The A. E. F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces

CHAPTER XV
VERDUN

FROM the hills around Verdun we saw the earth as it must have looked on perhaps the fourth day of creation week. It was all frowsy mud and slime. Man was down deep in the dust from which he will spring again some day. There was not even a foothold for poppies on the hills around Verdun, for mingled with the old earth scars were fresh ones, and there will be more tomorrow.

The Germans have been pushed back of the edges of the bowl in which Verdun lies, and now their only eyes are aeroplanes. Big naval guns are required to reach the city itself, but the Germans are not content to leave the battered town alone. They bang away at ruins and kick a city which is down. They fire, too, at the citadel, but do no more than scratch the top of this great underground fortress.

Our guide and mentor at Verdun was a distinguished colonel, very learned in military tactics and familiar with every phase of the various Verdun campaigns. The extent of his information was borne home to us the first day of the trip, for he stood the party on top of Fort Souville and carried on a technical talk in French for more than half an hour, while German shells, breaking a few hundred yards away, sought in vain to interrupt him.

From the top of Souville it was possible to see gun flashes and to spy, now and again, aeroplanes which darted back and forth all day, but not a soldier of either side was to be seen through the strongest glasses. On no front have men dug in so deeply as at Verdun. They have good reason to snuggle into the earth, for the French have a story that one of their projectiles killed men in a dugout seventy-five feet below the surface. They thought that this terrific penetration must have been due to the fact that the shell hit fairly upon a crack in the concrete and wedged its way through.

Barring plumbing, which is always an after thought in France, the French make the underground dwellings of the soldiers moderately comfortable. There are ventilating plants and electric lights, and in the citadel a motion picture theater. In one underground stronghold we found the telephone central for all the various positions around Verdun. We wondered whether or not he was ever obliged to report, "Your party doesn't answer."

We traveled far underground, and at last the colonel brought us out again near the high, bare spot where the automobiles had been left. As we walked down the road there was a particularly vicious bang some place to our left.

"That wasn't very far away," said the colonel.

This was the first shell which had stirred him to interest or attention. Presently there came another bang, and this seemed just as loud. The colonel paused thoughtfully.

"Maybe one of their aeroplanes has seen us and spotted us for the artillery," he said. "Tell the chauffeurs to turn the cars around at once, and we'll go."

The chauffeurs turned the cars with commendable alacrity and the colonel walked slowly toward them. But his roving glance rested for an instant upon a little ridge across the valley to his left which brought memories to his mind and he stopped in the middle of the road and began: "In the Spring of 1915 – " On and on he went in his beautiful French and described some small affair which might have influenced the entire subsequent course of events. It seemed that if the Germans had varied their plan a little the French defensive scheme would have been upset and all sorts of things would have happened. At the end of twenty minutes he had done full justice to the subject and then he recollected.

"We'd better go now," he said, "the Germans may have spotted us."

We messed with the French officers in the citadel that night and found that they were ready to converse on almost any subject but the war. Literature was their favorite topic. Although the colonel spoke no English, he was familiar with much American literature in translation. Poe he knew well, and he had read a few things of Mark Twain's. Somebody mentioned William James, and a captain quoted at length from an essay called "A Moral Equivalent for War." The lieutenant on my right wanted to know whether Americans still read Walt Whitman, and I wondered whether the same familiarity with French literature would be encountered in any American mess. This little lieutenant had been a professor or instructor some place or other when the war began and had several poetical dramas in verse to his credit. He had written a play called "Dionysius" in rhymed couplets. At the beginning of the war he had enlisted as a private and had seen much hard service, which had brought him two wounds, a medal and a commission. He hoped ardently to survive the war, for he felt that he could write ever so much better because he had been thrown into close relationship with peasants and laborers. He found their talk meaty, and at times rich in poetry. One day, he remembered, his regiment had marched along a country road in a fine spring dawn. His comrade to the right, a Parisian peddler, remarked as they passed a gleaming forest: "There is a wood where God has slept." The little lieutenant said that if he had the luck to live through the war he was going to write plays without a thought of the Greeks and their mythology. He hoped, if he should live, to write for the many as well as the few. I wondered to myself just what sort of plays one of our American highbrows would write if he served a campaign with the 69th or drove an army mule.

