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# True Stories of the Great War, Volume 1 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses ### By Unknown

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TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR

TALES OF ADVENTURE--HEROIC DEEDS--EXPLOITS TOLD BY THE SOLDIERS, OFFICERS, NURSES, DIPLOMATS, EYE WITNESSES

_Collected in Six Volumes From Official and Authoritative Sources_ (_See Introductory to Volume I_)

VOLUME I

Editor-in-Chief FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER (Litt. D., LL.D.) Editor of The Search-Light Library

1917 REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY NEW YORK

TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR

INTRODUCTORY

Thirty million soldiers, each living a great human story--this is the real drama of the Great War as it is being written into the hearts and memories of the men at the front. If these soldiers could be gathered around one camp-fire, and each soldier could relate the most thrilling moment of his experience--what stories we would hear! "Don Quixote," the "Arabian Nights," Dante's "Inferno," Milton's "Paradise Lost, and Regained"--all the legends and tales of the world's literature out-told by the soldiers themselves.

It is from the lips of these soldiers, and those who have passed through the tragedy of the war--the women and children whose eyes have beheld the inferno and whose souls have been uplifted by suffering and self-sacrifice--the generations will hear the epic of the days when millions of men gave their lives to "make the world safe for Democracy." The magnitude of this gigantic struggle against autocracy is such that human imagination cannot visualize it--it requires one to stand face to face with death itself.

A member of the British War Staff estimates that more than a million letters a day are passing from the trenches and bases of the various armies "to the folk back home." Another observer at the General Headquarters of one of the armies estimates that more than a million and a half diaries are being kept by the soldiers. It is in these words, inscribed by bleeding bodies and suffering hearts, that posterity is to hear _True Stories of the Great War_.

It is the purpose of these volumes, therefore, to begin the preservation of these soldiers' stories. This is the first collection that has been made; it is in itself an historic event. The manner in which this service has been performed may be of interest to the reader. It was my privilege to appoint a committee, or board of editors, to collect stories from soldiers in the various armies--personal letters, records of personal experiences, reminiscences, and all other available material. An exhaustive investigation has been made into the files of European and American periodicals to find the various narratives that have "crept into print."

More than eight thousand stories were considered. The vast amount of human material would require innumerable volumes to preserve it. It was the judgment of the committee that this documentary evidence could be brought into practical limitations by selecting a sufficient number of narratives to cover every human phase of the Great War and preserve them in six volumes.

This first collection of "True Stories" forms what might be termed a "story-history" of the Great War, although all chronological plan is purposely avoided in order to preserve the story-teller's "reality" rather than the historian's record.

These volumes are in the nature of a "Round Table" in which soldiers, refugees, nurses, eye-witnesses--all gather about the pages and relate the most thrilling episodes of their war experiences. We hear the tales of the soldiers who invaded Belgium, through the campaigns and battles on all the fronts, to the landing of the American troops in France. Diplomats tell of the scenes at the outbreak of the war; despatch bearers relate their missions of danger from Paris to Berlin, London, Vienna, Petrograd; refugees describe the flight of the Belgians, the exodus of the Serbians, the invasion of Poland. Emissaries at General Headquarters tell of their dinners with the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, with Hindenburg and Zimmerman, and describe the scenes inside the German empire. Soldiers from the Marne, the Aisne, Verdun--relate their experiences. We listen to passengers tossed into the sea from the _Lusitania_; revolutionists who overthrew the Czar in Russia; exiles returning from Siberia. We hear the tales of the fighters from South Africa, Egypt, Turkey; stories from the Far East along the seas of China. The lieutenant of the _Emden_ relates his adventures. There are stories told by Kitchener's "mob"; the "fighting Irish," Scottish Highlanders, the Canadians, the Australians, the Hindus. The French hussars and poilus tell of their experiences; the Italians in the Alps, the Austrians in the Carpathians--the stories cover the whole world and every race and nation.

