Part 2
Jean is just now back from a permission. He went away a reckless, jolly sort of an adventurer, and has come back sober, serious, and tremendously in love. He told me a little about it, as we sat together in my dugout (I have a private one now, with a stove, a tiny window sticking up discreetly six inches above ground, and pictures on the walls), and the tale is so typical of war-time France that I can't resist telling it to you.
They had carried on quite a correspondence, as godmother and godson, before the longed-for permission came; and when A----, with her parents, of course, met him at the train, she seemed like an old friend. She is charming, as I know from her photograph, and sturdy brown Jean, togged out in his special permission uniform, with his neat shoes, bright leather puttees and belt, képi de fantaisie, and gold sergeant's wound- and service-stripes, looks every inch a soldier of France. At the end of the second day, he was walking with A---- and could contain himself no longer.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "I cannot, as a man of honor, stay here longer. I love you,--there, I have said it,--but I am penniless, and after the war shall have only what I can earn. Your father, on the other hand, is the most important merchant in this district--so you see it would (even if you were willing) be quite impossible for me to ask for your hand. I can never thank you enough for your kindness to a poor soldier; it has given me a glimpse of Paradise."
That evening, as he sat in his room, trying to make up an excuse to give the old people for leaving, the girl's mother came in, saying that she understood he was going, and was much hurt to think that her house had not pleased him. Then the old gentleman rushed in, radiant with smiling good humor.
"But hush, maman," he cried, "I know all. Also I know a man when I see one. You love our little A----, eh, sergeant? Well, what of it? And you are poor--well, what of that? When we old ones are gone, she will have everything--she is all we have, since Louis was killed at the Marne. You are a type that I love, my boy--out there at the front, helping to push the Boche out of France; do you suppose I would not rather have you for a son-in-law than some sacré espèce of a rich embusqué, riding by in his limousine?"
Rather superb, I think.
So, as an engaged man, he is making a poor attempt to be cautious. Also, he has a frightful case of cafard, that mysterious malady of the trenches, which is nothing but concentrated homesickness and longing for the sight of one's women folk, sweethearts, sisters, mothers. A couple of days ago, he came to me with a brilliant idea.
"See, Charlot," he said, "I have a scheme. You know Lieutenant P----, chief of the corps franc--tell him of me, that I can speak German and can take prisoners, and tell him to ask my captain to detach me for the next coup de main."
To understand this, you must know that a coup de main is a raid, made after a brief artillery preparation, on the enemy trenches, not with the idea of gaining ground, but simply to get a few prisoners for information regarding regiments, and so forth. In the French army such raids are made by special selected companies of each regiment, who have no routine duty and get eight days' special leave after each raid that results in prisoners. These men are termed "corps franc." As you can see, Jean thought this a quick way to get back to his fiancée.
While we talked, by a freak of luck, who should knock at my door but Lieutenant P----, chief of our local corps franc, a very good friend and one I am proud to have. He is the perfect quintessence of a French subaltern,--twenty-six years old, slight, wiry, and handsome; an Anglophile in everything relating to sport, as exquisite in dress and person as Beau Brummell, and as recklessly brave as Morgan's buccaneers. He has risen from the ranks, wears a gold bracelet, and has every decoration that a French soldier or officer can get, including the red ribbon. His Croix de Guerre has seven citations, and he has been five times wounded. He took to Jean at once, saying that he needed an interpreter for a raid which was coming in two or three days, and promised to see the captain about it at once.
"Better come with us," he said to me, whimsically. "I want to run down to Paris next week, and if the sergeant here and I don't get a prisoner or two, it will be because there are none left in the first line. Come on--you'll see some fun!"
"But," I said, "what is there in it for me? I'm ruined if I'm caught in any such escapade, and in any case I get no permission."
"Oh, we'll fix that. Maybe you'd get a nice little wound like my last one; and if not, I'm an expert with grenades; I think I could toss one so you would just get an éclat or two in the legs--good for a week in Paris."