The French army tries to let the men at the front live a little better than elsewhere if it is possible to get the food up to them. In the citadel at Verdun the men dine in style now that the incoming roads are pretty much immune from shell fire. Our luncheon with the officers on the night of the twenty-fifth of September, for instance, consisted of hors d'œuvres, omelette aux fines herbes, bifsteck, pommes parmentier, confitures, dessert, café, champagne and pinard. And for dinner we had potage vermicelli, œfs bechamel, jambon aux epinards, chouxfleur au jus, duchesse chocolat, fruits, dessert, café and, of course, champagne and pinard.

We spent the night in the citadel and a little after midnight the German planes came over. They bombed the town and dropped a few missiles on the citadel, but they did no more than dent the roof a bit. Our rooms were almost fifty meters underground and the bombs sounded little louder than heavy rain on the roof. Certainly they did not disturb the Frenchman just down the hall. His snores were ever so much louder than the German bombs.

On the morning of our second day we crossed the Meuse and drove down heavily camouflaged roads to Charny. Five hundred yards away a French battery was under heavy bombardment from big German guns. We could see the earth fly up from hits close to the gun emplacements. Five hundred yards away men were being killed and wounded, but the soldiers in Charny loafed about and smoked and chatted and paid no attention. This bombardment was not in their lives at all. The men of the battery might have been the folk who walk upside down on the other side of the earth.

"The last time I came to Charny," said the Colonel, "I had to get in a dugout and stay five hours because the Germans bombarded it so hard.

"But that was in the afternoon," he reassured us; "the Germans never bombard Charny in the morning."

We stood and watched the two sheets of fire poured upon the battery until somebody called attention to the fact that it was almost noon and we returned to the citadel. And at two o'clock that afternoon we stood on a hilltop overlooking the valley and sure enough the Germans were giving Charny its daily strafe. Shells were bursting all around the peaceful road we had traveled in the morning. Probably by now the men in the battery were idling about and taking their ease. After all there is something to be said for a foe who plays a system.

CHAPTER XVI
WE VISIT THE BRITISH ARMY

HE was twenty-six and a major, but he was three years old in the big war, and that is the only age which counts today in the British army. The little major was the first man I ever met who professed a genuine enthusiasm for war. It had found him a black sheep in the most remote region of a big British colony and had tossed him into command of himself and of others. Utterly useless in the pursuit of peace, war had proved a sufficiently compelling schoolmaster to induce the study of many complicated mechanical problems, of subtler ones of psychology, not to mention two languages. It is true that his German was limited to "Throw up your hands" and "Come out or we'll bomb you," but he could carry on a friendly and fairly extensive conversation in French. The tuition fee was two wounds.

He was a fine, fair sample of the slashing, swanking British army which backs its boasts with battalions and makes its light words good with heavy guns. We rode together in a train for several hours on the way to the British front and when I told him I was a newspaper man he was eager to tell me something of what the British army had done, was doing and would do.

"If they'd cut out wire and trenches and machine guns and general staffs," said the little major, "we'd win in two months." Without these concessions he did not expect to see the end for at least a year. However, he was concerned for the most part with more concrete things than predictions, and I'd best let him wander on as he did that afternoon with no interruption save an occasional question. He was returning to the front after being wounded. There had been boating and swimming and tennis and "a deuced pretty girl" down there at the resort where he had been recuperating, and yet he was glad to be back.