These personal narratives reveal the psychology of war in all its horrible reality--modern warfare on its gigantic scale--the genius of invention and organization applied to destruction. They reveal, moreover, the psychology of human nature and human emotions in all their moods and passions. The first impression is of the physical horror of the war, but this is soon overcome by the higher spirituality that impels men to sacrifice their lives for civilization and humanity. The stories sink at times into grossest brutality only to rise to the heights of nobility on the part of the sufferers. Officers tell of the charges of their battalions; the men in the trenches tell of the "nights of terror"; spies tell of their secret missions; nurses deliver the death-messages of the dying; priests tell how they carry the Cross of Christ to the bloody fields; the prisoners tell the "inside story of the prisons"; aviators relate their death-duels in the air; submarine officers tell how they torpedo and capture the enemies' ships. There is testimony from the lips of women who were ravaged; children who were brutally mutilated; witnesses who saw soldiers crucified; soldiers lashed to their guns; babies torn from their mothers' arms; homes in flames and ruins, cathedrals desecrated.

And yet there is an undercurrent of humanity in these human documents. In their physical aspect they are almost beyond human belief--but there is a certain spiritual force running through them. There is a nobility in them that rises above all the physical anguish.

These stories (and this war) reveal the souls of men as has nothing before in modern times. The war has taught men "how to die." These men have lost all fear of death. They have traveled the road of the crucifixion and stood before Calvary; they have caught a glimpse of something finer, nobler, truer than their own individual existence. Through suffering and self-sacrifice they have risen to the noblest heights. They have found something that we who have not faced death in the trenches may never find--they have felt an exaltation in mind and body that we may never know. There is the fire of the Old Crusaders about them; they have caught the realization of the glory of humanity as they march into the face of death. It is interesting to observe that wherever the story-teller is fighting for a principle, he sees no horror in war or death. It is only where he thinks of his individual suffering, where his thoughts are of his own physical self, that he complains.

And there is even humor in these stories; we see men laughing at death; we see the wounded smiling and telling humorous tales of their suffering; there is irony, cajolery, good-natured satire, and loud outbursts of laughter. And there is tenderness in them--kindness, gentleness, devotion, affection, and love. We find in them every human passion--and every divine emotion. They form a new insight into character and manhood--they inspire us with a new and deeper faith in humanity.

The committee in making these selections found that many of the human documents of the Great War are being preserved by the British, French, and German publishing houses, but it is the American publishers who are performing the greatest service in the preservation of war literature. We have given consideration wherever possible to the notable work that is being done by our American colleagues. While we have selected from all sources what we consider to be _the best stories of the war_, giving full recognition in every instance to the original sources, it is a pleasure to state that our American periodicals have been given the preference. They cordially co-operated with us in this undertaking and we trust the public will show their due appreciation. We would especially call attention to the list of books and publishers recorded in the contents pages of the several volumes; also to the periodicals which are preserving many of the human stories of the war. These will form the basis for much of the literature of the future.

As editor-in-chief of these volumes, I desire further to give full recognition to my associates: Mr. M. M. Lourens, of the University of Leyden; Mr. Egbert Gilliss Handy, founder of The Search-Light Library; Mr. Walter R. Bickford, former managing editor of The Journal of American History; and the staff of investigators at The Search-Light Library who made the extensive researches and comprehensive bibliographies--covering the whole range of literature on The Great War--required as a basis for the production of these books.

FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER.

CONTENTS

The Board of Editors in accordance with the plan outlined in "Introductory" for collecting the "Best Stories of the War," has selected this group of stories for VOLUME I from the most authentic sources in Europe and America. This volume includes 170 episodes and tales of adventure told by twenty-six story-tellers--Soldiers, Staff Observers, Officers, Despatch Riders, Cavalrymen, Aviators, Nurses, Prisoners, Raiders, Secret Service Men and American soldiers. Full credit is given in every instance to the original sources.

VOLUME I--TWENTY-SIX STORY-TELLERS--170 EPISODES

=STORIES OF THE THREE MEN WHO CAUSED THE WORLD WAR= 1 "HOW I MET THE KAISER, CROWN PRINCE AND ARCHDUKE" Told by Hall Caine (Permission of J. B. Lippincott Company)

=MY VISIT TO KING ALBERT--THE KING WHOSE THRONE IS THE HEARTS OF HIS PEOPLE= 8 "I AM BOUND ON A MISSION FROM THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE" Told by Pierre Loti (Permission of J. B. Lippincott Company)

="VIVE LA FRANCE"--HOW THEY DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY= 23 LAST MESSAGES OF FRENCH SOLDIERS Told by Rene Bazin (Permission of Current History)

