CHAPTER X The European Conflict
Many and long were the discussions held by Jim and Bill and Larry now that they had reached the neighbourhood of the vast European conflict which had drawn America into its whirlpool. As they sat on their captured trawler at Dover they could literally hear the sound of that conflict in the distance; for across the Channel, but fifty miles inland, beyond Ypres—the celebrated Ypres, which had long since been shattered into fragments—British troops were fighting their way along the ridge of Paschendaele. Messines, the German stronghold, had fallen. British guns, made in British factories manned by British women, had smashed the Hun defences.
Consider this achievement for a while. In 1914 Britain possessed guns sufficient only for a small expeditionary force, and the supply none too liberal. In 1915 her manufacturing resources were sufficient to supply guns for an increasing host of volunteers—guns and every other munition necessary for the conduct of warfare. But the business of manufacturing weapons and all that appertains to fighting was not yet by any means fully expanded. Indeed, the need for it was not apparent. The call for shells, more shells, and still more shells, and for guns by the hundred to project them, had not yet gone through the land, nor had munition factories sprung up in every direction with the rapidity of mushrooms.
Then came the Ministry of Munitions—a huge Government concern inaugurated to control supplies for every kind of warfare. It commenced its work perhaps hesitatingly, it forged ahead with determination, it got fully into its stride; so that when 1916 arrived, and Britain and France faced the German in Picardy across the Somme valley, British guns, aye, and British men, were the masters of the situation.
And here was 1917 with still more men and with a still mightier array of munitions, deluging the German, bruising him all along the line through Flanders into France, smashing him and his defences, driving him from the ridges which he had held since 1914, and from which he had looked down upon the British troops floundering in the mud in Flanders.
To the Kaiser and his ruthless agents, to the German High Command as it is termed, those days must have seemed portentous. Disaster hung in the air, the fortune which had favoured them from the first instant seemed to have departed from them altogether. The Central Powers were in fact girt in by enemies. The world had declared war against these land and sea marauders. America had joined the Allies, having suffered indignities at the hands of the Kaiser; Portugal had joined the ranks of Prussia's enemies; and states in South America were already considering their position, or were now throwing in their lot with those sworn to beat down the oppressors of mankind and to fight for the freedom of nations.
The Dardanelles was an old tale. Britain had there left her mark, and the graves of her sons, and had departed. In Egypt the tribes haunting the Delta of the Nile, stirred up by German agents and supplied with money and with weapons, had revolted and had been subjugated by British columns. The Senussi, to take an example, were now conquered. Across the Canal, and far to the east of it, Turkish hosts gathered in Beersheba, Jerusalem, and other places were watching the steady relentless advance of a British railway across the desert, and, as Bill and his friends reached European waters, troops of the King-Emperor were already on the fringe of Palestine, where very soon they were to advance by Beersheba, Hebron, Bethlehem, and other places of Biblical interest, and were to hoist their flag over the ancient and sacred walls of Jerusalem, once the home of historical crusaders.
Farther east lay Mesopotamia, where the forced surrender of General Townshend's gallant troops at Kut had long since been avenged by the capture of that place and the taking of Bagdad. The noble-hearted Sir Stanley Maude was already leading his forces up the Tigris and Euphrates towards Mosul, and, though in later months that dread scourge cholera seized him, there were others to step into his place and still lead British and Indian troops onwards.
Glance to the eastern area of Europe. If matters wore a rosy aspect on the French front, in Egypt, Salonica, and Mesopotamia, if along those lengths of British trench-lines British guns and British troops were causing the Prussian to reel, the Turks to surrender, and the Bulgarians to wish perhaps that they had never joined hands with the Kaiser and his soldiers, to the east of Europe Russian troops were reeling from another reason altogether.
Revolution was in the air; the rights of man were being preached and practised in preference to patriotism and unselfish devotion to country; upstarts were springing into position; subtle agents of the Kaiser, their pockets heavy with German gold, had seized upon the ear of the ignorant people; soldiers turned against their officers; the working and the peasant class were induced first to oppose and then to throw off allegiance to those who had been their lords and masters. Anarchy supervened, though for a time the revolutionists, holding those who would carry matters to great lengths, attempted to form a Government and control the country, even attempted to keep the soldiers in the trenches and to stem the German invasion; until anarchy reared its head still higher, the voices of Trotsky and Lenin overpowered the voices of the moderates. The Tsar and his house had been removed, and were, in fact, prisoners; the government of the people, on behalf of the people, was destroyed. Trotsky and Lenin became, in fact, the rulers of the country, and they, be it understood, were already more than half given over to Germany. Trenches were abandoned, soldiers gave themselves leave and went off to their distant homes, a few faithful and patriotic divisions were left stranded; guns by the hundred and munitions of every description—for the most part supplied by Britain—lay at the mercy of any German battalion that cared to come for them.
