CHAPTER XIX

FACING DEATH IN THE TRENCHES

CAVE-DWELLING THE LOT OF MODERN SOLDIERS -- GERMANS HAVE LEARNED MUCH -- STANDARDIZED MODEL -- FRENCH STUDY OF GERMAN METHODS--“COMFORTS OF HOME”--BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE--“PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN AIR -- RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE -- THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER -- WHY COOKS WEAR IRON CROSSES--“PUTTING ONE OVER” ON THE RUSSIANS.

“Other times, other manners” applies as accurately to the battle-field as it does elsewhere. The cavalry charge is nearly extinct, mass formation is going, hand-to-hand conflict is rarely found, and now, it appears, the old-fashioned and romantic bivouac is no more. Trench-fighting has been carried on to such an extent in France and Belgium, and Poland, that the open camp, with its rows of little tents, outposts, and sentry guard, becomes almost a forgotten picture of warfare. Doubtless the military schools of the future will make provision for special instruction in the construction of commodious caverns on the battle-field, safe, warm, and containing all the comforts of a barrack.

The modern warrior, like a mole, lives under ground and displays his greatest activity at night. With the coming of subterranean warfare, as trench-fighting can be appropriately called, great armies have had to adopt unique methods. They have been compelled to build peculiar little forts--for a trench is a fort, in fact--wherever their soldiers meet the enemy. In consequence these rectangular excavations have been improved far beyond their original outline.

The first trench was nothing more nor less than a hole in the ground, deep enough to protect a man kneeling, standing, or sitting, as the case might be. Before the advent of the modern rifle and modern cannon, these defenses, with several feet of loose earth thrown up in front of them, served admirably. In those days the question of head-cover was of minor importance; today a protective roofing is the sine qua non of any well-constructed trench. Early in the European war it was discovered that the trench offered the safest haven from the bursting shells of the enemy’s field artillery. To all intents and purposes, shrapnel, or, as its inventor termed it, the man-killing projectile--is practically harmless in its effect upon entrenched troops. Unless a shell can be placed absolutely within the two-feet wide excavation it wastes its destructive powers on the inoffensive earth and air. This has led to a modification of artillery methods, which, in turn, compels the elaboration of the trench and emphasizes the importance of head-cover.

GERMANS HAVE LEARNED MUCH

“The history of the great war,” to quote from a French paper, “will show, among other things, how the Germans profited by the lessons of recent conflicts. The South African, the Russo-Japanese, and the Balkan wars were studied minutely by them, and their particular preparations, their tactics, and their artifices result from the knowledge thus acquired. They learned much, especially, as regards the formation of trenches.

“After 1870 we confined ourselves to three regulation types of trenches: for men prone, kneeling, and standing. While in training, our soldiers were taught how to take shelter momentarily between advances, by digging up the soil a little and lying flat behind the smallest of mounds. They were instructed, moreover, how to protect themselves from the enemy’s fire by propping up their knapsacks in front of them. This meant insufficient protection, and an extremely dangerous visibility, since the foe, by simply counting the number of knapsacks, could know the strength opposed to him. To insure the making of such shelter, a French company was equipped with eighty picks and eighty spades; that is, 160 tools for 250 men. These tools were fixed on to the knapsacks; and it took some time to bring them into use.”

The German methods for defensive and offensive trench-making are quite different. Each man has a tool of his own, which is fixed on to the scabbard of his sword-bayonet. When occasion for fighting arises, the line conceals itself, and, as soon as it is engaged, it prepares for possible retreat, making strong positions assuring an unrelenting defensive and counter-attacks.

STANDARDIZED MODEL

It is on these sound principles that all the German fighting-lines are organized, on a more or less standardized model. The fighting-lines consist generally of one, two, or three lines of shelter-trenches lying parallel, measuring twenty or twenty-five inches in width, and varying in length according to the number they hold; the trenches are joined together by zigzag approaches and by a line of reinforced trenches (armed with machine guns), which are almost completely proof against rifle, machine gun, or gun fire. The ordinary German trenches are almost invisible from 350 yards away, a distance which permits a very deadly fire. It is easy to realize that if the enemy occupies three successive lines and a line of reinforced entrenchments, the attacking line is likely, at the lowest estimate, to be decimated during an advance of 650 yards--by rifle-fire at a range of 350 yards’ distance, and by the extremely quick fire of the machine guns, which can each deliver from 300 to 600 bullets a minute with absolute precision. In the field-trench, it is obvious, a soldier enjoys far greater security than he would if merely prone behind his knapsack in an excavation barely fifteen inches deep. He has merely to stoop down a little to disappear below the level of the ground and be immune from infantry fire; moreover, his machine guns can fire without endangering him. In addition, this stooping position brings the man’s knapsack on a level with his helmet, thus forming some protection against shrapnel and shell-splinters.

At the back of the German trenches, shelters are dug for non-commissioned officers and for the commander of the unit. The latter’s shelter is connected with the communication trench; the others are not. If one adds that the bank, or, rather, the earth that is dug from the trenches and spread out in front, extends for five or six yards, and is covered with grass, or appropriate vegetation, it will be recognized that the works concealing the German lines can be seen only when a near approach is made to them.

