Chapter XI: On the Oise and the Somme

The armies were now fast locked along the Aisne. The varying fortunes of the first week made them impossible of approach. It was of interest to discover what was taking place on the German right and rear, where the position was still obscure, and the line of battle still indefinite and, therefore, easier of access.

Amiens, Thursday.

They are in touch again, and the German right is being enveloped.

It called for a long stroke from Paris to pass the wheeling left wing, for it was needful to avoid disturbing the intervening armies.

The journey through the Paris defences, those heedfully guarded lines that few civilians have hitherto penetrated on the north, was full of interest. By Neuilly and Pontoise we passed the careful fortifications, _chevaux de frise_ of old railway lines crossed and pointed, sandbag forts, and the rest, all innocently couched under hedges of trees.

Every quarter-mile a challenge by different varieties of uniform. The peasants busy working at the trenches. For though Paris is regaining its own appearance, and the Parisian is even daring to begin to poke fun at his absent Government, there is no relaxation of watchfulness. "Until France is clear, and beyond, Paris is on guard!" Gallieni guarantees it.

I am getting accustomed to meeting odd company on the road. Three days ago it was General Gallieni and his staff, escorting two civilian Ministers round the battlefield, reacquainting themselves with the new developments. Two days ago it was the Bishop of Meaux, in his lawn sleeves and violet biretta and robes, in a motor-car. To-day it came as an assortment of ---- officers, and a captured German pontoon train in wagons. At a railway crossing I was held up by a train full of German prisoners.

I turned east, skirting Creil and Pont, visiting the green glade and small brown graves that were said to mark the heroic charge of the Lancers, that first check to the oncoming tide upon Paris. Then back west to Meru, and north to Beauvais. Now and again the scarred walls of the end-houses of villages told where the Allies had fought on the great retreat.

At La Deluge--suitable name--an outlying farm was half burnt and in ruins. Here a small body of Germans had been wiped out by a French detachment in a six hours' siege. But an impassive farmer was leading his horses out of the ruins to resume work in the long-deserted fields.

Beauvais--and what a change! No longer the deserted city of a few widows running for shelter to the cathedral. Full of life, full of troops. We lunched cheerfully, at a freshly-opened hotel, on sheep's feet and pigs' trotters, with a jolly corps of French aviators.

The country is filled by our new army from the west. Mitrailleuse cars met me every mile. Amiens is occupied by it. A few English and Scottish soldiers, punctilious to a point, delight the seminary students by saluting them as parsons in the streets.

The Germans left Amiens between Friday and Saturday, having requisitioned 100,000 cigars and drunk "only mineral waters," of which they have left their reckonings scrawled large on the tables.

It was one of the centres at which French reservists had to present themselves. Seeing the large number of men in the streets, the Germans issued an order that 1,500 men were to present themselves at six o'clock on the morning of evacuation, together with all the remaining motor-cars. In the dark morning they were marched off to dig entrenchments further east; and so far none has returned.

The Germans cleared the public hospitals, not the private ones, of all the German and French wounded. The French they treated well, but the "Turcos" they forced out of bed at the point of the sword.

Amiens has suffered little, except in pocket.

A yellow-haired hostess had us arrested here, as "Germans." One chuckled to see her returning to make vapid conversation after the betrayal--the Delilah! And one returned to her afterwards for another glass of coffee; for a courteous arrest is the assurance that we are again in the heart of a competent army.

All along the road I was warned that odd bodies of Germans were still about in the woods. As I swung east, for Peronne, I had the proof. South-west of Bray a shot or two on a wooded hill made us stop. It was too far away to be intended for us. A band of peasants, with a few dragoons, were methodically beating a wood for some stray Germans, firing and shouting, like beaters, as they moved through.

Presently four German infantrymen emerged at our end, with their hands raised, without arms. Footsore, frightened. We were made use of to run them back to Doullens, where they were transferred to an armoured car. It was a depressing drive. The beaten man is an insult to humanity, of whatever race he may be.

