Chapter VII: Part 7

His breast was a panoply of medals. Among them was the Legion of Honor, while his _croix de guerre_ had all the stars, bronze, silver and gold, and two palms, as I remember, which meant that twice some deed of his out in the inferno had won official mention for him all the way up from the battalion through brigade, division and corps to the supreme command. The American Y.M.C.A. in Peking ought to be proud of his good opinion.

The architect, tall, well built, smiling and fair-haired, with an intellectual face, sat opposite the little dealer in precious stones who had traveled the world around in his occupation. There was an artist, too, who held an argument with the architect on art which _mon capitaine_ considered meretricious and hair-splitting, his conviction being that they were only airing a wordy pretentiousness and really knew little more of what they were talking about than he. In politics we had a Republican, a Socialist and a Royalist, who also were babbling without capturing any dugouts, according to _mon capitaine_ who was simply a soldier. It was clear that the Socialist and the Royalist were both popular, as well as my friend, though he had been promoted to the staff.

Another present was the "Admiral," a naval officer, commanding the monstrous guns of twelve to seventeen inches mounted on railway trucks, who wrote sonnets between directing two-thousand-pound projectiles on their errands of mashing German dugouts. He did not like gunnery where he did not see his target naval fashion, but he had done so well that he was kept at it. His latest sonnet was to an abstract girl somewhere in France which the Socialist, who was a man of critical judgment in everything and of a rollicking disposition, praised very highly and read aloud with the elocution of a Coquelin.

While others had as many as three and four gold stripes on their sleeves to indicate the number of their wounds, the Socialist had been over the parapet twenty-three times in charges without being hit, which he took as a sure sign that his was the right kind of politics, the Royalist and the Republican disagreeing and _mon capitaine_ saying that politics were a mere matter of taste and being wounded a matter of luck. Thereupon, the Socialist undertook a brief oration rich with humor, relieving it of too much of the seriousness of the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies, where he will probably thunder out his periods one of these days if he contrives to keep on going over the parapet without being hit.

A man was what he was as a man and nothing more in that distinguished company which had gained its distinction by extinguishing Germans. Comradeship made all differences of opinion, birth and wealth only the excuse for banter in this variation of type from the tall architect with his charming manner to the matter-of-fact expert in diamonds and opals, from the big private of colonial regulars who had won his shoulder straps to the fellow with the blue blood of aristocratic France in his veins. The architect I particularly remember, for he was killed in the next charge, and the dealer in precious stones, for a shell-burst in the face would never allow his eyes to see the flash of a diamond again.

But let youth eat, drink and be merry in the shadow of the fortunes of war which might claim some of them to-morrow, making vacancies for promotion of privates down in the camp. Where Cheeriness was the handmaiden of _morale_ with the British, Monsieur Élan was with the French. Everybody talked not only with his lips but with his hands and shoulders, in that absence of self-consciousness which gives grace to free expression. They spoke of their homes at one juncture with a sober and lingering desire and a catch in the throat and they touched on the problems after the war, which they would win or fight on forever, concluding that the men from the trenches who would have the say would make a new and better France and sweep aside any interference with the march of their numbers and patriotism.

We ate until capacity was reached and loitered over the black coffee, with the private who had produced all the courses out of the dugout with the magic of the rabbit out of a hat sharing in the conversation at times without breaking the bonds of discipline. Finally, the cook was brought forth, too, to receive his meed of praise as the real magician. Then we went to pay our respects to the colonel and the second in command. A sturdy little man the colonel, a regular from his neat fatigue cap to the soles of his polished boots, but with a human twinkle through his eyeglasses reflecting much wisdom in the handling of men of all kinds, which, no doubt, was why he was in command of this battalion.

Afterward, we visited the men lounging in their quarters or forming a smiling group, each one ready with quick responses when spoken to, men of all kinds from Apaches of Paris to the sons of princes, perhaps, while the Washington Post March was played for the American. Later, across the road we saw the then new baby _soixante-quinze_ guns for trench work, which were being wheeled about with a merry appreciation of the fact that a battery of father _soixante-quinze_ was passing by at the time.

Finally, came an incident truly French and delightful in its boyishness, as _mon capitaine_ hinted that I should ask _mon colonel_ if he would permit _mon capitaine_ to go into town and have dinner with my friend and the admiral and myself, returning in my friend's car in time to proceed to the firing-line with the battalion to-morrow. Accordingly I spoke to the colonel and the twinkle of his eye as he gave consent indicated, perhaps, that he knew who had put me up to it. _Mon capitaine_ had his dinner and a good one, too, and was back at dawn ready for battle.

It is not that France has changed; only that some people who ought to have known better have changed their opinions formed about her after '70 when, in the company of other foreigners, they went to see the sights of Paris.