I thanked him without enthusiasm and declined.
The sequel to this came last night as I lay reading in my bunk. The evening had been absolutely quiet, not a rifle-shot along the trenches, until suddenly, about 10.30, the batteries set up their sullen thumping, mingled with the thud of exploding aerial torpedoes.
To my ears, concentrated artillery fire--not too far off--has a strangely mournful sound--heavy, dull, and fitful, like a dark thunderstorm in Dante's hell. The bombardment lasted exactly forty minutes, then absolute silence except for an occasional pistol-shot (no one uses rifles in raids), and once more the sudden stammer of a mitrailleuse. As I lay there, safe in my warm bunk, I thought of gallant little P---- and jolly old lovelorn Jean, perhaps at that moment stealing through torn German wire with a brace of prisoners ahead of them, crouching low each time a star-shell sent up its warning trail of sparks,--or perhaps--
To-morrow, when I go back to the village for two days' rest, I shall look for them.
_April 10, 1917_
I am writing this in a new post of ours--a village several kilometres from the lines, where there are still civilians. As the hospital is very noisy at night, and one would have to sleep in a barrack, packed in among the wounded, I have arranged with a motherly old woman (patronne of the local café) to let me have her spare room. I found an old cowbell and by an arrangement of strings and hooks have rigged it so that it can be rung at night from the street below. Talk about luxury! I have a real bed (about five feet long) with sheets, pillows, and a featherbed that reaches from feet to waist. When a night call comes, the bell tinkles, I leap out of bed, pull on breeches and coat and high felt "arctics," and in three minutes am off.
As there are no men about, I have been (in odd moments) splitting wood and moving the heavy beer and wine casks as required--work really far too heavy for women. The old lady, in return, often invites me in for a cup of steaming coffee with a dash of schnapps, and to-day she asked me to a family dinner--a superb civilian meal of ham and boiled potatoes and home-made choucroute. The latter must be tasted to be appreciated. She is quite bitter about a branch of the Y.M.C.A.--called Foyer du Soldat--just opened here, which, with its free movies, papers, and so forth, has lured away much of her trade. "I pay a heavy license tax," she says, "and they pay nothing--nothing."
Useless to try to explain to the good old soul that the innocent must suffer in order that virtue shall triumph--or in other words, that the fantassin shall have amusement without beer. I comforted her with the regrettable truth that her boys will all be back when the novelty is worn off.
A great many of the men here are muleteers from the Spanish and Italian borders. Where the country is hilly and trails constitute the shortest route to the trenches, the French use a great many pack-mules to carry up provisions, ammunition, and supplies. A Western packer would be interested in their methods. Each mule has its master, who packs it, washes it, feeds it, and on the march walks ahead, leading it by a rope. The pack-saddles and rigging are wonderful--they must be when one considers that the mules often carry three hundred pounds twenty miles a day, and sore backs are unknown.
A mule's a mule, however, wherever you meet him--these are just the same "ornery" brutes we have at home. Their effect on the explosive southern French temperament is sometimes ludicrous. I stopped the other day to ask the way of a mule-skinner who was limping dejectedly ahead of his charge--the rest of the train was far ahead. After putting me on the road, he leaned wearily against a tree and explained that in all the world there was probably not another mule like his. It had kicked him yesterday, it had bitten him severely this morning, and just now, while he adjusted the pack, it had kicked him on the hip, so that in all likelihood he would limp for life. While he talked, the mule sidled over, with drooping eyelids and sagging ears, and planted one foot firmly on the unfortunate Frenchman's toes. The whole thing seemed to have been done by accident--I could almost see the dotted line of innocence running from the mule's sleepy eye off into space. Without a word, the man set his shoulder against the mule, forced its weight off his foot, and tenderly inspected the injured part. Then, hands on hips, he regarded the mule with a long stare of dramatic contempt.