Some distance from Peronne the sound of firing sounded closer. I left the moving base, and part ran, part walked, about five miles forward and south-eastward. At last coming over a field, I lighted upon a small moving column of Turcos.

The officer, a large brown-eyed southerner, saw me first. He had no one to detach to go back with me, and was not unfriendly. It is a toss up whether troops of this type will embrace or shoot. Perhaps as a warning against temerity I was hurried forward to what appeared to be an odd end of a firing line. From the direction of the sound of the guns it appeared to be well on the right of a German position. Our extended line seemed to be overlapping them on the north.

With a number of my guard I crawled up and into a scanty trench, occupied by a line of some thirty Turcos. The next men gave our reinforcement a glance, but no more. On the actual line they have more important things to think about. The continual zip of bullets sang overhead. There was the wicked "bubble" of a machine gun not far to the right. The man beside me talked continuously to himself. Two of the men further south presently slid forward against the breast-work, and leaned there motionless. In response, I suppose, to an order, my neighbours, who had been firing rhythmically, disappeared over the bank of the slight trench forward. I waited where I was, fortunately unheeded as I sat under the bank. The firing receded. I saw the backs of my friends disappearing into a wood in front. After a while, the Red Cross stretchers came along and picked up the two men near.

It was already late in the day. They came up, some dozen stretcher-bearers, under the direction of a young French surgeon, who was serving as a trooper, in uniform. I was engaged at the moment in some amateur bandaging, with the aid of a pocket Alpine surgical-case that has seen service in the Swiss mountains and in Belgium. They accepted me as an extra helper with little difficulty. Detained still, but allowed to help. Men at the front are concerned only with realities and their immediate work. An extra hand is an extra hand.

Along our trenches in the field there was little to do. The dead were left for later burial by the peasants. The seriously wounded were carried back, about a third of a mile, to where two Red Cross motors waited on a cross road. Another contingent was working from some fields on our left. A full ambulance ran past us as we came out on one trip to the road. It was all done very quietly and efficiently. The only raised voices were those of two men with whom the fever of bad wounds was taking the form of the furious raving of anger.

In most cases the Turcos were stoical and silent. One or two of the more lightly wounded had only to be helped back, after the first aid had been given on the field. One of them, as he limped along with his arm round my shoulder, hissed a whispered account of the exact form of death he designed for the next German he fought. It was chiefly gesture; and the dark brown face, close to my own, with the startling white gleam of the eye, gave it an almost theatrical ferocity.

In the dark it was decided to make a further search. My car, which a soldier was dispatched to recover, was accepted to help in the task. It was a dark night, rather cold, but clear and starry. It was cheering to recognise the great planet which in Belgium we used to call the "Brussels star," because night after night Brussels used to stand in the streets watching it, never failing to recognise it as an approaching "Zeppelin." If you watch a star or lamp at night for long, it always seems to be in motion, backwards or forwards, up or down.

We crossed to where the Germans had retreated. The men carried acetylene lamps; two had electric flash-lamps, and another carried one of my car lights. It was a strange search, stumbling along the little pits of moist, cold earth in the dark. The lamps were masked, and flashed only occasionally, and downwards; and all talk was under the breath. It was uncertain that the Germans might not be somewhere near.

We stumbled upon five or six bodies, but the enemy had clearly had time to remove their wounded with them. Two, however, left for dead, had been revived by the cold of the night, and were groaning. We found them by the sound. They were back some way from the trench, in the wet grass. One had been hit behind the shoulder, presumably while he was retreating.

The dark chill of the night, with the little quick flashes of searching lights, and the mutter of occasional orders in the silence, lent additional impressiveness to the steady, business-like courage of the ambulance men. It is a work that requires very practised nerves under modern fighting conditions. None of the excitement of fighting for them, or the stimulus of "hitting back"; yet they get hit themselves often enough. These long days of furious bombardment, raking long lines of hidden positions, trench and village, must inevitably, and without intention, find shells dropping upon man, house or wagon, whose Red Cross is unseen or indistinguishable.

