Part 11

One of the things that particularly impressed me during my visit to Champagne was the feverish activity that prevailed behind the firing-line. It was the busiest place that I have ever seen; busier than Wall Street at the noon-hour; busier than the Canal Zone at the rush period of the Canal’s construction. The roads behind the front for twenty miles were filled with moving troops and transport-trains; long columns of sturdy infantrymen in mud-stained coats of faded blue and wearing steel casques which gave them a startling resemblance to their ancestors, the men-at-arms of the Middle Ages; brown-skinned men from North Africa in snowy turbans and voluminous burnooses, and black-skinned men from West Africa, whose khaki uniforms were brightened by broad red sashes and rakish red tarbooshes; sun-tanned Colonial soldiery from Annam and Tonquin, from Somaliland and Madagascar, wearing on their tunics the ribbons of wars fought in lands of which most people have never so much as heard; Spahis from Morocco and the Sahara, mounted on horses as wiry and hardy as themselves; Zouaves in jaunty fezzes and braided jackets and enormous trousers; sailors from the fleet, brought to handle the big naval guns, swaggering along with the roll of the sea in their gait; cuirassiers, their steel breastplates and horse-tailed helmets making them look astonishingly like Roman horsemen; dragoons so picturesque that they seemed to be posing for a Detaille or a Meissonier; field-batteries, pale blue like everything else in the French army, rocking and swaying over the stones; cyclists with their rifles slung across their backs hunter-fashion; leather-jacketed despatch riders on panting motor-cycles; post-offices on wheels; telegraph offices on wheels; butcher-shops on wheels; bake-shops on wheels; garages on wheels; motor-busses, their tops covered with wire-netting and filled with carrier pigeons; giant search-lights; water-carts drawn by patient Moorish donkeys whose turbaned drivers cursed them in shrill, harsh Arabic; troop transport cars like miniature railway-coaches, each carrying fifty men; field-kitchens with the smoke pouring from their stovepipes and steam rising from the soup caldrons; long lines of drinking-water wagons, the gift of the Touring Club de France; great herds of cattle and woolly waves of sheep, soon to be converted into beef and mutton, for the fighting man needs meat, and plenty of it; pontoon trains; balloon outfits; machine-guns; pack-trains; mountain batteries; ambulances; world without end, amen. Though the roads were jammed from ditch to ditch, there was no confusion, no congestion. Everything was as well regulated as the traffic on Fifth Avenue or the Strand. If the roads were crowded, so were the fields. Here a battalion of Zouaves at bayonet practise was being instructed in the “haymaker’s lift,” that terrible upward thrust in which a soldier trained in the use of the bayonet can, in a single stroke, rip his adversary open from waist to neck, and toss him over his shoulder as he would a forkful of hay. Over there a brigade of _chasseurs d’Afrique_ was encamped, the long lines of horses, the hooded wagons, and the fires with the cooking-pots steaming over them, suggesting a mammoth encampment of gypsies. In the next field a regiment of Moroccan tirailleurs had halted for the night, and the men, kneeling on their blankets, were praying with their faces turned toward Mecca. Down by the horse-lines a Moorish barber was at work shaving the heads of the soldiers, but taking care always to leave the little top-knot by means of which the faithful, when they die, may be jerked to Paradise. A little farther on the huge yellow bulk of an observation balloon—“_les saucisses_,” the French call them—was slowly filling preparatory to taking its place aloft with its fellows, which, at intervals of half a mile, hung above the French lines, straining at their tethers like horses that were frightened and wished to break away. In whichever direction I looked, men were drilling or marching. Where all these hordes of men had come from, where they were bound for, what they were going to do, no one seemed to know or, indeed, to particularly care. They were merely pawns which were being moved here and there upon a mighty chess-board by a stout old man in a general’s uniform, sitting at a map-covered table in a farmhouse many miles away.

[Illustration:

German prisoners came by, carrying on their shoulders stretchers on which lay the stiff, stark forms of dead men. ]

As we made our way slowly and laboriously toward the front across a region so littered with scraps of metal and broken iron and twisted wire that it looked like the ruins of a burned hardware store, we began to meet the caravans of wounded. Lying with white, drawn faces on the dripping stretchers were men whose bodies had been ripped open like the carcasses that hang in front of butcher-shops; men who had been blinded and will spend the rest of their days groping in darkness; men smashed out of all resemblance to anything human, yet still alive; and other men who, with no wound upon them, raved and laughed and cackled in insane mirth at the frightful humor of the things that they had seen. Every house and farmyard for miles around was filled with wounded, and still they came streaming in, some hobbling, some on stretchers, some assisted by comrades, some bareheaded, with the dried blood clotted on their heads and faces, others with their gasmasks and their mud-plastered helmets still on. Two soldiers came by pushing wheeled stretchers, on which lay the stiff, stark forms of dead men. The soldiers were whistling and singing, like men returning from a day’s work well done, and occasionally one of them in sheer exuberance of spirits would send his helmet spinning into the air. Coming to a little declivity, they raced down it with their grisly burdens, like delivery boys racing with their carts. The light vehicles bumped and jounced over the uneven ground until one of the corpses threatened to fall off, whereupon the soldiers stopped and, still laughing, tied the dead thing on again. Such is the callousness begotten by war.