"You see," the little major explained, "I have been in all the shows from the beginning and I'd feel pretty rotten if they were to pull anything off without me. The C.O. wants me back. I have a letter here from him. He tells me to take all the time I need, but to get back as soon as I can. The C.O. and I have been together from the beginning. It isn't that the new fellow isn't all right. Quite likely he's a better officer than I am, but the C.O. wants the old fellows that he's seen in other shows and knows all about. That's why I want to get back. I want to see what the new fellow's doing with my men."

He limped a little still, and I pressed him to tell me about his wound. It seemed he got it in "the April show."

"There was a bit of luck about that," he said. "I happened to take my Webley with me when we went over, as well as my cane. They've got a silly rule now that officers mustn't carry canes in an attack and that they must wear Tommies' tunics, so the Fritzies can't spot them. They say we lose too many officers because they expose themselves. Nobody pays much attention to that rule. You won't find many officers in Tommies' tunics, but you will find 'em out in front with their canes.

"And there's sense to it. I've always said that I wouldn't ask my men to go any place I wasn't willing to go and to go first. 'Come on,' that's what we say in the British army. The Germans drive their men from behind. Some of their officers are very brave, you know, but that's the system. I remember in one show we were stuck at the third line of barbed wire. The guns hadn't touched it, but it wasn't their fault. There was a German officer there, and he stood up on the parapet, and directed the machine gun fire. He'd point every place we were a little thick and then they'd let us have it. We got him, though. I got a machine gunner on him. Just peppered him. He was a mighty brave officer."

I reminded the little major that I wanted to hear about his wound.

"We were coming through a German trench that had been pretty well cleaned out, but close up against the back there was a soldier hiding. When I came by he cut at me with his bayonet. He only got me in the fleshy part of my leg, and I turned and let him have it with my Webley. Blew the top of his head right off. Silly ass, wasn't he? Must have known he'd be killed."

I asked him if his wound hurt, and he said no, and that he was able to walk back, and felt quite chipper until the last mile.

"The first thing a wounded man wants to do," he explained, "is to get away. If he's been hit he gets a sudden crazy fear that he's going to get it again. Most wounds don't hurt much, and as soon as a man's out of fire and puts a cigarette in his mouth he cheers up. He's at his best if it's a blighty hit."

Here I was forced to interrupt for information.

"A blighty hit! Don't you know what that is? It's from the song they sing now, 'Carry Me Back to Blighty.' Blighty's England. I think it's a Hindustani word that means home, but I won't be sure about that. Anyhow, a blighty hit's not bad enough to keep you in France, but bad enough to send you to England. Those are the slow injuries that aren't so very dangerous.

"Next to getting to Blighty a fellow wants a cigarette. I never saw a man hit so bad he couldn't smoke. I saw a British 'plane coming down one day and the tail of it was red. The Germans fix up their machines like that, but I knew this wasn't paint on a British plane. He made a tiptop landing, and when he got out we saw part of his shoulder was shot away and he had a hole in the top of his head. 'That was a close call,' he said, and he took out a cigarette, lighted it and took two puffs. Then he keeled over."

The little major and I got out to stretch our legs at a station platform, and I noticed that salutes were punctiliously given and returned. "I suppose," I said, quoting a bit of misinformation somebody had supplied, "that out at the front all this saluting is cut out."

"No, sir," said the little major sternly. "Somebody told that to the last batch of recruits that was sent over, but we taught 'em better soon. They don't get the lay of it quite. It isn't me they salute; it's the King's uniform. Of course, I don't expect a man to salute if I pass him in a trench; but if he's smoking a cigarette I expect him to throw it away and I expect him to straighten up.

"You've got to let up on some things, of course. There's shaving now. I expect my men to shave every day when they're not in the line, but you can't expect that in the trenches. Naturally, I shave myself every day anyhow, but I'm lenient with the men. I don't insist on their shaving more than every other day."

When I got to the château where the visiting correspondents stay I found the officers at mess. There were four British officers, a Roumanian general, a member of Parliament, a Dutch painter and an American newspaperman. As at Verdun the conversation had swung around to literature. It all began because somebody said something about Shaw having put up at the château when he visited the front.