=FOR GOD AND ITALY--BREATHING DEATH WITH THE ITALIANS= 29 "WHERE MINUTES ARE ETERNAL" Told by Gabriele D'Annunzio (Permission of London Telegraph)

=THE BLOOD OF THE RUSSIANS IN FIGHT FOR LIBERTY= 36 "THE DESERTED BATTLEFIELDS I HAVE SEEN" Told by Count Ilya Tolstoy (Permission of Current History)

=MY EXPERIENCES IN THE WAR HOSPITALS OF RUMANIA= 44 THE HORRORS OF THE LITTLE BALKAN KINGDOM Told by Queen Marie of Rumania (Permission of Philadelphia Public Ledger)

="WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST"--VISITS TO THE GENERAL STAFF= 49 Told by Sven Hedin (Permission of John Lane Company)

="THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND"--WITH KITCHENER'S ARMY IN FRANCE= 73 STORIES STRAIGHT FROM THE TRENCHES Told by Captain Ian Hay Beith (Permission of Houghton, Mifflin and Company)

=SOME EXPERIENCES IN HUNGARY= 97 IN THE PALACE OF PRINCE AND PRINCESS K---- Told by Mina Macdonald (Permission of Longmans, Green and Company)

="FORCED TO FIGHT"--THE TALE OF A SCHLESWIG DANE= 117 "WHAT MY EYES WITNESSED IN EAST PRUSSIA" Told by Eric Erichsen (Permission of Robert M. McBride and Company)

="ADVENTURES OF A DESPATCH RIDER"= 133 AN OXFORD MAN WITH THE MOTORCYCLISTS Told by Capt. W. H. L. Watson (Permission of Dodd, Mead and Company)

=WITH A B.-P. SCOUT IN GALLIPOLI--ON THE TURKISH FRONTIER= 155 A RECORD OF THE BELTON BULLDOGS Told by Edmund Yerbury Priestman (Permission of E. P. Dutton and Company)

="IN THE FIELD"--THE STORIES OF THE FRENCH CHASSEURS= 165 IMPRESSIONS OF AN OFFICER OF LIGHT CAVALRY Told by Lieut. Marcel Dupont (Permission of J. B. Lippincott Company)

="FIELD HOSPITAL AND FLYING COLUMN"--IN RUSSIA= 181 JOURNAL OF AN ENGLISH NURSING SISTER Told by Violetta Thurston (Permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons)

=AN UNCENSORED DIARY--FROM THE CENTRAL EMPIRES= 192 AT THE AMERICAN EMBASSY IN COPENHAGEN Told by Ernesta Drinker Bullitt (Permission of Doubleday, Page and Company)

="A STUDENT IN ARMS"--IN THE RANKS WITH KITCHENER'S ARMY= 209 RESURRECTION OF THE SOUL ON THE BATTLEFIELD Told by Donald Hankey (Permission of E. P. Dutton and Company)

="THE RED HORIZON"--STORIES OF THE LONDON IRISH= 217 THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY Told by Patrick MacGill (Permission of George H. Doran Company)

=MY TRIP TO VERDUN--GENERAL PETAIN FACE TO FACE= 225 FROM GRAVES OF THE MARNE TO HILLS OF THE MEUSE Told by Frank H. Simonds (Permission of American Review of Reviews)

=UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES--WITH AMERICAN ARMY IN FRANCE= 246 STORIES OF AMERICAN TROOPS ON ROAD TO FRONT Told by Lincoln Eyre, with Pershing's Army (Permission of New York World)

=WITH THE SERBIAN STOICS IN EXILE--UNDER THE GERMAN YOKE= 257 EXPERIENCES IN THE FLIGHT TO ALBANIA Told by Gordon Gordon-Smith (Permission of New York Tribune)

=TALES OF THE TANKS--WITH THE ARMORED MONSTERS IN BATTLE= 274 ADVENTURES AS ROMANTIC AS MEDIAEVAL LEGENDS Told by the Men in the Tanks

="MY ESCAPE FROM THE TURKS DISGUISED AS A WOMAN"= 288 THE STORY OF A WONDERFUL FEAT Told by Private Miron D. Arber (Permission of Wide World Magazine)

=TALES OF GERMAN AIR RAIDERS OVER LONDON AND PARIS= 306 "HOW WE DROP BOMBS ON THE ENEMIES' CITIES" Told by the Air Raiders Themselves (Permission of New York American)