Their offensive in Champagne cost the French, I have every reason to believe, very close to 110,000 men. The German casualties, so the French General Staff asserts, were about 140,000, of whom 21,000 were prisoners. In addition the Germans lost 121 guns. Despite this appalling cost in human lives, the distance gained by the French was so small that it cannot be seen on the ordinary map. Yet to measure the effect of the French effort by the ground gained would be a serious mistake. Just as by the Marne victory the French stopped the invasion and ruined the original German plan, which was first to shatter France and then turn against Russia; and just as by the victory of the Yser they effectively prevented the enemy from reaching the Channel ports or getting a foothold in the Pas-de-Calais, so the offensive in Champagne, costly as it was in human lives, fulfilled its double mission of holding large German forces on the western front and of demoralizing and wearing down the German army. It proved, moreover, that the Allies _can_ pierce the Germans provided they are willing to pay the cost.

Darkness was falling rapidly when I turned my back on the great battle-field, and the guns were roaring with redoubled fury in what is known on the British front as “the Evening Hate” and on the French lines as “the Evening Prayer.” As I emerged from the communication trench into the highroad where my car was waiting I met a long column of infantry, ghostly figures in the twilight, with huge packs on their backs and rifles slanting on their shoulders, marching briskly in the direction of the thundering guns. It was the night-shift going on duty at the mills—the mills where they turn human beings into carrion.

VI THE CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS

Dawn was breaking over the Lorraine hills when the French aircraft were wheeled from their canvas hangars and ranged in squadrilla formation upon the level surface of the plain. In the dim light of early morning the machines, with their silver bodies and snowy wings, bore an amazing resemblance to a flock of great white birds which, having settled for the night, were about to resume their flight. All through the night the mechanicians had been busy about them, testing the motors, tightening the guy-wires, and adjusting the planes, while the pilots had directed the loading of the explosives, for a whisper had passed along the line of sheds that a gigantic air-raid, on a scale not yet attempted, was to be made on some German town. At a signal from the officer in command of the aviation field the pilots and observers, unrecognizable in their goggles and leather helmets and muffled to the ears in leather and fur, climbed into their seats. In the clips beneath each aeroplane reposed three long, lean messengers of death, the torpedoes of the sky, ready to be sent hurtling downward by the pulling of a lever, while smaller projectiles, to be dropped by hand, filled every square inch in the bodies of the aeroplanes. From somewhere out on the aviation field a smoke rocket shot suddenly into the air. It was the signal for departure. With a deafening roar from their propellers the great biplanes, in rapid succession, left the ground and, like a flock of wild fowl, winged their way straight into the rising sun. As they crossed the German lines at a height of twelve thousand feet the French observers could see, far below, the decoy aeroplanes which had preceded them rocking slowly from side to side above the German antiaircraft guns in such a manner as to divert their attention from the raiders.

