Chapter 13

On our way up to the front we made a détour in order that I might call on a friend, Mrs. A. D. Winterbottom, who, before her marriage to a British officer, was Miss Appleton of Boston. In "Fighting in Flanders" I told about a very brave deed which I saw performed by Mrs. Winterbottom. She was quite angry with me for mentioning it, but because she is an American of whom her countrypeople have every reason to be proud, I am going to tell about it again. It was during the last days of the siege of Antwerp. The Germans had methodically pounded to pieces with their great guns the chain of barrier forts encircling the city. Waelhem was one of the last to fall. When at length the remnant of the garrison evacuated the fort they brought back word that a score of their comrades, too badly wounded to walk, remained within the battered walls. So Mrs. Winterbottom, who had brought over from England her big touring-car and was driving it herself, said quietly that she was going to bring them out. The only way to reach the fort was by a straight and narrow road, a mile long, on which German shells were bursting with great accuracy and frequency. To me and to the Belgian officers who were with me, it looked like a short-cut to the cemetery. But that didn't deter Mrs. Winterbottom. She climbed into her car and threw in the clutch and jammed her foot down on the accelerator, and went tearing down that shell-spattered highway at top speed. She filled her car with wounded men and brought them safely back, and then returned and gathered up the others who were still alive. I have seen few braver deeds.

Mrs. Winterbottom remained with the Belgian army throughout the great retreat into Flanders, and when it settled down into the trench life on the Yser, she was officially attached to a division, with which she has remained ever since, moving when her division moves. She lives in a one-room shack which the soldiers have built her immediately in the rear of the trenches and within range of the enemy's guns. Her only companion is a dog, yet she is as safe as though she were on Beacon Hill, for she is the idol of the soldiers. She has a large recreation tent, like the side-show tent of a circus, but painted green to escape the attention of the German airmen, and in this tent she entertains the men during their brief periods of leave from the trenches. She gives them coffee, cocoa, milk, and biscuits; she provides them with writing materials--I forget how many thousand sheets of paper and envelopes she told me that they used each week; and she keeps them supplied with reading matter. Three times a week she gives "her boys" a phonograph concert in the first-line trenches. You must have experienced the misery and monotony of existence in the trenches to understand what these "concerts" mean to the tired and homesick men. I asked her if there was anything that the people at home could send her, and she replied rather hesitantly (for she is personally bearing the entire expense of this work) that she understood that some small metal phonographs were procurable which could easily be carried about and would not warp from dampness, for the trenches on the Yser are very wet. She also said that she would welcome phonograph records of any description and French books. The last I saw of her she was wading through a sea of mud, in rubber boots and a rubber coat and a sou'wester, to carry her "canned music" to the men on the firing-line. They ought to be very proud of Mrs. Winterbottom back in her own home town.

The Belgian trenches are very much like those on other sectors of the Western Front, except that they are made of sand-bags instead of earth, are muddier and are nearer the enemy, being separated from the German positions, for a considerable distance, only by the Yser, which in places is only forty yards across. In fact, a baseball player could easily sling a stone across the river into Dixmude, or what remains of it, for, like most of the other Flemish towns, it is now only a blackened skeleton. Many cities have been destroyed in the course of this war, but none of them, unless it be Ypres, so nearly approaches complete obliteration as Dixmude. Pompeii is a living, breathing city compared to it. Despite all that has been printed about the devastation in the war zone, I believe that when the war is over and the hordes of curious Americans flock Europeward, they will be stunned by the completeness of the desolation which the Germans have wrought in northeastern France and Belgium.