=TALES FROM SIBERIA--WHEN THE PRISON DOORS OPENED= 316 JOURNEY HOME OF A HUNDRED THOUSAND EXILES Told by (name withheld), an Eye-Witness (Permission of New York Evening World, Los Angeles Times, and Literary Digest)

=SURVIVORS' STORIES OF SINKING OF THE "LUSITANIA"= 325 "HOW WE SAW OUR SHIP GO DOWN--TORPEDOED BY A GERMAN SUBMARINE" Told by Passengers of the Ill-Fated "Lusitania"

=WITH THE AMERICAN SOLDIERS ON THE FIELDS OF FRANCE= 340 PERSONAL EXPERIENCES DIRECT FROM THE FRONT (Permission of New York Sun)

[Illustration: Photo by International News Service. ON OBSERVATION DUTY _A Better Defense Against Enemy Eyes Than Against Bullets or Shells!_]

[Illustration: "Canadian War Records, Copyright Reserved." A NERVE-RACKING JOB _Watching Artillery Fire From an Advance Pit in No-Man's-Land_]

[Illustration: POUNDING AT LONG RANGE _A Battery of Heavy Howitzers Doing its Part in Hammering the Enemy into Proper Condition for a Charge_]

[Illustration: © International News Service. FORWARD! _A Few Minutes Later These Britishers Were in the German Trenches_]

STORIES OF THE THREE MEN WHO CAUSED THE WORLD WAR

"_How I Met the Kaiser, Crown Prince and Archduke_"

_Told by Hall Caine, Famous British Novelist, Who Offered All to His Country_

This celebrated novelist, since the outbreak of the War, has fought a noble battle for the Anglo-Saxon race with the "pen that is mightier than the sword." His appeals to America have been the voice of a world patriot calling in the name of humanity. He presents the great actors in vivid pen pictures, the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, the Archduke. The following pen sketches are from "The Drama of 365 Days," by permission of the publishers _J. B. Lippincott Company_: Copyright, 1915.

[1] I--PEN PORTRAITS OF THE KAISER

Other whisperings there were of the storm that was so soon to burst on the world. In the ominous silence there were rumours of a certain change that was coming over the spirit of the Kaiser. For long years he had been credited with a sincere love of peace, and a ceaseless desire to restrain the forces about him that were making for war. Although constantly occupied with the making of a big army, and inspiring it with great ideals, he was thought to have as little desire for actual warfare as his ancestor, Frederick William, had shown, while gathering up his giant guardsmen and refusing to allow them to fight.

## Particularly it was believed in Berlin (not altogether graciously) that

his affection for, and even fear of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, would compel him to exhaust all efforts to preserve peace in the event of trouble with Great Britain. But Victoria was dead, and King Edward might perhaps be smiled at--behind his back--and then a younger generation was knocking at the Kaiser's door in the person of his eldest son, who represented forces which he might not long be able to hold in check. How would he act now?

Thousands of persons in this country had countless opportunities before the war of forming an estimate of the Kaiser's character. I had only one, and it was not of the best. For years the English traveller abroad felt as if he were always following in the track of a grandiose personality who was playing on the scene of the world as on a stage, fond as an actor of dressing up in fine uniforms, of making pictures, scenes, and impressions, and leaving his visible mark behind him--as in the case of the huge gap in the thick walls of Jerusalem, torn down (it was said with his consent) to let his equipage pass through.

In Rome I saw a man who was a true son of his ancestors. Never had the laws of heredity better justified themselves. Frederick William, Frederick the Great, William the First--the Hohenzollerns were all there. The glittering eyes, the withered arm, the features that gave signs of frightful periodical pain, the immense energy, the gigantic egotism, the ravenous vanity, the fanaticism amounting to frenzy, the dominating power, the dictatorial temper, the indifference to suffering (whether his own or other people's), the overbearing suppression of opposing opinions, the determination to control everybody's interest, everybody's work--I thought all this was written in the Kaiser's masterful face.

