Chapter XIII: The Lull in November (3)

I looked back upon the beauty of Paris all golden in the light of the setting sun, with its glinting spires and white gleaming palaces and rays of light flashing in front of the golden trophies of its monuments. Paris was still unbroken. No shell had come shattering into this city of splendor, and I thanked Heaven that for a little while the peril had passed.

*A Zouave's Story*

*By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.*

[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

CREIL, Sept. 10.--I could write this narrative as a historian, with details gathered from many different witnesses at various parts of the lines, in a cold and aloof way, but I prefer to tell it in the words of a young officer of the Zouaves who was in the thickest of fighting until when I met him and gave him wine and biscuits. He was put out of action by a piece of shell which smashed his left arm. He told me the story of the battle as he sat back, hiding his pain by a little careless smile of contempt, and splashed with blood which made a mess of his uniform.

"For four days previous to Monday, Sept. 7," he said, "we were engaged in clearing out the German bosches from all the villages on the left bank of the Ourcq, which they had occupied in order to protect the flank of their right wing. Unfortunately for us the English heavy artillery, which would have smashed the beggars to bits, had not yet come up to help us, although we expected them with some anxiety, as big business events began as soon as we drove the outposts back to their main lines.

"However, we were equal to the preliminary task, and, heartened by the news of an ammunition convoy which had been turned into a pretty fireworks display by 'Soixante-dix' Pau, my Zouaves, (as you see, I belong to the First Division, which has a reputation to keep up, n'est ce pas?) were in splendid form. Of course, they all laughed at me. They wanted to get near those German guns and nearer still to the gunners. That was before they knew the exact meaning of shellfire well.

"They did good things, those Zouaves of mine, but it wasn't pleasant work. We fought from village to village, very close fighting, so that sometimes we could look into our enemy's eyes. The Moroccans were with us. The native troops are unlike my boys, who are Frenchmen, and they were like demons with their bayonet work.

"Several of the villages were set on fire by the Germans before they retired from them, and soon great columns of smoke with pillars of flames and clouds of flying sparks rose up into the blue sky and made a picture of hell there, for really it was hell on earth. Our gunners were shelling Germans from pillar to post, as it were, and strewing the ground with their dead. It was across and among these dead bodies that we infantry had to charge.

"They lay about in heaps. It made me sick, even in the excitement of it all. The enemy's quick-firers were marvelous. I am bound to say we did not get it all our own way. They always manoeuvre them in the same style, and a very clever style it is. First of all, they mask them with infantry; then, when the French charge, they reveal them and put us to the test under the most withering fire. It is almost impossible to stand against it, and in this case we had to retire after each rush for about 250 meters. Then, quick as lightning, the Germans got their mitrailleuses across the ground which we had yielded to them and waited for us to come on again, when they repeated the same operation.

"I can tell you it was pretty trying to the nerves. My Zouaves were very steady in spite of fairly heavy losses. It is quite untrue to say that the Germans have a greater number of mitrailleuses than the French. I believe that the proportion is exactly the same to each division, but they handle them more cleverly, and their fire is much more effective than ours.

"In a village named Penchard there was some very sharp fighting, and some of our artillery was posted thereabout. Presently a German aeroplane came overhead, circling round in reconnoissance; but it was out for more than that. Suddenly it began to drop bombs and, whether by design or otherwise, they exploded in the middle of a field hospital. One of my friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a bullet from one of these bombs, but I don't know what other casualties there were. The inevitable happened shortly after the disappearance of the aeroplane. German shells searched the position and found it with unpleasant accuracy. It is always the same. The German aeroplanes are really wonderful in the way they search out the positions of our guns. We always know that within half an hour of observation by aeroplane shells will begin to fall above gunners, unless they have altered their position. It was so in this fighting round Meaux yesterday.

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

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

"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, and at every faint puff of wind sparks floated about them like falling stars.

"But other fires were burning. Under the cover of darkness the Germans had piled the dead into great heaps and had covered them with straw and paraffin; then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres.

"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. One of my own comrades lay very badly wounded, and when he wakened out of his unconsciousness one of these beastly birds was sitting on his chest waiting for him to die. That is war.

"The German shells were terrifying. I confess to you that there were times when my nerves were absolutely gone. I crouched down with my men (we were in open formation) and ducked my head at the sound of the bursting shell, and I trembled in every limb as though I had a fit of ague.

"It is true that in reality the German shells are not very effective. Only about one in four explodes nicely, but it is a bad thing when, as happened to me, the shells plopped around in a diameter of fifty meters. One hears the zip-zip of bullets, the boom of the great guns, the ste-tang of our French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of noise and stench, the screams at times of dying horses and men joined with the fury of gunfire and rising shrill above it, no man may boast of his courage. There were moments when I was a coward with all of them.

