The Soul of the War Part 12

I had the great fortune of seeing something of that rush to the rescue which gave hope that perhaps, after all, the tragedy which had seemed so inevitable--the capture of the world's finest city--might not be fulfilled.

This great movement was directed from the west, the south, and the east, and continued without pause by day and night.

In stations about Paris I saw regiment after regiment entraining--men from the southern provinces speaking the patois of the south, men from the eastern departments whom I had seen a month before, at the beginning of the war, at Chalons, and Epernay and Nancy, and men from the southwest and centre of France in the garrisons along the Loire.

They were all in splendid spirits, strangely undaunted by the rapidity of the German advance. "Fear nothing, my little one," said a dirty unshaven gentleman with the laughing eyes of d'Artagnan, "we shall bite their heads off. These brutal 'Boches' are going to put themselves in a veritable death-trap. We shall have them at last."

The railway carriages were garlanded with flowers of the fields. The men wore posies in their kepis. In white chalk they had scrawled legends upon the cattle-trucks in which they travelled. "a mort Guillaume!" "Vive la Gloire!" "Les Francais ne se rendent jamais!"

Many of them had fought at Longwy and along the heights of the Vosges. The youngest of them had bristling beards. Their blue coats with the turned-back flaps were war-worn and flaked with the dust of long marches. Their red trousers were sloppy and stained.

But they had not forgotten how to laugh, and the gallantry of their spirits was good to see. A friend of mine was not ashamed to say that he had tears at least as high as his throat when he stood among them and clasped some of those brown hands. There was a thrill not to be recaptured in the emotion of those early days of war. Afterwards the monotony of it all sat heavily upon one's soul.

They were very proud, those French soldiers, of fighting side by side with their old foes the British, now after long centuries of strife, from Edward the Black Prince to Wellington, their brothers-in-arms upon the battlefields; and because I am English they offered me their cigarettes and made me one of them.

In modern war it is only ma.s.ses of men that matter, moved by a common obedience at the dictation of mysterious far-off powers, and I thanked Heaven that ma.s.ses of men were on the move, rapidly, in vast numbers, and in the right direction--to support the French lines which had fallen back from Amiens a few hours before I left that town, whom I had followed in their retirement back and back, with the British always strengthening their left, but retiring with them almost to the outskirts of Paris itself.

Only this could save Paris--the rapid strengthening of the Allied front by enormous reserves strong enough to hold back the arrow-shaped battering-ram of the enemy's right.

All our British reserves had been rushed up to the front from Havre and Rouen. There was only one deduction to be drawn from this great swift movement. The French and British lines had been supported by every available battalion to save Paris from its menace of destruction, to meet the weight of the enemy's metal by a force strong enough to resist its ma.s.s.

3

One of the most dramatic incidents of the war was the transport of the army of Paris to the fighting line--in taxi-cabs. There were 2000 of these cabs in Paris, and on this day of September 1 they disappeared as though the earth had swallowed them, just as the earth had swallowed one of them not long before when the floods had sapped the streets. A sudden order from General Gallieni, the Military Governor of Paris, had been issued to each driver, who immediately ignored the upraised hands of would-be pa.s.sengers and the shouts of people desperate to get to one of the railway stations with household goods and a hope of escape. At the depots the drivers knew that upon the strength of their tyres and the power of their engines depended the safety of Paris and perhaps the life of France.

It was an extraordinary incident in the history of modern war. Five soldiers were loaded into each cab, four inside and one next to the driver, with their rifles and kit crammed in between them. In one journey twenty thousand men were taken on the road to Meaux. It was a triumph of mobility, and when in future the Parisian is tempted to curse those red vehicles which dash about the streets to the danger of all pedestrians who forget that death has to be dodged by never-failing vigilance, his righteous wrath will be softened, perhaps, by the remembrance that these were the chariots of General Manoury's army before the battle of Meaux, which turned the tide of war and flung back the enemy in retreat..

