The A.E.F.: With General Pershing and the American Forces Part 10

"The first stone of the present cathedral was laid in May, 1212, by the Archbishop Alberic de Humbert," he said.

Another big sh.e.l.l tore the sky, and this time the smash was nearer. It seemed certainly no more than nine blocks away. The young man began to calculate. He figured that he was seven centuries down, while the Germans had nine blocks to go. That was something, but the guide failed to keep up his pace through the centuries. There were no more happy hiatuses.

"Scholars dispute," he continued, "as to who was the architect of the cathedral. Some say it was designed by Robert de Coucy; others name Bernard de Soissons, but certain authorities hold to Gauthier de Reims and Jean d'Orbais." Two more sh.e.l.ls crossed the cathedral. The controversy seemed regrettable and the young man s.h.i.+fted constantly from foot to foot. He appeared to feel that there was less chance of being hit if he were on the wing, so to speak.

"One or two have named Jean Loups," said the guide, but he shook his head even as he mentioned him. It was evident that he had no patience with Loups or his backers. Indeed, the heresy threw him off his stride, and the next smash which came during the lull was more significant than any of the others. The crash was the peculiarly disagreeable one which occurs when a large sh.e.l.l strikes a small hardware store. Even the guide noticed this sh.e.l.l. It reminded him of the war.

"Since April," he said, "the Germans have been bombarding Rheims with naval guns. All the sh.e.l.ls which they fire now are .320 or larger. They fire about 150 sh.e.l.ls a day at the city, mostly in the afternoon, and they usually aim at the cathedral or some place near by."

The young man noted by his watch that it was just half-past one.

"A week ago the Germans fired a .320 sh.e.l.l through the roof, but it did not explode. I will show it to you, but first I must ask you to touch nothing, not even a piece of gla.s.s, for we want to put everything back again that we can after the war."

On the floor there was evidence that some patient hand had made a beginning of seeking to fit together in proper sequence all the available tiny gla.s.s fragments from the shattered rose windows. It was a pitiful jigsaw puzzle, which would not work. The curator stepped briskly up the nave, and at the end of a hundred paces he stopped.

"This is the most dangerous portion of the cathedral," he explained.

"Most of the big sh.e.l.ls have come in here." And he pointed to three great holes in the ceiling. Then he showed us the monstrous sh.e.l.l which had not exploded and the fragments of others which had. Down toward the west end of town fresh fragments were being made. Each hole in the cathedral roof sounded a different note as the sh.e.l.ls raced overhead.

But the old curator was musing again. He had forgotten the war, even though the smashed and twisted bits of iron and stone from yesterday's clean hit lay at his feet.

"The first stone of the present cathedral was laid in May, 1212, by the Archbishop Alberic de Humbert," he said. "Alberic gave all the money he could gather and the chapter presented its treasury, and all about the clergy appealed for funds in the name of G.o.d. Kings of France and mighty lords made contributions, and each year there was a great pilgrimage, headed by the image of the Blessed Virgin, through all the villages. And the building grew and sculptors from all parts of France came and embellished it and in 1430 it was finished. You see, gentlemen," he said, "it took more than two hundred years to build our cathedral."

We left the cathedral then and paused for a minute in the square before the statue of Jeanne d'Arc, who brought her king to Rheims and had him crowned. In some parts of France devout persons speak of the Jeanne statue in Rheims as a miracle because, although the cathedral has been scarred and shattered and every building round the square badly damaged, the statue of Jeanne is untouched. I looked closely and found the miracle was not perfect. A tiny bit of the scabbard of Jeanne had been snipped off by a flying shrapnel fragment, but the sword of Jeanne, which is raised high above her head, has not a nick in it.

Crossing the square we went into the office of _L'Eclaireur de l'Est_.