"But one gets used to it, as to all things. My ague did not last long. Soon I was shouting and cheering. Again we cleared the enemy out of the village of Bregy, and that was where I fell, wounded in the arm pretty badly by a bit of shell. When I came to myself a brother officer told me things were going on well and that we had rolled back the German right. That was better than bandages to me. I felt very well again, in spite of my weakness.

"It is the beginning of the end, and the Germans are on the run. They are exhausted and demoralized. Their pride has been broken; they are short of ammunition; they know their plans have failed.

"Now that we have them on the move nothing will save them. This war is going to be finished quicker than people thought. I believe that in a few days the enemy will be broken and that we shall have nothing more to do than kill them as they fight back in retreat."

That is the story, without any retouching of my pen, of a young Lieutenant of Zouaves whom I met after the battle of Meaux, with blood still splashed upon his uniform.

It is a human story, giving the experience of only one individual in the great battle, but it gives also in outline a narrative of that great military operation which has done irreparable damage to the German right wing in its plan of campaign and thrust it back across the Ourcq in a great retiring movement which has also begun upon the German centre and left.

*When War Burst on Arras*

[A Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES and The London Daily Chronicle.]

A TOWN IN FRANCE, Oct. 7.--Arras has been the pivot of a fierce battle which, commencing Thursday, was still in progress when I was forced to leave the citadel three days later.

In that period I was fortunate enough to penetrate into the firing line, and the experience is one that will never be dimmed in my memory. Like the movements of so many pawns on a mammoth chessboard was the feinting with scattered outposts to test the strength of the enemy.

I saw the action open with skirmishes at Vitry-en-Artois, and next morning one of the hardest battles which make a link in the chain flung right across France of the gigantic battle of rivers was being prosecuted before my eyes.

The days that ensued were full of feverish and hectic motion. Arras rattled and throbbed with the flow of an army and all the tragedy which war brings in its train. There were moments when its cobbled streets were threaded by streams of wounded from the country beyond. Guns boomed incessantly, a fitting requiem to the sad little processions which occasionally revealed that some poor fellow had sacrificed his life for the flag which accompanied him to his grave.

I reached Arras on Sept. 29. The Germans had occupied it a fortnight earlier. Now it was placid, sleepy, and deserted, and bore no outward signs of having suffered from their occupation. I learned, however, that although they had refrained from demolishing buildings, there had been scenes of debauchery, and private houses had been ransacked.

It was declared that the only German paying for anything during the whole of the fortnight's occupation was a member of the Hohenzollern family, an important officer who had made the Hôtel d'Univers his headquarters.

I decided to pass on to Vitry-en-Artois, twelve miles distant and six kilometers from Douai, where I had heard the Allies were in force. Here I obtained a room in a hotel.

Within a short while I saw armed cars. There came many warriors in many cars, cars fitted with mitrailleuses, cars advancing backward, cars with two soldiers in the back of each with their rifles rested on the back cushions and their fingers on the triggers, and with the muzzles of mitrailleuses pointing over their heads. Several cavalry scouts, too, are in the streets.

Once I ventured my head a little outside of the door and was curtly warned to eliminate myself or possibly I would get shot. I eliminated myself for the moment.

Now with dramatic suddenness death touches Vitry with her chill fingers. In the distance, right away beyond the bridge behind a bend in the road, there is a clatter of hoofs. It stops. Again it goes on and stops for about a couple of minutes, and then quite distinctly can be heard the sound of a body of horsemen proceeding at a walk.

The cavalry scouts have vanished into big barns on either side of the road, and around the corner of the bridge comes a small body of German cavalry. They have passed the spot where the French scouts are hidden and I have retreated to my bedroom window, from where I can count twelve of the Death's Head riders.

They are riding to their fate. Right slap up in front of the cars they come. A rifle shot rings out from where the French scouts are hidden, then another, and that is the signal for the inferno to be loosed.

C-r-r-r-r-r-ack, and the mitrailleuse spits out a regular hail of death, vicious, whiplike, never-ceasing cracks. Two horses are down and three men lie prone in the road.

The Germans have not fired a shot, all their energies being concentrated in wildly turning their horses to get back again round the bend.

It is too late. Another two are toppled over by the scouts in the barns, and then cars are after them, still spitting out an unending hail of lead.

It seems impossible that even a fly could live in such a stream of bullets, yet out of the dozen three get round the bend, and, galloping madly, make for the only spot where they can leave the road and get across country. Even the automobile and auto-mitrailleuse men cannot follow them there.

These fellows seem perfectly satisfied with a bag of nine, obtained without a scratch. All are dead, one of them with over twenty wounds in him. Two horses are stone dead, and three others have to be put out of their misery. The other four are contentedly standing at the roadside munching grass, one with a hind leg lifted a few inches off the ground.

The bodies of the dead Germans are laid side by side in a field to await burial. The uniforms are stripped of everything that can be removed, buttons and shoulder straps. The men in the cars take the water bottles, swords, and revolvers as mementos.