XIX

ON THE AERIAL FERRY

The "Ferry-Pilot's" office--Everybody is young in the Royal Flying
Corps--Any kind of aeroplane to choose from--A flying machine new
from the factory--"A good old 'bus"--Twenty planes a day from England
to France--England seen from the clouds--An aerial
guide-post--Stopping places--The channel from 4,000 feet aloft--Out
of sight in the clouds midway between England and France--Tobogganing
from the clouds--France from the air--A good flight.

Personal experience now intrudes in answer to the question whence come all the aeroplanes that take the place of those lost or worn out, which was made clear when I was in London for a few days' change from the fighting on the Ridge through a request to a general at the War Office for permission to fly back to the front.

"Why not?" he said. "When are you going?"

"Monday."

He called up another general on the telephone and in a few words the arrangements were made.

"And my baggage?" I suggested.

"How much of it?"

"A suit case."

"The machine ought to manage that considering that it carries one hundred and fifty pounds in bombs."

On Monday morning at the appointed hour I was walking past a soldierly line of planes flanking an aerodrome field scattered with others that had just alighted or were about to rise and inquiring my way to the "Ferry-Pilot's" office. I found it, identified by a white-lettered sign on a blackboard, down the main street of temporary buildings occupied by the aviators as quarters.

"Yes, all right," said the young officer sitting at the desk, "but we are making no crossings this morning. There is a storm over the channel."

Weather forecasts, which had long ago disappeared from the English newspapers lest they give information to Zeppelins, had become the privilege of those who travel by air or repulsed aerial raids.

"It may clear up this afternoon," he added. "Why not go up to the mess and make yourself comfortable, and return about three? Perhaps you may go then."

At three I was back in his office, where five or six young aviators were waiting for their orders as jockeys might wait their turn to take out horses. Everybody is young in the Royal Flying Corps and everybody thinks and talks in the terms of youth.

"You can push off at once!" said the officer at the desk.

Of course I must have a pass, which was a duplicate in mimeograph with my name as passenger in place of "machine gunner;" or, to put it another way, I was one joy-rider who must be officially delivered from an aerodrome in England to an aerodrome in France. Youth laughed when I took that view. Had I ever flown before? Oh, yes, a fact that put the situation still more at ease.

"What kind of a 'bus would you like?" asked the master pilot. "We have all kinds going over to-day. Take your choice."

I went out into the field to choose my steed and decided upon a big "pusher," where both aviator and passenger sit forward with the propeller and the roar of the motor behind them. She had been flown down across England from the factory the day before and, tried out, was ready for the channel passage.

"You'll take her over," said the master pilot to one of the group waiting their turn.

Then it occurred to somebody that another official detail had been overlooked, and I had to give my name and address and next of kin to complete formalities which should impress novices, while youth looked on smilingly at forty-three which was wise if not reckless. They put me in an aviator's rig with the addition of a life-belt in case we should get a ducking in the channel and I climbed up into my position for the long run, a roomy place in the semi-circular bow of the beast which was ordinarily occupied by a machine gun and gunner.

"She's a good old 'bus, very steady. You'll like her," said one of the group of youngsters looking on.

There were no straps, these being quite unnecessary, but also there was no seat.

"What is _à la mode_?" I asked.

"Stand up if you like!"

"Or sit on the edge and let your feet hang over!"

We were all laughing, for the aviation corps is never gloomy. It rises and alights and fights and dies smilingly.

"I like your hospitality, but not having been trained to trapeze work I'll play the Turk," I replied, squatting with legs crossed; and in this position I was able to look over the railing right and left and forward. The world was mine.

Flight being no new thing in the year 1916, I shall not indulge in any rhetoric. The pertinence of the experience was entirely in the fact that I was taking the aerial ferry which sent twenty planes a day to France on an average and perhaps fifty when the weather had held up traffic the previous day. I was to buffet the clouds instead of the waves on a crowded steamer and have a glimpse behind the curtains of military secrecy of the wonders of resource and organization, which are a commonplace to the wonder-workers themselves.

It was to be a straight, business flight, a matter of routine, a flight without any loitering on the way or covering unnecessary distance to reach the destination. There would be risks enough for the plane when it crossed into the enemy's area with its machine gun in position. The gleam of two lines of steel of a railroad set our course. After we had risen to a height of three or four thousand feet an occasional dash of rain whipped your face, and again the soft mist of a cloud.

It was real English weather, overcast; and England plotted under your eye, a vast garden with its hedges, fields and quiet villages, had never been so fully realized in its rich greens. We overtook trains going in our direction and passed trains going in the opposite direction under their trailing spouts of steam. Only an occasional encampment of tents suggested that the land was at war. The soft light melted the different tones of the landscape together in a dreamy whole and always the impression was of a land loved for its hedges, its pastures and its island seclusion, loved as a garden. In order to hold it secure this plane was flying and the great army in France was fighting.

After forty minutes of the exhilaration of flight which never grows stale, the pilot thumped one of the wings which gave out the sound of a drumhead to attract my attention and indicated an immense white arrow on a pasture pointing toward the bank of mist that hid the channel. This was the guide-post of the aerial ferry. He wheeled around it in order to give me a better view, which was his only departure from routine before, on the line of the arrow's pointing, he took his course, leaving the railroad behind, while ahead the green carpet seemed to end in a vaporish horizon.