4

It will be to the lasting credit of General Joffre and the French Staff that after six weeks of disorder owing to the unreadiness of their army and their grievous errors in the disposition of the available troops, they recovered themselves in a supreme effort and by a brilliant stroke of strategy took the enemy completely by surprise and dealt him a staggering blow. The German Headquarters Staff--the brains of the greatest military machine in Europe--sublimely arrogant in their belief that they had an exclusive knowledge of the whole science of war and that the allied armies were poor blunderers without intelligence and without organization, utterly incapable of resisting the military genius of the German race, found themselves foiled and out- man?uvred at the very moment when the prize of victory seemed to be within their grasp.

For the first time since the beginning of their advance into French territory they were confronted with something like equal numbers, and they were brought to a halt at once. This arrest, shocking to their self- confidence, was found to be more than a mere check easily overpowered by bringing up more battalions. General von Kluck realized that the French had gathered together a formidable ma.s.s of men ready to be flung upon his right flank. Their guns were already beginning to open fire with frightful effect upon his advanced columns. The pressure of French regiments marching steadily and swiftly from the south-east and south-west after weeks of retirement, was forcing in his outposts, chasing back his cavalry and revealing a strong and resolute offensive. On September 4 and 5 there was heavy fighting on the German left and centre, to the south of the Marne and the west of the Ourcq. While General von Kluck was endeavouring to resist the thrust of the French and British troops who were ma.s.sing their guns with great strength on his right, General von Bulow's left wing, with the Saxon army and the Prince of Wurtemberg's army, made desperate attempts to break the French centre by violent attacks to the north of Sezanne and Vitry-le- Francois. For two days the Germans tested the full measure of the strength opposed to them, but failed in smas.h.i.+ng through any part of the French line, so that the Allies, successful in holding their ground against the full weight of the enemy, gained time for the supports to reach them and then developed a complete and general attack.

Von Kluck found that his troops were yielding. The French mordant was too much for Prussians as well as Saxons, who in many villages of France and in the hollows of the downs were heavily punished by the Anglo-French artillery, and routed by bayonet charges thrust home with incredible ferocity. The German Headquarters Staff, receiving these reports from all parts of the line, must have had many moral shocks, undermining their pride and racking their nerves.

Perhaps one day we shall read the history of those councils of war between the German generals, when men who had been confident of victory began to be haunted by doubt, hiding their fears even from themselves until they were forced to a gloomy recognition of grave perils. Some of these men must have wept and others cursed, while Von Kluck decided to play again for safety, and issued an order for retreat. Retreat! What would the Emperor say in Berlin where he waited for the prize of Paris and heard that it had slipped from his grasp? How could they explain the meaning of that retreat to the people at home, expecting loot from the Louvre and souvenirs from Paris shops?

Some of the officers thought these things--I have read their letters-- but General von Kluck must have had only one dominating and absorbing thought, more important even than an Emperor's anger.

"Gott im Himmel, shall I get this army back to a stronger line or shall I risk all on a fight in the open, against those French and British guns and almost equal odds?" The failure of the German centre was the gravest disaster, and threatened von Kluck with the menace of an enveloping movement by the Allied troops which might lead to his destruction, with the flower of the Imperial troops. Away back there on the Aisne were impregnable positions tempting to hard-pressed men.

Leaving nothing to chance, the Germans had prepared them already in case of retreat, though it had not been dreamed of then as more than a fantastic possibility. The fortune of war itself as well as cautious judgment pointed back to the Aisne for safety. The allied armies were closing up, increasing in strength of men and guns as the hours pa.s.sed. In a day or two it might be too late to reach the strongholds of the hills.

5

So the retreat of the German right wing which had cut like a knife through northern France until its edge was blunted by a wall of steel, began on September 5 and increased in momentum as the allied troops followed hard upon the enemy's heels. The great ma.s.s of the German left swung backwards in a steady and orderly way, not losing many men and not demoralized by this amazing turn in Fortune's wheel. "It is frightfully disappointing," wrote a German officer whose letter was found afterwards on his dead body. "We believed that we should enter Paris in triumph and to turn away from it is a bitter thing for the men. But I trust our chiefs and I know that it is only a strategical retirement. Paris will still be ours."