I imperfectly understood the real meaning of this scrap. I had thought it was an encounter between stray forces. A talk with the driver of an armed car, however, enlarged my perspective. It was a meeting of the outposts of two great opposing armies, one of which was at Douai, the other at Cambrai. The feelers of both forces were being extended to discover the various positions, preparatory to a big battle, which was expected on the morrow (Oct. 1) along the line of Cambrai-Douai-Valenciennes.

It was understood that the Germans had massed in force at Cambrai and strong wings were thrown out on both sides, the outposts of one wing, as we have already seen, coming into touch with the French at Vitry.

From the reports of the auto-mitrailleuse men, who cover great distances in a day, similar skirmishing had been taking place at Etain, (where some farmhouses were burned,) Eterpigny, Croisilles, Boisleux, and Boyelles, these places ranging from ten to twenty kilometers from Arras.

There was a general exodus from Vitry and I secured standing room in a wagon of the last train leaving for Arras. It was loaded with fugitives.

Arras had changed completely on my return. Its calmness was gone. The station was empty of civilians, there were no trains running and the station entrance was in charge of a strong picket of soldiers, while the road outside echoed to the tread of infantry.

I stood still in amazement, while my papers were being closely examined, and watched regiment after regiment of foot with their transport trains complete marching out on the road to Douai. This was part of the preparation for the big battle which I was told was going to begin tomorrow.

In the town itself the transformation was still more amazing--soldiers in every street, cavalry, infantry, dragoons, lancers, and engineers in ones and twos, and parties of twenty or thirty picturesque Moroccans. I never saw such a medley of colors and expressions, and the whole town was full of them--material for one army corps at least.

I installed myself in quarters at the Hôtel de l'Univers, with the intention of getting away the first thing in the morning if possible. But it was not possible. I was informed that Arras was now under military control, and no permits were being issued whatsoever. The Lieutenant who told me this smiled as I shrugged my shoulders.

"You will bear witness, Monsieur, that I tried my best to get out," said I.

"Certainly; but why go away?" he asked with a smile. "Arras est tres belle ville, Monsieur. You have a good hotel, a good bed, and good food. Why should you go out?"

And so I stayed at Arras.

That was Sept. 30. The next day I could hear guns. They started at about 8 o'clock in the morning, the French guns being in position about five kilometers outside of Arras to the south, southeast, and east, sixteen batteries of France's artillery or 75-millimeter calibre.

All day long the guns thundered and roared, and all day long I sat outside the café of the Hôtel des Voyageurs in the Place de la Gare. The station building was right in front of me. I longed for a position which would enable me to see over the tall buildings on to the battlefield beyond. Even the roof of the station would have suited. There was a little crowd of officials already there with their field glasses, and they could discern what was going on, for I noticed several pointing here and there whenever a particularly loud explosion was heard.

Two men in civilian clothes sat down beside me and gave me "good day," evidently curious as to my nationality. I invited them to join me in coffee and cognac, and during the ensuing conversation we all became very friendly, and I was given to understand that one of them was the volunteer driver of an auto-mitrailleuse who had just come off duty.

I remarked that it would be very interesting to get a sight of what was going on behind the station.

"Is it very near--the battle?"

"About five kilometers, Monsieur. The German guns are ten kilometers distant. One of the German shells exploded behind the station this morning. Would Monsieur like to walk out a little way?"

"But surely the pickets will not let me pass beyond the barrier," said I.

My good friend of the auto-mitrailleuse smiled, rose, and buttoned up his coat. "Come with me," he invited.

At the barrier we were stopped, but luck had not deserted me, for in the Sergeant in charge of the pickets I recognized another café acquaintance of the previous night. We shook hands, exchanged cigarettes, and proceeded up and down numerous streets, bearing always southward in the direction of the firing, until the open country was reached.

My companion suddenly caught hold of my arm and we both jumped up the bank at the side of the road to let a long string of artillery drivers trot past on their way back for more ammunition. Another cloud of dust, and coming up behind us was a fresh lot of shells on the way out to the firing line.

Right up in the sky ahead suddenly appeared a ball of yellow greeny smoke, which grew bigger and bigger, and then "boom" came the sound of a gun about three seconds afterward. A shell had burst in the air about 300 yards away. Another and another came--all about the same place. They appeared to come from the direction of Bapaume.

"Bad, very bad," commented my companion. And so it appeared to me, for the Germans were dropping their shells from the southeast, at least one kilometer over range. We were standing beside a strawstack and looking due south, watching the just discernible line of French guns, when we heard the ominous whistling screech of an approaching shell. Down on our faces behind the stack, down we went like lightning, and over to the left, not 200 yards away, rose a huge column of black smoke and earth, and just afterward a very loud boom. A big German gun had come into action, slightly nearer this time.

