FOOTNOTES:
[19] By order of numbering, this was the 7th Army. Just why it was officially designated the 9th is still unknown.
[CHAPTER VIII]
DIGGING IN
A winter compounded of rain and fire had settled down heavily over the Aisne Valley and the plain of Champagne, from Rheims to Verdun. The chalky soil oozed gray and—red.
Deadlocked, their grip at each other's throats, German and Frenchman watched each other across a narrow, noisome waste, now and forever to become the symbol of all that is most horrible, most deadly, most pitiable:
No Man's Land!
Tens of thousands of men waited for the word of command which should bid them expose themselves to the unsated appetite of hungry slaughter, tens of thousands of men waited inactive while death and mutilation chose them, one by one.
A gray soil, a gray sky, and a gray doom.
The only thing that moved was the shuddering skin of the earth as the bullets flayed it in streaks or the shells dug deep holes like the festering sores of a foul disease. Not a blade of grass, not a weed, not a shrub remained; where leafy woods once had been, now only a few scarred and slivered stumps pointed accusing fingers upward. It was Chaos come again.
Where were the shouting hosts charged with valor, such as those who had driven forward at La Fère Champenoise, when Foch's army saved France?
Gone!
Where were the gallant fights to save the guns, when men met in open combat under the open sky?
Gone!
Where were the cavalry charges when squadrons with saber or with lance clashed in a deadly but glorious shock?
Gone!
Where were the armies that had fought hand to hand in the streets of Charleroi; that had snatched at and escaped from death alternately in the great retreat; that had hurled themselves at each other with equal fury in the attack or the defense of Paris; that had charged up the slopes of Le Grand Couronne and the bluffs of the Aisne with equal gallantry, and, dying, still had shaken their fists in the face of Slaughter?
Gone, all gone!
Aye, gone indeed, but where?
Dug in!
Horace, off duty for a few hours from his post as military telephonist, for which he had fitted himself to qualify when his work as a motor cyclist was done, looked at the smitten world. He tried to compare the war before him with the war to which for one brief, wild month he had been so close. There was no comparison.
To nothing that the world has ever seen could the War of the Trenches be compared.
It was a cold, invisible inferno, which, every morning and evening, spewed up its ghastly tale of dead and wounded; which, every evening and morning, yielded up its line of staggering, weary, war-dulled figures, glad to exchange the peril of death for the miserable existence which was all that was possible behind the trenches in the plain of Champagne that first fearful winter.
The war of men was over, only a war of murderous moles remained.
In a rickety hovel behind the lines, which, as Horace's companion in the telephone work declared, was "weather-proof only when there wasn't any weather to put it to the proof," the boy had puzzled over this new warfare. At last, one day, the opportunity serving, he hunted up his friend the veteran—now a sergeant-major—and learned the causes and the methods of the ditch-born strife.
Courtesy of "Le Miroir."
The Valley of the Dead.
Bombardment of shrapnel and high explosive shell, forming a barrage fire through which the men seen in the trench are about to plunge.
"Modern fighting," said the veteran, as he cleaned his rifle, a daily task in that rust-devouring atmosphere, "is the result of modern weapons. Whereas a musket would take two minutes to load and had a range of only a couple of hundred yards, a modern rifle will fire thirty shots a minute and over, and has a good killing range at an almost flat trajectory of a thousand yards. Suppose it takes a charging force of infantry six minutes to run a thousand yards, where a musket would get in three shots a modern rifle would put in from 180 to 300 shots, and would be firing almost continuously."
"Men would have to be under cover to face that fire," agreed Horace.
"More murderous than the rifle," the veteran continued, "is the machine-gun, which fires 600 shots a minute and can be operated by two men. It is estimated as being equal to fifty men, but, in reality, its destructiveness in the hands of a good gunner is far higher. It's easy to handle, too, the Maxims weighing sixty pounds and our Hotchkiss fifty-three pounds, because the English weapon is water-cooled and ours is air-cooled."
"Which is best?"
"Ours," replied the veteran promptly, "because a Maxim, when it's firing steadily, gets so hot that it boils the water and the enemy can see the steam. Then he knows where you are and concentrates his fire and—you tuck in your toes and no one will ever wake you up."
"Invisibility counts," said the boy.
"It's the difference between life and death!" was the reply. "That's where the value of the trenches becomes evident. Since both rifles and machine-guns have a flat trajectory, when they do strike the ground, they do it at a very slight angle. If your head is ten inches below the level of the ground, a thousand men can fire at you with rifles and machine-guns a hundred yards away, and you can smoke a pipe comfortably and listen to the song of the bullets overhead.
"Shrapnel, especially when handled by the 'Soixante-Quinze,' which, in addition to being the best field-gun in the world, has the best shell with the best time-fuse, is more destructive against advancing troops than machine-gun and rifle-fire combined, when it is rightly timed. Of course, it is far harder to aim exactly and to time to the second. A shrapnel shell holds 300 bullets and a 'Soixante-Quinze' can fire fifteen shells a minute. That means that one gun can send 4500 bullets a minute into an advancing enemy, the bullets scattering in a fan shape from the burst of the shell. The Boches, by the way, waste a tremendous amount of ammunition in bursting their shrapnel too high. I got hit, myself, with three balls from a shell which had burst too far away and they didn't even make a hole in my trousers; bruised me a bit, that was all.
"But you can see, my boy, when you've got rifle fire, machine-gun fire and shrapnel all looking for a different place to put a hole through you, a trench is the loveliest thing in the world, no matter if it's wet and slimy, full of smells and black with dried blood. The worst pool of filth would be a haven of refuge if only you could drop your body in it a few inches below the zone of certain death. If one gets caught once in the open, one never grumbles again about the labor of digging a trench."
"But why are trenches so twisty?" asked Horace. "One misty day, when it was safe, an aviator took me up a little way, and I had a chance to look down on our trenches. I was only in the air a few minutes and we didn't go very high, but, although I know this section pretty well, I couldn't make head or tail out of our lines. They looked like a sort of scrawly writing, or a spider's web stretched out and tangled up."
"That's not a bad description," said the veteran thoughtfully, "they do look a little like that, with the communication trenches for the cross-threads. But there are a good many reasons why the trenches are made 'twisty' as you call it.