"Wouldst thou kill me, sacré espèce of a camel?" he said at last; "well, death would be better than this. Come, here I am!"
The day before yesterday, when I was out at one of our posts on the front, an Austrian 88 mm. shell fell in a crowd of mules and their drivers. Fortunately no one was hurt (by one of the freaks of shells), but three mules were killed by the splinters. That night, with some misgivings, I tried a steak from the hind-quarter of a five-year-old mule. _It was bully._ When you come to think of it, a mule is just as good food as a steer.
A week ago I was waiting at a front post for some wounded, when a mule train came by, packed with the huge winged aerial torpedoes so much in vogue just now. Each mule carried four of these truly formidable things. As the last mule passed, he slipped on the muddy slope, his feet flew out, and down he came with a whack, torpedoes and all. You ought to have seen us scatter,--officers, men, and mule-drivers,--like fragments of a bursting shell. As the mule showed signs of struggling, we had to rush back and gingerly remove the load before helping him up.
These torpedoes play a great part in war nowadays. They are cheap to manufacture, carry an enormous bursting charge, and--shot out of small mortar-like guns, into which the steel or wooden "stem" of the torpedo is inserted--have a range of six or seven hundred yards. On days of attack you can see them, like huge black birds, soar slowly up from behind the trenches, hang poised for an instant, and dart down to make their formidable explosion, which sends clouds of débris, timber, and dirt, high into the air. Their fragments are very bad--long, thin, jagged things that come whizzing by and inflict terrible wounds. Many of them are equipped with "trailers," which outline their course in a shower of crimson sparks; and on nights of attack the sky is scored with their fiery trails.
A night attack is a wonderful thing to see: the steady solemn thunder of the guns, the sky glaring with star-shells and trails, the trenches flaming and roaring with bursting shell. It is like a vast natural phenomenon,--Krakatoa or Mont Pelée,--too vast and cataclysmic to be man's handiwork; and yet, into the maelstrom of spouting flames, hissing steel, shattering explosions, insignificant little creatures like you and me will presently run--offering, with sublime courage, their tender bodies to be burned and pierced and mangled. To me that is war's one redeeming feature--it brings out in men a courage that is of the spirit alone--above all earthly things.
_April 23, 1917_
I am sitting again in the little post I told you about in my last letter. The old lady is tidying up the café, the early morning sun is shining in gayly through the many-paned windows, and outside, along the picket-line, the mules are squealing and kicking while they have their morning bath. Pretty soon I shall go out foraging for a brace of eggs, and with these, a piece of cheese, and some coffee shall make my déjeuner.
The local barrack is the only one I have found where one simply cannot eat, as the cook and his kitchen are unspeakable. Unless he has been caught out in a shower, he has certainly gone without a bath since the war started. After a glance at him and at his kitchen even the most callous poilu rebels.
We have now, attached to our section as mechanic, a French private who is rather an unusual type--a rich manufacturer in civil life, who, through some kink of character, has not risen in the army. He put in a year in the trenches and then, being middle-aged, was put behind the lines. He speaks English, is splendidly educated, and has traveled everywhere, but is too indifferent to public opinion ever to make an officer, or even a non-com. In his factory he had a packer, earning seven francs a day, who was also mobilized, and who has now risen to the rank of lieutenant. Think of the gulf between a poilu and a French officer, with his authority, his galons and superb red-and-gold hat, and then consider that this lieutenant's idea of a permission is to go home, put on his oldest clothes, and spend the seven days working at his old job of packing and heading barrels. It takes France to produce this sort of thing.