Usually as they rose for the channel crossing pilots ascended to a height of ten thousand feet, in order that they should have range in case of engine trouble for a long glide which might permit them to reach shore, or, if they must alight in the sea, to descend close to a vessel. In both England and France along the established aerial pathway are certain way stations fit to give rubber tires a soft welcome, with gasoline in store if a fresh supply is required. It was the pride of my pilot, who had formerly been in the navy and had come from South Africa to "do his bit," that in twenty crossings he had never had to make a stop. To-day the clouds kept us down to an altitude of only four thousand feet.

Hills and valleys do not exist, all landscape being flat to the aviator's eye, as we know; but against reason some mental kink made me feel that this optical law should not apply to the chalk cliffs when we came to the coast, where only the green sward which crowns them was visible and beyond this a line of gray, the beach, which had an edge of white lace that was moving--the surf.

Soldiers who were returning from leave in the regular way were having a jumpy passage, as one knew by the whitecaps that looked like tiny white flowers on a pewter cloth; only if you looked steadily at one it disappeared and others appeared in its place. Otherwise, the channel in a heavy sea was as still as a painted ocean with painted ships which, however fast they were moving, were making no headway to us traveling as smoothly in our 'bus as a motor boat on a glassy lake.

I looked at my watch as we crossed the lace edging on the English side and again as we crossed it on the French side. The time elapsed was seventeen and a half minutes, which is not rapid going, even for the broader part of the channel which we chose. The fastest plane, I am told, has made it at the narrowest point in eight and a half minutes. Not going as high as usual, the pilot did not speed his motor, as the lower the altitude the more uncomfortable might be the result of engine trouble to his passenger.

Now, however, we were rising midway of the crossing into the gray bank overhead; one second the channel floor was there and the next it was not. Underneath us was mist and ahead and behind and above us only mist, soft and cool against the face. We were wholly out of sight of land and water, above the clouds, detached from earth, lost in the sky between England and France.

This was the great moment to me. I was away from the sound of the guns; from the headlines of newspapers announcing the latest official bulletins; from prisoners' camps and casualty clearing stations; from dugouts and trenches and the Ridge. Here was real peace, the peace of the infinite--and no one could ask you when you thought the war would be over. You were nobody, yet again you were the whole population of the world, you and the aviator and the plane, perfectly helpless in one sense and in another gloriously secure. Even he seemed a part of the machine carrying you swiftly on, without any sense of speed except the driving freshness of the air in your face. I felt that I should not mind going on forever. Time was unlimited. There was only space and the humming of the motor and the faintly gleaming circle of light of the propeller and those two rigid wings with their tracery of braces.

We were not long out of sight of land and water, but long enough to make one wish to fly over the channel again, the next time at ten thousand feet, when it was a gleaming swath hidden at times by patches of luminous nimbus.

The engine stopped. There was the silence of the clouds, cushioned silence, cushioned by the mist. Next, we were on a noiseless toboggan and when we came to the end of a glide of a thousand feet or more, France loomed ahead with its lacework of surf and an expanse of chalk cliffs at an angle and landscape rising out of the haze. A few minutes more and the salt thread that kept Napoleon out of England and has kept Germany out of England was behind us. We were over the Continent of Europe.

I had never before understood the character of both England and France so well. England was many little gardens correlated by roads and lanes; France was one great garden. Majestic in their suggestion of spaciousness were those broad stretches of hedgeless, fenceless fields, their crop lines sharply drawn as are all lines from a plane, fields between the plots of woodland and the villages and towns, revealing a land where all the soil is tilled.

Soon we were over camps that I knew and long, straight highways that I had often traveled in my comings and goings. But how empty seemed the roads where you were always passing motor trucks and guns! Long, gray streaks with occasional specks which, as you rose to a greater height, were lost like scattered beads melting into a ribbon! Reserve trenches that I had known, too, were white tracings on a flat surface in their standard contour of traverses. There was the chateau where I had lived for months. Yes, I could identify that, and there the town where we went to market.

We flew around the tower of a cathedral low enough to see the people moving in the streets, and then, in a final long glide, after an hour and fifty minutes in the air, the rubber wheels touched earth, rose and touched it again before the steady old 'bus slowed down not far from another plane that had arrived only a few minutes previously. When a day of good weather follows a day of bad and the arrivals are frequent, planes are flopping about this aerodrome like so many penguins before they are marshaled by the busy attendants in line along the edge of the field or under the shelter of hangars.

We had had none of those thrilling experiences which are supposed to happen to aerial joy-riders, but had made a perfectly safe, normal trip, which, I repeat, was the real point of this wonderful business of the aerial ferry. I went into the office and officially reported my arrival at the same time that the pilot reported delivery of his plane.

"Good-night," he said. "I'm off to catch the steamer to bring over another 'bus to-morrow."

