New York Times Current History The European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January Part 26

We crouched in a big trench in muddy water behind the bank. No, we did not sleep, but my head and eyes seemed to go to sleep from time to time.

"There were perhaps 200 left of our 600. I think there was one officer further along, but it was quite dark. Some of the men talked very low.

Then I heard voices whispering and talking near us on the river side of our bank. It was of earth perhaps five feet high and six feet thick. On the other side the slope fell steeply to the river.

"I sent a hush along the line. We listened quite silent. I thought I heard German words, an order pa.s.sed along on the other side. I crawled up on to the bank, not showing my head, you know. It was really about 300 Germans who had stayed there on our side under the bank, fearing to cross the river under our fire. So we stayed all through the night. We did not sleep nor did they.

"There was just six feet of piled wet earth between us. We only whispered and could hear them muttering and the sound of their belts creaking and of water bottles being opened.

"There was a thick gray mist hanging low in the morning. I crawled on to the bank again, holding my revolver out-stretched. A gray figure stood up in the mist below close to me. He looked like a British soldier in khaki. He said: 'It's all right, we are English,' and I said, 'But your accent isn't,' and I shot him through with my revolver. Some of our men crept to the bank, but they shot them, and some of theirs climbed over, but we fired at their heads or arms as they showed only a few feet away, and they fell backward [Transcriber: original 'bakward'] or on to us or lay hanging on the bank. Then we all waited.

"As it grew lighter they did not dare move away, and none of us could get out alive or over the bank to use the bayonet. A few men made holes in the looser earth, and so we fired at each other through the bank here and there. Our guns could not help us, and theirs could not shoot across, for we were all together, and yet we could not get at each other. Some of the men--theirs and ours--got over lower down, so there was firing now and then, and two men were killed near me sliding down into the water in the trenches.

"Somebody threw a cartridge case across close to me. On a paper inside was scrawled one word: 'Surrender!' We did not know if they wanted to surrender themselves or wanted us to surrender. They were more numerous, but we were better placed, so we went on sc.r.a.pping and crawling around to get a shot at them.

"Perhaps it was the French who got round at the ends. There was heavy firing. We heard quite close through the raised bank a few slipping down on the river edge and water splas.h.i.+ng. Some of us pulled ourselves up on to the bank. I heard our men scrambling up on either side of me, but could not see them. I think I was too sleepy. I shouted to charge, and then must have fallen over on my head, rolling down the bank.

"I am on the way down with these wounded. There are fifteen of us unhit here, but I think we came away just now with nearly a hundred out of our 600 of yesterday."

He was doing gallant Captain's work, a young, slight, ordinary Belgian trooper, a volunteer private in the ranks, muddy, limping, and unspeakably tired in muscle and nerve. His story is as nearly as possible in his own words, interrupted by blanks in his own consciousness of events--lapses familiar to men whose muscles and nerves are exhausted, but who must still work on without sleep.

For the following ten hours, without pause, he acted as interpreter and most capable adviser in getting long trains of stretchers with his wounded Belgian compatriots down and on to the British hospital s.h.i.+ps.

*A Visit to the Firing Line in France*

[By a Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

PARIS, Sept. 30.--In company with several representatives of American newspapers, I was permitted to pa.s.s several days in "the zone of military activity," on credentials obtained at the personal request of Amba.s.sador Herrick, that we might describe the destruction caused by the Germans in unfortified towns. Although I have given a parole to say nothing concerning the movement of the troops or to mention certain points that I visited, I am now permitted to send a report of a part of my experiences.

We crossed the entire battlefield of the Marne, pa.s.sed directly behind the lines of the battle still raging on the Aisne, accidentally getting under fire for an entire afternoon, and lunching in a hotel to the orchestra of bursting sh.e.l.ls, one end of the building being blown away during the bombardment. We witnessed a battle between an armored French monoplane and a German battery, and also had the experience of being accused of being German spies by two men wearing the English uniform, who, on failing to account for their own German accent, were speedily taken away under guard with their "numbers up," as the French Commandant expressed what awaited them.

On account of our exceptional credentials we were able to see more actual war than many correspondents, who when they learned that permits to go to the front were not forthcoming, went anyway, usually falling into the hands of the military authorities before getting far. In fact, getting arrested has been the chief occupation of the war correspondents in this war, even our accidental view of the fighting being sufficient to cause our speedy return to Paris under parole.