By far the most interesting day I spent on the Belgian front was not in the trenches but in a long, low, wooden building well to the rear. Over the door was a sign which read: "Section Photographique de l'Armée Belge." Here are brought to be developed and enlarged and scrutinized the hundreds of photographs which are taken daily by Belgian aviators flying over the German lines. In no department of war work has there been greater progress during recent months than in photography by airplane. Every morning at break of dawn scores of Belgian machines--and the same is true all down the Western Front--rise into the air, and for hour after hour swoop and circle over the enemy's lines, taking countless photographs of his positions by means of specially made cameras fitted with telescopic lenses. (The Allied fliers on the Somme took seventeen hundred photographs during a single day.) Most of these photographs are taken at a height of eight thousand to ten thousand feet,[F] though very much lower, of course, when an opportunity presents itself, and always with the camera as nearly vertical as possible. As soon as an aviator has secured a sufficient number of pictures of the locality or object which he has been ordered to photograph, he wings his way back to his own lines, the plates are immediately developed at the headquarters of the Section Photographique or in a dark room on wheels. If the first examination of the negative reveals anything of interest, it is at once enlarged, often to eight times the size of the original. As a result of this remarkable system of aerial espionage, there is nothing of importance which the Germans can long conceal from the Allies. They cannot extend their trench lines by so much as a yard, they cannot construct new positions, they cannot mount a machine-gun without the fact being registered by those eyes which, from dawn to dark, peer down at them from the clouds. At all of the divisional headquarters are large plans of the opposing enemy trenches, which are corrected daily by means of these airplane photographs and by the information collected through the elaborate system of espionage which the Allies maintain behind the German lines. To deceive the aerial observers, each side resorts to all manner of ingenious tricks. To suggest an impending retirement, columns of men are marched down the roads which lead to the rear; trenches which are not intended to be used are dug; and there are, of course, hundreds of dummy guns, some of which actually fire. The officer in command of the Belgian Photographic Section had heard that I was in Dunkirk in May, 1915, when it was shelled by a German naval gun, at a range of twenty-three and one-half miles.[G] So he gave me as a souvenir of the experience a photograph, taken from the air, of the gun emplacement after it had been discovered and bombed by the Allied aviators, and the gun removed to a place of safety. I reproduce the photograph herewith. The numerous white spots all about the emplacement are the craters caused by the bombs which were rained upon it.

Another of these monster guns was so ingeniously concealed in an imitation thicket that for a fortnight or more it defied the efforts of scores of airmen to locate it. Though hundreds of airplane photographs of the country behind the German trenches were brought in and minutely examined, there was nothing about them to suggest the hiding-place of a gun of so large a caliber until some one called attention to the deep ruts left by motor-trucks which had left the highway at a certain point and turned into the innocent-looking patch of woods. Why were the wheel-ruts shown on the plate so black? Because the vehicle must have sunk deep into the soft soil. Why did it sink so deeply? Because it was heavily laden. Laden with what? With large-caliber shells, perhaps. But still it was only a supposition. A few days later, however, it was noticed that at a certain point on the westward edge of that patch of woods there seemed to be a slight discoloration. This discoloration became more pronounced on later photographs which were brought in. Every one in the Section Photographique hazarded a guess as to its cause. At length some one suggested that it looked as though the leaves of the trees had been burned. But what burned them? There was only one answer. The fiery blast from a big gun hidden amid those trees, of course! Acting on that hypothesis, a score of aviators were sent out with orders to pour upon the wood a torrent of high explosive. The next few hours must have been very uncomfortable for the German gun-crew. In any event, the big piece was hauled out of danger under cover of darkness and the bombardments of the towns behind the Belgian lines abruptly ceased.

The Allied air service does not confine its observations to the trenches; it keeps an ever-wakeful eye on all that is in progress in the regions for many miles behind the front. To illustrate how little escapes the eye of the camera, the officer in charge of the Photographic Section showed me a series of photographs which had been taken of a village at the back of Dixmude, a few days previously, from a height of more than a mile. The first picture showed an ordinary Flemish village with its gridiron of streets and buildings. Cutting diagonally across the picture was a straight white streak which I knew to be a road leading into the country. At one point on this road were a number of tiny squares--evidently a row of workmen's cottages. The commandant handed me a powerful magnifying-glass. "Look very closely on that road," he said, "and you will see three specks." I saw them. They were about the size of pin-points.

"Those are three men," he continued. "The man at the right lives in the first of this row of cottages. The man in the middle lives in the fourth house in the row. But the man at the left is a farmer, and lives in this isolated farmhouse out here in the country."

"A very clever guess," I remarked, scepticism showing in my tone, I fear.

"We do not guess in this business," he replied reprovingly. "We _know_." And he handed me the next photograph, taken a few seconds later. There was no doubt about it; the pin-point of a man at the right had left his two companions and was turning in at the first of the row of cottages. Another photograph was produced. It showed the second man entering the gate of the fourth cottage. And the final picture of the series showed the remaining speck plodding on alone toward his home in the country.

"An officer of some importance is evidently making this house his headquarters," remarked the commandant, indicating another tiny rectangle. "If he wasn't of some importance he wouldn't have a telephone."

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to tell me that you can photograph a telephone-wire from a mile in the air?"

"Not quite," he admitted, "but sometimes, if the light happens to be right, we can get photographs of its shadow."

And sure enough, stretching across the ploughed fields, I could see, through the glass, a phantom line, intersected at regular intervals by short and somewhat thicker lines. It was the shadow of a field-telephone and its poles! And the airplane from which that photograph was taken was so high that it must have looked like a mere speck to one on the ground. There's war magic for you.