Waiting near by was my car and soldier chauffeur, who asked, in his quiet English way, if I had had "a good flight, sir;" and soon I was back in the atmosphere of the army as the car sped along the road, past camps, villages and motor trucks, until in the moonlight, as we came over a hill, the cathedral tower of Amiens appeared above the dark mass of the town against the dim horizon.

XX

THE EVER MIGHTY GUNS

A thousand guns at the master's call--Schoolmaster of the guns--More
and more guns but never too many--The gunner's skill which has life
and death at stake--"Grandmother" first of the fifteen-inch
howitzers--Soldier-mechanics--War still a matter of
missiles--Improvements in gunnery--Third rail of the battlefield--The
game of guns checkmating guns--A Niagara of death--A giant tube of
steel painted in frog patches.

How reconcile that urbane gunner-general, a genius among experts you were told, as the master of a thunderous magic which shot its deadly lightnings over the German area! Let him move a red pin on the map and a tractor was towing a nine-inch gun to a new position; a black pin and a battery of eighteen pounders took the road. A thousand guns answered his call with a hundred thousand shells when it pleased him. I stood in awe of him, for chaos seemed to be doing his bidding at the end of a pushbutton.

Whirlwind curtains of fire and creeping and leaping curtains were his familiar servants, and he set the latest fashion by his improvements. Had the French or the Germans something new? This he applied. Had he something new? He passed on the method to the French and gave the Germans the benefit of its results.

Observers seated in the baskets of observation balloons, aeroplanes circling low in risk of anti-aircraft fire, men sitting in tree-tops and others in front-line trenches spotting the fall of shells were the eyes for the science he was working out on his map. Those nests and lines of guns that seemed to be simply sending shells into the blue from their hiding-places played fortissimo and pianissimo under his baton. He correlated their efforts, gave them purpose and system in their roaring traffic of projectiles.

Where Sir Douglas Haig was schoolmaster of the whole, he was schoolmaster of the guns. After the grim days of the salient, when he worked with relics from fortresses and anything that could be improvised against the German artillery, came the latest word in black-throated, fiery-tongued monsters from England where the new gunners had learned their ABC's and he and his assistants were to teach them solid geometry and calculus and give them a toilsome experience, which was still more useful.

His host kept increasing as more and more guns arrived, but never too many. There cannot be too many. Plant them as thick as trees in a forest for a depth of six or eight miles and there would not be enough by the criterion of the infantry, to whom the fortunes of war increasingly related to the nature of the artillery support. He must have smiled with the satisfaction of a farmer over a big harvest yield that filled the granary as the stack of shells at an ammunition depot spread over the field, and he could go among his guns with the pride of a landowner among his flocks. He knew all the diseases that guns were heir to and their weaknesses of temperament. A gun doctor was part of the establishment. This specialist went among the guns and felt of their pulses and listened to accounts of their symptoms and decided whether they could be cared for at a field hospital or would have to go back to the base.

Temperament? An old eight-inch howitzer which has helped in a dozen curtains of fire and blown in numerous dugouts may be a virtuoso for temperament. Many things enter into mastery of the magic of the thunders, from clear eyesight of observers who see accurately to precision of gunner's skill, of powder, of fuse, of a hundred trifles which can never be too meticulously watched. The erring inspector of munitions far away oversea by an oversight may cost the lives of many soldiers or change the fate of a charge.

Comparable only with the surgeon's skill in the skill which has life and death as the stake of its result is the gunner's. The surgeon is trying to save one life which a slip of the knife may destroy; the gunner is trying both to save and to take life. In the gunner's skill life that is young and sturdy, muscles that are hardened by exercise and drill, manhood in its pink, must place its trust. A little carelessness or the slightest error and monsters with their long, fiery reach may strike you in the back instead of the enemy in front, and instead of dead and wounded and capitulation among smashed dugouts and machine gun positions you may be received by showers of bombs. No wonder that gunners work hard! No wonder that discipline is tightened by the screw of fearful responsibility!

At the front we had a sort of reverence for Grandmother, the first of the fifteen-inch howitzers to arrive as the belated answer of "prepared England" who "forced the war" on "unprepared Germany" to the famous forty-two centimeters that pounded Liège and Maubeuge. Gently Grandmother with her ugly mouth and short neck and mammoth supporting ribs of steel was moved and nursed; for she, too, was temperamental. Afterward, Grandfather came and Uncle and Cousin and Aunt and many grown sons and daughters, until the British could have turned the city of Lille into ruins had they chosen; but they kept their destruction for the villages on the Somme, which represent a property loss remarkably small, as the average village could be rebuilt for not over two hundred thousand dollars.