The inevitable followed. German troops advanced and seized wide tracts of country. They took, with only the trouble of taking it, vast masses of military booty; they imposed peace terms on the Russians which practically made slaves of them; and, with their accustomed cunning, so handled matters that this huge country, once tenanted by a patriotic people, became dissolved into separate provinces, each claiming its own sovereignty, the one already engaged in warfare against the other, careless of the fact that the conqueror was already knocking at their doors.
That was the position which faced the line when Jim and Bill and Larry came upon the scene. Our eastern ally, who had held masses of Germans and Austrians, and bid fair with proper organization and generalship to march into Austria, and perhaps into the Kaiser's territory, suddenly went out of the conflict, leaving Germany and Austria free to withdraw their troops and throw them upon the French and British in the west and upon the Italians. The situation was more than serious. Already, in fact, Italy had suffered a serious reverse, and had been driven from the line along the River Izonso, which she had captured, right back to the Piave.
There again German cunning and Austrian duplicity had had much to do with this loss of territory and of soldiers. Lies had been spread, gullible subjects of King Victor had listened to and had disseminated tales which robbed some of their comrades of their patriotic valour. Thus, when the ground was fully prepared, a secret massing of the Austrians and Germans allowed strong forces to be flung upon our Italian ally. The line reeled; where the poisonous lies of the Germans had penetrated, it broke, it fell back, in places it surrendered. The whole line then was forced to retire, but, thanks to the valour of the majority of the Italians, to the patriotism of King Victor's army, a rear-guard action was fought which saved the situation, though for a time the position was precarious, so precarious, in fact, that British and French troops were rushed to Italy to stem this invasion.
And now the end of 1917 was at hand. What had 1918 in prospect for Britain and her allies? The line in France, stretching from Dunkerque to Verdun and so to Belfort, bristled with men and weapons. Opposite it lay the German line packed with an increasing throng of soldiers, while guns and every implement of warfare, now no longer needed on the Russian front, were being massed, preparatory to the biggest conflict the world has ever witnessed.
But not yet had the blow fallen. A comparative calm existed along the front—the calm before the storm which was undoubtedly brewing. It was this period of the war which found Bill and his friends stepping from the steamer at Boulogne, about to take their places in the ranks of the Allies.
"Hello, boys!" someone greeted them as they halted on the quay and looked about them. "Come over—eh?"
"Yep," Larry answered laconically, shaking hands with this undoubted specimen of American citizenship, and then casting his eyes round once more, for he could never tire of the hum and bustle which existed all round him.
What with railway trucks being slowly shunted towards the water-side, what with the vessel then busily unloading, the big station and its restaurant, alive with officers and men, with blue-frocked porters, hospital nurses, and every variety of human being; with the quay farther along stacked high with boxes and bales and parcels of every sort and description, more ships, motor-cars, motor-ambulances, a shrieking locomotive, soldiers, sailors, and civilians, women and children and babies, the place was a seething mass of movement, backed by the hills beyond, and the picturesque town of Boulogne climbing towards the summit. It was quite a little time, in fact, before either Larry or Bill or Jim could give much attention to the person who had accosted them. They found him a tall, raw-boned, thin, American non-commissioned officer.
"Names!" he snapped, and they gave them.
"Ah! I've heard of you. They sent me a chit through from London. You've come right here to get trained. How's that? Why not do your training in the camps in America?"
They told him—Larry in his jerky, short, abrupt and smiling manner; Jim, serious, rather monosyllabic, having to have the details dragged out of him; Bill impulsively, as one might expect of such a youth, yet modestly enough. Then the Sergeant stopped them and clapped a big, brawny hand on Bill's shoulder.
"I've heard of you. Gee!" he cried, and pushed the young fellow away from him so as to study him the better. "So you three are Larry and Jim and Bill, and, say, what did you do with the trawler?"
"Trawler!" Larry gaped, Jim gaped, Bill looked astonished.
"Aye, trawler! D'you think we're such dunces over here that we don't know what's going on? Just you wait! Look at this—a communiqué which was issued last night—see it?
"'Gallant affair in the North Sea. British prisoners on board a German trawler overpower crew and conduct a fight with another trawler. German torpedo-boat destroyer intervenes, but assistance arrives at the critical moment in the shape of a British destroyer. The escaped prisoners capture the other trawler and steam her in with the help of their prisoners. The two trawlers reach the roads at Dover quite safely. This feat is mainly the work of three men from America—Larry——'"
"Here, hold hard!" cried Larry, pushing his head forward, "you're romancing—eh? Gee! It's truth! Well I——!"
