Over the Front in an Aeroplane, and Scenes Inside the French and Flemish Trenches — Inside the Classic

were three Americans, a couple of Frenchmen, a couple of Scandinavians, and, I think, a Russian. Their cicerone was a very tall staff-officer who looked slightly worried by his cosmopolitan responsibilities. Their party was going on to Verdun.

After a comfortable two-hour trip we got out at Epernay. There we were met by Captain F----, a staff-officer belonging to the General Staff of the 5th Army, which we were to visit. Thus Captain d'A----, from the Staff of the Paris War Office, had general responsibility for the trip, while Captain F----, who also was to accompany us, was responsible for the detailed military arrangements during our stay with the 5th Army.

Captain d'A----'s orderly (who before mobilization had been the wealthy young proprietor of a steamship line to South America) having taken our bags to the hotel, where we were to return to spend the night, we immediately started off on our schedule.

The ground plan of my three-day trip was planned to give me a condensed view of all the component parts of a French army of five army corps, or about 200,000 men, from the rear up to the front trench.

We accordingly began with the Motor Transport Repair Corps, situated in Epernay, consisting of 1,000 men and 14 officers, including 3 doctors. It kept in up-to-the-minute running order the 1,500 motor vehicles of the army corps which occupied the front 20 miles before us.

The Captain who showed us around had been technical supervisor of the Rochet-Schneider Auto Company and had, together with all the other mechanical experts, been mobilized directly into the present work. He answered my surprise at the number of soldiers employed in these peaceful labors by explaining that two soldiers at work in the rear for every three soldiers fighting was the regular formula.

Epernay, being the centre of the champagne industry, most of the military repair garages had been located in the great wine storehouses. It was odd to see soldiers repainting grim wire-cutting autos rubbing elbows with peasant women busily wrapping gold-foil round the heads of fat quarts of famous vintages.

"Yes, they work together," smiled the Captain; "and it is not so incongruous as it looks. For the champagne was a good ally of ours during the battle of the Marne. It made enough casualties among the Boches to have an appreciable effect on the course of the battle. When we chased them out of here the broken bottles looked as though there were no more champagne left in the world. But as a matter of fact, so enormous are the quantities stored hereabouts that the German inroads were relatively slight."

It was remarkable how much we were able to crowd into an hour's inspection. Great meat-lorries, each carrying enough fresh carcasses to stock a city butcher-shop, secured ventilation yet guarded their contents against flies by close-meshed steel netting instead of solid sides. But to protect the meat from dust science had had to bow to nature, for to the netting in its turn were attached pine boughs which admitted air while excluding dust more efficiently than any artificial contrivance. Enormous repair-lorries were each a perambulating garage fully equipped with machinery for repairing broken parts or making new ones. Some of these lorries ran on their own power. Others were towed along by a big motor. In either case they made their own power to run their repair machinery, and their own brilliant electric light by which to work at night. They had almost hermetically sealed curtains to keep the light from leaking out, for in mobile war they are often called upon to do their work in sight and range of the enemy. But the trench warfare has rooted them to the spot for a weary time.

"But wait!" said the Captain. "When the advance begins just watch us keep up with the procession."

There were autos with a steel frame running from the radiator, overhead to the back seat, this frame having razor-edged knife-blades attached. In open warfare while scouting along strange roads these were useful in shearing through any wires which the thoughtful foe might have strung across for the decapitation of speeding visitors.

There were uninteresting-looking big gray ammunition-lorries, ambulances, post-offices on wheels and hundreds of ordinary autos for the use of officers, messengers, etc.

I was informed that the life of the average car in active service was very far from being as short as was popularly supposed. "Why," said the Captain, "we have many cars coming in which have been working hard for eleven months, and now for the first time are compelled to come in for repairs."

I noticed with what fastidious care all the cars were painted and varnished. "Yes, that is the way we apply psychology to motor-repair work," chuckled the Captain. "Experience has taught us that when a soldier is given a beautifully finished car to run he takes pride in it. And he not only keeps the outside well cleaned, which greatly postpones the date when it must come back to us for doctoring, but he also bestows much more care on his motor. So it is not only æstheticism which prompts that beautiful finish. But talk about æstheticism, here is a real example of it."