The greater credit to the men whose dangerous work and even occasional death can earn them no glory of individual exploit. Like the fishermen mine-trawlers in the North Sea, they are the nameless heroes of humanity on the edges of the shadow of inhuman war.

The firing began again before dawn, far to the south. When I left them, to convey two of the wounded Germans and an ambulance assistant back to the village, the surgeon and his party were getting hurriedly into two of the wagons, to follow up again behind the fighting line.

Boulogne, Friday.

Last night I crossed to England, returning early to-day in one of the worst storms conceivable on a Channel crossing. Boulogne and the north are beginning to simmer with a new movement.

The southern position is still stationary. The forcing of the Germans out of their strong defensive trenches is a question of time and of endurance. The French and British have the advantage of superior facilities for moving men or getting up reinforcements by rail.

It is still difficult to say whether the German right, as it lies, is fighting a stubborn rearguard action on the retreat, or if it is intended to hold its present lines. If the latter, it is in danger from the Allies' overlapping left, and from their movement on the north-west.

Our own troops would seem to be carrying again the burden of some of the fiercest fighting, about Soissons.

The region north of the German lines, which I traversed to and fro to-day, is a region of vague skirmishing, somewhat similar to that existing in northern Flanders. The Germans and French are alternately occupying the towns and villages near the frontier with small patrols or armoured cars. The Germans, on the whole, are contracting their web.

Lille is free for the moment, and either army uses it. The Cambrai neighbourhood is of course still German, on the line of their communications. The French are spreading up to the border again, in a gentle wave. The country is absolutely peaceful. The people go about their work in the fields with little regard for the wandering parties of war that go past on the roads.

It is a different sight from the deserted fields, the panic-stricken peasantry, the hurrying troops, that filled this border when I came up last. That was in the week of concentration, after mobilisation, when I reached Valenciennes from Paris with a party of Belgian officers. They went to Maubeuge, I back to Calais. There have been flooding armies back and through that opening into Belgium since that week.

A few British stragglers still come in. A party of seventy with two officers, all in uniform, got through two days ago. Another courageous contingent of artillery came through with horses and men in fine condition. But the majority have been dressed by the peasants in the oddest of peasant remnants. They look hearty and bronzed, and the better for the holiday in the fields. In many of the woods further south German stragglers now take their place. The relations between these small unarmed bodies when they meet, both in strange territory, neither sure which should take the other prisoner, are pregnant with curious situations. Three Irishmen, whom the peasants hailed me to bring down from a copse where they lay hid during the day, told a tremendous story of stalking a German officer and knocking him off his bicycle. With a nice appreciation of their common position as outlaws, they then let him go.

For the moment we can but wait the issue of the long struggle on the Aisne. Of the greatest value would be the success of the French in penetrating the line on the east, against the German centre or left.

Another success on our left, valuable as it would be, would only force back von Kluck and von Buelow, accelerating their retreat, upon a new position on the frontier, without necessarily seriously defeating the combined armies. A success on our right would imperil their whole line, and cut off their retreating right wing in the Argonne. Under modern conditions, however, it is almost impossible for strategy to achieve the surprises which produce big defeats. The most we can look for, to end these long triturating battles, is the possibility of using more easy communications so as to be able to outnumber the enemy somewhere on the line, and so force a retreat by sheer weight.

This evening I ran all down the coast almost to Dieppe, and made the interesting discovery that all the coast towns, which only a few days before had been declared "open," and ordered to surrender all arms to their civic authorities, are again in military occupation. To follow the new development, I made, in the late evening, for Amiens, in violent wind and cold rain.

Amiens, Saturday.

For the present the news remains the same--the continuation of a battle for positions, savagely contested; the Germans fighting for time, time for the full use of their reinforcements and for the escape of their left wing in the Argonne region. The Allies are fighting to break the line on the east and to hold it, or turn it, on the west. Time, too, with its possible happenings in this quarter, is also in their favour.