You will ask, of course, why the Germans don't maintain over the Allied lines a similar system of aerial observation. They do--when the Allies let them. But the Allies now have in commission on the Western Front such an enormous number of aircraft--I think I have said elsewhere the French alone probably have close to seven thousand machines--and they have made such great improvements in their anti-aircraft guns that to-day it is a comparatively rare thing to see a German flier over territory held by the Allies. The moment that a German flier takes the air, half a dozen Allied airmen rise to meet and engage him, and, in the rare event of his being able to elude them and get over the Allied lines, the "Archies," as the anti-aircraft guns are called on the British front, get into noisy action. (Their name, it is said, came from a London music-hall song which was exceedingly popular at the beginning of the war. When the shells from the German A. A. guns burst harmlessly around the British airmen they would hum mockingly the concluding line of the song: "Archibald, certainly not!") Unable to keep their fliers in the air, the Germans are to all intents and purposes blind. They are unable to regulate the fire of their artillery or to direct their infantry attacks; they do not know what damage their shells are doing; and they have no means of learning what is going on behind the enemy's lines. It is obvious, therefore, that to have and keep control of the air is a very, very important thing.

* * * * *

No one who has been in Europe during the past two years can have failed to notice the unpopularity of the Belgians among the French and English. This is regrettable but true. Also it is unjust. When I left Belgium in the late autumn of 1914 the Belgians were looked on as a nation of heroes. They were acclaimed as the saviors of Europe. Nothing was too good for them. The sight of a Belgian uniform in the streets of London or Paris was the signal for a popular ovation. When the red-black-and-yellow banner was displayed on the stage of a music-hall the audience rose en masse. The story of the defense of Liége sent a thrill of admiration round the world. But in the two and a half years that have passed since then there has become noticeable among French and English--particularly among the English--a steadily growing dislike for their Belgian allies; a dislike which has, in certain quarters, grown into a thinly veiled contempt. I have repeatedly heard it asserted that the Belgian has been spoiled by too much charity, that he is lazy and ungrateful and complaining, that he has become a professional pauper, that he has been greatly overrated as a fighter, and that he has had enough of the war and is ready to quit.

The truth of the matter is this: The majority of the Belgians who fled before the advancing Germans belonged to the lower classes; they were for the most part uneducated and lacking in mental discipline. Is it any wonder, then, that they gave way to blind panic when the stories of the barbarities practised by the invaders reached their ears, or that their heads were turned by the hysterical enthusiasm, the lavish hospitality, with which they were received in England? That as a result of being thus lionized, many of these ignorant and mercurial people became fault-finding and overbearing, there is no denying. Nor can it be truthfully gainsaid that, for a year or more after the war began, there hung about the London restaurants and music-halls a number of young Belgians who ought to have been with their army on the firing-line. But, if my memory serves me rightly, I think that I saw quite a number of English youths doing the same thing. Every country has its slackers, and Belgium is no exception. But to attempt to belittle the glorious heroism of the Belgian nation because of a few young slackers or the ingratitude and ill-manners of some ignorant peasants, is an unworthy and despicable thing. The assertion that the Belgians are lacking in courage is as untruthful as it is cruel. Ask the Germans who charged up the fire-swept slopes of Liége--those of them left alive--if the Belgians are cowards. Ask those who saw the fields of Aerschot and Vilvorde and Termonde and Malines strewn with Belgian dead. Go stand for a few days--and nights--beside the Belgians who are holding those mud-filled trenches on the Yser. And remember that the Belgians were fighting while the English were still only talking about it. Nor forget that, had not their heroic resistance given France a breathing-spell in which to complete her tardy mobilization, the Germans would now, in all probability, be in Paris. The truth is that the civilized world owes to the Belgians a debt which it can never repay. We of America are honored to be counted among their Allies.

FOOTNOTES:

[F] In order to keep pace with the steady improvement in range and accuracy of anti-aircraft artillery, aviators have found it necessary to operate at constantly increasing altitudes, so that it is now not uncommon for aerial combats to be fought at a height of 20,000 feet. Hence, many airplanes are now equipped with oxygen-bags for use in the rarefied atmosphere of the higher levels. The aviators operating on the Italian front experience such intense cold during the winter months that a system has been evolved for heating their caps, gloves, and boots by electricity generated by the motor.

[G] For an account of this, the longest-range bombardment in history, see Mr. Powell's "Vive la France!"

* * * * *

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Page 133: genlteman replaced with gentleman | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+