As to reinforced trenches, the drawings show clearly their conception and arrangement. They are proof against ordinary bullets and shrapnel. Only percussion-shells are able to destroy them and to decimate their defenders. The interior details of the trenches vary according to the ingenuity and spare time of the occupants and the nature of the ground.

FRENCH STUDY OF GERMAN METHODS

The whole system, that of the rest-rooms more especially, is designed to give the men the maximum of comfort and security. Doors and wooden shutters wrenched from deserted houses are used for covers, or else turf-covered branches.

Ever since the outbreak of the war, the French troops in Lorraine, after severe experiences, realized rapidly the advantages of the German trenches, and began to study those they had taken gloriously. Officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the Engineers were straightway detached in every unit to teach the infantry how to construct similar shelters. The education was quick, and very soon they had completed the work necessary for the protection of all. The tools of the enemy “casualties,” the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages, were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers’ knapsacks, to be carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of each fighting nation--less than 500 yards away from their enemy--would hear the noise of the workers of the foe: the sounds of picks and axes; the officers’ words of encouragement; and tacitly they would agree to an armistice during which to dig shelters from which, in the morning, they would dash out, to fight once more.

“COMFORTS OF HOME”

Commodious, indeed, are some of the present trench barracks, if we may believe the letters from the front. One French soldier writes:

“In really up-to-date entrenchments you may find kitchens, dining-rooms, bedrooms, and even stables. One regiment has first class cow-sheds. One day a whimsical ‘piou-piou,’ finding a cow wandering about in the danger zone, had the bright idea of finding shelter for it in the trenches. The example was quickly followed, and at this moment the --th Infantry possess an underground farm, in which fat kine, well cared for, give such quantities of milk that regular distributions of butter are being made--and very good butter, too.”

But this is not all. An officer writes home a tale of yet another one of the comforts of home added to the equipment of the trenches:

“We are clean people here. Thanks to the ingenuity of ----, we are able to take a warm bath every day from ten to twelve. We call this teasing the ‘bosches,’ for this bathing-establishment of the latest type is fitted up--would you believe it?--in the trenches!”

BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE

Describing trenches occupied by the British in their protracted “siege-warfare” in Northern France along and to the north of the Aisne Valley, a British officer wrote: “In the firing-line the men sleep and obtain shelter in the dugouts they have hollowed or ‘undercut’ in the side of the trenches. These refuges are slightly raised above the bottom of the trench, so as to remain dry in wet weather. The floor of the trench is also sloped for purposes of draining. Some trenches are provided with head-cover, and others with overhead cover, the latter, of course, giving protection from the weather as well as from shrapnel balls and splinters of shells. . . . At all points subject to shell-fire access to the firing-line from behind is provided by communication-trenches. These are now so good that it is possible to cross in safety the fire-swept zone to the advanced trenches from the billets in villages, the bivouacs in quarries, or the other places where the headquarters of units happen to be.”

“PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN AIR

A cavalry subaltern gave the following account of life in the trenches: “Picnicking in the open air, day and night (you never see a roof now), is the only real method of existence. There are loads of straw to bed down on, and everyone sleeps like a log, in turn, even with shrapnel bursting within fifty yards.”

RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE

One English officer described the ravages of modern artillery fire, not only upon all men, animals and buildings within its zone, but upon the very face of nature itself: “In the trenches crouch lines of men, in brown or gray or blue, coated with mud, unshaven, hollow-eyed with the continual strain.”

“The fighting is now taking place over ground where both sides have for weeks past been excavating in all directions,” said another letter from the front, “until it has become a perfect labyrinth. A trench runs straight for a considerable distance, then it suddenly forks in three or four directions. One branch merely leads into a ditch full of water, used in drier weather as a means of communication; another ends abruptly in a cul-de-sac, probably an abandoned sap-head; the third winds on, leading into galleries and passages further forward.

“Sometimes where new ground is broken the spade turns up the long-buried dead, ghastly relics of former fights, and on all sides the surface of the earth is ploughed and furrowed by fragments of shell and bombs and distorted by mines. Seen from a distance, this apparently confused mass of passages, crossing and recrossing one another, resembles an irregular gridiron.

“The life led by the infantry on both sides at close quarters is a strange, cramped existence, with death always near, either by means of some missile from above or some mine explosion from beneath--a life which has one dull, monotonous background of mud and water. Even when there is but little fighting the troops are kept hard at work strengthening the existing defenses, constructing others, and improvising the shelter imperative in such weather.”

THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER

But it is not the guns or cannon of the enemy that affect the spirits of the soldiers. It is the weather. A week of alternate rain and snow, when the ill-drained dugouts are half-filled with a freezing viscid mud; when, day after day, the feet are numbed by the frost until all sensation in them is deadened; when the coarse, scanty ration is refused by the tortured stomach--then it is that the spirits of the stoutest falter. Let the enemy attack as he will, and he must fail. It is only in fighting that the men find an outlet for their rancor.

