Part 5
To Miss Jane Addams has been attributed the following assertion: “We heard in all countries similar statements in regard to the necessity for the use of stimulants before men would engage in bayonet charges, that they have a regular formula in Germany, that they give them rum in England and absinthe in France; that they all have to give them the ‘dope’ before the bayonet charge is possible.” Now, Miss Addams has never, so far as I am aware, been in the trenches. Of the conditions which exist there she knows only by hearsay. Miss Addams says that rum is given to the British soldier. That is perfectly true. In pursuance of orders issued by the Army Medical Corps, every man who has spent the night in the trenches is given a ration (about a gill) of rum at daybreak, not to render him reckless, as Miss Addams would have us believe, but to counteract the effects of the mud and water in which he has been standing for many hours. But when Miss Addams asserts that the French soldiers are given absinthe she makes an assertion that is without foundation of fact. Not only have I never seen a glass of absinthe served in France since the law was passed which made its sale illegal, but I have never seen spirits of any kind in use in the zone of operations. More than once, coming back, chilled and weary, from the trenches, I have attempted to obtain either whiskey or brandy only to be told that its sale is rigidly prohibited in the zone of the armies. The regular ration of the French soldier includes now, just as in time of peace, a pint of _vin ordinaire_—the cheap wine of the country—this being, I might add, considerably less than the man would drink with his meals were he in civil life. As regards the conditions which exist in the German armies I cannot speak with the same assurance, because I have not been with them since the autumn of 1914. During the march across Belgium there was, I am perfectly willing to admit, considerable drunkenness among the German soldiers, but this was due to the men looting the wine-cellars in the towns through which they passed and not, as Miss Addams would have us believe, to their officers having systematically “doped” them. I have heard it stated, on various occasions, that German troops are given a mixture of rum and ether before going into action. Whether this is true I cannot say. Personally, I doubt it. If a man’s life ever depends upon a clear brain and a cool head it is when he is going into battle. Everything considered, therefore, I am convinced that intemperance virtually does not exist among the armies in the field. I feel that Miss Addams has done a grave injustice to brave and sober men and that she owes them an apology.
The British troops are not permitted to drink unboiled or unfiltered water, each regiment having two steel water-carts fitted with Birkenfeldt filters from which the men fill their water-bottles. As a result of this precaution, dysentery and diarrhœa, the curse of armies in previous wars, have practically disappeared, while, thanks to compulsory inoculation, typhoid is unknown. Perhaps the most important of all the sanitary devices which have been brought into existence by this war, and without which it would not be possible for the men to remain in the trenches at all, is the great force-pump that is operated at night and which throws lime and carbolic acid on the unburied dead. It is, indeed, impossible to overpraise the work being done by the Royal Army Medical Corps, which has, among its many other activities, so improved and speeded up the system of getting the wounded from the firing-line to the hospitals that, as one Tommy remarked, “You ’ears a ’ell of a noise, and then the nurse says: ‘Sit hup and tike this broth.’”
Though in this war the work of the cavalry is almost negligible; though cartridges and marmalade are hurried to the front on motor-trucks and the wounded are hurried from the front back to the hospital in motor-ambulances; though despatch riders bestride panting motor-cycles instead of panting steeds; though scouting is done by airmen instead of horsemen, the day of the horse in warfare has by no means passed. Without the horse, indeed, the guns could not go into action, for no form of tractor has yet been devised for hauling batteries over broken country. In fact, all of the belligerent nations are experiencing great difficulty in providing a sufficient supply of horses, for the average life of a war-horse is very short—ten days, assert some authorities; sixteen, say others. For the first time in the history of warfare, therefore, the horse is treated as a creature which must be cared for when sick or wounded as well as when in health, and this not merely from motives of sentiment or humanity but as a detail of military efficiency. “For want of a nail,” runs the old ditty, “the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the battle was lost”—and the Royal Army Veterinary Corps is seeing to it that no battles are lost for lack of either horses or horseshoes. The Army Veterinary Corps now has on the British sector 700 officers and 8,000 men, whose business it is to conserve the lives of the horses. The last report that I have seen places the total number of horses treated in the various hospital units (each of which accommodates 1,000 animals) as approximately 81,000, of which some 47,000 had been returned to the Remount Department as again fit for active service; 30,000 were still under treatment; the balance having died, been destroyed, or sold.
The horses in use by the British Army in France are the very pick of England, the Colonies, and foreign countries; thoroughbred and three-quarter bred hunters from the hunting counties and from Ireland; hackneys, draft, and farm animals; Walers from Australia; wire-jumpers from New Zealand; hardy stock from Alberta and Saskatchewan; sturdy ponies from the hill country of India; thousands upon thousands of animals from the American Southwest, and from the Argentine; to say nothing of the great sixteen-hand mules from Missouri and Spain.