Just behind a wood I could plainly see the smoke of the gun itself rising above the trees. Two more shells from the big gun exploded within twenty yards of each other, and then, with disconcerting suddenness, a French battery came into action within a hundred yards of our strawstack cover. They had evidently been there for some time, awaiting eventualities, for we had no suspicion of their proximity, and they were completely hidden.

My ears are still tingling and buzzing from the sound of those guns. One after another the guns of this battery bombarded the newly taken up position of the German big guns, which replied with one shell every three minutes.

Presently we had the satisfaction of hearing a violent explosion in the wood, and a column of smoke and flame rose up to a great height.

Soixante-quinze had again scored, for the German guns had been put out of action. From out the French position came infantry, at this point thousands of little dots over the landscape, presenting a front of, I should think, about two miles, rapidly advancing in skirmishing order. Every now and then the sharp crackle of rifle fire could distinctly be heard.

The French had advanced over a mile, and the Germans had hastily evacuated the wood. Other French batteries now came into action, and the German fire over the whole arc was becoming decidedly fainter and less frequent. This might, of course, be due to changing their positions on the German front.

Wounded began to arrive, which showed that for the present at any rate, it was safe to go out to the trenches to collect them.

Very few of them seemed badly hit, and the wounded French artillerymen seemed to be elated in spite of their wounds. Had not their beloved Soixante-quinze again scored? The time was 6 o'clock of a beautiful evening and the firing, though fairly continuous, was dropping off. The Germans had changed their positions and it was getting a little too hazy to make observation, although a French aeroplane was seen descending in wide circles over the German position, evidently quite regardless of the numerous small balls of smoke, which made their appearance in the sky in dangerous proximity to the daring pilot.

It is very interesting to watch these aeroplane shells bursting in the air. First of all one sees a vivid little streak of bluish white light in the sky, and then instantaneously a smoke ball, which appears to be about the size of a football, is seen in the sky, always fairly close to the machine. Then there is the sound of an explosion like a giant cracker.

Occasionally several guns will fire at about the same time, and it is weird to watch the various balls of smoke, apparently coming into being from nowhere, all around the machine. Sometimes one of these shells, which are filled with a species of shrapnel, bursts rather unpleasantly near the aeroplane, and then one sees the machine turn quickly and rise a little higher.

Two or three holes have been neatly drilled through the planes. Perhaps one has appeared in the body of the machine, rather too near the pilot for safety; but it is a big gamble, anyhow, and besides the pilot has been instructed to find out where the various positions are, and he means to do it.

So he simply rises a little higher and calmly continues his big circles over the German position.

I take off my hat to these brave men, the aeroplane pilots. They are willing to chance their luck. What matters it if their machine gets hit, if the planes are riddled with holes? It will still fly, even if the engine gets a fatal wound and stops.

The pilot, if he is high enough, can still glide to safety in his own lines. But (and it is a big "but") should a shrapnel ball find its billet in the pilot--well, one has only to die once, and it is a quick and sure death to fall with one's machine.

*The Battles in Belgium*

[An Associated Press Dispatch.]

LONDON, Oct. 26, 4:40 A.M.--The correspondent of The Daily News, who has been in an armored train to the banks of the Yser, gives a good description of the battle in the North. He says:

"The battle rages along the Yser with frightful destruction of life. Air engines, sea engines, and land engines deathsweep this desolate country, vertically, horizontally, and transversely. Through it the frail little human engines crawl and dig, walk and run, skirmishing, charging, and blundering in little individual fights and tussles, tired and puzzled, ordered here and there, sleeping where they can, never washing, and dying unnoticed. A friend may find himself firing on a friendly force, and few are to blame.

"Thursday the Germans were driven back over the Yser; Friday they secured a footing again, and Saturday they were again hurled back. Now a bridge blown up by one side is repaired by the other; it is again blown up by the first, or left as a death trap till the enemy is actually crossing.

"Actions by armored trains, some of them the most reckless adventures, are attempted daily. Each day accumulates an unwritten record of individual daring feats, accepted as part of the daily work. Day by day our men push out on these dangerous explorations, attacked by shell fire, in danger of cross-fire, dynamite, and ambuscades, bringing a priceless support to the threatened lines. As the armored train approaches the river under shell fire the car cracks with the constant thunder of guns aboard. It is amazing to see the angle at which the guns can be swung.

"And overhead the airmen are busy venturing through fog and puffs of exploding shells to get one small fact of information. We used to regard the looping of the loop of the Germans overhead as a hare-brained piece of impudent defiance to our infantry fire. Now we know its means early trouble for the infantry.

"Besides us, as we crawl up snuffing the lines like dogs on a scent, grim trainloads of wounded wait soundlessly in the sidings. Further up the line ambulances are coming slowly back. The bullets of machine guns begin to rattle on our armored coats. Shells we learned to disregard, but the machine gun is the master in this war.