Truly it was a strategical retirement and not a "rout," as it was called by the English Press Bureau. But all retirements are costly when the enemy follows close, and the rearguard of Von Kluck's army was in a terrible plight and suffered heavy losses. The French light artillery opened fire in a running pursuit, advancing their guns from position to position with very brief halts, during which the famous soixante-quinze flung out sh.e.l.ls upon bodies of troops at close range--so that they fell like wheat cut to pieces in a hailstorm. The British gunners were pus.h.i.+ng forward, less impetuously but with a steady persistence, to the west of the River Ourcq, and after all their hards.h.i.+ps; losses, and fatigues, the men who had been tired of retreating were heartened now that their turn had come to give chase.

Episodes that seem as incredible as a boy's romance of war took place in those first days of September when the German right rolled back in a retreating tide. On one of those days an English regiment marched along a dusty road for miles with another body of men tramping at the same pace on a parallel road, in the same white dust which cloaked their uniforms--not of English khaki, but made in Germany. Hundreds of German soldiers, exhausted by this forced march in the heat, without food or water, fell out, took to the cover of woods, and remained there for weeks, in parties of six or eight, making their way to lonely farmhouses where they demanded food with rifles levelled at frightened peasants, taking pot-shots at English soldiers who had fallen out in the same way, and hiding in thickets until they were hunted out by battues of soldiers long after the first great battle of the Marne. It was the time for strange adventures when even civilians wandering in the wake of battle found themselves covered by the weapons of men who cared nothing for human life, whether it was their own or another's, and when small battalions of French or English, led by daring officers, fought separate battles in isolated villages, held by small bodies of the enemy, cut off from the main army but savagely determined to fight to the death.

Out of the experiences of those few days many curious chapters of history will be written by regimental officers and men. I have heard scores of stories of that kind, told while the thrill of them still flushed the cheeks of the narrators, and when the wounds they had gained in these fields of France were still stabbed with red-hot needles of pain, so that a man's laughter would be checked by a quivering sigh and his lips parched by a great thirst.

6

Because of its vivid interest and its fine candour, I will give one such story. It was told to me by a young officer of Zouaves who had been in the thickest of the fighting to the east of Paris. He had come out of action with a piece of sh.e.l.l in his left arm, and his uniform was splashed with the blood of his wound. I wish I could write it in his soldierly French words;--so simple and direct, yet emotional at times with the eloquence of a man who speaks of the horrors which have scorched his eyes and of the fear that for a little while robbed him of all courage and of the great tragedy of this beastly business of war which puts truth upon the lips of men.

I wish also I could convey to my readers' minds the portrait of that young man with his candid brown eyes, his little black moustache, his black stubble of beard, as I saw him in the rags and tatters of his Zouave dress, concealed a little beneath his long grey-blue cape of a German Uhlan, whom he had killed with his sword.

When he described his experience he puffed at a long German pipe which he had found in the pocket of the cape, and laughed now and then at this trophy, of which he was immensely proud.

"For four days previous to Monday, September 7," he said, "we were engaged in clearing out the German 'boches' from all the villages on the left bank of the Ourcq, which they had occupied in order to protect the flank of their right wing."

"Unfortunately for us the English heavy artillery, which would have smashed the beggars to bits, had not yet come up to help us, although we expected them with some anxiety, as the big business events began as soon as we drove the outposts back to their main lines."

"However, we were quite equal to the preliminary task, and heartened by the news of the ammunition convoy which had been turned into a very pretty firework display by 'Soixante-dix Pau.' My Zouaves--as you see I belong to the First Division, which has a reputation to keep up--n'est-ce pas?--were in splendid form."

"They were just like athletes who want to be first off the mark, or rather perhaps I should say like bloodhounds on the scent."

