Chapter 3

WITH THE BRITISH ARMY. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE

_Paris, Sunday, September 6th._ Since the French Government left Paris we have been totally ignorant of all that is going on outside of the city walls. For the past few days everything has been hazy rumor. During all last week we expected the Germans to march into Paris any day; for their headquarters were at Compiègne, their heavy advance at Senlis and Coulomiers, and their cavalry at Pontoise and Chantilly.

With the Germans only fifteen miles from the gates of Paris, the newspapers make no definite mention of the fact, but fill their space with accounts of the great victories which the Russians think to win in Silicia. Rumor has it that the Germans have even encircled Paris and are at Fontainebleau to the south-southeast. This is highly improbable, but we have already seen that the wildest improbability of one day becomes an actuality the next. Everyone at the Embassy, and indeed all Paris, is desperately anxious for news. Even unfavorable news would be better than this prolonged suspense. Everyone inquires and wonders and queries, but no one knows what the real situation is--where the German army is stationed, what its next move may be, or if any of the Allied army is between it and Paris.

After several days of great tension, desperately trying to the active American temperament, I decided that the easiest way to find out what was happening outside the city was to go and see. It was first absolutely necessary to obtain permission from the authorities of Paris to pass out of the gates--as without proper papers I would certainly be arrested. I, by this time, knew personally many of the police officials in the city, having interviewed them hundreds of times in regard to German and Austrian internes. Finally I found one who thought he knew me well enough to trust me with a pass. He explained that the garrison of Paris occupied a zone which extended out from the walls ten miles in all directions. Outside this were the moving armies, and once beyond the defensive zone we could, at our own risk, go where we chose. My permit stated that we were bound for Lagny, which is about twelve miles from the gates and well outside the circle of defense. I took one of the Embassy automobiles driven by a skillful American amateur, Melvin Hall. He drove his own six-cylinder high-power car, carrying a light touring body.

We left the city about four o'clock in the afternoon by the Porte de Vincennes. Immediately we left the walls behind us, we found all the roads guarded by French troops and barred by elaborate obstructions. Every two or three minutes we were brought to a stop by little gated forts built across the highway, which were loopholed for rifles and commanded the road in both directions. These were designed to retard German scouting parties or halt German mitrailleuse automobiles. The barriers were built of an extraordinary variety of material: trees, paving-stones, barrels, carts, hen-coops, sandbags, boxes, and fence-rails. At each barrier were stationed a score or more of soldiers, and as one approached, one saw the gleam of bayonets and heard a sharp, imperative "Halte-là!" When we came to a full stop, two or three of the sentinels would step out cautiously and suspiciously, their rifles all ready for action, while in a gingerly way they examined our papers.

The barriers were usually placed in positions of strategic importance, on hills or ridges, and always one was found at each end of the main thoroughfare of every village. All the side streets of the villages were closed and fortified, and any opening between the outermost houses was piled high with obstructions. Each little town within the fortified zone thus became itself a small fort, a complete circle of defense. We travelled along slowly for some ten miles, being halted and examined about every half mile. Finally we came to a great trench which ran across the fields on either side of the road. Facing away from Paris, one looked over a valley, and in the distance could distinctly hear the boom of guns in action.

We were now at the outer line of the defense zone, within which all the roads, bridges, and valleys were held by infantry working in conjunction with the large forts placed at intervals in the great circle. Outside of this zone is open country in which battles are being fought; where and when, it was our aim to discover.

At the trench where we halted, the men on guard were very much on the qui vive and the officers were busy with their field-glasses, for they had just received warning that German cavalry were in front of them in the valley over which we looked. We stopped to talk for a few minutes with the commanding officer, and then, releasing our brakes, slid quietly out in front of the trench, down the hill.