"Now we near the river at a flat country farm. The territory is scarred with trenches, and it is impossible to say at first who is in them, so incidental and separate are the fortunes of this riverside battle. The Germans are on our bank enfilading the lines of the Allies' trenches. We creep up and the Germans come into sight out of the trenches, rush to the bank, and are scattered and mashed. The Allies follow with a fierce bayonet charge.

"The Germans do not wait. They rush to the bridges and are swept away by the deadliest destroyer of all, the machine gun. The bridge is blown up, but who can say by whom. Quickly the train runs back.

"'A brisk day,' remarks the correspondent. 'Not so bad,' replies the officer. So the days pass."

The Telegraph's correspondent in Belgium, who, accompanied by a son of the Belgian War Minister, M. de Broqueville, made a tour of the battleground in the Dixmude district last Wednesday, says:

"No pen could do justice to the grandeur and horror of the scene. As far as the eye could reach nothing could be seen but burning villages and bursting shells. I realized for the first time how completely the motor car had revolutionized warfare and how every other factor was now dominated by the absence or presence of this unique means of transport.

"Every road to the front was simply packed with cars. They seemed an ever-rolling, endless stream, going and returning to the front, while in many villages hundreds of private cars were parked under the control of the medical officer, waiting in readiness to carry the wounded.

"Arrived at the firing line, a terrible scene presented itself. The shell fire from the German batteries was so terrific that Belgian soldiers and French marines were continually being blown out of their dugouts and sent scattering to cover. Elsewhere, also, little groups of peasants were forced to flee because their cellars began to fall in. These unfortunates had to make their way as best they could on foot to the rear. They were frightened to death by the bursting shells, and the sight of crying children among them was most pathetic.

"Dixmude was the objective of the German attack, and shells were bursting all over it, crashing among the roofs and blowing whole streets to pieces. From a distance of three miles we could hear them crashing down, but the town itself was invisible, except for the flames and the smoke and clouds rising above it. The Belgians had only a few field batteries, so that the enemy's howitzers simply dominated the field, and the infantry trenches around the town had to rely upon their own unaided efforts.

"Our progress along the road was suddenly stopped by one of the most horrible sights I have ever seen. A heavy howitzer shell had fallen and burst right in the midst of a Belgian battery, making its way to the front, causing terrible destruction. The mangled horses and men among the débris presented a shocking spectacle.

"Eventually, we got into Dixmude itself, and every time a shell came crashing among the roofs we thought our end had come. The Hôtel de Ville (town hall) was a sad sight. The roof was completely riddled by shell, while inside was a scene of chaos. It was piled with loaves of bread, bicycles, and dead soldiers.

"The battle redoubled in fury, and by 7 o'clock in the evening Dixmude was a furnace, presenting a scene of terrible grandeur. The horizon was red with burning homes.

"Our return journey was a melancholy one, owing to the constant trains of wounded that were passing."

The Daily Mail's Rotterdam correspondent, telegraphing Sunday evening, says:

"Slowly but surely the Germans are being beaten back on the western wing, and old men and young lads are being hurried to the front. The enemy were in strong force at Dixmude, where the Allies were repulsed once, only to attack again with renewed vigor.

"Roulers resembles a shambles. It was taken and retaken four times, and battered to ruins in the process. The German guns made the place untenable for the Allies.

"An Oosburg message says the firing at Ostend is very heavy, and that the British are shelling the suburbs, which are held by the Germans. Last night and this morning large bodies of Germans left Bruges for Ostend. It is believed the Ostend piers have been blown up."

"The position on the coast is stationary this morning," says a Daily Mail dispatch from Flushing, Netherlands, under date of Sunday. "There is less firing and it is more to the southward. No alteration of the situation is reported from Ostend.

"The German losses are frightful. Three meadows near Ostend are heaped with dead. The wounded are now installed in private houses in Bruges, where large wooden sheds are being rushed up to receive additional injured. Thirty-seven farm wagons containing wounded, dying, and dead passed in one hour near Middelkerke.

"The Germans have been working at new intrenchments between Coq sur Mer and Wenduyne to protect their road to Bruges."

Gen. von Tripp and nearly all his staff, who were killed in a church tower at Leffinghe by the fire from the British warships, have been buried in Ostend.

*Seeking Wounded on Battle Front*

By Philip Gibbs of The London Daily Chronicle.

FURNES, Belgium, Oct. 21.--The staff of the English hospital, to which a mobile column has been attached for field work, has arrived here with a convoy of ambulances and motor cars. This little party of doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers, and chauffeurs, under the direction of Dr. Bevis and Dr. Munro, has done splendid work in Belgium, and many of them were in the siege of Antwerp.

Miss Macnaughton, the novelist, was one of those who went through this great test of courage, and Lady Dorothie Feilding, one of Lord Denbigh's daughters, won everybody's love by her gallantry and plucky devotion to duty in many perilous hours. She takes all risks with laughing courage. She has been under fire in many hot skirmishes, and has helped bring away the wounded from the fighting around Ghent when her own life might have paid the forfeit for defiance to bursting shells.