The siege warfare to which, owing to strategic reasons, we are reduced in our part of the lines, with both sides playing the part of besieged and besiegers, gives rise to a curious unwritten understanding between ourselves and the enemy. Take the hospital corps, their first-aid posts and ambulances. The Germans must know perfectly well where the posts are, but they scarcely ever shell them--not from any humanitarian reason, but because if they did, the French would promptly blow theirs to pieces. It is a curious sensation to live in such a place, with the knowledge that this is the only reason you enjoy your comparative safety. Likewise our ambulances. I often go over a road in perfectly plain view of the Boche, only a few hundred yards distant, and though shells and shrapnel often come my way, I am confident none of them are aimed at me. The proof of it is that no one has ever taken a pot-shot at me with rifle or machine-gun, either one of which would be a sure thing at the range. The other day an officer invited me down to see his newly completed observatory--a cunningly built, almost invisible stronghold on the crest of a hill, which commanded a superb view of the trenches and German territory behind them. It chanced to be an afternoon of unusual interest. The trenches, about eight hundred yards distant, were spread like a map beneath us,--a labyrinth of zigzag ditches and boyaux,--all cunningly laid out on principles which I have been studying. With the powerful glasses lent me, I could make out the thickets of wire before the first lines. A heavy bombardment was in progress, and all along the lines, as far as the eye could see, clouds of smoke and earth were springing up and settling slowly down. Not a living being was in sight. Far off to the south, a flock of observation balloons floated motionless, high in air, like fat, hovering birds. Suddenly the man beside me, who had been staring through his glasses at a twenty-acre patch of woods a couple of miles away, gave an excited exclamation. "I have spotted it--the new battery of heavy guns that has been annoying us; they were too bold, for once."
Sure enough, I thought I made out a thin wisp of smoke trailing among the tree-tops at the south end of the wood.
The officer muttered a string of cabalistic instructions into his telephone receiver and motioned me to watch. A minute later, a battery of French heavy guns behind us began their deep, coughing thumps, sending enormous shells hurtling overhead with the pulsing rush of an express train, crescendo and diminuendo. The first shell fell short, showering the trees with earth and débris--the salvos that followed obscured the whole wood in clouds of smoke, broken branches, and dust. Twenty minutes of this before the battery went silent again. A final tremendous explosion, eclipsing all that had gone before, seemed to shake the trees to their roots.
"That will hold them for a while," said my friend exultantly, as he telephoned the news back to his battery; "we must have hit their magazine of propelling charges."
Next day I was sitting at lunch in our mess, distant about three hundred yards from the observatory, when a series of heavy, racking explosions made the windows rattle. There is a distinct difference between the sound of a gun and that of a bursting shell. The first is a cracking _bang_, or _boum_, as the French say. The latter is a racking, dwelling roar--drawn out, if such a thing can be said of an explosion. Shells were bursting somewhere close to us--many of them. When I went outside I could hear, clear and waspish above the din, the _pinging_ of splinters whizzing overhead, and the occasional crackle of a lopped-off branch. After half an hour of this, a man came panting up with the bad news that the new observatory was completely demolished. There you have the inner workings of siege-war; the Boches, with uncanny craft, knew of the observatory, let the French complete it, and might have let it alone, had it not been instrumental in destroying their battery. That led them into their indiscreet action, for the French, in retaliation, promptly wiped off the map the most important German observatory--an elaborate affair whose exact location they had long known. This time the Boche did not dare retaliate. And so it goes.
There is a crack French gun-pointer near here who has brought down seven enemy planes in the past two months--a remarkable record in this quiet district. The last one fell close to one of our posts--its two passengers, German lieutenants, were dead, but scarcely marked by their drop into a snow-drift. One of them, a handsome young chap, with a little blond mustache, wore a gold bracelet, and in his pocket was a letter from his mother, accusing him of being an ungrateful son, who had only written twice in six months. Rather pathetic. There is a sort of chivalry in the air service which is a relief in the sordid monotony of this war. A German plane was crippled a while ago, and had to volplane down smack into a parade-ground where a French regiment was at drill. The soldiers rushed out to make prisoners of the two German officers, who were not a hundred yards up; but the latter, with indomitable courage, loosed their Spandaus on the crowd, and were promptly riddled with bullets by the reluctant French. They received a funeral in accordance with their splendid death.
