Part 4
At eight o’clock the general commanding the garrison hurried in. He had invited me to lunch with him. “I am desolated that I cannot have the pleasure of your company at _déjeuner_, Monsieur Powell,” said he, “but it is not wise for you to remain in the city. I am responsible to the Government for your safety, and it would make things easier for me if you would go. I have taken the liberty of sending for your car.” You can call it cowardice or timidity or anything you please, but I am not at all ashamed to admit that I was never so glad to have an invitation cancelled. I have had a somewhat extensive acquaintance with bombardments, and I have always found that those who speak lightly of them are those who have never seen one.
In order to get out of range of the German shells my driver, acting under the orders of the commandant, turned the bonnet of the car toward Bergues, five miles to the southward. But we found that Bergues had not been overlooked by the German gunners, having, indeed, suffered more severely than Dunkirk. When we arrived the bombardment was just over and the dust was still rising from the shattered houses. Twelve 38-centimetre shells had landed in the very heart of the little town, sending a score or more of its inhabitants, men, women, and children, to the hospital and a like number to the cemetery.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
The mass before the battle.
There are said to be upward of twenty thousand priests fighting in the armies of France. ]
A few hours before Bergues had been as quaint and peaceful and contented a town of five thousand people as you could have found in France. Because of its quaint and simple charm touring motorists used to go out of their way to see it. It is fortified in theory but not in fact, for its moss-grown ramparts, which date from the Crusades, have about as much military significance as the Battery in New York. But the guide-books describe it as a fortified town, and that was all the excuse the Germans needed to turn loose upon it sudden death. To-day that little town is an empty, broken shell, its streets piled high with the brick and plaster of its ruined homes. One has to see the ruin produced by a 38-centimetre shell to believe it. If one hits a building that building simply ceases to exist. It crumbles, disintegrates, disappears. I do not mean to say that its roof is ripped off or that one of its walls is blown away. I mean to say that the whole building crashes to the ground as though flattened by the hand of God. The Germans sent only twelve of their shells into Bergues, but the central part of the town looked like Market Street in San Francisco after the earthquake. One of the shells struck a hospital and exploded in a ward filled with wounded soldiers. They are not wounded any longer. Another shell completely demolished a three-story brick house. In the cellar of that house a man, his wife, and their three children had taken refuge. There was no need to dig graves for them in the local cemetery. Throughout the bombardment a _Taube_ hung over the doomed town to observe the effect of the shots, and to direct by wireless the distant gunners. I wonder what the German observer, peering down through his glasses upon the wrecked hospital and the shell-torn houses and the mangled bodies of the women and children, thought about it all. It would be interesting to know, wouldn’t it?
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
What a 38-centimetre shell, fired from a gun twenty-three miles away, did in Dunkirk.
“When one of these shells hits a building, that building simply ceases to exist.” ]
II ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE
Along a road in the outskirts of that French town which is the British headquarters a youth was running. He was of considerably less than medium height, and fair-haired and very slender. One would have described him as a nice-looking boy. He wore a jersey and white running-shorts which left his knees bare, and he was bareheaded. Shoulders back and chest well out, he jogged along at the steady dog-trot adopted by athletes and prize-fighters who are in training. Now, in ordinary times there is not anything particularly remarkable in seeing a scantily clad youth dog-trotting along a country road. You assume that he is training for a cross-country event, or for a seat in a ’varsity shell, or for the feather-weight championship, and you let it go at that. But these are not ordinary times in France, and ordinary young men in running-shorts are not permitted to trot along the roads as they list in the immediate vicinity of British Headquarters. Even if you travel, as I did, in a large gray car, with an officer of the French General Staff for companion, you are halted every few minutes by a sentry who turns the business end of a rifle in your direction and demands to see your papers. But no one challenged the young man in the running-shorts or asked to see _his_ papers. Instead, whenever a soldier caught sight of him that soldier clicked his heels together and stood rigidly at attention. After you had observed the curious effect which the appearance of this young man produced on the military of all ranks it suddenly struck you that his face was strangely familiar. Then you all at once remembered that you had seen it hundreds of times in the magazines and the illustrated papers. Under it was the caption, “His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.” That young man will some day, if he lives, sit in an ancient chair in Westminster Abbey, and the Archbishop of Canterbury will place a crown upon his head, and his picture will appear on coins and postage-stamps in use over half the globe.