On an occasion like this each man is permitted the widest latitude of action. He is given an itinerary which he is expected to adhere to as closely as circumstances will permit, and he is given a set point at which to aim his bombs, but in all other respects he may use his own discretion. The raiders flew at first almost straight toward the rising sun, and it was not until they were well within the enemy’s lines that they altered their course, turning southward only when they were opposite the town which was their objective. So rapid was the pace at which they were travelling that it was not yet six o’clock when the commander of the squadron, peering through his glasses, saw, far below him, the yellow gridiron which he knew to be the streets, the splotches of green which he knew to be the parks, and the squares of red and gray which he knew to be the buildings of Karlsruhe. The first warning that the townspeople had was when a dynamite shell came plunging out of nowhere and exploded with a crash that rocked the city to its foundations. The people of Karlsruhe were being given a dose of the same medicine which the Zeppelins had given to Antwerp, to Paris, and to London. As the French airmen reached the town they swooped down in swift succession out of the gray morning sky until they were close enough to the ground to clearly distinguish through the fleecy mist the various objectives which had been given them. For weeks they had studied maps and bird’s-eye photographs of Karlsruhe until they knew the place as well as though they had lived in it all their lives. One took the old gray castle on the hill, another took the Margrave’s palace in the valley, others headed for the railway-station, the arms factory, and the barracks. Then hell broke loose in Karlsruhe. For nearly an hour it rained bombs. Not incendiary bombs or shrapnel, but huge 4-inch and 6-inch shells filled with high explosive which annihilated everything they hit. Holes as large as cellars suddenly appeared in the stone-paved streets and squares; buildings of brick and stone and concrete crashed to the ground as though flattened by the hand of God; fires broke out in various quarters of the city and raged unchecked; the terrified inhabitants cowered in their cellars or ran in blind panic for the open country; the noise was terrific, for bombs were falling at the rate of a dozen to the minute; beneath that rain of death Karlsruhe rocked and reeled. The artillery was called out but it was useless; no guns could hit the great white birds which twisted and turned and swooped and climbed a mile or more overhead. Each aeroplane, as soon as it had exhausted its cargo of explosives, turned its nose toward the French lines and went skimming homeward as fast as its propellers could take it there, but to the inhabitants of the quivering, shell-torn town it must have seemed as though the procession of aircraft would never cease. The return to the French lines was not as free from danger as the outward trip had been, for the news of the raid had been flashed over the country by wire and wireless and antiaircraft guns were on the lookout for the raiders everywhere. The guarding aeroplanes were on the alert, however, and themselves attracted the fire of the German batteries or engaged the German _Taubes_ while the returning raiders sped by high overhead. Of the four squadrillas of aeroplanes which set out for Karlsruhe only two machines failed to return. These lost their bearings and were surprised by the sudden rising of hawk-like _Aviatiks_ which cut them off from home and, after fierce struggles in the air, forced them to descend into the German lines. But it was not a heavy price to pay for the destruction that had been wrought and the moral effect that had been produced, for all that day the roads leading out of Karlsruhe were choked with frantic fugitives and the stories which they told spread over all southern Germany a cloud of despondency and gloom. Since then the news of the Zeppelin raids on London has brought a thrill of fear to the people of Karlsruhe. They have learned what it means to have death drop out of the sky.

More progress has been made in the French air service, which has been placed under the direction of the recently created Subministry of Aviation, than in any other branch of the Republic’s fighting machine. Though definite information regarding the French air service is extremely difficult to obtain, there is no doubt that on December 1, 1915, France had more than three thousand aeroplanes in commission, and this number is being steadily increased. The French machines, though of many makes and types, are divided into three classes, according to whether they are to be used for reconnoissance, for fire control, or for bombardment. The machines generally used for reconnoissance work are the Moranes, the Maurice Farmans, and a new type of small machine known as the “Baby” Nieuport. The last-named, which are but twenty-five feet wide and can be built in eight days at a cost of only six thousand francs, might well be termed the Fords of the air. They have an eighty-horsepower motor, carry only the pilot, who operates the machine-gun mounted over his head, and can attain the amazing speed of one hundred and twenty miles an hour. These tiny machines can ascend at a sharper angle than any other aeroplane made, it being claimed for them, and with truth, that they can do things which a large bird, such as an eagle or a hawk, could not do. The machines generally used for directing artillery fire are either Voisins or Caudron biplanes. The Voisin, which carries an observer as well as a pilot, is armed with a Hotchkiss quick-firer throwing three-pound shells, being the only machine of its size having sufficient stability to stand the recoil from so heavy a gun. The Caudron, which likewise has a crew of two men, has two motors, each acting independently of the other. I was shown one of these machines which, during an observation flight over the German lines, was struck by a shell which killed the observer and demolished one of the motors; the other motor was not damaged, however, and with it the pilot was able to bring the machine and his dead companion back to the French lines. For making raids and bombardments the Voisin and Breguet machines have generally been used, but they are now being replaced by the giant triplane which has fittingly been called “the Dreadnaught of the skies.” This aerial monster, the last word in aircraft construction, has a sixty-three-foot spread of wing; its four motors generate eight hundred horse-power; its armament consists of two Hotchkiss quick-firing cannon and four machine-guns; it can carry twelve men—though on a raid the crew consists of four—and twelve hundred pounds of explosive; its cost is six hundred thousand francs.

As a result of this extraordinary advance in aviation, France has to-day a veritable aerial navy, formed in squadrons and divisions, with battle-planes, cruisers, scouts, and destroyers, all heavily armored and carrying both machine-guns and cannon firing 3-inch shells. Each squadron, as at present formed, consists of one battle-plane, two battle-cruisers, and six scout-planes, with a complement of upward of fifty officers and men, which includes not only the pilots and observers but the mechanics and the drivers of the lorries and trailers which form part of each outfit. These raiding squadrons are constantly operating over the enemy’s lines, bombarding his bases, railway lines, and cantonments, hindering the transportation of troops and ammunition, and creating general demoralization behind the firing-line. On such forays it is the mission of the smaller and swifter machines, such as the Nieuports, to convoy and protect the larger and slower craft exactly as destroyers convoy and protect a battleship.