Other children of smaller caliber also arrived in surprising numbers. Make no mistake about that nine-inch howitzer, which appears to be only a monstrous tube of steel firing a monstrous shell, not being a delicately adjusted piece of mechanism. The gunner, his clothes oil-soaked, who has her breech apart pays no attention to the field of guns around him or the burst of a shell a hundred yards away, no more than the man with a motor breakdown pays to passing traffic. Is he a soldier? Yes, by his uniform, but primarily a mechanic, this man from Birmingham, who is polishing that heavy piece of steel which, when it locks in the breech, holds the shell fast in place and allows all the force of the explosion to pass through the muzzle, while the recoil cylinder takes up the shock as nicely as on a battleship, with no tremble of the base set in the débris of a village. He shakes his head, this preoccupied mechanician. It may be necessary to call in the gun doctor. His "how" has been in service a long time, but is not yet showing the signs of general debility of the eight-inch battery near by. They have fired three times their allowance and are still good for sundry purposes in the gunner-general's play of red and black pins on his map. The life of guns has surpassed all expectations; but the smaller calibers forward and the _soixante-quinze_ must not suffer from general debility when they lay on a curtain of fire to cover a charge.

War is still a matter of projectiles, of missiles thrown by powder, whether cannon or rifle, as it was in Napoleon's time, the change being in range, precision and destructive power. The only new departure is the aeroplane, for the gas attack is another form of the Chinese stink-pot and our old mystery friend Greek fire may claim antecedence to the _Flammenwerfer_. The tank with its machine guns applied the principle of projectiles from guns behind armor. Steel helmets would hardly be considered an innovation by mediæval knights. Bombs and hand grenades and mortars are also old forms of warfare, and close-quarter fighting with the bayonet, as was evident to all practical observers before the war, will endure as long as the only way to occupy a position is by the presence of men on the spot and as long as the defenders fight to hold it in an arena free of interference by guns which must hold their fire in fear of injury to your own soldiers as well as to the enemy.

With all the inventive genius of Europe applied in this war, the heat ray or any other revolutionary means of killing which would make guns and rifles powerless has not been developed. It is still a question of throwing or shooting projectiles accurately at your opponent, only where once it was javelin, or spear, or arrow, now it is a matter of shells for anywhere from one mile to twenty miles; and the more hits that you could make with javelins or arrows and can make with shells the more likely it is that victory will incline to your side. Where flights of arrows hid the sun, barrages now blanket the earth.

The improvement in shell fire is revolutionary enough of itself. Steadily the power of the guns has increased. What they may accomplish is well illustrated by the account of a German battalion on the Somme. When it was ten miles from the front a fifteen-inch shell struck in its billets just before it was ordered forward. On the way luck was against it at every stage of progress and it suffered in turn from nine-inch, eight-inch and six-inch shells, not to mention bombs from an aviator flying low, and afterward from eighteen pounders. When it reached the trenches a preliminary bombardment was the stroke of fate that led to the prompt capitulation of some two hundred survivors to a British charge. The remainder of the thousand men was practically all casualties from shell-bursts, which, granting some exaggeration in a prisoner's tale, illustrates what killing the guns may wreak if the target is under their projectiles.

The gunnery of 1915 seems almost amateurish to that of 1916, a fact hardly revealed to the public by its reading of bulletins and of such a quantity of miscellaneous information that the significance of it becomes obscure. At the start of the war the Germans had the advantage of many mobile howitzers and immense stores of high explosive shells, while the French were dependent on their _soixante-quinze_ and shrapnel; and at this disadvantage the brilliancy of their work with this wonderful field gun on the Marne and in Lorraine was the most important contributory factor in saving France next to the vital one of French courage and organization. The Allies had to follow the German suit with howitzers and high explosive shells and the cry for more and more guns and more and more munitions for the business of blasting your enemy and his positions to bits became universal.

The first barrage, or curtain of fire, ever used to my knowledge was a feeble German effort in the Ypres salient in the autumn of 1914, though the French drum fire distributed over a certain area had, in a sense, a like effect. To make certain of clearness about fundamentals familiar to those at the front but to the general public only a symbol for something not understood, a curtain of fire is a swath of fragments and bullets from bursting projectiles which may stop a charge or prevent reserves from coming to the support of the front line. It is a barrier of death, the third rail of the battlefield. From the sky shrapnel descend with their showers of bullets, while the high explosives heave up the earth under foot. Shrapnel largely went out of fashion in the period when high explosives smashed in trenches and dugouts; but the answer was deeper dugouts too stoutly roofed to permit of penetration and shrapnel returned to play a leading part again, as we shall see in the description of a charge under an up-to-date curtain of fire in another chapter.

Counter-battery work is another one of the gunner-general's cares, which requires, as it were, the assistance of the detective branch. Before you can fight you must find the enemy's guns in their hiding-places or take a chance on the probable location of his batteries, which will ordinarily seek every copse, every sunken road and every reverse slope. The interesting captured essay on British fighting methods, by General von Arnim, the general in command of the Germans opposite the British on the Somme, with its minutiæ of directions indicative of how seriously he regarded the New Army, mentioned the superior means of reporting observations to the guns used by British aeroplanes and warned German gunners against taking what had formerly been obvious cover, because British artillery never failed to concentrate on those spots with disastrous results.