"In the first place, a trench is made zigzag, so that, if the enemy should make a sudden raid and seize a section of the trench, he can't fire along it and enfilade you. Then a trench that wavers in long uneven lines is much safer against shell-fire, for, supposing that the enemy does get the range of a piece of trench, his range will be wrong for the same trench ten yards farther on, the shells falling harmlessly in the ground before it or behind it.
"Besides that, a thin wavy line is much more difficult to see from an aëroplane than a straight line, because there are no straight lines in nature. That's why we've had to stop putting straw in the trenches, the line of yellow was too easy to see from overhead."
"Is that why trenches are made so narrow?" the boy asked. "I've often thought it silly to make them so that two people can hardly squeeze past each other. The stretcher-bearers growl about it all the time."
"The ideal fire-trench," the veteran answered, "should be only about eighteen inches wide and not quite four feet deep, the upthrown earth forming a parapet. It should be recessed here and there, and traversed. To pass a man, you have to slide sideways. The communicating trench should be about fifteen yards to the rear. It should be seven feet deep and about three feet wide.
"Twenty-five yards in the rear is the cover trench, sixteen feet deep, and wide enough to allow troops to march in single file. The communication trenches from one line to another are always best as tunnels, though sometimes they are open. Our trenches here are open, but," the veteran nodded sagely, "I don't think they ought to be. This is a chalk soil, and the whitish soil underneath shows too clearly when you throw it up."
"The trenches wouldn't be so bad," said the lad, "if they weren't always wet."
"You can't change that," the veteran responded grimly, "unless you can find some way to make water run up-hill. It stands to reason that if you dig holes in the ground and it rains—as it does nearly all the time in this wretched northern country—the water is going to run into those holes. If you bale it out by day, the Boches see you, and if you pump at night, they hear you. If it rains, the trenches are going to be knee-deep in water and you can't help it."
"But how can you find your way, when one trench looks exactly like another and they're all twisting and turning like so many snakes trying to get warm?"
"You can't, unless you know the plans," the sergeant-major answered. "You've no idea of the amount of work that our draughtsmen have to do, in mapping out these underground cities and thousands of miles of ditch-streets. I know my little section, of course, and each officer has learned the tangle of trenches in which his command is likely to operate. But the officers have to know the tangle of the enemy's trenches, too, and, what's more, when we attack, they have to be in the front and guide us. An assault isn't just a blind drive over the top, it must have a definite goal and has to be reached a certain way. The officers have got to know the Boche roads as well as our own."
"But how can they find that out?"
"Aeroplanes with photographers and draughtsmen," came the reply. "You've heard the story of the tattooed draughtsman?"
"No," answered Horace, "I haven't."
"He was a young fellow," the veteran began, "who was assigned to the job of making a plan of the enemy's trenches opposite his part of the line. The Boche lines were on a little higher ground than ours at that point, so that nothing could be seen from the fire trench. The young draughtsman went up in a machine several times, but there was a very efficient battery of anti-aircraft guns a little back of their lines and the Archies would not let our Farman aëroplane come down low enough for a photograph to show anything definite.
"This chap got desperate. He was bound to succeed, no matter what happened to him. At last, one night, we caught a Boche patrol on No Man's Land and wiped them out. As soon as the return fire slackened, the draughtsman, who had been in one of the dug-outs, crawled out, and, wriggling flat to where the Boches had fallen, he grabbed one of the dead men by the ankle and dragged him to our trench.
"Then, unobtrusively and to our open-mouthed astonishment, the young draughtsman dressed himself in the dead man's uniform, read carefully all the papers in the pockets, so that he might learn who it was he was counterfeiting and bade us good-bye.
"'There's just about one chance in a million,' he said, 'that I don't get found out right away. If I am, then—' He clicked his tongue like a trigger. 'If I'm not caught and can manage to go back with the relief and return again,' he said, 'as soon as I get to the trench I'll bolt out of it, holding my left arm stretched out straight. You'll know by that, it's me. They'll pot me from behind, of course, but I may get half-way over No Man's Land before they do. If I drop, just smother the place where I fell with bullets so that the Boches don't have a chance to sneak out and get me.'
"'But that'll cut you to ribbons,' I said to him.
"He shrugged his shoulders.
"'I'll be dead, probably,' he said, 'and if I'm not and you kill me, then it's only five minutes' difference, anyway.
"'Then, when it's night, let some of the fellows go out and drag me in. I've got an indelible pencil, and you'll find a map of the trenches on my chest.'"
"Did he go?"
"He did," the veteran answered. "We watched close all that night, all the next day and all the next night, till we were sure that he had been nabbed.
"Then, suddenly, one of our chaps called,
"'Here he comes!'
"Sure enough, just as it was getting light enough to see, a figure dressed like a Boche came jumping out of the trench holding his left arm stretched out straight and began a bolt across No Man's Land. He was running like a hare, but three or four rifles spoke. He dropped, wounded, and began to crawl, inch by inch, to our lines. Then they got a machine-gun full on him and began to spray him with bullets, like you sprinkle a flower-bed in summer.
"He didn't wriggle very far.
"We answered them hot and heavy. We didn't leave room for a worm to crawl up to him, much less a man. Then, when night came, some of our fellows drove a sap to where he lay and hooked down the body."
"And the map?"
"Scrawled on his bare chest, the way he said it would be," the veteran answered, "and underneath was written in the same smeared violet marks the word:
"'Victory!'"
"You can't beat France when it comes to heroism!" declared Horace.
"The English are just as nervy," answered the veteran. "Even in the trenches, though, they fight differently. They make far fewer night attacks than we do, and far more mines. There's few nights that the British haven't got a listening patrol out somewhere on the line."
"I hear every one talking of a 'listening patrol,'" put in the lad; "tell me, Sergeant, just what a listening patrol is for."
"To listen," answered the veteran laconically.
"Of course, but for what?"
The answer came, sinister,
"Mines!"
"Ah!" Horace had seen the effects of those most terrible of all weapons of trench warfare.
Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
Listening Patrol Trapped by a Star-Shell.
Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
Locating Enemy Sappers on a Listening Patrol.