Two types of projectiles are carried on raiding aeroplanes: aerial torpedoes, two, three, or four in number, fitted with fins, like the feathers on an arrow, in order to guide their course, which are held by clips under the body of the machine and can be released when over the point to be bombarded by merely pulling a lever; and large quantities of smaller bombs, filled with high explosive and fitted with percussion fuses, which are dropped by hand. It is extremely difficult to attain any degree of accuracy in dropping bombs from moving aircraft, for it must be borne in mind that the projectiles, on being released, do not at once fall in a perfectly straight line to the earth, like a brick dropped from the top of a skyscraper. When an aeroplane is travelling forward at a speed of, let us say, sixty miles an hour, the bombs carried on the machine are also moving through space at the same rate. Owing to this forward movement combining with the downward gravitational drop, the path of the bomb is really a curve, and for this curve the aviator must learn to make allowance. Should the aircraft hover over one spot, however, the downward flight of the bomb is, of course, comparatively vertical.

[Illustration:

Lunéville from an aeroplane.

Through a study of maps and photographs the aviators come to know the towns they are to bombard as well as the people who live in them. This photo was taken by an American in the French air service. ]

The most exciting, as well as the most dangerous, work allotted to the aviators is that of flying over the enemy’s lines and, by means of huge cameras fitted with telephoto lens and fastened beneath the bodies of the machines, taking photographs of the German positions. As soon as the required exposures have been made, the machine speeds back to the French lines, usually amid a storm of bursting shrapnel, and the plates are quickly developed in the dark room, which is a part of every aerodrome. From the picture thus obtained an enlargement is made, and within two or three hours at the most the staff knows every detail of the German position, even to the depth of the wire entanglements and the number and location of the machine-guns. Should weather conditions or the activity of the enemy’s antiaircraft batteries make it inadvisable to send a machine on one of these photographic excursions, the camera is attached to a _cerf-volant_, or war-kite. The entire equipment is carried on three motor-cars built for the purpose, one carrying the dismounted kite, the second the cameras and crew, while the third car is a dark room on wheels. I can recall few more interesting sights along the battle-front than that of one of these war-kites in operation. Taking shelter behind a farmhouse or haystack, the staff, in scarcely more time than it takes to tell about it, have jointed together the bamboo rods which form the framework of the kite, the linen which forms the planes is stretched into place, a camera with its shutter controlled by an electric wire is slung underneath, and the great kite is sent into the air. When it is over that section of the enemy’s trenches of which a photograph is wanted, the officer at the end of the wire presses a button, the shutter of the camera swinging a thousand feet above flashes open and shut, the kite is immediately hauled down, a photographer takes the holder containing the exposed plate and disappears with it into the wheeled dark room to appear, five minutes later, with a picture of the German trenches.

[Illustration:

_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._

French antiaircraft gun in action against a German aeroplane. ]

The change that aeroplanes have produced in warfare is strikingly illustrated by the fact that in the Russo-Japanese war the Japanese fought for weeks and sacrificed thousands of men in order to capture 203-Metre Hill, not, mind you, because of its strategic importance, but in order that they might effectively control the fire of their siege mortars, which were endeavoring to reach the battleships in the harbor of Port Arthur. To-day that information would be furnished in an hour by aeroplanes. From dawn to dark aircraft hang over the enemy’s positions, spotting his batteries, mapping his trenches, noting the movements of troops and trains, yet with a storm of shrapnel bursting about them constantly. I remember seeing, in Champagne, a French aeroplane rocking lazily over the German lines, and counting sixty shrapnel clouds floating about it at one time. So thick were the patches of fleecy white that they looked like the white tufts on a sky-blue coverlet. The shooting of the German verticals (antiaircraft guns) has steadily improved as a result of the constant practise they have had, so that half the time there are ragged rents in the French planes caused by fragments of exploding shells. So deafening is the racket of the motor and propeller, however, that it is impossible to hear a shell unless it bursts at very close range, so that the aviators, intent on their work, are often utterly unconscious of how near they are to death. It is very curious how close shells can explode to a machine and yet not cripple it enough to bring it down. A pilot flying over the German lines in Flanders had his leg smashed by a bursting shell, which, strangely enough, did no damage to the planes or motor. The wounded man fainted from the pain and shock and his machine, left uncontrolled, began to plunge earthward. Recovering consciousness, the aviator, despite the excruciating pain which he was suffering, retained sufficient strength and presence of mind to get his machine under control and head it back for the French lines, though shrapnel was bursting all about him. He came quietly and gracefully to ground at his home aviation field and then fell over his steering lever unconscious.