Animals suffering from wounds or sickness are shipped back to the hospital bases on the coast in herds, each being provided with a separate covered stall, or, in case of pneumonia, with a box-stall. The spotless buildings, with their exercise tracks and acres of green paddocks, suggest a race-course rather than a hospital for horses injured in war. Each hospital has its operating-sheds, its X-ray department, its wards for special ailments, its laboratories for preventive research work, a pharmacy, a museum which affords opportunity for the study of the effects of sabre, shell, and bullet wounds, and a staff of three hundred trained veterinarians. Schools have also been established in connection with the hospitals in which the grooms and attendants are taught the elements of anatomy, dentistry, farriery, stabling, feeding, sanitation, and, most important of all, the care of hoofs. All the methods and equipment employed are the best that science can suggest and money can obtain, everything having passed the inspection of the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Lonsdale, the two greatest horse-breeders in England. Attached to each division of troops in the field is a mobile veterinary section, consisting of an officer and twenty-two men, who are equipped to render first-aid service to wounded horses and whose duty it is to decide which animals shall be sent to the hospitals for treatment, which are fit to return to the front for further service, and which cases are hopeless and must be destroyed. The enormous economic value of this system is conclusively proved by the fact that it has reduced sickness among horses in the British Army 50 per cent, and mortality 47 per cent.
The question that has been asked me more frequently than any other is why the British, with upward of a million men in the field, are holding only about fifty miles of battle-front, as compared with seventeen miles held by the Belgians and nearly four hundred by the French. There are several reasons for this. It should be remembered, in the first place, that the British Army is composed of green troops, while the French ranks, thanks to the universal service law, are filled with men all of whom have spent at least three years with the colors. In the second place, the British sector is by far the most difficult portion of the western battle-front to hold, not only because of the configuration of the country, which offers little natural protection, but because it lies squarely athwart the road to the Channel ports—and it is to the Channel ports that the Germans are going if men and shells can get them there. The fighting along the British sector is, moreover, of a more desperate and relentless nature than elsewhere on the Allied line, because the Germans nourish a deeper hatred for the English than for all their other enemies put together.
It was against the British, remember, that the Germans first used their poison-gas. The first engagement of importance in which gas played a part was the Second Battle of Ypres, lasting from April 22 until May 13, which will probably take rank in history as one of the greatest battles of all time. In it the Germans, owing to the surprise and confusion created by their introduction of poison-gas, came within a hair’s breadth of breaking through the Allied line, and would certainly have done so had it not been for the gallantry and self-sacrifice of the Canadian Division, which, at the cost of appalling losses, won imperishable fame. The German bombardment of Ypres began on April 20 and in forty-eight hours, so terrible was the rain of heavy projectiles which poured down upon it, the quaint old city, with its exquisite Cloth Hall, was but a heap of blackened, smoking ruins. That portion of the Allied line to the north of the city was held, along a front of some four miles, by a French division composed of Colonials, Algerians, and Senegalese, stiffened by several line regiments. Late in the afternoon of the 22d, peering above their trenches, they saw, rolling toward them across the Flemish plain, an impalpable cloud of yellowish-green, which, fanned by a brisk wind, moved forward at the speed of a trotting-horse. It came on with the remorselessness of Fate. It blotted out what was happening behind it as the smoke screen from a destroyer masks the manœuvres of a Dreadnaught. The spring vegetation shrivelled up before it as papers shrivel when thrown into a fire. It blasted everything it touched as with a hand of death. No one knew what it was or whence it came. Nearer it surged and nearer. It was within a hundred metres of the French position ... fifty ... thirty ... ten ... and then the silent horror was upon them. Men began to cough and hack and strangle. Their eyes smarted and burned with the pungent, acrid fumes. Soldiers staggered and fell before it in twos and fours and dozens as miners succumb to fire-damp. Men, strained and twisted into grotesque, horrid attitudes, were sobbing their lives out on the floors of the trenches. The fire of rifles and machine-guns weakened, died down, ceased. The whole line swayed, wavered, trembled on the verge of panic. Just then a giant Algerian shouted: “The Boches have turned loose evil spirits upon us! We can fight men, but we cannot fight _afrits_! Run, brothers! Run for your lives!” That was all that was needed to precipitate the disaster. The superstitious Africans, men from the West Coast where voodooism still holds sway, men of the desert steeped in the traditions and mysteries of Islam, broke and ran. The French white troops, carried off their feet by the sudden rush, were swept along in the mad debacle. And as they ran the yellow cloud pursued them remorselessly, like a great hand reaching out for their throats.