"You see," the veteran explained, "when trenches are well and solidly dug, especially the way the Germans build them; when solid machine-gun emplacements are made and properly manned with plenty of ammunition; when there is a concentration of artillery to support the trenches on both sides, nobody can do much. Of course, they shell us all the time, and we shell them. They send over rifle-bombs and we shoot ammonal and vitriol grenades. Once in a while, if they're lucky, they'll land a 'Minnenwerfer' in one of our trenches and then there's a little work for the doctor and a lot for the grave-digger."
"What's a 'Minnenwerfer'?"
"A pleasant little toy the Germans have invented, which looks like a rubber ball at the end of a stick. Its right name is the 'Krupp trench howitzer.' It weighs only 120 pounds—at least one of them that we captured, weighed that—and can be handled by a couple of men. Although it has a caliber of only 2.1-inch it throws a shell of 16-inch diameter."
"How on earth can it do that?" asked the boy. "You can't squeeze a 16-inch shell down a 2.1-inch muzzle!"
"That's what the stick is for," came the reply. "The shell is round, like one of the old-fashioned cannon-balls you see piled up in village squares beside antiquated cannon. It weighs 200 pounds and has a bursting charge of 86 pounds of tri-nitro-toluol. The shell is bored to the center. You shove one end of the iron rod into the gun so that it sticks out about eight inches beyond the muzzle. Then you put the shell on the rod by the hole bored to the center. It looks like a toy balloon at the end of a child's toy cannon. Then you fire it, the iron rod is shot out, driving the bomb ahead of it and off she goes."
"Will it go far?"
"Far enough," the veteran said. "At an angle of projection of 45 degrees with the low muzzle velocity of 200 feet per second, the range of the bomb is 1244 feet and it takes eight seconds to come. That's the only good thing about it, sometimes you can hear it coming soon enough to dodge into a dug-out. But neither Minnenwerfers, nor the 5.6-inch nor even the 8.4-inch howitzers will win a trench. It takes mines to do that.
"So, in order to gain an advantage, one side or the other burrows deep tunnels in the earth, sometimes 16 feet down, sometimes 60, all depending on the soil and the plan. The men work underground like moles and they drive a long subterranean gallery until they come right below an important point, maybe an officers' dug-out or a grenade depot. Then they burrow upwards a bit, and put in a tremendous charge of explosive, melinite or something like that, and fix an electric wire. The earth is then rammed back into the gallery, an electric contact is made and whiz! bang! about forty tons of mixed heads, legs, bits of bomb-proof and earth go flying into the air, leaving a hole big enough to build a bungalow in and never see the roof.
"Then it's our turn. While the section of the Boche line is in confusion we dash across, while our artillery, behind us, smothers the rest of the line. We settle in the big hole and build our trenches from it and we've gained a hundred yards and can pepper the Boche trenches from their rear. A mine's a great thing, although, sometimes, it costs more men to consolidate and hold a place like that than to take it. The British have beaten us all at that game. They've got small armies of Welsh miners, doing nothing but that all day and all night long. They're used to it, it's their trade and they don't mind.
"Now, a listening patrol, which is what I began to tell you about, is a patrol generally consisting of four men, under an officer, which creeps out on No Man's Land during the night. By approaching near the enemy trenches, listening with their ears to the ground, the men can hear if there is any one at work under them. The earth—as you ought to know, being a telephonist—is a good conductor of sound, and if there's any tricky business going on, a listening patrol can find it out."
"What good does it do to know that some one is driving a mine under you? Do you desert the trench, then, until they blow it up?"
The veteran almost growled.
"Does a Frenchman desert a trench!" he said. "No, we find out exactly where they're digging, and start a tunnel from our side, right below the other. Then, when they're working busily, a little explosion below them smashes their tunnel into soup and they're all dead—and buried—without troubling any one."
"I shouldn't think a listening patrol would be so dangerous, then," said the boy, "if you've only got to crawl out and listen."
"But there's others listening, too! If they hear a move, or think that they hear a move, up goes a star shell, bright as day, to show you sprawled on the ground. Your only chance is to lie still, like a dead man. But, lots of times, even if they think you're dead they'll turn a machine-gun on you, just to make sure. You don't have to imitate being dead any more, then. I know of six officers, right in this sector, who have been killed in listening-patrol work, and I couldn't count how many men."
He leaned forward and stared out into space gloomily.
"I don't call this—war," he said in a lower voice. "I can't call it war when a soldier's chief weapons are a pickax and a spade for digging trenches—and graves. And—I wanted to be an officer!" He stared out upon the faded world and repeated slowly, "I wanted to be an officer! I wanted to lead men into—that!"
"You lead men now!" said the boy.
The fire of responsibility and pride flashed back into the dull eyes and involuntarily the veteran stood up.
"I lead men now," he cried, "and I'll lead them till we drive the Germans back from the last foot of the soil of France!"
He strode off to his multifarious duties with swing and determination in his step.
It was three days after that when Horace, who was gradually acclimatizing to the nerve-racking cannonade of the battlefield, became conscious that it was steadily increasing in intensity. The clouds hung low, muffling the resonance and emphasizing the sharp reports of the cannon. The moist, sluggish air, full of unimaginable odors, became pungent with sulphur, powder, the burnt smell of calcined soil and the fumes of charred wool arising from the ignited clothing of the unburied dead on No Man's Land.
Significant, too, that evening, was the appearance of wagon-loads of wire. One of the men groaned aloud as he saw it,
"Zut! That means some dodging of bullets to-night!"
Never, till Time has ceased to be, will any man calculate the number of deaths which have been caused by that entrapment born in the brain of some fiend—wire entanglement.
Wire! The strangler!
Wire! The man-trap!
Wire! That grips a soldier with malicious glee and holds him fast to an immediate or a lingering death.
Wire! Which lies before every heroic effort, which throws its snaky coils around the feet and around the nerves of the bravest.
Embodiment of hate, of diabolic trickery, of malign expectancy, arch-creator of despair—Wire!
For every mile of fighting front, there are a thousand miles of wire, with a weight of 110 tons. For every mile of front, 12,000 standards and 12,000 pickets must be used. Withal, that thousand miles of wire has cost a thousand lives to put it up and keep it in repair, that, when the time may come, it may cost the lives of two thousand of the enemy.
