The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 Part 27

We left our landing place for the front on the Tuesday and got there on Sat.u.r.day night. The Germans had just reached Liege then, and we got into action on the Sunday morning. The first thing we did was to blow up a bridge to stop the Germans from crossing. Then we came into action behind a lot of houses attached to the main street. We were there about ten minutes when the houses started to fall around us. The poor people were buried alive. I saw poor children getting knocked down by bursting sh.e.l.ls.

The next move was to advance across where there was a Red Cross hospital. They dropped sh.e.l.ls from airs.h.i.+ps and fired on it until the place was burned down to the ground. Then they got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on Tuesday night. We camped there until 2 o'clock next morning.

Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all got together and cleared the field for action. [The letter mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the Germans were in the proportion of three to one.] We cut them down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps and dropping like hail. The Colonel pa.s.sed along the line and said, "Stick it, boys."

I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades dropping down--some getting their heads blown off and others their legs and arms. I was fighting with my s.h.i.+rt off. A piece of sh.e.l.l went right through my s.h.i.+rt at the back and never touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between the wheels to stop bullets.

We were there, all busy fighting, when an airs.h.i.+p came right over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the sh.e.l.ls were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line and saw the German guns coming toward us. We turned our two centre guns on them and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.

Just after that a sh.e.l.l burst right over our gun. That one got me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off; you see, they got completely around us. I went about two miles and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin Hospital.

We were sh.e.l.led out of there about 2 in the morning, and then taken in a train and taken down to a plain near Rouen. Next morning we were put on a s.h.i.+p for dear old England.

The First German Prisoners

[From The London Times.]

_The following letter from a soldier at the front who has taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of Paris, Aug. 16:_

We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action.

We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They have been told a thousand phantasmagoria--that France had declared war, that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols, and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they had no desire to share a like fate.

The prisoners are gentle and calm, and follow with their eyes the bits of bread which are pa.s.sed about near them and which one gives them, and they eat them voraciously. For two days they have only received two rations of coffee. Their appet.i.te is so great that, though in presence of a French officer they will click their heels together properly, they never cease at the same time to munch noisily and to fill out their hollow cheeks.

One feels that they believe us French to be up to every sort of devilment, that we are going to undress them, to take their papers, and they tremble from head to foot in fear of being shot. Even when you give them a cigarette, it does not seem to allay their mistrust. One of them, who was dying of thirst, would not drink the water that was offered him before the gendarme had tasted it in front of him.

They are all astonished at their adventure. They had been told that they were going to enter Maubeuge in company with the Belgians; to seize Maubeuge would be as easy as taking a _cafe au lait_--and there they are without their _cafe au lait_!

The officers are absolutely different. Prussian pride gave them an a.s.surance which their mishap has transformed into irritation. A young Baron Lieutenant, like von Forstner, pretended that he couldn't make his bed, and refused to answer before simple soldiers. He couldn't feel anything but the humiliation of being a prisoner, and couldn't get accustomed to his new situation.

We found on the field of battle the medicine chest of a vet., who jotted down his impressions from minute to minute. When he was killed he was writing: "I see the sh.e.l.ls bursting with a white smoke in the sky, which is lighted up from the south; luckily my helmet protects me from sunstroke." Evidently he was on an excursion, this veterinary surgeon, and was counting on coming to Paris, and had taken the most minute precautions of hygiene and of elegance. He was provided with scent and eau de cologne. He had even brought with him a rose ointment for the nails, and a superb gilt shoulder-belt which was to raise his prestige for when he pa.s.sed under the Arc de Triomphe. The battery to which he belonged is annihilated now. We could observe on the spot the terrific effect of our artillery, which was very well commanded. Six abandoned guns, of which three are impossible to move, are there on the ground with all their crews, all their officers, all their horses--the pieces still mounted, riddled with splinters. They were taken back to the rear, and attracted all the way along the curiosity of the soldiers, with their sumptuous armorial bearings and their motto, _Ultima regis ratio_.

But this lesson seems to have made a bit of an impression on the Germans who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded.

The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see _francs-tireurs_ everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to the frontier.

They arrive in a village toward 8 in the morning; three French dragoons are there as patrols. When the German column is within range, the three dragoons bring down the Colonel and dash off at full gallop from the other end of the village. The Germans are furious and swear that they have been attacked by _francs-tireurs_, and that they are going to inflict punishment. They seize the cure, a notable inhabitant, and two or three peasants, and take them off to be present at the burning of their houses, while waiting to be executed themselves.

I have this story from the cure, who arrived to us absolutely done, with his ca.s.sock in rags, without a hat on, after a day of shocks such as he has certainly never had in his life before. Although he has got the superb beard of a missionary, they made him march with the cha.s.seurs, hitting him with the b.u.t.ts of their rifles till the moment when the French shrapnel arrived. Then it was _sauve qui peut_. Our brave cure saw all his butchers fall around him. When the noise had finished, five unarmed German cha.s.seurs rushed toward him crying with their great, thick accent, "Catholics, Catholics!" They were Poles who were flying from the army and coming over to our lines. "With my own arms," said the cure proudly, "I made five prisoners."

Altogether bewilderment, softness, and indifference on the part of the men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. Just compare them with ours!

Two Letters From the Trenches

[From The London Times, Oct. 25, 1914.]

_A Canadian officer attached to the British forces writes as follows on Sept. 27:_

It has been very fortunate for me having a recommendation to Gen. C. He said that he would welcome all the French-speaking Canadians with military knowledge that crossed the Atlantic. I keep my rank of Lieutenant and am attached to the ---- Guards, which does scouting, patrol, and reconnoissance duty in areas prescribed by the Brigadier. We have plenty of most interesting work, which suits me down to the ground.