He showed me a car from whose front lamp-brackets some artist had wrought in iron two very beautiful palm fronds.

"The man sacrificed much leisure time to making those branches from sheer love of his art and of the beautiful. The French people are like that, Monsieur."

Having eaten a sample of the good bread and most excellent Irish stew which constitutes the soldiers' lunch, we returned to the hotel for our own early lunch. Then I climbed into one military motor with Captain F----, while Eyre installed himself in another with Captain d'A----, and at about 12.30 we started off for the front of "the front."

We climbed rapidly out of Epernay, up a long very steep grade, flanked as far as the eye could reach by vineyards, in which peasant women, old men and boys were busily harvesting the raw material for future "Secs," "Extra drys," and "Bruts." Our bellowing military motor-siren drove most of the heavy two-wheeled peasant's carts hastily toward the gutter to give us passage. Every now and then some cart's fantastic creakings would drown our clamor, and then as we finally forced our way past, the soldier-chauffeur would launch some terse but terrific imprecations at the driver. At the end of the ascent we cut loose along the broad turnpike which ran through a forest across the top of a wide plateau. Sprinkled all along the highway were uniformed "territorials" working at road repair.

"It is of extreme military importance to keep all these lines of communication in first-class condition," explained Captain F----. "It is not so romantic to mend a road as to mend a trench, but it is just as necessary."

By rights we ought now to have started our routine of courtesies by calling on General Franchet d'Esperey, commanding the 5th Army, the first of whose five army corps we were about to visit. For the amenities of a trip to the front require that in theory the stranger should pay his prearranged respects to all those in command from the General of the Army, through the General of the Army Corps, down through the General of Division, to the Colonel of the Regiment he happens to be visiting. And practise in this matter sticks uncommonly close to theory. Charming though it is to meet these courteous, highly intelligent and often illustrious men, it is impossible not to feel that the amount of time devoted to such visits of ceremony is quite out of proportion to the very limited time allowed the average visitor to the front. It is not the actual ten or fifteen minutes spent in conversation with these hospitable gentlemen which eats up the time, but the fact that meetings with some of the busiest men in the world are necessarily definite appointments which must be very punctually kept. And four or five such appointments in the course of a day at places scores of miles apart necessarily tear that day to pieces.

However, General Franchet d'Esperey had suddenly been called out to an inspection of a certain part of the front, so we skipped the engagement which had been made with him, and motored on to call on the General in command of the Army Corps with which we found ourselves. In the _salon_ of a small château we were introduced, and conversed pleasantly for a few minutes. Then he assigned one of his staff-officers to accompany us to an observation point on the edge of the plateau from which he could give us a sweeping view of many miles of the front, and point out the interesting topographical features and the course of the trenches.

I was thus simultaneously accompanied by Captain d'A----, the staff-officer from the Paris War Office, by Captain F----, the staff-officer from the 5th Army, and by the staff-officer of the Army Corps.

Having explained to us the "lay of the land" and incidentally pointed out to us the sizable crater of a shell which a few days earlier had come within twenty yards of putting a definite end to this particular observation point, the last officer bade us good-bye. We climbed back into our motors, and made the steep, winding descent from the plateau, and raced over the long, straight road so well known to motor tourists of peaceful days, which leads to where in the distance the low roofs of Rheims can be seen, like some muddy tide washing the foot of the craglike cathedral. In Rheims, which the enemy had considerately stopped shelling an hour or so before our arrival, we had to go to the headquarters of the Colonel in Command. He was out, but had left a Major with instructions to show us to X----, a village about a kilometre from the outskirts of Rheims and immediately touching on the front trenches. We left our motors near the edge of the city and walked to where down the street ran a deep narrow ditch lying open, waiting for its sewer-pipes. "Climb in," said the Major. "Here's where the communicating trench begins." In we climbed and were led by the Major along a zigzag kilometre of trench until, fifteen minutes later, we climbed out again in the main street of X----. There the Major introduced us to the Captain at the moment in command of the battalion occupying the village. He became our guide through the rest of the afternoon, which we spent in the front trenches, and which is described in the following chapter.