Just as the character of the fighting shows the nature of troops, so does the wire that they use. The German wire is put up by machinery. It is a harder, tougher wire than is used by the Allies, with curved barbs, altogether a more efficient thing in itself. But, by reason of that very solidity, it affords greater resistance to shell-fire, and therefore, under heavy bombardment, funnels of passage can be driven through it, by which troops may assault the trenches it is designed to protect.
British wire is thinner, lighter, sharper. It is irregularly constructed, with pitfalls. It is largely put up by knife-rests, afterwards staked to the ground. It stretches over a wide space, as a rule, with the result that while shell-fire beats it down and explosions may uproot the stakes, the ground remains a hideous tangle of treachery for the feet.
A form of wire used on the French front consists of two spiral coils, four feet in diameter, wound loosely in opposite directions and entangled. It is so loose and yields so little resistance that shell-fire, however much it may blow the coils into the air, only entangles it the more. The spiral coils retain their form. Moreover, most important of all, it cannot be crossed by throwing planks upon it, for the coils give way and the plank drops in between. Nothing but a bridge of hurdles—or the bodies of dead men—will serve for passage over it.
Well the soldiers knew what the strengthening of wire under an increased bombardment implied.
The Germans were preparing to assault.
If further assurance were needed, Horace found it in the tramping of feet as reënforcements came rolling up from the rear. What men were these?
These were the unafraid!
These were the terror of the enemy!
The Moroccan Division! Chosen for the moments of danger, picked for occasions when savage ferocity is required, the Africans wait for the word of command.
Courtesy of "The Sphere."
French Tank Cutting Wire.
Note the lower lines and greater speed of the French design compared with the British, more mobile but less powerful.
"They march past," said Henri Barbusse, describing them at the front, "with faces red brown, yellow or chestnut, their beards scanty and fine, or thick and frizzled, their greatcoats yellowish-green, and their muddy helmets displaying the crescent instead of our grenade. From flat or angular faces, burnished like new coins, one would say that their eyes shine like balls of ivory and onyx. Here and there in the file, towering above the rest, comes the impassive black face of a Senegalese sharpshooter. The red flag with a green hand in the center goes behind the company.
"These demon-men, who seem carved of yellow wood, of bronze or of ebony, are grave and taciturn; their faces are disquieting and secret, like the threat of a snare suddenly found at your feet. These men are drunk with eagerness for the bayonet and from their hands there is no quarter. The German cry of surrender, 'Kamerad!' they answer with a bayonet thrust, waist-high."
Their presence, also, told its story.
A counter-assault was planned.
Rarely do the Moroccans hold the trenches. It is not their kind of fighting, nor would their bodies, used to the sun of North Africa, endure the cold and wet of the muddy trench. They are the troops of the advance. There are no prisoners, no wounded, after they have leaped into a trench. Their trail is the trail of savage death.
All the next day the bombardment increased in violence, and Horace, at his military switchboard, plugged calls to distant quarters for reënforcements. Everywhere along the line, when the early dusk fell, men were standing to arms or marching to the threatened sector.
One section of trench was wiped out with the concentration of high explosive shells; wire, fire trench, communication trench and their living defenders being blown into an unrecognizable, pockmarked mass. Another trench was hastily dug behind and craftily wired. There the assault would come.
The noise was deafening, maddening. One felt the slow approach of insanity. Men sprang up here and there with frantic cries that the appalling nerve-racking din might cease, even for a second. A few went mad, and their hands were bound by their comrades until the crisis was past.
A gray, evil earth; a gray, evil sky, with bomb-dropping aeroplanes overhead like vultures waiting to swoop down upon their carrion prey. Upon that scene night fell.
On that small section of the trenches not less than 50,000 projectiles had fallen that evening. The shrill whistling of bullets, the baby's wail of falling torpedoes, the spattering "whit" "whit" of ricochetting fuses, the six-fold squall of the 77's, the whine of the small howitzers, and the roar of large shell formed a shrieking arch in the tortured and glutted air.
Nor was the French artillery silent. The batteries of "Soixante-Quinze" replied incessantly. From time to time the bellow as of a prehistoric bull told that the 8.2-inch gun was bodily tearing holes and men in the enemy's trenches. The long thin Rimailho sent its 5.9-inch shell with the swift flight of a vengeful meteor and the new great 10-inch howitzer looped its 240-pound shell upon the dug-outs where the men were sheltering. There is neither shelter nor men after that shell has fallen.
The guards in the advance trenches were redoubled. Extra supplies of bombs and hand-grenades were served out.
Under arms, silent, expectant, grim, stood the Moroccan brigade. Their turn was coming, soon.
The night dragged on. No one went to sleep, for sleep was impossible under the fury of noise.
The Germans, systematic in everything, over-systematic in everything, never commence an assault before midnight. At half-past eleven o'clock, Horace plugged in for the order to be given for the barrage fire to begin.
The whirlwind of vertically-falling flame shut off the German lines in a tawny curtain of annihilation.
Now and then rockets shot up, red, green and white, writing artillery messages on the sky.
The calcium whiteness of star shells illuminated the gruesome zone of No Man's Land, void, deserted and desolate.
On its horrid bleakness, nothing moved. Its pallid stillness intensified the menace.
Officers and men glanced anxiously at the watches fastened on their wrists.
Behind, the Moroccan brigade stood motionless. They even laughed in eagerness. It was a jangling laugh. White men who heard it, shivered.
It was not yet midnight, but, suddenly, a vicious crackle of rifles far to the left suggested that there, the moment was at hand.
Not yet the attack, it was a patrol of German wire-cutters, trying to sneak up under cover to make an opening.
"Cr-a-a-a-a-ck!"
A machine-gun spoke. The wire-cutters pitched headlong. The young officer, wounded, tried to crawl back to the lines.
"Crack!"
One rifle spoke. Even at night a sharpshooter does not miss. The figure of the German officer moved no more.
The German bombardment, hitherto directed against the batteries far to the rear, began to draw forward. It approached the rear of the trenches where the dug-out for the telephone was situated.