Now, the future King of England—Edward VIII they will doubtless call him—is not getting up at daybreak and reeling off half a dozen miles or so because he particularly enjoys it. He is doing it with an end in view. He is doing it for precisely the same reason that the prize-fighter does it—he is training for a battle. To me there was something wonderfully suggestive and characteristic in the sight of that young man plugging doggedly along the country road. He seemed to epitomize the spirit which I found to exist along the whole length of the British battle-line. Every British soldier in France has come to appreciate that he is engaged in a struggle without parallel in history—a struggle in which he is confronted by formidable, ferocious, resourceful, and utterly unscrupulous opponents, and from which he is by no means certain to emerge a victor—and he is, therefore, methodically and systematically preparing to win that struggle just as a pugilist prepares himself for a battle in a prize-ring.
The British soldier has at last come to a realization of the terrible gravity of the situation which faces him. You don’t hear him singing “Tipperary” any more or boasting about what he is going to do when he gets to Berlin. He has come to have a most profound respect for the fighting qualities of the men in the spiked helmets. He knows that he, an amateur boxer as it were, is up against the world’s heavyweight professional champion, and he perfectly appreciates that he has, to use his own expression, “a hell of a job” in front of him. He has already found out, to his cost and to his very great disgust, that his opponent has no intention of being hampered by the rules laid down by the late Marquis of Queensberry, having missed no opportunity to gouge or kick or hit below the belt. But the British soldier has now become familiar with his opponent’s tactics, and one of these days, when he gets quite ready, he is going to give that opponent the surprise of his life by landing on him with both feet, spikes on his shoes, and brass knuckles on his fingers. Meanwhile, like the young Prince in the running-shorts, he has buckled down with grim determination to the task of getting himself into condition.
I suppose that if I were really politic and far-sighted I would cuddle up to the War Office and make myself solid with the General Staff by confidently asserting that the British Army is the most efficient killing machine in existence, and that its complete and early triumph is as certain as that the sparks fly upward; neither of which assertions would be true. It should be kept in mind, however, that the British did not begin the building of their war-machine until after the outbreak of hostilities, while the German organization is the result of upward of half a century of unceasing thought, experiment, and endeavor. But what the British have accomplished since the war began is one of the marvels of military history. Lord Kitchener came to a War Office which had long been in the hands of lawyers and politicians. Not only was he expected to remodel an institution which had become a national joke, but at the same time to raise a huge volunteer army. In order to raise this army he had to have recourse to American business methods. He employed a clever advertising specialist to cover the walls and newspapers of the United Kingdom with all manner of striking advertisements, some pleading, some bullying, some caustic in tone, by which he has proved that, given patriotic impulse, advertising for people to go to war is just like advertising for people to buy automobiles or shaving-soap or smoking-tobacco. It was not soothing to British pride—but it got the men. Late in the spring of 1915, after half a year or more of training, during which they were worked as a negro teamster works a mule, those men were marched aboard transports and sent across the Channel. So admirably executed were the plans of the War Office and so complete the precautions taken by the Admiralty, that this great force was landed on the Continent without the loss of a single life from German mines or submarines. That, in itself, is one of the greatest accomplishments of the war. England now (December, 1915) has in France an army of approximately a million men. But it is a new army. The bulk of it is without experience and without experienced regiments to stiffen it and give it confidence, for the army of British regulars which landed in France at the outbreak of the war has ceased to exist. The old regimental names remain, but the officers and men who composed those regiments are, to-day, in the hospitals or the cemeteries. The losses suffered by the British Army in Flanders are appalling. The West Kent Regiment, for example, has been three times wiped out and three times reconstituted. Of the Black Watch, the Rifle Brigade, the Infantry of the Household, scarcely a vestige of the original establishments remains. Hardly less terrible are the losses which have been suffered by the Canadian Contingent. The Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry landed in France 1400 strong. To-day only 140 remain. The present colonel was a private in the ranks when the regiment sailed from Quebec.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
London buses at the front.