Then came stories. One of my friends in Rome was an American doctor who had been called to attend a lady of the Emperor's household. "Well, doctor, what's she suffering from?" said the Kaiser. The doctor told him. "Nothing of the kind--you're entirely wrong. She's suffering from so and so," said the Majesty of Germany, stamping up and down the room. At length the American doctor lost control. "Sir," he said, "in my country we have a saying that one bad practitioner is worth twenty good amateurs--you're the amateur." The doctor lived through it. Frederick William would have dragged him to the window and tried to fling him out of it. William II put his arm round the doctor's shoulder and said, "I didn't mean to hurt you, old fellow. Let us sit down and talk."

A soldier came with another story. After a sham fight conducted by the Kaiser the generals of the German army had been summoned to say what they thought of the Royal manoeuvers. All had formed an unfavourable opinion, yet one after another, with some insincere compliment, had wriggled out of the difficulty of candid criticism. But at length came an officer, who said:

"Sir, if it had been real warfare to-day there wouldn't be enough wood in Germany to make coffins for the men who would be dead."

The general lived through it, too--at first in a certain disfavour, but afterwards in recovered honour.

Such was the Kaiser, who a year ago had to meet the mighty wind of War. He was in Norway for his usual summer holiday in July, 1914, when affairs were reaching their crisis. Rumour has it that he was not satisfied with the measure of the information that was reaching him, therefore he returned to Berlin, somewhat to the discomfiture of his ministers, intending, it is said, for various reasons (not necessarily humanitarian) to stop or at least postpone the war. If so, he arrived too late. He was told that matters had gone too far. They must go on now. "Very well, if they must, they must," he is reported to have said. And there is the familiar story that after he had signed his name on the first of August to the document that plunged Europe into the conflict that has since shaken it to its foundations, he flung down his pen and cried, "You'll live to regret this, gentlemen."

II--PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE CROWN PRINCE

And then the Crown Prince. In August of last year nine out of every ten of us would have said that not the father, but the son, of the Royal family of Germany had been the chief provocative cause of the war. Subsequent events have lessened the weight of that opinion. But the young man's known popularity among an active section of the officers of the army; their subterranean schemes to set him off against his father; a vague suspicion of the Kaiser's jealousy of his eldest son--all these facts and shadows of facts give colour to the impression that not least among the forces which led the Emperor on that fateful first of August to declare war against Russia was the presence and the importunity of the Crown Prince. What kind of man was it, then, whom the invisible powers of evil were employing to precipitate this insensate struggle?

Hundreds of persons in England, France, Russia and Italy must have met the Crown Prince of Germany at more or less close quarters, and formed their own estimates of his character. The barbed-wire fence of protective ceremony which usually surrounds Royal personages, concealing their little human foibles, was periodically broken down in the case of the Heir-Apparent to the German Throne by his incursion every winter into a small cosmopolitan community which repaired to the snows of the Engadine for health or pleasure. In that stark environment I myself, in common with many others, saw the descendant of the Fredericks every day, for several weeks of several years, at a distance that called for no intellectual field-glasses. And now I venture to say, for whatever it may be worth, that the result was an entirely unfavourable impression.

I saw a young man without a particle of natural distinction, whether physical, moral, or mental. The figure, long rather than tall; the hatchet face, the selfish eyes, the meaningless mouth, the retreating forehead, the vanishing chin, the energy that expressed itself merely in restless movement, achieving little, and often aiming at nothing at all; the uncultivated intellect, the narrow views of life and the world; the morbid craving for change, for excitement of any sort; the indifference to other people's feelings, the shockingly bad manners, the assumption of a right to disregard and even to outrage the common conventions on which social intercourse depends--all this was, so far as my observation enabled me to judge, only too plainly apparent in the person of the Crown Prince.

Outside the narrow group that gathered about him (a group hailing, ironically enough, from the land of a great Republic) I cannot remember to have heard in any winter one really warm word about him, one story of an act of kindness, or even generous condescension, such as it is easy for a royal personage to perform. On the contrary, I was constantly hearing tales of silly fooleries, of overbearing behaviour, of deliberate rudeness, such as irresistibly recalled, in spirit if not in form, the conduct of the common barrator in the guise of a king, who, if Macaulay's stories are to be credited, used to kick a lady in the open streets and tell her to go home and mind her brats.

III--PEN-PORTRAIT OF THE ARCHDUKE FERDINAND

Then the Archduke Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary, whose assassination was the ostensible cause of this devastating war--what kind of man was he? Quite a different person from the Crown Prince, and yet, so far as I could judge, just as little worthy of the appalling sacrifice of human life which his death has occasioned.