Nothing could exceed the kindness shown to Canadian officers by their English brethren. We are all one in aim, in spirit, and in that indefinable quality of loyal co-operation which holds together the British Army fighting against enormous odds in France, as it binds together the British Empire by bonds not less strong because they are invisible.

This afternoon we are taking a good sound rest at the house of a retired French farmer, who has three sons fighting in the country. He is as game as game, and says he is just holding things together until the war is over. He is 75 and remembers the horrors of the last war, in which he fought in the artillery.... Our "look-out" men are ever on the alert, for we never take a meal or rest altogether. Sentries and signalers are always posted before we dismount. The cure joined us at the farmer's house and we enjoyed an excellent repast, with the honor of two local gendarmes who had brought in a German spy caught red-handed robbing the house of a peasant the night before and attempting to murder her. The man was dressed as a French peasant. Upon him we found evidence that he was a spy. Summary procedure made it easy to decide that the sentence of drumhead court-martial was death. And here again is an instance of the extraordinary clemency of the French clergy. The cure pleaded that the spy should not be shot and the extreme penalty inflicted. So I consented (not being a man of blood) to the prisoner being sent to the nearest French military post, to be executed or not, as the General shall order.

I really believe that all of the evidence which crowds into me supports the charge that this is not a campaign which has proved attractive to the German rank and file. Prisoners we have taken say that they have no relish for the fighting. They have been well plied with drink, and seem to urge that drunkenness may be pleaded as an excuse for crime.

_An officer whose letter from the trenches we published a few days ago has since written a letter, dated Oct. 8, from which we take extracts:_

Last week I wrote that we had been in the trenches ten days. Now we have been in them nearly three weeks, and still the fight goes on. We don't mind it now. We hated it at first. The inaction made us ill. But we recovered and began to make jokes about it. And now we don't care. We eat and sleep, and eat again; and we dig, eternally dig, grubbing our way deeper and deeper into the earth, and making covered ways that lead hundreds of yards back from the firing line into safety.

And at the end of one of these I sit at this moment; away on the rear slope of the hill which is our fortress. The sun is sinking far away down the valley of the Aisne, and the river flickers in the distance between lines of trees, while the little villages at the foot of the slopes are gradually losing themselves in the evening mist. How lovely to sit here in time of peace! Could one bear it after this, I wonder?

With all the beauty, there are sad things around me; signs of war every way I look. To the right, a few yards off, are new-cut graves, and they are putting up headstones, made by a reservist who is a mason in private life. One man was killed yesterday, and we buried him after dark. There was no service, because we had neither light nor book; but I said the Lord's Prayer before the earth was thrown in, thinking there could be no harm.

Then away across a bend of the valley are more of our trenches, with the German parapets 200 yards away beyond. And over these our sh.e.l.ls are bursting, fired by guns on the slope of the hill beneath me; they whistle softly as they skim through the air over my head, and I hear the burst as they land. Further away to the west is one of the enemy's strongholds, and there bigger sh.e.l.ls are bursting, throwing up clouds of black smoke and dust. These pa.s.s by with a louder purring whistle like the sound of surplus air escaping from the pipes of an organ in church.

They come from our big guns up in the woods across the river, hidden from view. And always up in the sky the German aeroplanes circle round and round, seeking for the guns, their engines buzzing and the sun s.h.i.+ning on their wings. Now and then they dash away, perhaps to carry news, perhaps because a British or French machine has come upon the scene. When they spot our positions they drop little silvery packets, which unfold and show their gunners where to shoot. Sometimes they drop bombs, but these do little harm. At times the weather is foggy, so that the aeroplanes can do nothing at all, and warfare becomes suddenly ten years out of date.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARCHDUKE FREDERICK,

Commander in Chief of Austrian Armies Operating Against the Russians.

(_Photo from Paul Thompson._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG, THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR,

In His Field Uniform, Showing the Helmet in Its New Weatherproof Cover.

(_Photo by Brown & Dawson, From Underwood & Underwood._)]

Now the enemy are firing on the little village behind our lines, dropping sh.e.l.l among the houses, and always near the house where certain staff officers are at work. A curious point this--how close they get to the house when they can't possibly see the result of their fire. The explanation must be "spies." They are everywhere here; they wear British uniform and French uniform, and, most dangerous of all, civilian dress.

It is our own fault; we allow the French population to return to the village right in our midst, and who in these times can question every one's rights? The other day three men in civilian dress were found near our lines sitting in trees; they were armed with wire-cutters, and said they were engaged in cutting vines. Now there are no vineyards near, but our wire entanglements were just beyond the wood. Again, one night we were to attack a small position at a given hour, but the order was afterward canceled. However, at the appointed time the enemy opened fire upon the ground we should have crossed and lighted the scene with rockets.

Nighttime is a period of continuous strain. The sentry peers into the darkness, imagining every bush to be an approaching enemy. Distant trees seem to change their position; bunches of gra.s.s, really quite close, seem to be men coming over the sky-line. One man questions another; the section commander is called upon. He in turn explains his fears to an officer. A single shot is ordered at the suspected object, and no sound is heard. So the night goes on. When we were new to the game a single shot was enough to alarm the whole line, and thousands of rounds were fired into the darkness. Now we know better. So also do the enemy. And it was satisfactory to find that our ammunition had not all been wasted, for a patrol recently discovered more than a hundred dead Germans in a wood in front of us. The ammunition had not been wasted that time. But, oh, what a wasteful war!

The Baptism of Fire

[From The London Times, Nov. 4, 1914.]

_The following letter, thoroughly characteristic of the pluck and cheerfulness of the young British officer, was received from a cavalry subaltern at the front:_