Where aeroplanes easily detect lines, be they roads or a column of infantry, as I have said, a battery in the open with guns and gunners the tint of the landscape is not readily distinguishable at the high altitude to which anti-aircraft gunfire restricts aviators. When a concentration begins on a battery, either the gunners must go to their dugouts or run beyond the range of the shells until the "strafe" is over. If A could locate all of B's guns and had two thousand guns of his own to keep B's two thousand silenced by counter-battery work and two thousand additional to turn on B's infantry positions, it would be only a matter of continued charges under cover of curtains of fire until the survivors, under the gusts of shells with no support from their own guns, would yield against such ghastly, hopeless odds.

Such is the power of the guns--and such the game of guns checkmating guns--in their effort to stop the enemy's curtains of fire while maintaining their own that the genius who finds a divining rod which, from a sausage balloon, will point out the position of every enemy battery has fame awaiting him second only to that of the inventor of a system of distilling a death-dealing heat ray from the sun.

And the captured gun! It is a prize no less dear to the infantry's heart to-day than it was a hundred years ago. Our battalion took a battery! There is a thrill for every officer and man and all the friends at home. Muzzle cracked by a direct hit, recoil cylinder broken, wheels in kindling wood, shield fractured--there you have a trophy which is proof of accuracy to all gunners and an everlasting memorial in the town square to the heroism of the men of that locality.

In the gunners' branch of the corps or division staff (which may be next door to the telephone exchange where "Hello!" soldiers are busy all day keeping guns, infantry, transport, staff and units, large and small, in touch) the visitor will linger as he listens to the talk of shop by these experts in mechanical destruction. Generic discussions about which caliber of gun is most efficient for this and that purpose have the floor when the result of a recent action does not furnish a fresher topic. There are faddists and old fogies of course, as in every other band of experts. The reports of the infantry out of its experience under shell-bursts, which should be the gospel, may vary; for the infantry think well of the guns when the charge goes home with casualties light and ill when the going is bad.

Every day charts go up to the commanders showing the expenditure of ammunition and the stock of different calibers on hand; for the army is a most fastidious bookkeeper. Always there must be immense reserves for an emergency, and on the Somme a day's allowance when the battle was only "growling" was a month's a year previous. Let the general say the word and fifty thousand more shells will be fired on Thursday than on Wednesday. He throws off and on the switch of a Niagara of death. The infantry is the Oliver Twist of incessant demand. It would like a score of batteries turned on one machine gun, all the batteries in the army against a battalion front, and a sheet of shells in the air night and day, as you yourself would wish if you were up in the firing-line.

Guardians of the precious lives of their own men and destroyers of the enemy's, the guns keep vigil. Every night the flashes on the horizon are a reminder to those in the distance that the battle never ends. Their voices are like none other except guns; the flash from their muzzles is as suggestive as the spark from a dynamo, which says that death is there for reaching out your hand. Something docile is in their might, like the answering of the elephant's bulk to the mahout's command, in their noiseless elevation and depression, and the bigger they are the smoother appears their recoil as they settle back into place ready for another shot. The valleys where the guns hide play tricks with acoustics. I have sat on a hill with a dozen batteries firing under the brow and their crashes were hardly audible.

"Only an artillery preparation, sir!" said an artilleryman as we started up a slope stiff with guns, as the English say, all firing. You waited your chance to run by after a battery had fired and were on the way toward the next one before the one behind sent another round hurtling overhead.

The deep-throated roar of the big calibers is not so hard on the ears as the crack of the smaller calibers. Returning, you go in face of the blasts and then, though it rarely happens, you have in mind, if you have ever been in front of one, the awkward possibility of a premature burst of a shell in your face. Signs tell you where those black mouths which you might not see are hidden, lest you walk straight into one as it belches flame. When you have seen guns firing by thousands as far as the eye can reach from a hill; when you have seen every caliber at work and your head aches from the noise, the thing becomes overpowering and monotonous. Yet you return again, drawn by the uncanny fascination of artillery power.

Riding home one day after hours with the guns in an attack, I saw for the first time one of the monster railroad guns firing as I passed by on the road. Would I get out to watch it? I hesitated. Yes, of course. But it was only another gun, a giant tube of steel painted in frog patches to hide it from aerial observation; only another gun, though it sent a two-thousand-pound projectile to a target ten miles away, which a man from a sausage balloon said was "on."

XXI

BY THE WAY

The River Somme--Amiens cathedral--Sunday afternoon
promenaders--Women, old men and boys--A prosperous old town--Madame
of the little Restaurant des Huîtres--The old waiter at the
hotel--The stork and the sea-gull--Distinguished visitors--Horses and
dogs--Water carts--Gossips of battle--The donkeys.