"Still, just to encourage them a little, don't you know, I pulled out my revolver, showed it to my little ones, and said very gently that the first man who hesitated to advance under the fire of the German guns would be a dead man before he took a step to the rear. (In every regiment there are one or two men who want encouraging in this way.) Of course, they all laughed at me. They wanted to get near those German guns, and nearer still to the gunners. That was before they knew the exact meaning of sh.e.l.l-fire. Well, they did good things, those Zouaves of mine. But it wasn't pleasant work. We fought from village to village, very close fighting, so that sometimes we could look into our enemy's eyes. The Moroccans were with us, the native troops, unlike my boys who are Frenchmen, and they were like demons with their bayonet work."

"Several of the villages were set on fire by the Germans before they retired from them, and soon great columns of smoke with pillars of flame and clouds of flying sparks rose up into the blue sky, and made a picture of h.e.l.l there. For really it was h.e.l.l on earth.

"Our gunners were sh.e.l.ling the Germans from pillar to post, as it were, and strewing the ground with their dead. It was across and among these dead bodies that we infantry had to charge. They lay about in heaps, ma.s.ses of bleeding flesh. It made me sick, even in the excitement of it all."

"The enemy's quickfirers were marvellous. I am bound to say we did not get it all our own way. They always man?uvre them in the same style, and very clever it is. First of all they mask them with infantry.

Then when the French charge they reveal them and put us to the test under the most withering fire. It is almost impossible to stand against it, and in this case we had to retire after each rush for about 250 metres."

"Then quick as lightning the Germans got their mitrailleuses across the ground which we had yielded to them, and waited for us to come on again; when they repeated the same operation."

"I can tell you it was pretty trying to the nerves, but my Zouaves were very steady in spite of fairly heavy losses."

"In a village named Penchard there was some very sharp fighting, and some of our artillery were posted hereabouts. Presently a German aeroplane came overhead circling round in reconnaissance.

But it was out for more than that. Suddenly it began to drop bombs, and whether by design or otherwise--they have no manners, these fellows--they exploded in the middle of a field hospital. One of my friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a bullet from one of these bombs, though I don't know what other casualties there were. But the inevitable happened. Shortly after the disappearance of the aeroplane the German sh.e.l.ls searched the position, and found it with unpleasant accuracy. It is always the same. The German aeroplanes are really wonderful in the way they search out the positions of our guns. We always know that within half an hour of a-n observation by aeroplane the sh.e.l.ls will begin to fall above the gunners unless they have altered their position. It was so in this fighting round Meaux yesterday.

"For some days this rat-hunting among the villages on the left bank of the Ourcq went on all the time, and we were not very happy. The truth was that we had no water for ourselves, and were four days thirsty. It was really terrible, for the heat was terrific during the day, and some of us were almost mad with thirst. Our tongues were blistered and swollen, our eyes had a silly kind of look in them, and at night we had horrid dreams. It was, I a.s.sure you, an intolerable agony."

"But we did our best for the horses. I have said we were four days without drink. That was because we used our last water for the poor beasts. A gentleman has to do that--you will agree?--and the French soldier is not a barbarian. Even then the horses had to go without a drop of water for two days, and I'm not ashamed to say that I wept salt tears to see the sufferings of those poor innocent creatures, who did not understand the meaning of all this b.l.o.o.d.y business and who wondered at our cruelty."

"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, the dear hamlets of France, and at every faint puff of wind the sparks floated about them like falling stars. But other fires were burning.

Under the cover of the darkness the Germans had collected their dead and had piled them into great heaps and had covered them with straw and paraffin. Then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres."

"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. Not many of them, but they came flopping about the dead bodies, and the living, with hungry beaks. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest waiting for him to die. That is war!"

"Yet there are other things in war. Fine and splendid things. It was magnificent to see your English gunners come up. They were rather late in the field. They did not appear until midday on September 7, when the big battle was going on, and when we were doing our best to push back the German right wing. They came up just as if they were on the parade ground, marvellously cool, very chic fellows, superb in their manner of handling their guns. It was heavy artillery, and we badly wanted it. And nothing could budge your men, though the German sh.e.l.l-fire was very hot."