Thus the War Department from Paris had notified the General Staff of the 5th Army that I was to make a three-day visit to that army. That General Staff had arranged a complete programme and had notified the staffs of the various Army Corps which I was to visit. The first of these Army Corps Staffs had decided that I was to visit the front before Rheims, and had so notified the Colonel. The Colonel had decided which particular portion of the front I was to visit before Rheims and had so notified the Captain. And the Captain in turn had made up his mind which specific trenches I was to visit, and conducted me through them.

Thus far my programme had been more interesting but just as rigid as that of any of the correspondents' tours.

At the end of the afternoon in the trenches a minor example arose of the advantages which my special trip conferred.

As we returned to our motors in the outskirts of Rheims, I told d'A---- how keenly I wished to see the Rheims Cathedral.

"It is not on the programme," he answered; "but if you want to see it you certainly shall. It will get you back to Epernay pretty late, instead of at the hour arranged for, but that will not matter."

So we rolled through the streets of Rheims, where of the 110,000 original population 20,000 still live and carry on their daily life. The greater part of the city showed no signs whatever of the constantly repeated bombardments which it has sustained, save for the blocks on blocks of houses closed and with windows boarded up. But when we entered that portion lying to the east of the cathedral and toward the enemy, we passed through the fleshless skeleton of a city. The house walls generally stood intact, but through the gaping windows one could see the nothingness that lay behind, where great shells had plunged downward through the roof, sweeping the whole interior, floor by floor, down into the cellar; or where smaller shells had gutted the interior by fire. Every now and then we would see a street completely blocked by a great barrier of rubble, where a whole house had been plucked out bodily from between its neighbors by some monstrous explosion and smashed to pieces on the pavement as you would smash an egg on the ground.

Then we came out into the great square before the cathedral, and looked up at its cliff-like façade.

I heaved a sigh of relief. I seemed to be looking at the same incredible beauty that I had looked at just over a year ago, when the world was still at peace. It is true that half the great rose window was empty of glass; that here and there stood statues headless or with chipped and mutilated limbs. But in the vast profusion of carvings on the façade these were almost lost. Gradually, however, the full tragedy bore in on me.

Have you ever seen an exquisite cameo face congested by drunkenness or disease so that it remains but a blurred and subtly bloated semblance of its former loveliness? If you have, you will know what has befallen the façade at Rheims. It stood away from the German guns so that not a shell hit it. But Fate and inefficiency left it covered with scaffolding which caught fire, and the towering blaze licked and licked so furiously at every sculptured angle, line and curve that in a few hours all those keenly chiselled outlines which the centuries themselves had only faintly mellowed, became flabby, blunt and indeterminate. One used at times to gaze at the façade through half-closed lids, so that no exquisite detail should distract from the swimming, hazy glory of the whole. That glory it still possesses, but to those who knew it in its earlier unmarred splendor it seems to stand, straining aloft, in patient martyrdom. A heavy barricade, built at a distance of some twenty yards, prevented entrance or even a close approach. As we stood counting the shrapnel scars on the horse of Jeanne d'Arc, which ended the myth that this statue had come through the whole bombardment miraculously untouched, a little girl approached with a basket full of pieces of colored glass. These she offered for sale as fragments of the priceless stained glass of the cathedral. It required no expert to see that they were pitifully spurious. Thus huckstering makes pennies out of tragedy.

We departed silently, and leaving Captain F---- to return to his headquarters for the night, we were quickly speeding through the twilight on our way back to Epernay.

IN THE FRENCH TRENCHES

WITH THE 5TH FRENCH ARMY, _Aug. 3_ (_via Paris_).

On the anniversary of the last day of the world's peace, the 365th day of the war, I stood in the darkness of a very advanced front trench.