The big Sergeant shouted his laughter and pointed a finger at the diminutive Larry.
"True? I should say it was! So you are the three! Come right along. I've quarters for you, and you can get some food and then sit down and give me the whole yarn. To-morrow you'll go up country and then start in at the business of training."
Three days later the three had reached a spot some fifteen miles from the front line, where they were at once posted to a Franco-American transport unit.
"You'll have to learn the work with horses first of all," they were told, "after that there is the motor traction part of it. Yes, you'll see some of the front. In a day or two you'd be sent with one of the convoys taking ammunition up. It's exciting work sometimes, boys," the Sergeant continued. "When shelling's severe, the chaps that take up food and such like, see things, or rather feel 'em. But you've been under gun-fire—eh! Don't tell me! Ain't I seen the news about the trawler?"
So he had seen it too, others also, for the advent of the three to this Franco-American unit was the signal for quite an outpouring of questions. The very first night indeed, as Larry puffed tranquilly at his cigar, a big American finger was pointed at him, while there sat round the circle with their American brothers a number of blue-coated poilus, likewise attached to the unit.
"Oui! Bien!" one of them said, shrugging his shoulders expressively; "Larry, Jim, Beill! A-ha! Ve knows sem! Ve 'ave 'eard seir names many time. You come out wis see story now—hey! Dat is bien!"
Larry blew a cloud of smoke at him, Jim fidgeted, Bill felt really like bolting; to stand upon the bridge of the trawler under gun-fire had been one thing, to sit there under this battery of eyes with questions being flung at them, bursting all round them as it were, was quite a different experience and a greater ordeal to our heroes.
"See here," drawled Larry at length, turning an expressive and somewhat dirty thumb in Jim's direction, "he's the scholar of our crew, he'll spout. Jim, you get in at it. 'Sides, you speak French a little, you told us so on our way over; give it 'em in French and English together."
It was true enough that Jim, in a moment of enthusiasm, and when feeling confidential, had informed his chums that he was quite a considerable French speaker; but now he seemed to have forgotten the occurrence. He shook his head quite angrily, shook a fist at the grinning Larry, and mopped a streaming forehead. So it devolved on Bill to tell of their experiences, which he did quite modestly, interjecting a word or two of French now and again; for, if Jim were dumb, he at least had heard something in his schooldays and was, as a matter of fact, quite a fair linguist.
"Then you ain't got no call to feel scared about going up to the line," said their Sergeant when the tale was finished. "You three did mighty well. There's Americans as reached France in advance of our fighting units in queer ways. Some of 'em come over as stowaways, some sneaked across in perhaps more open fashion. I know a chap what got took on as a German nootral in Noo York. What, don't know what a German nootral is? Well that is some! A German nootral, chaps, is a man what's absolutely nootral; he don't care nothing for one side nor t'other. But he happens to have been born of German parents. They've likely as not settled in America this many years back, and have made pots of money under the old stars and stripes. They're grateful, they are! they've brought up their son to feel grateful too! He speaks German, of course, and equally of course he's nootral, that is when he's speakin' open and above-board; but behind the scenes he's as German as the Kaiser. He'd down America and the very boys that he went to school with. He's out for planting 'Kultur' round the whole world. He looks for a Germany that'll spread across England and away over the Atlantic to Noo York, Washington, and Philadelphia. Shucks! He's about as nootral as I am! He's just a born traitor! This here pal of mine was all that I've said, only he wasn't a traitor, he was just artful and burning keen to get over. So he takes on as I said as a German nootral on a nootral boat that wasn't any more nootral than a German. He hoodwinked the crowd, got across, and slipped ashore in England; in twenty-four hours he was over here. He's laid back o' the churchyard over yonder, he is. Harvey Pringle was his name—you'll see it chalked up on the cross on his grave. He was a man, was Harvey Pringle."
The big Sergeant blew his nose violently, stared at Larry in quite a pugnacious way, lit a pipe with considerable display of energy, and spat a little aggressively. It was American feeling; it was the only way in which this sturdy fellow would allow his feelings to vent themselves. Larry knew what he meant; Jim and Bill realized that he had lost a friend almost before he mentioned the churchyard; their French comrades, quick in feeling and understanding, glanced at one another, exclaimed, and lit their pipes as if in sympathy with the Sergeant.
"Well, boys," the latter went on when he had smoked for a little while in silence, "you've come over in fine style, and you'll do fine. We can't have too many boys of your sort. Anyways, we're glad to see you."
It was three nights later when the three chums joined a convoy which moved out of the camp with its laden wagons for the trench line, where, for the first time, they were to experience warfare as it was just then in France.