This daily newspaper has no humorous column, no editorials, no sporting page and no dramatic reviews, and yet is probably the most difficult journal in the world to edit. The chief reportorial task of the staff of _L'Eclaireur_ is to count the number of sh.e.l.ls which fall into the city each day. That doesn't sound hard. The reporter can hear them all from his desk and many he can see, for the cathedral just across the street is still the favorite target of the Germans. Sometimes the reporter does not have to look so far. The office of _L'Eclaireur_ has been hit eleven times during the bombardment and three members of the staff have been killed. One big sh.e.l.l fell in the composing room and so now the paper is set by hand. It is a single sheet and the circulation is limited to the three or four thousand civilians, who have stuck to Rheims throughout the bombardment. One of the few who remain is a man who keeps a picture postcard shop in a building next door to the newspaper office.

His roof has been knocked down about his head and his business is hardly thriving. I asked him why he remained.

"I started to go away several months ago after one day when they put some gas sh.e.l.ls into the town," he said. "The very next morning I put all my things into a cart and started up that street there. I had gone just about to the third street when a sh.e.l.l hit the house behind me. It killed my horse and wrecked the wagon and so I picked up my things and came back. It seemed to me I wasn't meant to go away from Rheims."

The sh.e.l.ling increased in violence before we left the office of _L'Eclaireur_. One sh.e.l.l was certainly not more than a hundred and fifty yards away, but the work went on without interruption. The printers who were setting ads never looked up. Mostly these advertis.e.m.e.nts were of houses in Rheims which were renting lower than ever before. If there was anyone in the visiting party who felt uncomfortable he was unwilling to show it, for just outside the door of the newspaper office there sat an old lady with a lapful of fancy work. A sh.e.l.l came from over the hills and, in the seconds while it whistled and then smashed, the old lady threaded her needle.

A day later, when some of us were willing to confess that of all miserable sounds the whistling of a sh.e.l.l was the meanest, we found a curious kink in the brain of everyone. It was the universal experience that the slightest bit of cover, however inadequate, gave a sense of safety out of all proportion to its utility. Thus we all felt much more uncomfortable in the square than when we stood in the composing room of the newspaper which was s.h.i.+elded by the remains of a gla.s.s skylight. The same curious psychological twist can be found among soldiers at the front. Again and again men will be found taking apparent comfort in the fact that half an inch of tin roof protects them from the sh.e.l.ls of the Germans.

One is always taken from the cathedral of Rheims to the wine cellars.

The children of darkness are invariably wiser than the children of light and the champagne merchants have not suffered as the churchmen have.

Their business places have been knocked about their heads, but their treasures are underground deep enough to defy the biggest sh.e.l.ls. In the cellar of a single company which we visited there were 12,000,000 quarts of wine. Even the German invasion at the beginning of the war failed to deplete this stock. Hundreds of people live in these cellars, which are laid out in avenues and streets. We came first to New York, a street with tier upon tier of wine bottles; then to Boston, then to Buenos Ayres, then to Montreal. One of the visitors explained that the street named New York contained the wine destined to be s.h.i.+pped to that city, while Buenos Ayres contained the consignment for the Argentine capital, and so on. We nodded acceptance of the theory, but the next wine-laden street was called Carnot and the next was Jeanne d'Arc.

From the cellars we made a journey to a battery of French .75's. It was a peaceful military station, for so well were the guns concealed that they seemed exempt from German fire, in spite of the fact that they had been in place for half a year. The men sat about underground playing cards and reading newspapers, but the commander of the battery was unwilling that we should go with such a peaceful impression of his guns.

He brought his men to action with a word or two and sent six sh.e.l.ls sailing at the German first line trenches for our benefit. We left, half deafened, but delighted.

No child could be more eager to show a toy than is a French officer to let a visitor see in some small fas.h.i.+on how the war wags. We went from the battery to a first line trench. It was slow work down miles and miles of camouflaged road to the communicating trench, and all along the line we were stopped by kindly Frenchmen, who wanted us to see how their dugouts were decorated or the nature of their dining room or the first aid dressing station or any little detail of the war with which they were directly concerned. Much can be done with a dugout when a few back numbers of _La Vie Parisienne_ are available. Still, this scheme of decoration may be carried too far. I will never forget the face of a Y.