What contrasts! There was none so pleasant as that when you took the river road homeward after an action. Leaving behind the Ridge and the scarred slope and the crowding motor trucks in their cloud of dust, you were in a green world soothing to eyes which were painful from watching shell-blasts. Along the banks of the Somme on a hot day you might see white figures of muscle-armored youth washed clean of the grime of the firing-line in the exhilaration of minutes, seconds, glowingly lived without regard to the morrow, shaking drops of water free from white skins, under the shade of trees untouched by shell fire, after a plunge in cool waters. Then from a hill where a panorama was flung free to the eye, the Somme at your feet held islands of peace in its shining net as it broke away from confining green walls and wound across the plain toward Amiens.

The Somme is kindly by nature with a desire to embrace all the country around, and Amiens has trained its natural bent to man's service.

It gave softer springs than those of any ambulance for big motor scows that brought the badly wounded down from the front past the rich market gardens that sent their produce in other boats to market. Under bridges its current was divided and subdivided until no one could tell which was Somme and which canal, busy itself as the peasants and the shopkeepers doing a good turn to humankind, grinding wheat in one place and in another farther on turning a loom to weave the rich velvets for which Amiens is famous, and between its stages of usefulness supplying a Venetian effect where balconies leaned across one of its subdivisions, an area of old houses on crooked, short streets at their back huddled with a kind of ancient reverence near the great cathedral.

At first you might be discriminative about the exterior of Amiens cathedral, having in mind only the interior as being worth while. I went inside frequently and the call to go was strongest after seeing an action. Standing on that stone floor where princes and warriors had stood through eight hundred years of the history of France, I have seen looking up at the incomparable nave with its majestic symmetry, French _poilus_ in their faded blue, helmets in hand and perhaps the white of a bandage showing, spruce generals who had a few hours away from their commands, dust-laden dispatch riders, boyish officers with the bit of blue ribbon that they had won for bravery on their breasts and knots of privates in worn khaki. The man who had been a laborer before he put on uniform was possessed by the same awe as the one who had been favored by birth and education. A black-robed priest passing with his soft tread could not have differed much to the eye from one who was there when the Black Prince was fighting in France or the soldiers of Joan or of Condé came to look at the nave.

The cathedral and the Somme helped to make you whole with the world and with time. After weeks you ceased to be discriminative about the exterior. The cathedral was simply the cathedral. Returning from the field, I knew where on every road I should have the first glimpse of its serene, assertive mass above the sea of roofs--always there, always the same, immortal; while the Ridge rocked with the Allied gun-blasts that formed the police line of fire for its protection.

I liked to walk up the canal tow-path where the townspeople went on Sunday afternoons for their promenade, the blue of French soldiers on leave mingling with civilian black--soldiers with wives or mothers on their arms, safe for the time being. One scene reappears to memory as I write: A young fellow back from the trenches bearing his sturdy boy of two on his shoulder and the black-eyed young mother walking beside him, both having eyes for nothing in the world except the boy.

The old fishermen would tell you as they waited for a bite that the German was _fichu_, their faith in the credit of France unimpaired as they lived on the income of the savings of their industry before they retired. You asked gardeners about business, which you knew was good with that ever-hungry and spendthrift British Army "bulling" the market. One day while taking a walk, Beach Thomas and I saw a diver preparing to go down to examine the abutment of a bridge and we sat down to look on with a lively interest, when we might have seen hundreds of guns firing. It was a change. Nights, after dispatches were written, Gibbs and I, anything but gory-minded, would walk in the silence, having the tow-path to ourselves, and after a mutual agreement to talk of anything but the war would revert to the same old subject.

On other days when only "nibbling" was proceeding on the Ridge you might strike across country over the stubble, flushing partridges from the clover. And the women, the old men and the boys got in all the crops. How I do not know, except by rising early and keeping at it until dark, which is the way that most things worth while are accomplished in this world. Those boys from ten to sixteen who were driving the plow for next year's sowing had become men in their steadiness.

Amiens was happy in the memory of the frustration of what might have happened when her citizens looked at the posters, already valuable relics, that had been put up by von Kluck's army as it passed through on the way to its about-face on the Marne. The old town, out of the battle area, out of the reach of shells, had prospered exceedingly. Shopkeepers, particularly those who sold oysters, fresh fish, fruits, cheese, all delicacies whatsoever to victims of iron rations in the trenches, could retire on their profits unless they died from exhaustion in accumulating more. They took your money so politely that parting with it was a pleasure, no matter what the prices, though they were always lower for fresh eggs than in New York.

We came to know all with the intimacy that war develops, but for sheer character and energy the blue ribbon goes to Madame of the little Restaurant des Huîtres. She needed no gallant husband to make her a marshal's wife, as in the case of Sans-Gêne, for she was a marshal herself. She should have the _croix de guerre_ with all the stars and a palm, too, for knowing how to cook. A small stove which was as busy with its sizzling pans as a bombing party stood at the foot of a cramped stairway, whose ascent revealed a few tables, with none for two and everybody sitting elbow to elbow, as it were, in the small dining-room. There were dishes enough and clean, too, and spotless serviettes, but no display of porcelain and silver was necessary, for the food was a sufficient attraction. Madame was all for action. If you did not order quickly she did so for you, taking it for granted that a wavering mind indicated a palate that called for arbitrary treatment.