“Far as the eye can see stretch long lines of London motor-buses in war coats of elephant gray, crowded with sun-tanned men in khaki hurrying toward the trenches.” ]
The machine that the British have knocked together, though still a trifle wabbly and somewhat creaky in its joints, is, I am convinced, eventually going to do the business. But you cannot appreciate what it is like or what it is accomplishing by reading about it; you have to see it for yourself as I did. That corner of France lying between the fifty miles of British front and the sea is, to-day, I suppose, the busiest region in the world. It reminded me of the Canal Zone during the rush period of the Canal’s construction. It is as busy as the lot where the Greatest Show on Earth is getting ready for the afternoon performance. Down the roads, far as the eye can see, stretch long lines of London motor-buses, sombre war coats of elephant gray replacing the staring advertisements of teas, tobaccos, whiskeys, and theatrical attractions, crowded no longer with pale-faced clerks hurrying toward the city, but with sun-tanned men in khaki hurrying toward the trenches. Interminable processions of motor-lorries go lumbering past, piled high with the supplies required to feed and clothe the army, practically all of which are moved from the coast to the front by road, the railways being reserved for the transport of men and ammunition; and the ambulances, hundreds and hundreds of them, hurrying their blood-soaked cargoes to the hospitals so that they may go back to the front for more. So crowded are the highways behind the British front that at the cross-roads in the country and at the street crossings in the towns are posted military policemen with little scarlet flags who control the traffic just as do the policemen on Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The roads are never permitted to fall into disrepair, for on their condition depends the rapidity with which the army can be supplied with food and ammunition. Hence road gangs and steam-rollers and sprinkling-carts are at work constantly. When the war is over, France will have better roads and more of them than she ever had before. There are speed-limit signs everywhere—heretofore practically unknown in France, where any one who was careless enough to get run over was liable to arrest for obstructing the traffic. At frequent intervals along the roads are blacksmith shops and motor-car repair stations, to say nothing of the repair cars, veritable garages on wheels, which, when news of an accident or breakdown is received, go tearing toward the scene of trouble as a fire-engine responds to an alarm of fire. At night all cars must run without lights, as a result of which many camions and motor-buses have met with disaster by running off the roads in the darkness and tipping over in the deep ditches. To provide for this particular form of mishap the Army Service Corps has designed a most ingenious contrivance which yanks the huge machines out of the ditch and sets them on the road again as easily as though they were stubborn mules. Upon the door of every house we passed, whether château or cottage, was marked the number of men who could be billeted upon it. There are signs indicating where water can be obtained and fodder and pasturage and petrol. In every town and village are to be found military interpreters, known by a distinctive cap and _brassard_, who are always ready to straighten out a misunderstanding between a Highlander from the north of the Tweed and a _tirailleur_ from Tunisia, who will assist a Ghurka from the Indian hill country in bargaining for poultry with a Flemish-speaking peasant, or instruct a lost Senegalese how to get back to his command. An officers’ training-school has been established at St.-Omer, which is the British Headquarters, where those men in the ranks who possess the necessary education are fitted to receive commissions. After this war is over the British Army will no longer be officered by the British aristocracy. The wholesale promotions of enlisted men made necessary by the appalling losses among the officers will result in completely changing the complexion of the British military establishment. Provided he has the necessary educational qualifications, the son of a day-laborer will hereafter stand as much chance as the son of a duke. Did you know, by the way, that the present Chief of the Imperial General Staff began life as a footman and entered the army as a private in the ranks?
[Illustration:
_From a photograph by Meurisse._
British field-kitchens on the march in Flanders.