This morning a flying column of the hospital was preparing to set out in search of wounded men on the firing line under direction of Lieut. de Broqueville, son of the Belgian War Minister. The Lieutenant, very cool and debonair, was arranging the order of the day with Dr. Munro. Lady Dorothie Feilding and the two other women in field kit stood by their cars, waiting for the password. There were four stretcher-bearers, including Mr. Gleeson, an American, who has worked with this party around Ghent and Antwerp, proving himself to be a man of calm and quiet courage at a critical moment, always ready to take great risks in order to bring in a wounded man.

It was decided to take three ambulances and two motor cars. Lieut. de Broqueville anticipated a heavy day's work. He invited me to accompany the column in a car which I shared with Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett of The London Daily Telegraph, who also volunteered for the expedition.

We set out before noon, winding our way through the streets of Furnes. We were asked to get into Dixmude, where there were many wounded. It is about ten miles away from Furnes. As we went along the road, nearer to the sound of the great guns which for the last hour or two had been firing incessantly, we passed many women and children. They were on their way to some place further from the firing. Poor old grandmothers in black bonnets and skirts trudged along the lines of poplars with younger women, who clasped their babies tightly in one hand, while with the other they carried heavy bundles of household goods.

Along the road came German prisoners, marching rapidly between mounted guards. Many of them were wounded, and all of them had a wild, famished, terror-stricken look.

At a turn in the road the battle lay before us, and we were in the zone of fire. Away across the fields was a line of villages with the town of Dixmude a little to the right of us, perhaps a mile and a quarter away. From each little town smoke was rising in separate columns which met at the top in a great black pall. At every moment this blackness was brightened by puffs of electric blue, extraordinarily vivid, as shells burst in the air. From the mass of houses in each town came jets of flame, following explosions which sounded with terrific thudding shocks. On a line of about nine miles there was an incessant cannonade. The farthest villages were already on fire.

Quite close to us, only about half a mile across the fields to the left, there were Belgian batteries at work and rifle fire from many trenches. We were between two fires, and Belgian and German shells came screeching over our heads. The German shells were dropping quite close to us, plowing up the fields with great pits. We could hear them burst and scatter and could see them burrow.

In front of us on the road lay a dreadful barrier, which brought us to a halt. A German shell had fallen right on top of an ammunition convoy. Four horses had been blown to pieces and their carcasses lay strewn across the road. The ammunition wagon had been broken into fragments and smashed and burned to cinders by the explosion of its own shells. A Belgian soldier lay dead, cut in half by a great fragment of steel. Further along the road were two other dead horses in pools of blood. It was a horrible and sickening sight, from which one turned away shuddering with cold sweat, but we had to pass it after some of this dead flesh had been dragged away.

Further down the road we had left two of the cars in charge of Lady Dorothie Feilding and her two nurses. They were to wait there until we brought back some of the wounded. Two ambulances came on with our light car, commanded by Lieut. Broqueville and Dr. Munro. Mr. Gleeson asked me to help him as stretcher-bearer. Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett was to work with one of the other stretcher-bearers.

I was in one of the ambulances, and Mr. Gleeson sat behind me in the narrow space between the stretchers. Over his shoulder he talked in a quiet voice of the job that lay before us. I was glad of that quiet voice, so placid in its courage. We went forward at what seemed to me a crawl, though I think it was a fair pace, shells bursting around us now on all sides, while shrapnel bullets sprayed the earth about us. It appeared to me an odd thing that we were still alive. Then we came into Dixmude.

When I saw it for the first and last time it was a place of death and horror. The streets through which we passed were utterly deserted and wrecked from end to end, as though by an earthquake. Incessant explosions of shell fire crashed down upon the walls which still stood. Great gashes opened in the walls, which then toppled and fell. A roof came tumbling down with an appalling clatter. Like a house of cards blown by a puff of wind, a little shop suddenly collapsed into a mass of ruins. Here and there, further into the town, we saw living figures. They ran swiftly for a moment and then disappeared into dark caverns under toppling porticos. They were Belgian soldiers.

We were now in a side street leading into the Town Hall square. It seemed impossible to pass, owing to the wreckage strewn across the road. "Try to take it," said Dr. Munro, who was sitting beside the chauffeur. We took it, bumping over heaps of débris, and then swept around into the square. It was a spacious place, with the Town Hall at one side of it--or what was left of the Town Hall; there was only the splendid shell of it left, sufficient for us to see the skeleton of a noble building which had once been the pride of Flemish craftsmen. Even as we turned toward it parts of it were falling upon the ruins already on the ground. I saw a great pillar lean forward and then topple down. A mass of masonry crashed from the portico. Some stiff, dark forms lay among the fallen stones; they were dead soldiers. I hardly glanced at them, for we were in search of the living.