She had a machine gun tongue on occasion. If you did not like her restaurant it was clear that other customers were waiting for your place, and generals capitulated as promptly as lieutenants. A camaraderie developed at table under the spur of her dynamic presence and her occasional artillery concentrations, which were brief and decisive, for she had no time to waste. Broiled lobster and sole, oysters, filets and chops, sizzling fried potatoes, crisp salads, mountains of forest strawberries with pots of thick cream and delectable coffee descended from her hands, with no mistake in any orders or delay in the prompt succession of courses, on the cloth before you by some legerdemain of manipulation in the narrow quarters to the accompaniment of her repartee. It was past understanding how she accomplished such results in quantity and quality on that single stove with the help of one assistant whom, apparently, she found in the way at times; for the assistant would draw back in the manner of one who had put her finger into an electric fan as her mistress began a manipulation of pots and pans.

If Madame des Huîtres should come to New York, I wonder--yes, she would be overwhelmed by people who had anything like a trench appetite. Soon she would be capitalized, with branches des Huîtres up and down the land, while she would no longer touch a skillet, but would ride in a limousine and grow fat, and I should not like her any more.

People who could not get into des Huîtres or were not in the secret which, I fear, was selfishly kept by those who were, had to dine at the hotel, where a certain old waiter--all young ones being at the front--though called mad could be made the object of method if he had not method in madness. When he seemed about to collapse with fatigue, tell him that there had been a big haul of German prisoners on the Ridge and the blaze of delight in his dark eyes would galvanize him. If he should falter again, a shout of, "_Vive l'Entente cordiale! En avant!_" would send him off with coat-tails at right angles to his body as he sprang into the midst of the riot of waiters outside the kitchen door, from which he would emerge triumphantly bearing the course that was next in order. Nor would he allow you to skip one. You must take them all or, as the penalty of breaking up the system, you went hungry.

Outside in the court where you went for coffee and might sometimes get it if you gave the head waiter good news from the front, a stork and a sea-gull with clipped wings posed at the fountain. What tales of battle were told in sight of this incongruous pair whose antics relieved the strain of war! When the stork took a step or two the gull plodded along after him and when the gull moved the stork also moved, the two never being more than three or four feet apart. Yet each maintained an attitude of detachment as if loath to admit the slightest affection for each other. Foolish birds, as many said and laughed at them; and again, heroes out of the hell on the Ridge and wholly unconscious of their heroism said that the two had the wisdom of the ages, particularly the stork, though expert artillery opinion was that the practical gull thought that only his own watchfulness kept the wisdom of the ages from being drowned in the fountain in an absent-minded moment, though the water was not up to a stork's ankle-joint. More nonsense, when the call was for reaction from the mighty drama, was woven around these entertainers by men who could not go to plays than would be credible to people reading official bulletins; woven by dining parties of officers who when dusk fell went indoors and gathered around the piano before going into a charge on the morrow.

At intervals men in civilian clothes, soft hats, gaiters over everyday trousers, golf suits, hunting suits, appeared at the hotel or were seen stalking about captured German trenches, their garb as odd in that ordered world of khaki as powdered wig, knee-breeches and silver buckles strolling up Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue. Prime ministers, Cabinet members, great financiers, potentates, journalists, poets, artists of many nationalities came to do the town. They saw the Ridge under its blanket of shell-smoke, the mighty columns of transport, all the complex, enormous organization of that secret world, peeked into German dugouts, and in common with all observers estimated the distance of the nearest shell-burst from their own persons.

Many were amazed to find that generals worked in chateaux over maps, directing by telephone, instead of standing on hilltops to give their commands, and that war was a systematic business, which made those who had been at the front writing and writing to prove that it was wonder if nobody read what they wrote. An American who said that he did not see why all the trucks and horses and wagons and men did not lose their way was suggestive of the first vivid impressions which the "new eye" brought to the scene. Another praised my first book for the way it had made life at the front clear and then proceeded to state his surprise at finding that trenches did not run straight, but in traverses, and that soldiers lived in houses instead of tents and gunners did not see their targets. Now he had seen this mighty army at work for himself. It is the only way. I give up hope of making others see it.

So grim the processes of fighting, so lacking in picturesqueness, that one welcomed any of the old symbols of war. I regretted yet rejoiced that the horse was still a factor. It was good to think that the gasoline engine had saved the sore backs of the pack animals of other days, removed the horror of dead horses beside the road and horses driven to exhaustion by the urgency of fierce necessity, and that a shell in the transport meant a radiator smashed instead of flesh torn and scattered. Yet the horse was still serving man at the front and the dog still flattering him. I have seen dogs lying dead on the field where the mascot of a battalion had run along with the men in a charge; dogs were found in German dugouts, and one dog adopted by a corps staff had refused to leave the side of his fallen master, a German officer, until the body was removed.