M. C. A. man who joined us at a French officers' mess one day. It was a low ceilinged room, with pine walls, but not an inch of wall was visible, for a complete papering of _La Vie Parisienne_ pictures had been provided. Among the ladies thus drafted for decorative purposes there was perhaps chiffon enough to make a single arm bra.s.sard.

Trenches, save in the very active sectors, give the visitor a sense of security. Open places are the ones which try the nerves of civilians, and it was pleasant to walk with a wall of earth on either hand, even if some of us did have to stoop a bit. From the point where we entered the communication trench to the front line was probably not more than half a mile as the crow flies--if, indeed, he is foolish enough to travel over trenches--but the sunken pathway turned and twisted to such an extent that it must have been two miles before we struck even the third line.

Here we were held while ever so many dugouts and kitchens and gas alarm stations and telephones were exhibited for us. They were all included in the routine of war, but of a sudden romance popped up from underground.

The conducting officer paused at the entrance of a pa.s.sage. "Another dugout" we thought.

"Bring them up!" said the officer to a soldier, and the poilu scrambled down the steps and came up with a bird cage containing two birds.

"These are the last resort," explained the officer. "We send messages from the trenches by telephone, if we can. If the wires are destroyed we use flashes from a light, but if that station is also broken and we must have help the birds are freed."

Neither pigeon seemed in the least puffed up over the responsibility which rested upon him.

The German trenches were just 400 yards away from the first lines of the French. It was possible to see them by peering over the rim of the trench, but we quickly ducked down again. Presently we grew less cautious, and one or two tried to stare the Germans out of countenance.

If they could see that strangers were peeping at them they paid no attention.

The French officer in charge seemed embarra.s.sed. He explained that it was an exceptionally quiet day. Only the day before the Germans had been active with trench mortars, and he couldn't understand why they were sulking now. Possibly the bombardment from the French .75's, which had been going on all day, had softened them a bit. He looked about the trench dejectedly. The soldiers of the front line were playing cards, eating soup or modeling little grotesque figures out of the soft rock which lined the walls of the trenches. He called sharply to a soldier, who fetched a box of rifle grenades out of a cubbyhole and sent half a dozen, one after the other, spinning at the German lines. Probably they fell short, or perhaps the Germans were simply sullen. At any rate, they paid no attention. They were not disposed into being prodded to show off for American visitors.

The officer suddenly thought up a method to retrieve the lost reputation of his trench. If we could only stay until dark he would send us all out on a patroling party right up to the wire in front of the German first line. We declined, and made some little haste to leave this ever so obliging officer. In another moment we feared he would organize an exhibition offensive for our benefit and reserve us places in the first wave.

If things were quiet on the ground there was plenty of activity aloft.

It was a clear day, and both sides had big sausage balloons up for observation. Once a German plane tried to attack a French sausage, but it was driven off, and all day long the Germans sought without success to wing the balloon with one of their long range guns. In that particular sector on that particular day the French unquestionably had the mastery of the air. We saw four of their 'planes in the air to every one German, and once a fleet of five cruised over the German lines. The Boche opened on them with shrapnel. It was a clear day, without a breath of wind, and the white puffs clung to the sky at the point where they broke. Presently the French planes swooped much lower, and the Germans opened on them with machine guns. Somebody has said that machine gun fire sounds as if a crazy carpenter was s.h.i.+ngling a roof, and somebody else has compared the noise to a typewriter being operated in an upper room, but it is still more like a riveting machine. It has a business-like, methodical sound to me. To my ear there is no malice in a machine gun, but then I have never heard it from an aeroplane.

The officer in charge accompanied us to the end of the communicating trench.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

We told him that we were going directly to Paris.

"Have a good time," he said, "but leave one dinner and one drink for me."

"You are going to Paris?" we asked.

He looked over toward the German wire and smiled a little. "I may," he said.

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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 gla.s.ses. 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 sh.e.l.l 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.