Going over the battlefield of the Marne, we found the battle had followed much the same tactics as a cyclone, in that in some places nothing, not even the haystacks, had been disturbed, while in others everything, the villages, roads, and fields, had been utterly devastated by sh.e.l.ls. We talked with the inhabitants of every village and always heard the same story--that during occupation the Germans, evidently having been ordered to be on their good behavior after the Belgian atrocities, had offered little trouble to the civilians, and had confined their activities to looting and wasting the provisions. Also that when retreating they had destroyed all the food they were unable to carry.

Our baptism of fire appropriately came while we were in a church. At noon of the second day we motored into a deserted village, and were stopped by a sentry who acknowledged our credentials, but warned us if we intended to proceed to beware of bullets. But there was not a hostile sound to alarm us.

As we drove carelessly over the brow of a hill where the road dipped down a valley into the town, we were in direct line with the German fire, as great holes in the ground and fallen trees testified. It is a wonder our big motor car was not an immediate mark. On the way in we noticed a church steeple shot completely off, so after finding an inn, where the proprietor came from the cellar and offered to guard our car and prepare luncheon, we decided first to examine the church. The innkeeper explained that we had come during a lull in the bombardment, but the silent, deserted place lulled all sense of danger. The verger showed us over the church and we were walking through the ruined nave when suddenly we heard a sound like the shrill whistling of the wind.

"It begins again," our conductor said simply. As the speech ended we heard a loud boom and the sound of falling masonry as a sh.e.l.l struck the far end of the building. We hurried to the hotel, the sh.e.l.ls screaming overhead. We saw the buildings tumbling into ruins, gla.s.s falling in fine powder and remnants of furniture hanging grotesquely from sc.r.a.ps of masonry.

All my life I had wondered what would be the sensation if I ever were under fire--would I be afraid? To my intense relief I suddenly became fatalistic. I was under fire with a vengeance, but instead of being afraid I kept saying to myself, "Being afraid won't help matters; besides nothing will happen if we just keep close to the walls and away from the middle street."

On the way we met two men in English uniform who later denounced us as spies. We hailed them, and they replied that they had been cut off from their regiment and were now fighting with the French. Just as luncheon was announced eight soldiers filed into the hotel, arrested us, and marched us before the Commandant, who saw that our papers were all right, but suggested that on account of the dangerous position we leave as soon as possible. We asked permission to finish our luncheon. It was lucky that we were arrested then--before the accusation that we were spies--for when that question arose there was no doubt in the mind of the Commandant concerning us, so our accusers' charge merely reacted upon themselves.

During the episode of arrest there was another lull in the bombardment, which began again as we were seated at luncheon. All through the meal the sh.e.l.ls whistled and screamed overhead, and the dishes rattled constantly on the table.

When the meal was over the proprietor called us to witness what had happened to the far wing of the hotel. It was completely demolished.

"Alert" had just been sounded, and the soldiers were running through the streets. We ran out in time to see a building falling half a block away, completely filling the street by which we had entered the town an hour earlier.

In a few minutes we heard the sharp crackle of infantry fire about half a mile away, and we had a sudden desire to get away before the automobile retreat was cut off. Just then we heard the sound of an aero engine overhead. It was flying so low that through a gla.s.s we could easily see the whirring propeller. The machine was mounted with a rapid-fire gun which was trying to locate the German gunners, who immediately abandoned the destruction of the town in an attempt to bring it down. For ten minutes we saw sh.e.l.ls bursting all about it. At times it was lost in smoke, but when the smoke cleared there was the monoplane still blazing away, always mounting to a higher level, and finally disappearing toward the French lines.

There was another lull in the cannonade, and we were permitted to pa.s.s down the street near the river, where, by peering around a building, we could see where the German batteries were secreted in the hills. We were warned not to get into the street which led to the bridge, as the Germans raked that street with their fire if a single person appeared.

We then took advantage of a lull in the firing and departed to the south at seventy miles an hour, in order to beat the sh.e.l.ls, if any were aimed our way as we crossed the rise of the hill.

*Unburied Dead Strew Lorraine*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

DIJON, Sept. 26.--Although great interest is concentrated upon the northwest side of the line of of battle in France, it must not be forgotten that the east side is also of high importance. The operation of the French and German forces along the jagged frontier from north to south is of vital influence upon the whole field of war, and any great movement of troops in this direction affects the strategy of the Generals to command on the furthermost wings.

It was a desire to know something of what had been happening in the east which led me to travel to the extreme right. Few correspondents have been in this part of the field since the beginning of the war. It is far from their own line of communications. For this reason there have been no detailed narratives of the fighting in Lorraine, and a strange silence has brooded over those battlefields. The spell of it has been broken only by official bulletins telling in a line or two the uncertain result of the ceaseless struggle for mastery.