An eye-witness of the rout that followed told me that he never expects to see its like this side of the gates of hell. The fields were dotted with blue-clad figures wearing kepis, and brown-clad ones wearing turbans and tarbooshes, who stumbled and fell and rose again and staggered along a few paces and fell to rise no more. The highways leading from the trenches were choked with maddened, fear-crazed white and black and brown men who had thrown away their rifles, their cartridge-pouches, their knapsacks, in some cases even their coats and shirts. Some were calling on Christ and some on Allah and some on their strange pagan gods. Their eyes were starting from their sockets, on their foreheads stood glistening beads of sweat, they slavered at the mouth like dogs, their cheeks and breasts were flecked with foam. “We’re not afraid of the Boches!” screamed a giant sergeant of zouaves, on whose breast were the ribbons of a dozen wars. “We can fight _them_ until hell turns cold. But this we cannot fight. _Le Bon Dieu_ does not expect us to stay and die like rats in a sewer.” Guns and gun-caissons passed at a gallop, Turcos and _tirailleurs_ clinging to them, the fear-crazed gunners flogging their reeking horses frantically. The ditches bordering the roads were filled with overturned wagons and abandoned equipment. Giant negroes, naked to the waist, tore by shrieking that the spirits had been loosed upon them and slashing with their bayonets at all who got in their path. Mounted officers, frantic with anger and mortification, using their swords and pistols indiscriminately, vainly tried to check the human stream. And through the four-mile breach which the poison-gas had made the Germans were pouring in their thousands. The roar of their artillery sounded like unceasing thunder. The scarlet rays of the setting sun lighted up such a scene as Flanders had never before beheld in all its bloody history. Then darkness came and the sky was streaked across with the fiery trails of rockets and the sudden splotches of bursting shrapnel. The tumult was beyond all imagination—the crackle of musketry, the rattle of machine-guns, the crash of high explosive, the thunder of falling walls, the clank of harness and the rumble of wheels, the screams of the wounded and the groans of the dying, the harsh commands of the officers, the murmur of many voices, and the shuffle, shuffle, shuffle of countless hurrying feet.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._
Machine-gun squad wearing masks as a protection against the asphyxiating gas with which the Germans precede their attacks. ]
And through the breach still poured the helmeted legions like water bursting through a broken dam. Into that breach were thrown the Canadians. The story of how, overwhelmed by superior numbers of both men and guns, choked by poison-fumes, reeling from exhaustion, sometimes without food, for it was impossible to get it to them, under such a rain of shells as the world had never before seen, the brawny men from the oversea Dominion fought on for a solid week, and thereby saved the army from annihilation, needs no re-telling here. Brigade after brigade of fresh troops, division after division, was hurled against them but still they battled on. So closely were they pressed at times that they fought in little groups; men from Ontario and Quebec shoulder to shoulder with blood-stained heroes from Alberta and Saskatchewan. At last, when it seemed as though human endurance could stand the strain no longer, up went the cry, “Here come the guns!” and the Canadian batteries, splashed with sweat and mud, tore into action on the run. “Action front!” screamed the officers, and the guns whirled like polo ponies so that their muzzles faced the oncoming wave of gray. “With shrapnel!... Load!” The lean and polished projectiles slipped in and the breech-blocks snapped home. “Fire at will!” and the blast of steel tore bloody avenues in the German ranks. But fresh battalions filled the gaps—the German reserves seemed inexhaustible—and they still came on. At one period of the battle the Germans were so close to the guns that the order was given, “Set your fuses at zero!” which means that a shell bursts almost the moment it leaves the muzzle of the gun. It was not until early on Friday morning that reinforcements reached the shattered Canadians and enabled them to hold their ground. Later the Northumbrian Division—Territorials arrived only three days before from the English training-camps—were sent to aid them and proved themselves as good soldiers as the veterans beside whom they fought. For days the fate of the army hung in the balance, for there seemed no end to the German reserves, who were wiped out by whole divisions only to be replaced by more, but against the stone wall of the Canadian resistance the men in the spiked helmets threw themselves in vain. On May 13, 1915, after three weeks of continuous fighting, may be said to have ended the Second Battle of Ypres, not in a terrific and decisive climax, but slowly, sullenly, like two prize-fighters who have fought to the very limit of their strength.