"Awful ass," said an English officer who had met the playwright out there. "He was no end of nuisance for us. Why, when he got out here we found he was a vegetarian, and we had to chase around and have omelettes fixed up for him every day."

"I censored his stuff," said another. "I didn't think much of it, but I made almost no changes. Some of it was a little subtle, but I let it get by."

"I heard him out here," said a third officer, "and he talked no end of rot. He said the Germans had made a botch of destroying towns. He said he could have done more damage to Arras with a hammer than the Germans did with their shells. Of course, he couldn't begin to do it with a hammer, and, anyway, he wouldn't be let. I suppose he never thought of that. Then he said that the Germans were doing us a great favor by their air raids. He said they were smashing up things that were ugly and unsanitary. That's silly. We could pull them down ourselves, you know, and, anyhow, in the last raid they hit the postoffice."

"The old boy's got nerve, though," interrupted another officer. "I was out at the front with him near Arras and there was some pretty lively shelling going on around us. I told him to put on his tin hat, but he wouldn't do it. I said, 'Those German shell splinters may get you,' and he laughed and said if the Germans did anything to him they'd be mighty ungrateful, after all he'd done for them. He don't know the Boche."

"He told me," added a British journalist, "'when I want to know about war I talk to soldiers.' I asked him: 'Do you mean officers or Tommies?' He said that he meant Tommies.

"Now you know how much reliance you can put in what a Tommy says. He'll either say what he thinks you want him to say or what he thinks you don't want him to say. I told Shaw that, but he paid no attention."

Here the first officer chimed in again. "Well, I stick to what I've said right along. I don't see where Shaw's funny. I think he's silly."

The major who sat at the head of the table deftly turned the conversation away from literary controversy. "What did you think of Conan Doyle?" he said.

Bright and early next morning we started out to follow in the footsteps of Shaw. We went through country which had been shocked and shaken by both sides in their battles and then dynamited in addition by the retreating Germans. I stood in Peronne which the Germans had dynamited with the greatest care. They left the town for dead, but against a shattered wall was a sign which read, "Regimental cinema tonight at the Splinters – CHARLIE CHAPLIN IN SHANGHAIED." This was first aid. A frozen man is rubbed with snow and a town which has suffered German frightfulness is regaled with Charlie Chaplin.

Life will come back to that town in time and to others. After all life is a rubber band and it will be just as it was only an instant after they let go. We turned down the road to Arras and drove between fields which had been burned to cinders and trodden into mud by men and guns only a few weeks ago. Now the poppies were sweeping all before them. Into the trenches they went and over. First line, second line, third line, each fell in turn to the redcoats. They were so thick that the earth seemed to bleed for its wounds.

Presently we were in Arras and our officer led us into the cathedral. "We won't stay in here long," said the officer. "The Germans drop a shell in here every now and then and the next one may bring the rest of the walls down. People keep away from here." This indeed seemed a very citadel of destruction and loneliness, but as we turned to go we heard a mournful noise from an inner room. We investigated and found a Tommy practicing on the cornet. He was playing a piece entitled, "Progressive Exercises for the Cornet – Number One." He stood up and saluted.

"Have the Germans bombarded the town at all today?" the captain asked.

"Yes, sir," said the Tommy. "They bombarded the square out in front here this morning."

"Did they get anybody?"

"No, sir, only a Frenchman, sir," replied the Tommy with stiff formality.

"Was there any other activity?"

"Yes, sir, there were some aeroplanes over about an hour ago and they dropped some bombs in there," said the Tommy indicating a street just back of the cathedral.

"And what were we doing?" persisted the captain.

"We were trying out some new anti-aircraft ammunition," explained the Tommy patiently, "but I don't think it was any good, sir, because most of it came down and buried itself over there," and he indicated a spot some fifteen or twenty feet from his music room.