We only hear of what is happening along the south front of the German army. About its south-west aspect there is a great silence.

The Amiens and northern German troops have fallen back upon a strong series of positions, which make an acute angle with those of their south front along the Aisne. Following the line of the Oise north, from the junction with the Aisne, they hold the line of highlands on either bank north to Noyon, thence west of the river to St. Quentin; they cover the railway lines by Chauny, La Fere, etc., with Laon, as centre. Thence north to Cambrai.

It will be seen that their communications are exposed to attack from the west. The distances are too great for continuous protection in force. I have been able to-day myself to reach the railway line in two places, between Bapaume and Peronne, without interruption.

The country is more or less covered by cavalry and motor detachments, whose action is necessarily local. These are in turn hunted, marked down, or reported by the French and English motor-cars fitted with machine-guns. The game is exciting, and is succeeding in its object of condensing the German dispersed bodies. But there are signs of a more serious pressure from the Germans beginning, that may eventually remove the centre of interest from the battle going on farther south.

The long-continued battle on the Aisne is in the nature of artillery duels, fencing for positions, followed by infantry attacks and counter-attacks on either side. So far we have had the advantage on the west, but at great cost. The counter-attacks by the Germans on our troops in the course of the nights have been repulsed with loss.

In the long business of wearing down we have the advantage, both in convenience of supply-service and in freshness and number of troops. But for a decisive issue, in view of the strength of the German position, we may have to hope for the entry of some new factor upon the scene.

The strong winds have dried up the roads to a large extent, and the movement of men and guns is again becoming easier.

In the region in which I have been able to approach the fighting, our counter-moves were proceeding vigorously and with plenty of confidence.

Amiens is in the overstrung, spy-mania condition of a town but just free of a hostile army, and again occupied by a friendly but mysterious military. As I ran in to-night in the dark, narrowly escaping driving into the river at the shattered bridge of Picquigny, I met the atmosphere like a thick fog. Sentinel challenges at every corner, suspicious civilian crowds thronging round if ever we checked. Two correspondents have been arrested as spies, and cannot be traced. To get myself and the car out without detention, I start to-morrow at the first light.

Creil, Sunday.

This has been a day of rather exceptional interest and incident. A number of hours have been spent in following up a line, and a direction, of which it has now become indiscreet to write in detail, but of whose possible importance to the issue of the battle of the Aisne and Oise those who have followed my account will be already aware.

That Von Kluck, if it is still Von Kluck on the German right, is alive to its importance, there is evidence in the strong reinforcements constantly thrust out towards the line Paris-Amiens, to anticipate the French movements, and in the vigour of the offensive which is pushing out to the west of Noyon. The conflicts between the patrols and our flying mitrailleuse-cars have made a distraction in the north to the unvarying character of reports from the long and terrible ding-dong battle on the Aisne and Oise.

Even the French papers are saying it to-day. "Keep your eyes also on the west. Don't be discouraged by the absence of material progress in that long-drawn conflict between the entrenched armies!"

That is all one may say after a number of hours spent in tense progress in sight and hearing of friendly and hostile forces. (_Note._--I was following the development of the French encircling movement, by Clermont and Lassigny, round the German right wing.)

You are tired probably of reading about races with Uhlans. But they retain their freshness of excitement for the participants. I must add yet one more, and that happened only this morning. We were passing from Moreuil to Montdidier. Outside Braches the wreck of a motor car, the two hind wheels smashed by some sort of projectile, led to questions. It had been destroyed, seemingly for practice shooting, by a body of Uhlans who crossed the line last night. The three occupants had fled to the village.