[Illustration:
_From a photograph copyright by “The Daily Mirror.”_ A British battery in action. ]
[Illustration:
“Bodies, long months dead, rotting amid the wire entanglements.” ]
[Illustration:
_From photographs by Meurisse._
“Imagine what it must be like to sleep in a hole in the earth, into which you have to crawl on all fours, like an animal into its lair.” ]
According to the present British system, the soldiers spend three weeks at the front and one week in the rear—if possible, out of sound of the guns. The entire three weeks at the front is, to all intents and purposes, spent in the trenches, though every third day the men are given a breathing spell. _Three weeks in the trenches!_ I wonder if you of the sheltered life have any but the haziest notion of what that means. I wonder if _you_, Mr. Lawyer; _you_, Mr. Doctor; _you_, Mr. Business Man, can conceive of spending your summer vacation in a ditch 4 feet wide and 8 feet deep, sometimes with mud and water to your knees, sometimes faint from heat and lack of air, in your nostrils the stench of bodies long months dead, rotting amid the wire entanglements a few yards in front of you, and over your head steel death whining angrily, ceaselessly. I wonder if you can imagine what it must be like to sleep—when the roar of the guns dies down sufficiently to make sleep possible—on foul straw in a hole hollowed in the earth, into which you have to crawl on all fours, like an animal into its lair. I wonder if you can picture yourself as wearing a uniform so stiff with sweat and dirt that it would stand alone, and underclothes so rotten with filth that they would fall apart were you to take them off, your body so crawling with vermin and so long unwashed that you are an offense to all whom you approach—yet with no chance to bathe or to change your clothes or sometimes even to wash your hands and face for weeks on end. I wonder how your nerves would stand the strain if you knew that at any moment a favorable wind might bring a gas cloud rolling down upon you to kill you by slow strangulation, or that a shell might drop into the trench in which you were standing in water to your knees and leave you floating about in a bloody mess which turned that water red, or that a _Taube_ might let loose upon you a shower of steel arrows which would pass through you as a needle passes through a piece of cloth, or that a mine might be exploded beneath your feet and distribute you over the landscape in fragments too small to be worth burying, or, worse still, to leave you alive amid a litter of heads and arms and legs which a moment before had belonged to your comrades, the horror of it all turning you into a maniac who alternately shrieks and gibbers and rocks with insane mirth at the horror of it all. I am perfectly aware that this makes anything but pleasant reading, my friends, but if men of gentle birth, men with university educations, men who are accustomed to the same refinements and luxuries that you are, can endure these things, why, it seems to me that you ought to be able to endure reading about them.
[Illustration:
French high-explosive shells bursting on the German trenches. ]
The effect of some of the newer types of high-explosive shells is almost beyond belief. For sheer horror and destruction those from the Austrian-made Skoda howitzer, known as “Pilseners,” make the famous 42-centimetre shells seem almost kind. The Skoda shells weigh 2,800 lbs., and their usual curve is 4½ miles high. In soft ground they penetrate 20 feet before exploding. The explosion, which occurs two seconds after impact, kills every living thing within 150 yards, while scores of men who escape the flying metal are killed, lacerated, or blinded by the mere pressure of the gas. This gas pressure is so terrific that it breaks in the roofs and partitions of bomb-proof shelters. Of men close by not a fragment remains. The gas gets into the body cavities and expands, literally tearing them to pieces. Occasionally the clothes are stripped off leaving only the boots. Rifle-barrels near by are melted as though struck by lightning. These mammoth shells travel comparatively slowly, however, usually giving enough warning of their approach so that the men have time to dodge them. Their progress is so slow, indeed, that sometimes they can be seen. Far more terrifying is the smaller shell which, because of its shrill, plaintive whine, has been nicknamed “Weary Willie,” or those from the new “noiseless” field-gun recently introduced by the Germans, which gives no intimation of its approach until it explodes with a shattering crash above the trenches. Is it any wonder that hundreds of officers and men are going insane from the strain that they are under, and that hundreds more are in the hospitals suffering from neuritis and nervous breakdown? Is it any wonder that, when their term in the trenches is over, they have to be taken out of sight and sound of battle and their shattered nerves restored by means of a carefully planned routine of sports and games, as though they were children in a kindergarten?
The breweries, mills, and factories immediately behind the British lines have, wherever practicable, been converted into bath-houses to which the men are marched as soon as they leave the trenches. The soldiers strip and, retaining nothing but their boots, which they deposit beside the bathtub, they go in, soap in one hand and scrubbing-brush in the other, the hot bath being followed by a cold shower. The underclothes which they have taken off are promptly burned and fresh sets given to them, as are also clean uniforms, the discarded ones, after passing through a fumigating machine, being washed, pressed, and repaired by the numerous Frenchwomen who are employed for the purpose, so as to be ready for their owners the next time they return from the trenches. At one of these improvised bath-houses thirteen hundred men pass through each day.
“What do the French think of the English?”