The captain could think of no more inquiries just then and the soldier quickly folded up his cornet and his music and after saluting with decent haste left the cathedral. For the sake of his music he was willing to endure shells and bombs and shrapnel fragments but questions put him off his stride entirely. He fled, perhaps, to some shell hole for solitude.

From the cathedral we went to the town hall. Here again one could not but be impressed with the futility of destruction. The Germans have torn the building cruelly with their shells and their dynamite, but beauty is tough. Dynamite a bakeshop and you have only a mess. Shell a tailor's and rubbish is left. But it is different when you begin to turn your guns against cathedrals and town halls. If a structure is built beautifully it will break beautifully. The dynamite has cut fine lines in the jagged ruins of the Town Hall. The Germans have smashed everything but the soul of the building. They didn't get that. It was not for want of trying, but dynamite has its limitations.

We got up to the lines the next day and had a fine view of the opposing trench systems for ten or twelve miles. Our box seat was on top of a hill just back of Messines ridge. We saw a duel between two aeroplanes, the explosion of a munitions dump, and no end of big gun firing but the officer who conducted us said that it was a dull morning. Our day on the hill was a clear one after three days of low clouds, and all the fliers were out in force. Almost two dozen British 'planes were to be seen from the hilltop, as well as several captive balloons. Although the English 'planes flew well over the German lines, they drew no fire, but presently the sky began to grow woolly. Little round white patches appeared, one against the other, cutting the sky into great flannel figures. Then we saw above it all a 'plane so high as to be hardly visible. Indeed, we should not have seen it but for the telltale shrapnel. These were our guns, and this was no friend. Now it was almost over our heads. It seemed intent upon attacking one of the British captive balloons, which could only stand and wait. The guns were snarling now. We were close enough to hear the anger in every shot. The shrapnel broke behind, below, above and in front of the aeroplane, but on it sailed, untouched, like a glass ball in a Buffalo Bill shooting trick.

Yet here was no poor marksmanship, for at ten thousand feet the air pilot has forty seconds to dodge each shell. He merely has to watch the flash of the gun and then dive or rise or slide to right or left. Sometimes, indeed, the shrapnel lays a finger on him, but he whirls away out of its grip like a quarterback in a broken field. The guns stopped firing, although the German was still above the British lines. Somebody was up to tackle him at closer range. Where our 'plane came from we did not know. The sky was filled all morning with English fliers, but each appeared to have definite work in hand, and not one paid the slightest attention to the German intruder. This was a special assignment. When we caught sight of the English flier he had maneuvered into a position behind his German adversary. We caught the flashes from the machine guns, but we could hear no sound of the fight above us. The 'planes darted forward and back. They were clever little bantams, these, and neither was able to put in a finishing blow. Our stolid guiding officer was up on his toes now and rooting as if it were some sporting event in progress. Looking upward at his comrade, ten thousand feet aloft, he cried: "Let him have it!"

The hostile attitude of the spectators or something else discouraged the German and he turned and made for his own lines. The Englishman pursued him for a time and then gave up the chase. The consensus of opinion was that the Briton had won the decision on points.

"They've been making a dead set for our balloons all week," said an English soldier after the German 'plane had been driven away.

"If they get the balloon does that mean that they get the observer?" I asked in my ignorance.

"Lord bless you no," said the soldier. "No danger for 'im, sir. He just jumps out with a parachute."

Next we turned our attention to the big gun firing. We could see the flash of the guns of both sides and hear the whistle of the shells. After the flash one might mark the result if he had a sharp eye. There was no trouble in following the progress of one particular British shell for an instant after the flash a high column of smoke arose above a town which the Germans held. A minute or so later we had our own column for a German shell hit one of the many munition dumps scattered about behind the British front. Our own hill was pocked with shell holes and the tower near which we stood was nibbled nigh to bits and we had a wakeful, stimulating feeling that almost any minute something might drop on or near us. The Tommy with whom we shared the view undeceived us.