The patrol was said to have gone on westward. Uhlans are very local in this wide, rolling country. Fifteen hours had intervened. They might be miles away. We ran on, with only a wary eye for the edges of the woods. The road, swinging up and down over the rolling, wooded slopes, ran up and over a crest, contouring round a grassy down-summit on a terrace which faced towards the west. The railway line and river lay below to our right. A long, straight road, bordered by tufty-topped trees, ran up along a sky-line to join our terrace-road from the west.

We were swinging slightly down-hill to the road-junction about a quarter of a mile ahead, when, quite a third to half a mile down the cross-road on the right, horsemen became visible, appearing and disappearing between the trees. They might be a friendly patrol; but we put on full speed. It was soon settled. Some half-dozen broke into a gallop, or rather a canter, up-hill to intercept us. We had the advantage of slope, pace and distance to the crossing. The tilt of the hill and the road-bank also shielded us. I was only concerned about the moment of crossing at the junction, where we should be straight in view.

Some of the Lancers, some twenty in all, had halted and seemed preparing to fire. Luck favoured us. The half-dozen scattered men galloping up the road got in the way of the rest, and covered our crossing. We raced past, a good three or four hundred yards ahead at the junction. The road-bank and clumps of bushes again sheltered us, and a distant shot or two came nowhere near. It was rather joyous to turn and watch in glimpses over the bank the clearly irritated grey troopers pulling up their puffed horses.

We were still at full speed, in a sort of after-math of excitement, some three or four kilometres further on and across the next rise, when a placid green copse beside the road ahead suddenly grew alive, and a little swarm of men with bayonets moved quietly out to block the road. But the red and blue of the French army is visible afar. They greeted us from fifty yards off. "What have you seen?" We gave them the news. It appeared they were out on the trail of just twenty-five such marauders. Two came on with us to Montdidier to report. The rest marched off on a line that might cut ahead of our band. This is the railway line to the north, and for the last few days it has constantly been the scene of such little conflicts, on the one part the attempt to occupy the line, on the other to protect it.

In return for the news I was allowed to move up, under escort, and partly "requisitioned" for troops, nearer to the great battle than I hoped. First to Clermont, then by cross roads to Estrées; thence to near Giraumont, south-west of Ribecourt, which lies at an angle of the Oise north-west of the Forest of Laigue. From here, following a small cyclist contingent pushing their cycles, I got on foot through the woods on a track, until I could look down on the Oise. I did not see a battle. But, since it has been generally assumed that the Germans are east of the Oise, at least to as far north as Noyon, it was surprising to hear a very heavy cannonade proceeding from due north, showing clearly that the Germans were engaged well west of Noyon, towards Lassigny.

Where I was, however, the sight was all the more picturesque for the absence of the suggestion of destruction. The day had been squally, alternating silver streaks of sunlight and violent, windy rain. A silver shield of sunlight lay along the Oise to the north. The French were pushing up the western slopes of the river. At two points the troops, bright chequers of colour, were crossing on pontoon bridges. On the far bank they were trickling up in narrow streaks of colour again, into the green forest that swayed black with the wind. They were extending and supporting the French advance on this wing, which is pushing very gradually north, from as far west as Clermont, through the forest and fields towards the Noyon line.

The only signal of a battle progressing was the constant reverberation of guns that seemed to come alike from all quarters of the sky. I could identify only the peculiar uniform of the Senegalese and the light blue of the cavalry, as they moved past through breaks in the trees. Then the rain came down again, fiercely, and the scene lost colour in a grey drift of cloud and wind. Once so far up, and clear of the obstruction of bases, it was well to see all one could. Returning down the line of the Oise, and keeping in the woods, I got to the extreme west corner of the Forest of Laigue, where the Aisne joins the Oise. Most of the bridges have been blown up, and it is well not to approach those that exist, as things are.

Choosing a sharp corner, and retaining only what was essential for warmth, part wading, part swimming, I got across the Oise--it was decidedly cold--and followed at first the north bank of the Aisne.

The trees gave necessary shelter. It was a long and exciting walk, or rather stalk, east and then north through the forest, behind the French lines. All the traversable ways had to be avoided. The word "forest" gives a false idea of the open glades and blank stretches of country that give little cover. The firing seemed very near in front; but it also seemed to be on either hand, confusingly.