More than thirty years ago a well-known German general declared that a book on “Seasonal Tactics” might as properly be written as those on the tactics of weapons, and of geographical conditions; and in a recent issue of the Deutsche Revue an unsigned article by a veteran of the Franco-Prussian war recounts the difficulties that arise when the Frost King holds sway. “To begin with, the precious hours of daylight are much fewer, and even these may be shortened by overcast skies and heavy fogs. Soft snow and mud seriously impede marching and at times it is impossible to take cross-country cuts, even single horsemen having great difficulty in crossing the frozen ridges of plowed fields or stubble. Moreover, even regular highways may become so slippery that they endanger both man and horse, and in hilly country such conditions make it necessary to haul heavy artillery up steep ascents by man-power. Cold head-winds also greatly impede progress.

“The necessity of bringing the troops under cover enforces long marches at the end of the day’s work, and again at its beginning, and therefore makes extra demands on energy. . . . The early dark hinders the offense from carrying out its plans completely and from utilizing any advantage won by following it up energetically. Night battles become frequent. The defense seeks to regain what it has lost by day, the offense to make use of the long nights to win what it could not achieve in the daytime. Then, too, the need of getting warmed-up makes the troops more enterprising.”

All sorts of constructive work--fortification building, the erection of stations for telegraphs, telephones and wireless, etc.--is naturally much more difficult in frozen ground. General von der Goltz of the German Army is said to have recommended many years ago that in view of possible winter campaigns provision should be made in quantity of warm winter clothing, materials for the building of barracks, making double tents, etc. Another important preventive of suffering and the consequent diminished efficiency is to provide plenty of good hot food for the men.

WHY COOKS WEAR IRON CROSSES

“There isn’t anything heroic about cooks,” wrote Herbert Corey in the New York Globe, “and when things go wrong one either apprehends a cook as chasing a waiter with a bread-knife or giving way to tears.” Yet the German army contains many a cook whose expansive apron is decorated with the Iron Cross. “And the Iron Cross,” Mr. Corey reminds us, “is conferred for one thing only--for 100 per cent courage.”

“‘They’ve earned it,’ said the man who had seen them. ‘They are the bravest men in the Kaiser’s four millions. I’ve seen generals salute greasy, paunchy, sour-looking army cooks.’

“The cook’s job is to feed the men of his company. Each German company is followed, or preceded, by a field-kitchen on wheels. Sometimes the fires are kept going while the device trundles along. The cook stands on the foot-board and thumps his bread. He is always the first man up in the morning and the last to sleep at night.

“When that company goes into the trenches the cook stays behind. There is no place for a field-kitchen in a four-foot trench. But these men in the trench must be fed. The Teuton insists that all soldiers must be fed--but especially the men in the trench. The others may go hungry, but these must have tight belts. Upon their staying power may depend the safety of an army.

“So, as the company can not go to the cook, the cook goes to the company. When meal-hour comes he puts a yoke on his shoulders and a cook’s cap on his head and, warning the second cook as to what will happen if he lets the fires go out, puts a bucketful of hot veal stew on either end of the yoke and goes to his men. Maybe the trench is under fire. No matter. His men are in that trench and must be fed.

“Sometimes the second cook gets his step right here. Sometimes the apprentice cook--the dish-washer--is summoned to pick up the cook’s yoke and refill the spilled buckets and tramp steadily forward to the line. Sometimes the supply of assistant cooks, even, runs short. But the men in the trenches always get their food.

“‘That’s why so many cooks in the German Army have Iron Crosses dangling from their breasts,’ said the man who knows. ‘No braver men ever lived. The man in the trench can duck his head and light his pipe and be relatively safe. No fat cook yoked to two buckets of veal stew ever can be safe as he marches down the trench.’”

“PUTTING ONE OVER” ON THE RUSSIANS

Granville Fortescue, who visited the Russian trenches in Poland, related in the Illustrated London News a story of how the Germans, to use a slang phrase, “put one over” on the too-confiding Russians. “This happened,” he wrote, “at a portion of the line where the positions ran so close that the men could communicate by shouting. It was around Christmas, and the Germans invited the Russians to come over for a hot cup of new coffee just received from home. The Russians replied to this invitation, shouting: ‘Come over and try our tea. It’s a special gift from the Czar.’

“The Germans then put up the white flag, and said that they would send over fifteen men to try the tea if the Russians would send over the same number to sample their coffee. The plan was carried out. When the fifteen Germans appeared in the Russian trench, the hosts remarked to one another that if these were a sample the enemy would not hold out long. They were a sick-looking lot. Suddenly the Germans pulled down their white flag and commenced firing. Then the Russians found that they had exchanged fifteen good soldiers for fifteen typhus patients.

“It is easy to believe that the Russian soldier could be imposed upon in this way. Although extremely courageous, he is very simple-minded with it all, and certainly trusting. He is a splendid physical specimen. In the trail of trench warfare this is the great desideratum. Then, the Russians of the type that are drafted into the army have all their life been accustomed to privation and exposure. For this reason they are the only troops that I have seen who can stick six days and nights on end in a trench, under constant small arms and shell fire, with the temperature below zero, and after a day’s rest be as good as ever. The Russians never grumble.”