“Napoleon said: ‘An army marches on its belly,’ and the Army Service Corps is seeing to it that the belly of the British soldier is never empty.” ]
The wonderful thoroughness of the British is exemplified by the bulletins which are issued every morning by the Intelligence Department for the information of the brigade and regimental commanders. They resemble ordinary hand-bills and contain a summary of all the information which the Intelligence Department has been able to collect during the preceding twenty-four hours as to what is going on behind the German lines—movements of troops, construction of new trenches, changes in the location of batteries, shortage of ammunition, condition of the roads; everything, in short, which might be of any conceivable value to the British to know. For example, the report might contain a sentence something like this: “At five o’clock to-morrow morning the Prussian Guard, which has been holding position No. —, to the south of Ypres, will be relieved by the 47th Bavarian Landsturm”—which, by the way, would probably result in the British attacking the position mentioned. The information contained in these bulletins comes from many sources—from spies in the pay of the Intelligence Department, from aviators who make reconnoissance flights over the German lines, and particularly from the inhabitants of the invaded regions, who, by various ingenious expedients, succeed in communicating to the Allies much important information—often at the cost of their lives.
The great base camps which the British have established at Calais and Havre and Boulogne and Rouen are marvels of organization, efficiency, and cleanliness. Cities whose macadamized streets are lined with portable houses of wood or metal which have been brought to the Continent in sections, and which have sewers and telephone systems and electric lights, and accommodations for a hundred thousand men apiece, have sprung up on the sand-dunes of the French coast as though by the wave of a magician’s wand. Here, where the fresh, healing wind blows in from the sea, have been established hospitals, each with a thousand beds. Huge warehouses have been built of concrete to hold the vast quantity of stores which are being rushed across the Channel by an endless procession of transports and cargo steamers. So efficient is the British field-post system, which is operated by the Army Post-Office Division of the Royal Engineers, that within forty-eight hours after a wife or mother or sweetheart drops a letter into a post-box in England that letter has been delivered in the trenches to the man to whom it was addressed.
In order to prevent military information leaking out through the letters which are written by the soldiers to the folks at home, one in every five is opened by the regimental censor, it being obviously out of the question to peruse them all. If, however, the writer is able to get hold of one of the precious green envelopes, whose color is a guarantee of private and family matters only, he is reasonably certain that his letter will not be read by other eyes than those for which it is intended. Nor does the field-post confine itself to the transmission of letters, but transmits delicacies and comforts of every sort to the boys in the trenches, and the boys in the trenches use the same medium to send shell fragments, German helmets, and other souvenirs to their friends at home. I know a lady who sent her son in Flanders a box of fresh asparagus from their Devonshire garden on a Friday, and he had it for his Sunday dinner. And this reminds me of an interesting little incident which is worth the telling and might as well be told here as elsewhere. A well-known American business man, the president of one of New York’s street-railway systems, has a son who is a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. The father was called back to America at a time when his son’s battery was stationed in a particularly hot corner to the south of Ypres. The father was desperately anxious to see his son before he sailed, but he knew that the chances of his being permitted to do so were almost infinitesimal. Nevertheless, he wrote a note to Lord Kitchener explaining the circumstances and adding that he realized that it was probably quite impossible to grant such a request. He left the note himself at York House. Before he had been back in his hotel an hour he was called to the telephone. “This is the secretary of Lord Kitchener speaking,” said a voice. “He desires me to say that you shall certainly see your son before returning to America, and that you are to hold yourself in readiness to go to the Continent at a moment’s notice.” A few days later he received another message from the War Office: “Take to-morrow morning’s boat from Folkestone to Boulogne. Your son will be waiting for you on the quay.” The long arm of the great War Minister had reached out across the English Channel and had picked that obscure second lieutenant out from that little Flemish village, and had brought him by motor-car to the coast, with a twenty-four hours’ leave of absence in his pocket, that he might say good-by to his father.
The maxim that “an army marches on its belly” is as true to-day as when Napoleon uttered it, and the Army Service Corps is seeing to it that the belly of the British soldier is never empty. Of all the fighting men in the field, the British soldier is far and away the best fed. He is, indeed, almost overfed, particularly as regards jams, marmalades, puddings, and other articles containing large quantities of sugar, which, so the army surgeons assert, is the greatest restorer of the muscular tissues. Though the sale of spirits is strictly prohibited in the military zone, a ration of rum is served out at daybreak each morning to the men in the trenches.