It was silent and lonely in the valley; the whole countryside was desolate. We saw neither soldier nor civilian. The very air seemed charged with disaster. In a few minutes we ran into Lagny, which was absolutely deserted. A curious sensation it is to enter a town having all the marks of being inhabited and yet to sense the utter absence of human beings. On the village square, however, we found the Mayor, who, like so many brave French officials throughout the country, had felt it his first duty to stand by his community, come what might to him personally. He told us that the Germans were spread all over the country between Lagny and the Meaux, ten miles away, and added that their cavalry had been through the town recently and might return any minute. He then warned us that we could not cross the Marne, which ran through the village, because the bridges were all down. We, therefore, turned south toward Ferrières, at right angles to our original course, and parallel to the walls of Paris.

Before reaching Ferrières, we again touched the outer lines of the fortified camp. Here a big standing trench was occupied by French infantry which had been in action with some German cavalry only a few minutes before. The captain in command asked us to take a soldier who had been wounded back to the brigade hospital some two or three miles to the rear. This we did gladly and found the hospital located in the schoolhouse of a small village. Here we also encountered a wounded English private who was manifestly grateful to hear the sound of his own language. The village was occupied by a large body of French Hussars who were there encamped. Some of them were rubbing down their horses, others were cooking supper. The gray smoke of the fires ascending through the poplar trees, the bare-armed soldiers laboring over their mounts, the deserted houses, the litter of saddles and equipment, made a picture not soon to be forgotten.

We returned to the entrenchments again, crossed them, and proceeded to Ferrières, where we at last found a road which turned off to the east. We followed this for two miles, passing through the grounds of a large château only to find the road barred by an impassable combination of ditches, barriers, and barbed wire. We went back again to Ferrières, which we learned had been the seat of the British General Staff only that morning, and from there continued southward for several miles to another village called Pontcarré. Here at last we found a straight and open road to the east. We turned down it at top speed, not having the faintest idea of what was ahead, and ran for ten miles through deserted farming country in which the only signs of life were two French cavalry patrols scouting through the woods.

Just as night was falling, we approached Villeneuve-le-Comte. Watchful sentries in khaki surrounded the village, and the fields around it on all sides were packed with British troops, who had just arrived and were in the act of bivouacking for the night. From them we learned that the German army was less than three miles away at Crécy and that on the morrow at dawn a great battle was to be staged. All the Allies had been force-marching to get there in time.

On every side camp fires gleamed out through the gray of the gloaming and their smoke mounted upward to mingle with the gray of the evening sky above. Everywhere one saw men and horses blissfully resting after the long, hot, and dusty march. The men lay upon the ground with every muscle relaxed, while the horses, with drooped heads, stood first on one tired hind foot and then upon the other. Long lines of motor trucks loaded with ammunition were parked along the gutters of all the roads and byways. Along the crowded highway a lane was, however, sacredly kept open, and men looked twice before they ventured to cross it. From time to time an orderly on a motor-cycle, carrying instructions to subordinate commanders, would zip at a dizzy speed down this narrow path which was flanked by almost unbroken walls of men, wagons, and lorries.

The streets of the little French village were crowded full with khaki-clad soldiers. A battalion of Highlanders were going through inspection in the dusk. They now numbered only three hundred odd, but two weeks ago in Belgium they had been eleven hundred strong. An officer of another regiment informed us that he knew of no British battalion in all history which had sustained such heavy losses and yet been able to maintain its formation and fight on. We watched with interest the Scotchmen of that regiment file by after dismissal. They were incredibly tattered and torn, their kilts dirty and frayed; many of them wore big, battered straw hats. The only things about them which were neat were their rifles, their bayonets, and their clean-shaven faces. One could certainly have no doubts as to the excellent state of their morale; we were, indeed, much impressed by the morale of all these British troops who, notwithstanding the fact that they had been beaten back during two long weeks across a hundred and fifty miles of country and had been retreating until that very morning, in no sense felt themselves defeated but eagerly awaited the word to advance and attack.

We spent a profitable and long-to-be-remembered hour and a half talking with the British officers and watching the troops. We had brought with us a supply of the two things they most craved--matches and newspapers, and whenever any of these were distributed it nearly produced a riot. When a box of matches was handed out, two matches would, as long as they lasted, be given to each man of a company.