"Afraid?" the officer asked Horace.
"Yes," the boy answered, "but game!"
A shell fell a dozen yards away. The burst smashed in the roof of the dug-out. A flying piece of concrete grazed the officer's cheek. It bled freely.
"Hit, sir?" the boy asked anxiously.
"Nothing! My cheek!"
He telephoned an order.
The Moroccans, unwillingly, take cover in a shelter-trench. They dislike the underground, but it is no use to stand and be shot down uselessly.
Bombs and grenades fall like a hail of fire.
The telephone bell rings continuously. Every one of the seventeen wires running to the switchboard is working. Horace is on the alert, his fingers as electric as the wires he is handling.
A growing nervousness runs through the lines, making the whole army tingle like a single human organism vibrant with life.
All the world is in activity or in readiness.
Medical troops pass by, carrying out the wounded from the bombardment.
An enemy patrol dashes forward to destroy the wire, knowing that it will never return alive. It is met by a storm of rifle-fire, but those who survive, cut. A hole is made. The last German falls.
A French patrol rushes out to mend the gap, throwing coils here and there and is, in its turn, wiped out by grenadiers.
The hateful eyes of searchlights peer over the zone of destruction. It is deserted—as yet.
What is that—a shout?
Midnight!
There is one last furious burst from trench mortars, howitzers and guns.
The white lights, with all the accusing whiteness of the fingers of a thousand dead, cease their groping and point to the farther side of No Man's Land.
They come!
Black in the whiteness of that intense light, the wave rolls up.
The silent plain crawls with running, staggering, falling, crawling men. The gray-white expanse speckles rapidly with its spotting of dead.
Into the barrage of fire the wave plunges. It is the end, surely, nothing can get through.
The miracle of escape is demonstrated again. If the masses be large enough, you cannot kill them all. With two-thirds dead, ten thousand men break through. They plunge forward with lowered heads and bristle of bayonets. Every third man is a bomb-thrower.
"Let them come nearer, boys!"
Every man holds his breath.
"Fire!"
A solid blast of flame outlines the fire trench. In the white glare of searchlights and star-shells illumining the scene as though by a continuous river of lightning, the wave is seen to waver. Some fall flat, others sink down quietly, others, again, drop to hands and knees and crawl on, yet others, clutched by the wounded in their death-grip, free themselves with a bayonet thrust—their brothers, their comrades!—and rush on.
The machine guns claim their prey by scores, by hundreds every minute. It does not stop the wave.
Their eyes fixed and staring, as though they were figures in their own nightmares, they leap into the trench, hurling a last shower of hand grenades as they come.
It is the butt and the steel now.
They have reached the trench but they have not won it.
Around each machine gun a special fight gathers.
Another wave is coming. It passes through the barrage fire again and dashes for the trench, already half taken.
Ah! What is that?
The 75's!
The strident roar of unnumbered batteries, with shells timed to the second, breaks loose behind the French lines. The second wave meets that wall of lead. It does not waver, it collapses.
A third wave—how they are driven on to death, those Germans!
The first wave is nearly gone now, the hand to hand struggle in the trench is nearly over and the reserves are creeping in.
But the third wave?
Four mines explode simultaneously. Scores of bodies are thrown in the air. Dozens are thrown down by the sheer impact of the air.
The moment has come.
"Africans! On!"
There is no shouting as they leap over the parapet, but the glitter of their eyes suffices.
The third wave breaks and flees.
"Forward, my children, forward!"
The cry of the officers runs along the line.
The men do not need to be told. The Germans have failed. Now is the counter-assault. Now they have a taste of their own medicine.
"Forward, my children, forward!"
But they, too, have machine guns; they, too, have rifles; they, too, have shrapnel and their wire entanglements stretch before us. The French fall as their men fall, but the French commanders will not waste life like theirs.
"Fall back, my children, they have had enough!"
Slowly the bombardment dies down to a watchful fire against a repetition of the assault. With countless false alarms the hours of the night pass by.
The gray day breaks slowly.
The trenches are full of dead and No Man's Land is a sight of redoubled horror.
Full daylight comes and shows the scene as desolate as ever, the long line of trenches stretching unbroken from Switzerland to the sea.
All the heroism, the courage, the mad endeavor, the agony, the slaughter, what has it brought to either side?
Nothing.
All that the official communiqués can say, whether sent out from Berlin or from Paris, will be:
"The enemy's attack was repulsed."
Has nothing been gained?
Yes! The French trenches are still French. From this much of French soil the foreigner's foot is banished. Aggression, greed, and hate have made another violent effort to win a strip of territory for their befouling and blackening touch, have tried—and the motionless figures on No Man's Land are France's answer.
Yesterday's clouds have fled and the golden sunshine floods the ravaged fields; it pours into the windows of field hospitals on the French and German sides alike, it blesses with the hope of the future the soldier who will recover and eases the pain of him who looks upon his last sun; it shows the African sharpening his steel for the next charge, and the general planning the next assault; it shines into distant countries whence men are coming to take the places of those that have gone before.
Heroes all!
Yet the communiqué says only:
"The enemy made a violent assault and was repulsed."
[CHAPTER IX]
THE DEMON FACES
"Croquier!"
"But yes, my boy, it is I!"
The boy ran forward eagerly to greet his old friend, for the moment ignoring the dogs by which he was surrounded, and then stopped and looked fixedly at his comrade.
"Your arm?" he queried.
The hunchback shrugged one shoulder.
"It is gone, as you see," he answered.
"But how?"
"It was my fate, no doubt," the other responded. "Destiny had decided that I should give an arm to the Germans; so, since the military authorities would not give me the opportunity to lose it at the front, I left it behind me in Paris."
"What happened?" Horace persisted.
"It was a little nothing," the hunchback replied. "A German bird dropped a shell out of his beak on the munitions factory where I was working."
"And a splinter hit you?"
"Several."
"Why didn't you dodge?"
"I couldn't. You see," the hunchback continued, "there was a girl there."
"And then?" demanded the lad impatiently. "Don't stammer so, Croquier, tell the story!"