Our cars were brought to a halt outside the building, and we all climbed down. I lighted a cigarette, and I noticed two of the other men fumble for matches for the same purpose. We wanted something to steady our nerves. There was never a moment when shell fire was not bursting in that square. Shrapnel bullets whipped the stones. The Germans were making a target of the Town Hall and dropping their shells with dreadful exactitude on either side of it.

I glanced toward the flaming furnace to the right of the building. There was a wonderful glow at the heart of it, yet it did not give me any warmth. At that moment Dr. Munro and Lieut. de Broqueville mounted the steps of the Town Hall, followed by Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett and myself. Mr. Gleeson was already taking down a stretcher; he had a little smile about his lips.

A French officer and two men stood under the broken archway of the entrance, between the fallen pillars and masonry. A yard away from them lay a dead soldier, a handsome young man with clear-cut features turned upward to the gaping roof. A stream of blood was coagulating around his head, but did not touch the beauty of his face. Another dead man lay huddled up quite close, and his face was hidden.

"Are there any wounded here, Sir?" asked our young Lieutenant. The other officer spoke excitedly. He was a brave man, but he could not hide the terror in his soul, because he had been standing so long waiting for death, which stood beside him, but did not touch him. It appeared from his words that there were several wounded men among the dead down in the cellar, and that he would be obliged to us if we could rescue them.

We stood on some steps, looking down into that cellar. It was a dark hole, illumined dimly by a lantern, I think. I caught sight of a little heap of huddled bodies. Two soldiers, still unwounded, dragged three of them out and handed them up to us. The work of getting those three men into the first ambulance seemed to us interminable; it was really no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. During that time Dr. Munro, perfectly calm and quiet, was moving about the square, directing the work. Lieut. de Broqueville was making inquiries about other wounded in other houses. I lent a hand to one of the stretcher-bearers. What the others were doing I do not know, except that Mr. Gleeson's calm face made a clear-cut image on my brain.

I had lost consciousness of myself. Something outside myself, as it seemed, was saying that there was no way of escape; that it was monstrous to suppose that all these bursting shells would not smash the ambulance to bits and finish the agony of the wounded, and that death was very hideous. I remember thinking, also, how ridiculous it was for men to kill one another like this and to make such hells on earth.

Then Lieut. de Broqueville spoke a word of command; the first ambulance must now get back. I was with the first ambulance, in Mr. Gleeson's company. We had a full load of wounded men, and we were loitering. I put my head outside the cover and gave the word to the chauffeur. As I did so a shrapnel bullet came past my head, and, striking a piece of ironwork, flattened out and fell at my feet. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, though God alone knows why, for I was not in search of souvenirs.

So we started with the first ambulance through those frightful streets again and out into the road to the country. "Very hot!" said one of the men--I think it was the chauffeur. Somebody else asked if we should get through with luck. Nobody answered the question. The wounded men with us were very quiet; I thought they were dead. There was only an incessant cannonade and the crashing of buildings. The mitrailleuses were at work now, spitting out bullets. It was a worse sound than that of the shells; it seemed more deadly in its rattle. I started back behind the car and saw the other ambulance in our wake. I did not see the motor car.

Along the country roads the fields were still being plowed by shells which burst over our heads. We came to a halt again in a place where soldiers were crouched under cottage walls. There were few walls now, and inside some of the remaining cottages were many wounded men. Their comrades were giving them first aid and wiping the blood out of their eyes. We managed to take some of these on board. They were less quiet than the others we had, and groaned in a heartrending way.

A little later we made a painful discovery--Lieut. de Broqueville, our gallant young leader, was missing. By some horrible mischance he had not taken his place in either of the ambulances or the motor cars. None of us had the least idea what had happened to him; we had all imagined that he had scrambled up like the rest of us, after giving the order to get away.

There was only one thing to do--to get back in search of him. Even in the half hour since we had left the town Dixmude had burst into flames and was a great blazing torch. If de Broqueville were left in that hell he would not have a chance of life.

It was Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett who, with great gallantry, volunteered to go back and search for our leader. They took the light car and sped back toward the burning town. The ambulances went on with their cargo of wounded, and Lady Dorothie Feilding and I were left alone for a little time in one of the cars. We drove back along the road toward Dixmude, and rescued another wounded man left in a wayside cottage.

By this time there were five towns blazing in the darkness, and in spite of the awful suspense which we were now suffering we could not help staring at the fiendish splendor of that sight.

Dr. Munro joined us again, and after consultation we decided to get as near to Dixmude as we could, in case our friends had to come out without their car or had been wounded.

The German bombardment was now terrific. All the guns were concentrated upon Dixmude and the surrounding trenches. In the darkness under a stable wall I stood listening to the great crashes for an hour, when I had not expected such a lease of life. Inside the stable soldiers were sleeping in the straw, careless that at any moment a shell might burst through upon them. The hour seemed a night; then we saw the gleam of headlights, and an English voice called out.