A final long and enforced wait at last made it apparent that the sound was, if anything, coming nearer in this quarter. The Germans might be pushing a counter-attack southward. In any case, further progress would have been hazardous.

The retreat was like the advance. Glimpses of moving men through the trees; long waits; distant knots of ambulance men waiting, or moving southward. Always the confusing echo of firing, sometimes silent for intervals, sometimes clear and close as the south-west wind lulled. So back and over the Oise, with a big leafy branch to cover my drift across the river.

It was, frankly, a relief to rejoin my moving base, doing ambulance duty at Estrées, and to be on the clear road again. As I left the river, several barges of wounded were moving slowly southward. The little columns of Red Cross motors held the roads. This has been a terribly costly battle. We have held our own magnificently, but it has been against superior numbers, backed by accurate shell-fire from strongly-entrenched positions.

Unless the line can be pierced on the east, the great hope, thus limiting the Germans to the few lines of communications to the northern "troué," and unless their western lines can be seriously threatened from the north-west or in Belgium, we may look for a long, wearing winter campaign, a "stalemate" in the present positions. But a good deal has still to happen before we need make up our minds for that.

Creil, Monday.

I have been now once again making south, to resume contact with the battle along the Aisne. You have heard the account of the melancholy condition of the country north of and around Meaux, and of the ruins of Senlis.

Creil is in little better state. This was one point at which the tremendous German march upon Paris was first checked, to swing, with lost momentum, south and east, and then recoil.

The roads to the north and east bear the usual signs of past warfare. Wayside entrenchments, significantly enough often facing north-west, as if the Germans, when they checked, had half prepared to meet attack from that quarter. Hastily obliterated milestones and sign-posts. Villages with a house here and there destroyed. At Cauffry, for instance, the big Mairie is burnt out, nothing else touched.

Entering Creil from the north, at first only every house in four or five seems to have been injured. Further down towards the river, every second house; and then whole rows of empty shells, shattered by bombardment, burnt out with fire. Others still standing, with every window broken and the doors smashed in; pillaged and scooped out, as if by the enormous paw of some predatory beast. In the cold autumn wind and driving rain the inhabitants are sheltering in the empty frameworks, doorless, windowless, often roofless. The town is full of the usual tales of suffering. The boy scout, who piloted me, grew passionate over the long tale of a lady called _la belle Andaluse_. It embodied all the atrocities; with the single exception of the now dubitable anecdote of the "little boy who was shot because he pointed his toy gun at a soldier." For any one who has read the story of Napoleon's campaign in this district, in 1814, and of the Cossack atrocities perpetrated among these villagers, it has a grim meaning to hear, in 1914, their descendants in the same villages recounting, unknowingly, much the same catalogue of outrages. Civilisation will seem to bray at him, like a donkey running round in a well-wheel.

In the grey chilly evening the river dividing the town is a melancholy sight. The two twisted ends of the great girder bridge, blown up by the French on their retreat, droop into the broad river. Below this, still survives the remains of the German pontoon bridge, by which they crossed. A big ferry further down makes the only connection with the region north-west of the Oise for a number of miles.

None of the heroics of war in these depressing after-views and moody, hopeless faces. A column of French sailors swung through just now; fine fellows, bronzed, and singing in time to their springing step. It was more reckless, more tuneful than the toneless, barbaric little chant of the Cuirassiers as they rode past me at Sombreffe in August. But that did not jar with the sunlight and woods and the noise of armies going into battle. Here the song seemed garish and discordant, in the grey, miserable awakening of a town to its own ruin.

And, if this of Creil, what shall we have left to say of Rheims, or to think of its cathedral and churches, reported to-night to have succumbed at last to the week's bombardment? To German Culture--let Louvain be the memorial; to the Imperial Piety--the ruins of Rheims.