"It was a tiny nothing," his comrade repeated, somewhat shamefacedly. "It was this way. In the factory where I was working, there were many brave girls working also, brave girls, for the work was dangerous. It was especially dangerous, because there was a church on one side and a hospital near by. A Boche aviator always tries to hit a hospital when he can. The Red Cross to him is as it would be to a bull."
"I've noticed that," the boy agreed. "At the front, here, they shell the field hospitals every chance they get. But tell the story!"
"One foggy morning, then," the hunchback went on, "about a week before Christmas, an aviator who had escaped our air-sentries by reason of the mist, let fall a bomb. I feel sure it was meant for the hospital, but it hit us instead. I was working on the top floor. The bomb—it was quite a little one—came through the roof. I happened to be the one to see it coming and I saw, at once, that it would fall on the stone bench in front of which the girls were working.
"It was not the time for politeness, you understand, so I swept my left arm round, and the girl who was working next to me fell down flat.
"I must have been a little slow in bringing down my arm after I had swung it round, for the shell struck the bench at the same second and the splinters collected in my hand and wrist. The hand was almost quite cut off. The doctors said it was a lovely amputation—they are droll fellows, those doctors—but to make the matter more sure, they cut off my arm a little higher, as you see. It was to prevent infection, they said."
"And the girl?"
The hunchback looked grave.
"She was black and blue for a week," he said. "You see, I am rather strong and perhaps I hit her a little too hard."
"But you saved her life!"
"That, of course," said the Frenchman, simply; "what else would any one do?"
"And were you the only one hurt?"
"Alas, no!" sighed Croquier. "It is there that I was a fool. If I had hit two girls, one on either side, it would have been very good. But I had a sharp tool in my right hand and I did not think of it. The brave little one on that side was killed. No one else was hurt. It was a wonderful escape."
"I don't quite see it that way," the boy retorted. "One girl killed and one man crippled, by a small aëroplane bomb, looks to me more like a catastrophe than an escape. What happened to the girl whose life you saved?"
"She was as kind as she was brave," the hunchback answered. "She was very rich, or, rather, she had been so before the war, though she had put on workmen's clothes and was slaving in a munitions factory. She was doing it for France.
"Every day that I was in the hospital she came to see me after working hours. So did other of the operatives. They were all very kind, but she was the kindest. It was she who secured permission for me to have the 'captive Kaiser' on the little table beside my hospital bed. The doctors could refuse her nothing. She had a smile, ah! one to remember!"
Horace smiled at the mental picture of the grim, black eagle with the yellow eyes, iron-caged, in the white, cool cleanliness of a hospital ward.
"It was Mademoiselle Chandon, too," Croquier continued, "who enabled me to come here to the front. I am a general, no less, my boy, now. I am the General of this army of dogs."
"So I see," the lad agreed. "But I didn't know that you knew anything about dogs."
"Have you forgotten, my boy," the hunchback answered, "that, when I was a small urchin, I traveled with the circus? I am sure I have told you stories of that time. My master was the animal trainer and many were the tricks that he taught me. One does not forget what one has learned in childhood.
"Mademoiselle Chandon, she whose pretty face I was so fortunate as to save with my arm, formerly was rich, as I have said. Before the war, her father had owned magnificent kennels and he was forever lamenting that he could not give his dogs to the army. But they were not trained.
"'But I, Mademoiselle,' I said to her, 'behold, I can train dogs. That does not take two hands!'
"She clapped her little palms together with delight and ran away to her big house in the town, which was being used as a hospital for the blind.
"It was, perhaps, about a week after that, that the old nobleman, her grandfather, came to see me in the hospital. It must needs be her grandfather who came. Her father was an officer in the Cuirassiers. The family had given all their automobiles to the army for staff purposes, so the old nobleman came himself through the streets on foot.
Courtesy of "La Grande Guerre."
Machine-Gun Dog-Team In Belgium.
Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
Each Kennel Inhabited By One Wise, Silent Dog.
Note that these kennels are drilled out of solid rock as a protection against dropping shells.
"'So, my fine fellow,' he said to me, 'after saving my daughter's life, you want to train my dogs so that they may get crippled, eh?'
"'That is as Monsieur le Comte wishes,' I made reply.
"'I shall give myself the pleasure of taking you to the country with me when I go, next week,' he said.
"Ah, it is the old families who understand true courtesy!
"He had nearly a hundred dogs. They were a little too much inbred, perhaps, and therefore over-nervous, but good dogs. Monsieur le Comte gave me the gardener's cottage to live in—the gardener is in the trenches at Verdun—and I spent two happy months teaching the dogs."
"That's why my letters never reached you, then," said Horace. "I always wrote to our old address."
"I think the landlady died when I was in the hospital," answered Croquier. "She fell ill soon after you left. And, you remember, she was very old."
"She was old," the boy agreed. "But why didn't you ever write to me?"
"I did, many times. Naturally, I wrote to the Motorcycle Corps of the Fourth Army, but I never received a response."
"Of course," said the boy thoughtfully, "that wouldn't reach me. My old motor-cycle has been idle for several months. When I found that there wasn't any more dispatch work to do, I took a military telephone course at the camp school."
"So you're a telephonist, now!"
"And you're a dog general!"
"I have some beauties, too!" Croquier looked around at the little rock-cut kennels with manifest pride. "They're so clever that I'm afraid, some morning, I'll come out and find them all talking."
"What do you teach them to do?" asked Horace, smiling at the exaggeration.
"I train them into three different lines of work," the hunchback answered. "One set is taught to serve on listening-posts and to assist on sentry duty, another group is trained to carry messages, and the third group is taught to hunt for the wounded when a battle has been raging over a large space of ground."
"What does a dog do at a listening-post?" Horace asked. "Does he bark when he hears something?"
"Not a bark, not a sound!" the hunchback answered. "I teach them to bite a man's ankles gently, so!" He bent down and with his strong fingers nipped Horace just above the heel. "Then the sentry knows that there is an alarm, for a dog's hearing is much keener than a man's. If the sentry is lying down, I teach the dog to pay no attention to him but to run to the sentry at the next listening-post. Then the second sentry knows that there is an alarm, and also that the man at the next post is either dead or wounded. From that listening-post a message is sent back, sometimes by telephone, sometimes by messenger, sometimes by message or liaison dog. Star shells are meantime shot up to illumine that particular bit of trench, and the machine guns spray death there."