Ashmead-Bartlett and Gleeson had come back. They had gone to the entrance to Dixmude, but could get no further, owing to the flames and shells. They, too, had waited for an hour, but had not found de Broqueville. It seemed certain that he was dead; and, very sorrowfully, as there was nothing to be done, we drove back to Furnes.

At the gate of the convent were some Belgian ambulances which had come from another part of the front with their wounded. I helped to carry one of them in, and strained my shoulders with the weight of the stretcher. Another wounded man put his arm around my neck, and then, with a dreadful cry, collapsed, so that I had to hold him in a strong grip. A third man, horribly smashed about the head, walked almost unaided into the operating room. Mr. Gleeson and I led him with just a touch on his arm. This morning he lies dead on a little pile of straw in a quiet corner of the courtyard.

I sat down to a supper, which I had not expected to eat. There was a strange excitement in my body, which trembled a little after the day's adventures. It seemed very strange to be sitting down to table with cheerful faces about me, but some of the faces were not cheerful. Those of us who knew of the disappearance of de Broqueville sat silently over our soup.

Then suddenly Lady Dorothie Feilding gave a little cry of joy, and Lieut. de Broqueville came walking briskly forward. It seemed a miracle; it was hardly less than that. For several hours after our departure from Dixmude he had remained in that inferno. He had missed us when he went down into the cellar to haul out another wounded man, forgetting that he had given us the order to start. There he had remained, with buildings crashing all around him until the German fire had died down a little. He succeeded in rescuing his wounded man, for whom he found room in a Belgian ambulance outside the town and walked back along the road to Furnes.

We clasped hands and were thankful for his escape. This morning he has gone again to what is left of Dixmude with a flying column. Dr. Munro and Mr. Gleeson, with Lady Dorothie Feilding and her friends, are in the party, although in Dixmude German infantry have taken possession of the outer ruins.

The courage of this English field ambulance under the Belgian Red Cross is one of those splendid things which shine through this devil's work of war.

*At the Kaiser's Headquarters*

By Cyril Brown of The New York Times.

GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Oct. 20.--The most vulnerable, vital spot of the whole German Empire is, paradoxically, in France--the small city on the Meuse where the Grosses Hauptquartier, the brains of the whole German fighting organism, has been located for the last few weeks. After a lucky dash through the forbidden zone of France held by the Germans I managed to pay a surprise visit to the Great Headquarters, where, among other interesting sights, I have already seen the Kaiser, the King of Saxony, the Crown Prince, Major Langhorne, the American Military Attaché; Field Marshal von Moltke, and shoals of lesser celebrities with which the town is overrun. My stay is of indeterminate length, and only until the polite but insistent pressure which the Kaiser's secret police and the General Staff are bringing to bear on their unbidden guest to leave becomes irresistible.

It was a sometime TIMES reader, a German brakeman, who had worked in New York and was proud of being able to speak "American," who helped me to slip aboard the military postzug (post train) that left the important military centre of L---- at 1:30 A.M. and started to crawl toward the front with a mixed cargo of snoring field chaplains, soldiers rejoining their units, officers with iron crosses pinned to their breasts, ambulance men who talked gruesome shop, fresh meat, surgical supplies, mail bags, &c. Sometimes the train would spurt up to twelve miles an hour. There were long stops at every station, while unshaven Landsturm men on guard scanned the car windows in search of spies by the light of their electric flash lamps. After many hours somebody said we were now in Belgium.

There are no longer any bothersome customs formalities at the Belgian border, but the ghost of a house that had been knocked into a cocked hat by a shell indicated that we were in the land of the enemy. Houses that looked as if they had been struck by a Western cyclone now became more numerous. A village church steeple had a jagged hole clean through it. After more hours somebody else said we were in France. Every bridge, culvert, and crossroad was guarded by heavily bearded Landsturm men, who all looked alike in their funny, antiquated, high black leather helmets--usually in twos--the countryside dotted with cheery little watch fires.

In the little French villages all lights were out in the houses. The streets were barred like railroad crossings except that the poles were painted in red-white-black stripes, a lantern hanging from the middle of the barrier to keep the many army automobiles that passed in the night from running amuck.

Sedan, a beehive of activity, was reached at daybreak. Here most of the military, plus the Field Chaplains, got out. From here on daylight showed the picturesque ruin the French themselves had wrought--the frequent tangled wreckage of dynamited steel railway bridges sticking out of the waters of the river, piles of shattered masonry damming the current, here and there half an arch still standing of a once beautiful stone footbridge. I was told that over two hundred bridges had been blown up by the retreating French in their hopeless attempt to delay the German advance in this part of France alone.

Several hours more of creeping over improvised wooden bridges and restored roadbeds brought the post train to the French city that had 20,000 inhabitants before the war which the Kaiser and the Great Headquarters now occupy.