Here are regiments of young men who have the right already to call themselves veterans, for they have been fighting continually for six weeks in innumerable engagements, for the most part unrecorded in official dispatches. I had seen them answering the call to mobilization, singing joyously as they marched through the streets. Then they were smart fellows, clean shaven and spruce in their new blue coats and scarlet trousers. Now war has put its dirt upon them and seems to have aged them by fifteen years, leaving its ineffaceable imprint upon their faces. Their blue coats have changed to a dusty gray, but they are hard and tough for the most part, and Napoleon himself would not have wished for better fighting men.

Now for the first time since the beginning of the war there will be a little respite on the Lorraine frontier, and in the wooded country of the two lost provinces there will be time to bury the dead which inc.u.mber its fields. Words are utterly inadequate to describe the horrors of the region to the east of the Meurthe, in and around the little towns of Blamont, Badonviller, Cirey-les-Forges, Arracourt, Chateau-Salins, Morhauge, and Baudrecourt, where for six weeks there has been incessant fighting. After the heavy battle of Sept. 4, when the Germans were repulsed with severe losses after an attack in force, both sides retired for about twelve miles and dug themselves into lines of trenches which they still hold; but every day since that date there has been a kind of guerrilla warfare, with small bodies of men fighting from village to village and from wood to wood, the forces on each side being scattered over a wide area in advance of their main lines. This method of warfare is even more terrible than a pitched battle.

"It is absurd to talk of Red Cross work," said one of the French soldiers who had just come out of the trenches at Luneville. "It has not existed as far as many of these fights are concerned How could it? A few litter-carriers came with us on some of our expeditions, but they were soon shot down, and after that the wounded just lay where they fell, or crawled away into the shelter of the woods. Those of us who were unhurt were not allowed to attend to our wounded comrades; it is against orders. We have to go on regardless of losses. My own best comrade was struck down by my side. I heard his cry and saw him lying there with blood oozing through his coat. My heart wept to leave him. He wanted me to take his money, but I just kissed his hand and went on, I suppose he died, for I could not find him when we retreated."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where the Armies are Contending in Alsace-Lorraine.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS NICHOLAIEVITCH The Russian Commander-in-Chief. _ (Photo (C) by Underwood & Underwood._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEN. RENNENKAMPF The Russian General Who Was Removed by the Grand Duke [Transcriber: photo credit ineligible]]

Another French soldier lay wounded at the edge of a wood ten miles from Luneville. When he recovered consciousness he saw there were only dead and dying men around him. He remained for two days, unable to move his shattered limbs, and cried out for death to relieve him of his agony. At night he was numbed by cold; in the day thirst tortured him to the point of madness. Faint cries and groans came to his ears across the field. It was on the morning of the third day that French peasants came to rescue those who still remained alive.

There have been several advances made by the French into Lorraine, and several retirements. On each occasion men have seen new horrors which have turned their stomachs. There are woods not far from Nancy from which there comes a pestilential stench which steals down the wind in gusts of obscene odor. For three weeks and more dead bodies of Germans and Frenchmen have lain rotting there. There are few grave diggers. The peasants have fled from their villages, and the soldiers have other work to do; so that the frontier fields on each side are littered with corruption, where plague and fever find holding ground.

I have said that this warfare on the frontier is pitiless. This is a general statement of a truth to which there are exceptions. One of these was a reconciliation on the battlefield between French and German soldiers who lay wounded and abandoned near the little town of Blamont.

When dawn came they conversed with each other while waiting for death. A French soldier gave his water bottle to a German officer who was crying out with thirst. The German sipped a little and then kissed the hand of the man who had been his enemy. "There will be no war on the other side," he said.

Another Frenchman, who came from Montmartre, found a Luxembourger lying within a yard of him whom he had known as a messenger in a big hotel in Paris. The young German wept to see his old acquaintance. "It is stupid," he said, "this war. You and I were happy when we were good friends in Paris. Why should we have been made to fight with each other?" He died with his arms around the neck of the soldier who told me the story, unashamed of his own tears.

I could tell a score of tales like this, told to me by men whose eyes were still haunted by the sight of these things; and perhaps one day they will be worth telling, so that people of little imagination may realize the meaning of this war and put away false heroics from their lips. It is dirty business, with no romance in it for any of those fine young Frenchmen I have learned to love, who still stay in the trenches on the frontier lines or march a little way into Lorraine and back again.

Some of those trenches on either side are still filled with men leaning forward with their rifles pointing to the enemy--quite dead, in spite of their lifelike posture.

*Along the German Lines Near Metz*