"And the message dogs, how do you work them?" the boy asked.
"The dogs of liaison are used on advanced post work, or in saps, or when tunneling is done for a mine. Sometimes it is necessary to send back for reënforcements and a man cannot be spared. Then a message is attached to a dog's neck and he is told to go. He gallops back to the headquarters which is his home for the time being and the man in charge takes the message and gives him a feed. The dogs are kept hungry and they know that whenever they take a message they will get a good dinner. I tell you, my boy, they do not stop to play along the road!"
"And the Red Cross dogs?"
"I have only a few of those," the hunchback answered, "chiefly Belgian dogs, because the Red Cross is using a great many dogs from Mount St. Bernard, dogs which have already been taught by the monks to find travelers lost in the snow.
"Then I have ratting terriers, a few rough-coated fox terriers, which have a natural instinct for fighting rats, and a number of Irish terriers which have to be trained to the work. When properly taught, they are much the better."
"I don't see why," the boy objected; "I should think that dogs which didn't have to be trained would be keener after the rats."
"So they are," the trainer replied, "if we were dealing with ordinary rats. But the savage rats which have developed in the trenches, creatures which are sometimes ferocious enough to kill and devour the severely wounded, are sometimes more than the snappy little fox-terriers can manage. Some of those rats have a body eight inches long from snout to root of tail and weigh over a pound. The hard wiry coat and tough skin of the Irish terrier is a good protection against the terrible down-slashing stroke of a rat's teeth. Besides which, the Irish terrier is a much more determined fighter, when aroused, and his square jaw is far more powerful than that of his black-and-white cousin."
Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
Message Dog Wearing Gas Mask.
In order to escape poison fumes, dogs of the liaison have to be trained to wear masks, like soldiers.
"Why not use ferrets to drive the rats out the trenches, just as they do to drive them out of granaries and warehouses in the city?"
"Too unsafe," the hunchback answered. "We can't spare men enough to send them rat-hunting with ferrets, and if we simply turned the ferrets loose, they might multiply so fast that they would kill off all the rats and then become a tenfold worse danger. A ferret is twice as long as a rat and is the most murderous creature that draws the breath of life. A plague of ferrets would be fearful. They would be worse than poison gas, which is the thing that troubles me most in the kennels here."
"Why here?" asked the boy in surprise, "you're far enough in the rear to escape poison gas, surely?"
"Yes, but my dogs have to work at the front," the hunchback explained, "and they need protection, just as much as the men in the fire trench. The dogs have to become accustomed to wearing gas-masks, just like soldiers. It's hard on the dogs, too, because a dog doesn't breathe much through his nose when he's running but through his mouth and so the mask has to be made in a different way.
"You'd never believe the amount of trouble I have in trying to teach my dogs to keep from scratching the gas-masks off with their paws. I've got some little puppies that I keep in gas-masks all the time. I only take their alkali-soaked bonnets off at their breakfast and dinner time. They even sleep in them."
"Poor little beggars!" exclaimed Horace, "and they haven't even got the satisfaction of realizing why they have to do it."
"Well," said the hunchback, gravely, "I always tell them 'It's for France!' Because," he added, half-seriously, "one can never tell how much a dog understands."
Horace spent the whole of his day off duty with his old friend and returned that evening to his telephone station, full of stories of the hunchback's wonderful dogs. With great gusto he recounted to his friend the veteran the story of the canine gas-masks.
"Luckily, as yet we haven't needed them here," the sergeant-major answered, "though I suppose we may expect gas at any time. It's a dirty, sneaking way of making war, I think! The Boches only started that against the British because they hate them so. You know their 'Chant of Hate':
"'You we hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hate by water and hate by land, Hate of the head and hate of the hand, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone, England!' When you hate anybody as much as that, I suppose, even poison gas seems justified."
"One hardly realizes," said Horace, thoughtfully, "that any nation could work up such a hate."
"Germany is worse poisoned by her hate than any one of our poor asphyxiated soldiers is poisoned by their chlorine gas. Yet it's a terrible thing to be gassed. I saw some of its victims on that sector to which I was transferred for a while, this spring. A gassed man is made blind and dumb; sometimes the sight returns, and sometimes it does not. The tongue is swollen to nearly double its normal size, ulcerated and blotched with black patches. The lungs are attacked so badly that quite often the blood vessels burst and the man chokes to death with bubbling frothy blood. The arms and legs turn a mottled violet color. The pulse is no more than a faint flutter. Even those who recover have their health so badly wrecked that they can never march or work again. To lift the hands over the head a few times drives a gassed man into a violent perspiration, and to walk upstairs produces exhaustion, while others, for the rest of their lives, will never be able to eat a solid meal."
"But did that poison gas do the Germans any good?" the boy asked. "Did it achieve any military gain?"
"Yes," the veteran admitted, "it did. It almost won them the war. If they had known as much about poison gas when they started it as they do now, they would have gobbled up the little piece of Belgium which they have never been able to win and thus secured a hold on the English Channel coast."
"What stopped them?"
"Two things," the veteran replied, "the valor of the Canadians and the fact that the poison gas system which they used at the beginning was fixed and not mobile. When the fiendish fumes were first directed against fighting troops, they were projected from fixed gasometers, and the pipes leading from them were permanent and solidly made, so that they would not leak gas into their own trenches. That meant that the fumes could only be wafted from the one fixed point."
"When was it first used?"
"On April 22," the veteran answered.[20] "It was the Duke of Würtemberg's army which had the foul dishonor of being the first to employ the evil thing. About five o'clock in the evening, from the base of the German trenches and over a considerable stretch of the line, there appeared vague jets of whitish mist. Like the vapors from a witch's caldron they gathered and swirled until they settled into a definite low-hanging cloud-bank, greenish-brown below and yellow above, where it reflected the rays of the sinking sun. This ominous bank of vapor, impelled by a northeastern breeze, drifted slowly across the space which separated the two lines, just at the point where the British and French commands joined hands. The southernly drift of the wind drove it down the line.