A short section where I stood was roofed and bomb-proofed. Through a row of very narrow rifle-slits came little beams of daylight that rested in flecks on the white, chalky back of the trenches and were thrown up very faintly against the logs of the trench roof.

Very dimly, I could gradually make out a narrow plank standing-platform running along below the slits. A card was tacked to the wooden frame of each opening, bearing the name of the particular soldier to whom that opening belonged. Above each slit hung (or could hang) its owner's rifle in slings from the roof.

Every few yards, set in little recesses dug out from the back of the trench, stood fat bottles. They contained chemicals with which to soak the soldiers' mouth-coverings if attacked by poisoned gas.

The trench was nearly empty of men. But at the loophole nearest me stood the rigid figure of a soldier. His legs were invisible in the darkness. His body showed up vaguely. His face was brilliantly lighted by the thin blade of light through the rifle-slit. He stood silent and motionless, his eyes intently focussed out into the sunlight.

I looked through the next slit, through a spider's web of barbed wire, between stunted black posts, across two hundred yards of green grass and wild flowers, at another tangle of posts and barbed wire with a narrow furrow of white chalky soil running along just behind it--the German trenches.

Not a living thing was in sight in the sunny loneliness. There was silence except for the crack, crack, crack of striking bullets from inaudible German rifles. I looked back at the face of the "guetteur," the watcher. His eyes, fixed on the narrow white line, were puckered with intentness, but his lips were parted in an easy, good-humored smile, brightening a face young, clean-cut, alert, calm and very patient.

He seemed to symbolize the spirit of the new France, the France of endurance, of determination, of buoyancy, of patience, the stoic France that can keep silent and motionless, the France that can stand in the darkness undismayed, watching and waiting till the moment comes to leap up and out into the light.

Early that morning, from the window of a château on the edge of a high plateau, a young staff-officer had shown me the great plain of Champagne stretching away to the low hills on the horizon. Miles away lay Rheims, made to seem squatty by the cathedral which towered in its midst.

Across the green fields of the panorama, over swelling hills, disappearing into dark woods, reappearing at the other end, I saw two tiny lines of white like the aimless tracing of a child's slate-pencil on a slate. They ran on across the landscape, now drawn boldly forward, now swerving with indecision, now zigzagging with perplexity. Sometimes the child's pencil had slipped and made short little lines at right angles. Sometimes the pencil had made three or four short starts parallel with each other before it finally got under way. Sometimes it had made a regular little maze of lines. But always the two white scratchings on the slate were drawn on and on till, wavering but always close abreast, the trenches of the two armies disappeared into the far distance.

Through powerful glasses the officer showed me little puffs of smoke floating up from the sunny, silent, peaceful landscape. They were from the exploding shells. To the right I saw a high cloud of smoke rising lazily into the air out of some woods. It was a house in the German lines fired by French shells. And, though the little puffs of smoke were only here and there on the landscape, everywhere I could see through the glasses the microscopic figures of peasants working busily in their fields, bringing in the harvest. Many were soldiers helping out, but very many were old men, boys and women. Again the scene seemed symbolical.

Behind the soldier watching in the bomb-proof were the innumerable tiny plodding figures, undaunted by the abrupt little puffs of smoke, doing their patient share toward bringing in the harvest.

In the château itself as I went down-stairs I passed a bedroom door with "Seine Koenigliche Hoheit" written across it in white chalk. The Duke of Brunswick had slept there at the high tide of the German advance. His staff had had their names chalked across various other doors, but few of them remained.

One by one they were being gradually scrubbed off. It was explained to me that these chalk marks were particularly hard to remove from wooden doors. But with patience it is being done.

The trip which I was taking to the French front had been most kindly arranged for me by the French Government as a special trip for my particular benefit. It had the advantage of enabling us to go into portions of the advanced trenches, where the larger parties could not go for fear of precipitating shelling by the Germans.

Our party consisted of a staff-officer from Paris, a staff-officer from army headquarters, Lincoln Eyre, whom the authorities had allowed me to ask along--and myself.