Word was passed around that we were to return to Paris that evening, and first and last we were given some fifty notes written hurriedly by the men who wished to send a last word to their homes before the battle which was to begin on the morrow. We, of course, accepted these notes only with the permission of the officers.

It was long after dark before we started back toward Paris. Mist and fog hung close to the ground, and it was a weird ride as we felt our way through lonely woods and deserted villages, being continually stopped by ditches or barbed wire or a barrier across the road. Often ahead of us we would suddenly see bayonets flickering through the mist as our head-lights shone out upon them, and immediately the terse cry of "Halte-là!" followed; a sergeant would come forward, lantern in hand, to examine our papers and suspiciously look us over. All the time we felt that a dozen unseen rifles were leveled at us from somewhere out in the dark.

We re-entered Paris through the Porte de Vincennes at half-past eight. After dinner I made a report of our trip to Mr. Herrick, saying that a great battle was about to begin; that the German armies formed a right angle, the apex of which was near Meaux, while one side extended north through Senlis and the other ran almost due east; that between this German army and Paris were stationed the British and French troops who would retreat no farther but expected themselves to open the attack in the morning. After the suspense of the past few days it is a tremendous relief to have definite news.

* * * * *

_Monday, September 7th._ For me all the world was this morning electric with excitement. That Paris should go calmly about her daily routine, unconscious and unconcerned, seemed monstrous. I wanted to grasp everyone I met and cry: "The Germans are only twenty miles away! A great battle is even now being fought just outside the gates!--a battle on the issue of which hangs the fate of France--and much more than France. If the thin line which stands between Paris and her enemies does not hold, this day sees France reduced to a second-rate Power and Paris will again hear the tramp of German armies marching down the Champs-Elysées!" My feet walked the familiar streets, but every pulse-beat, every conscious thought was with the Allied armies of defense with which I had so recently been in touch. The sense of their near presence and of their great conflict was much more vivid to me than the objects passing before my physical eyes.

* * * * *

_Tuesday, September 8th._ I spent yesterday and today at the Embassy superintending the card-indexing of the German internes. Think of card catalogues! and the battle, perhaps the world's greatest battle, raging no farther away than one might reach in an hour by automobile!

* * * * *

_Wednesday, September 9th._ Mr. Breckenridge, the American Assistant Secretary of War, has arrived in Paris, and with him came also Colonel Allen of the General Staff of the United States Army. Just as I reached the limit of endurance in card-indexing, release came.

Through the energy and activity of Mr. Breckenridge, a permit has been obtained allowing Colonel Allen, Captain Parker, and myself to leave the city and view the battle which is raging outside. We are to observe and study as much of the operations as possible, in order to gather information useful to our army in America.

We are allowed to take our own chauffeur, and Melvin Hall, at my suggestion, has been chosen for this position. We hope to stay a week and shall leave tomorrow, if the machine can be made ready for so long a trip in so short a time.

* * * * *

_Thursday, September 10th._ I had this morning a long talk with Richard Harding Davis. He has just arrived from Belgium and is at present striving to get permits to see the war in France. He said that never in his previous war experiences had he seen such unspeakable atrocities as the Germans have committed in Belgium. He speaks nearly as vehemently about it as does Dr. Louis Seaman. He is the first person with whom I have had opportunity to talk who has actually been in Belgium and saw the details of the violation of that country by Germany.

Hall was today unable to complete the preparations on his automobile. On this trip, running through a region devastated by war, we dare not count on finding gasoline, tires, or food, but must start well stocked with all these essentials. We wish to keep going at least five or six days and probably shall find during that time no opportunity to refit. Hall is, therefore, loading up every spare corner of his automobile with food, tires, and gasoline cans.

The great cry of the troops at the front is for matches, cigarettes, and newspapers. I have purchased one hundred boxes of matches, one hundred and sixty newspapers, and six hundred cigarettes to distribute among them as chance offers.

It has been raining almost constantly this week. One cannot help wondering what effect it has had upon the great battle out yonder, the battle about which we still know so little, and of which we think so anxiously.