"This hill!" he said. "Why there was a time when it was as much as your life was worth to stand up here and now the place's nothing but a bloomin' Cook's tour resort."

Our last day with the army was spent at the University of Death and Destruction where the men from England take their final courses in warfare. We began with a class which was having a lesson in defense against bombs. A tin can exploded at the feet of a Scotchman and peppered his bare legs. Five hundred soldiers roared with laughter, for the man in the kilt had flunked his recitation in "Trench Raiding." Officially the Scot was dead, for the tin can represented a German bomb. They were cramming for war in the big training camp and they played roughly. The imitation bombs carried a charge of powder generous enough to insure wholesome respect. The Scot, indeed, had to retire to have a dressing made.

The trench in which the class was hard at work was perfect in almost every detail, save that it lacked a back wall. This was removed for the sake of the audience. An instructor stood outside and every now and again he would toss a bomb at his pupils. He played no favorites. The good and the bad scholar each had his chance. In order to pass the course the soldier had to show that he knew what to do to meet the bomb attack. He might take shelter in the traverse; he might kick the bomb far away; or, with a master's degree in view, he might pick up the imitation bomb and hurl it far away before it could explode. Speed and steady nerves were required for this trick. An explosion might easily blow off a finger or two. Yet, after all, it was practice. Later there might be other bombs designed for bigger game than fingers.

We followed the students from bombs to bayonets. The men with the cold steel were charging into dummies marked with circles to represent spots where hits were likely to be vital. It looked for all the world like football practice and the men went after the dummies as the tacklers used to do at Soldiers' Field of an afternoon when the coach had pinned blue sweaters and white "Y's" on the straw men. There was the same severely serious spirit. In a larger field a big class was having instruction in attack. Before them were three lines of trenches protected by barbed wire ankle high. At a signal they left their trench and darted forward to the next one. Here they paused for a moment and then set sail for the second trench. At another signal they were out of that and into a third trench. From here they blazed away at some targets on the hill representing Germans and consolidated their positions. Instructors followed the charge along the road which bordered the instruction field. They mingled praise and blame, but ever they shouted for speed. "Make this go now," would be the cry, and to a luckless wight who had been upset by barbed wire and sent sprawling: "What do you mean by lying there, anyhow?"

It was a New Zealand company which I saw, and in the class were a number of Maoris. These were fine, husky men of the type seen in the Hawaiian Islands. All played the game hard, but none seemed so imaginatively stirred by it as the Maoris. They were fairly carried away by the enthusiasm of a charge, and left their trenches each time shouting at top voice. The capture of the third trench by no means satisfied them. They wanted to go on and on. If the officer had not called a halt there's no telling but that they might have invaded the next field and bayoneted the bombardiers. Over the hill there was a rattle of machine guns and beyond that a more scattering volume of musketry. We stopped and watched the men at their rifle practice.

"You wouldn't believe it," said the instructor, "but we've got to keep hammering it home to men that rifles are meant to shoot with. For a time you heard nothing but bayonets. A gun might have been nothing more than a pike. Later everything was bombs, and sometimes soldiers just stood and waited till the Boches got close, so that they could peg something at 'em. But when these men go away they're going to know that the bombs and the bayonet are the frill. It's the shooting that counts."

We saw a good deal of the British army during our trip but the thing which gave me the clearest insight into the fundamental fighting, sporting spirit of the army was a story which an officer told me of an incident which occurred in the sector where he was stationed. An enlisted man and an officer were trapped during a daylight patrol when a mist lifted and they had to take shelter in a shell hole. They lay there for some hours, and then the soldier endeavored to make a break back for his own trenches. No sooner had his head and shoulders appeared above the shell hole than a German machine gun pattered away at him. He was hit and the officer started to climb up to his assistance.

"No, don't come," said the soldier. "They got me, sir." He put his hand up and indicated a wound on the left hand side of his chest. "It was a damn good shot," he said.