The code of the Prussian officer is never to surrender; but of course all cannot live up to this. In a recent raid, a sergeant I know made a prisoner of a German captain, who, as they walked to the rear, cursed his luck in fluent French, saying that he was caught unaware--that an officer never surrendered, but fought to the end.
"Stop here, my captain, and let us consider this," said the sergeant seriously; "there are several articles of your equipment to which my fancy runs--that watch, for example, those leather puttees, and that fat purse I saw you change to your hip-pocket. Perhaps I can at once oblige you and gratify my whim. Suppose you were suddenly to run--a quick shot would save your honor, and me the trouble of escorting you back to the rear. And I am an excellent shot, je vous assure." But the German was not interested.
_April 26, 1917_
This afternoon the general of the division ordered us to present ourselves at headquarters at four o'clock. From lunch on there was a great shaving and haircutting, brushing and pressing of uniforms, and overhauling of shoes and puttees. Four o'clock found us lined up at the door of the wonderful old château, and next moment a superb officer, who spoke English,--of the Oxford variety,--stepped out, introduced himself all around with charming courtesy, took our names, and ushered us in.
The general, a hawk-faced man of sixty, straight and slender as an arrow, with sparkling dark eyes, stood surrounded by his resplendent staff. As each name was announced, we walked forward to him, saluted and bowed, and shook hands. This over, we stepped back and mingled with the staff officers, who displayed a wonderful trick of making us feel at home in the first stiffness. Presently orderlies brought in champagne and glasses, and when every one had his glass in hand the buzz stopped while the general spoke.
"Your country, gentlemen," he said, "has done France the honor of setting aside this day for her. It is fitting that I should ask you here, in order to tell you how much we appreciate America's friendship, which you and your comrades have been demonstrating by actions rather than words. I am an old man, but I tell you my heart beat like a boy's when the news came that the great Sister Republic--united of old by ideals of human liberty--had thrown in her lot with ours. I ask you to drink with me to the future of France and America--the sure future. You have seen France: our brave women, ready to make any sacrifices for the motherland; our little soldiers, invincible in their determination. Let us drink then to France, to America, and to the day of ultimate victory, which is coming as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow."
As he ceased, he stepped forward to touch glasses with each of us,--the invariable French custom,--and next moment a magnificent Chasseur band, outside on the terrace, crashed into the "Star-Spangled Banner." Quite thrilling, I assure you. Later, we strolled through the fine old gardens, chatting with the officers while the band played. The general, while the most military man imaginable, has a very attractive brusque affability. We are a good-sized crowd as Americans run, and the French, who average shorter and stockier, never cease to wonder at our height. The old chap grabbed three or four of us by the shoulders and lined us up.
"Mais vous êtes des gaillards," he said, smiling; "see, I am five or six centimetres shorter than any of you. But wait, we have a giant or two."
With that he called over a grinning captain and pulled him back to back with our biggest man, whom he topped by a full inch.
"But, my general," laughed the officer, "it is not good to be so tall--too much of one sticks out of a trench."
The owner of the château--a stately woman of fifty, proud of her name, her race, and her country, and an angel from heaven to the sick and poor for miles around--is an example of the kind of patriotism of which, I fear, we are in need. Her husband is dead; when the war broke out she had a daughter and two sons--gallant young officers whose brief lives had been a constant source of satisfaction and pride to their mother. The elder was killed at the Marne, and a while ago, the younger, her special pet, was killed here in an attack. A woman of her kind, to whom the continuance of an old name was almost a religion, could undergo no harder experience. At the grave-side she stood erect and dry-eyed, with a little proud smile on her lips, as her last boy was buried. "Why should I weep?" she asked some one who would have comforted her; "there is nothing finer my boys could have done if they had lived out their lives." Her heart must be very nearly broken in two, but never a sign does she give; going about among her hospitals and peasant families as cheerful, interested, even gay, as if her only cares were for others. There is true courage for you!