"The French troops, staring over the top of their parapet at this curious cloud, which, for the time being, ensured them a temporary relief from the continuous bombardment, were observed suddenly to throw up their hands, to clutch at their throats and to fall to the ground in the agonies of asphyxiation.
"Many lay where they had fallen, while their comrades, absolutely helpless against this diabolical agency, rushed madly out of the mephitic mist and made for the rear, overrunning the lines of trenches behind them. Some never halted until they had reached Ypres, while others rushed westwards and put the canal between themselves and the enemy.
"The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and took possession of the successive lines of trenches, tenanted only by dead garrisons, whose blackened faces, contorted figures and lips fringed with blood and foam from their bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died. Some thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of 75's and four British batteries were the trophies won by this disgraceful victory.
Courtesy of "The Graphic."
The Zouave Bugler's Last Call.
"... he tore off his protecting mask, sent his anguished appeal to his comrades in the rear, and then lurched forward to die an agonizing death."
"It was especially terrifying to the Africans. They were ready for any form of fighting, but brigades such as the Moroccans, born and brought up under a vivid primitive fear of sorcery, were—for the first time in their history—driven into panic. They were willing to charge against men, no matter what the odds, but not against magic, and our officers had great difficulty in rallying them, even two or three days afterwards. When, however, the Algerian and Moroccan troops became convinced that it was the work of men and not of afrits or djinns, they had but one desire—revenge.
"Yet the Germans gained far less by this advantage than they should have done, for they wasted their time in consolidating the trenches they had won. A marvelous opening was before them, but for lack of personal dash, their best opportunity passed away forever. 'They sold their souls as soldiers,' as one of the English writers, Sir Conan Doyle, expressed it, 'but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had the Germans had a corps of cavalry ready and passed them through the gap, it would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.'"
"'They sold their souls as soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poor one.' That's a good phrase," repeated Horace, "I'll remember it."
"It was really the most dangerous moment of the war," the veteran continued, "for it was the only time in the war that the Germans actually broke through. They had not broken through in Belgium. They had not broken through—save for advance cavalry—at Charleroi. They had not broken through on the British left in the retreat from Mons, though it was a near shave. They had not broken through at Foch's right in the Battle of the Marne, though in a few hours more they must have done so. But they broke through at Ypres. The initial poison gas attack pierced the Allied lines for the first time.
"Then the hidebound German strategy, which wins a few battles for them and loses twice as many more, became their ruin. Finding themselves on the farther side of the line, it seemed a supreme opportunity to adopt flanking tactics. The Canadians—whom the Germans hated equally with the Australians and twice as much as the English, if that were possible—held the line to the north of the sector which had been pierced by the aid of poison gas. The Germans hungrily turned on the Canadians to encircle and crumple them up.
"They soon found that they had clutched a spiny thistle in bare hands.
"From three sides they advanced upon the Canadians, ranging their artillery in a devastating cross-fire. Not a man in the Canadian regiments expected to survive. Few did. In the teeth of every conceivable projectile, Canadian reënforcements came up to dare and die. Again the Germans, having recharged their reservoirs, opened their poison gas valves. But the direction of the attack was different and the wind blew the fumes away. The Germans, though in gas-masks (worn for the first time that day), were not sufficiently protected and hundreds died from their own infernal device. The gas was shut off. In the night the wind changed and on Friday morning another discharge of gas was sent against the Canadian lines.
"The Canadian Highlanders received that discharge, and, though they showed themselves to be among the most gallant soldiers who ever fought like heroes in a righteous cause, they were compelled to fall back. Yet, even so, the Teutons did not break the line. On every side, the German forces poured in. They threw army corps after army corps into the gap. At one time, there were fourteen Germans against one Canadian, and the artillery concentration was as sixty shells to one.
"Yet the men held firm, knowing, that hour by hour, even minute by minute, the gap behind them was being closed by reënforcements. They died, and died willingly, to save the day. Neither poison gas—remember, they had no masks, for the gas was a surprise only of the night before—artillery, nor overwhelming odds could break the line. The officers ran to the foremost places in the trenches and died, fighting, with the men. Every Canadian reserve was hurled into the breach, to charge and counter-attack for a few minutes before they died, that others, following, also might hold the foe for a few moments, and then die.
"By the middle of Friday morning, British reënforcing brigades had come up. They reached the Canadian lines.
"The British halted, sent up a cheer for Canada, for a heroic fight seldom equaled in the annals of war, a fight which has given Canada a glory equal to the splendor of Belgium at Liége, of France at the Marne and of the Irish and Scotch at the Aisne, and, cheering still, the British drove at the Germans.
"Without a single moment of rest for two days and nights, the struggle continued, and, by Sunday morning, the gap was closed and the German opportunity was gone. Every advance was dammed back by rifle-fire, even though the fingers that pulled the triggers were already writhing in the intolerable agony which precedes a death from asphyxiating gas.
"Once, indeed, during the second British charge, all seemed lost, for the charge failed, and halted. For a moment it seemed to give way, then a cry ran along the English lines.
"'The Bowmen! The Bowmen of Agincourt!'
"And the British, peering through the cloud of gas, saw, before them, the ghostly shapes of ranks upon ranks of English archers, such as had fought upon the field of Europe exactly five hundred years before. Their short armor gleamed against the hideous greenish cloud and the bowstrings twanged as they released the cloth-yard arrow shafts, drawn to the head.
"Once before, at Mons, at the time when St. George also had appeared on the right wing of the English, the left wing had seen the bowmen, when they drove back the flanking German host, and victory had been theirs for the moment.
"Remembering this, triumph rang in the shout which reverberated through the English lines:
"'The Bowmen! The Bowmen of Agincourt!'
"Neither poison gas, explosive shells, machine-guns, rifles nor bayonet could stop that rush. Backed up by three brigades of Indian troops, the English charged. They reached the front line of the trenches when once more the ominous yellow-green mist rolled on. In a moment the Indians were encircled by the dead fumes. Many of the men died where they stood. The mephitic cloud passed slowly over, but every man who was not dead was stupefied. Into the mass the rifle and shrapnel fire fell. Of one of the Indian regiments, seventy answered the roll-call that night, in another, only eleven.
"The famous Hill 60 was taken by gas. There, with a favorable wind, the Boches poured out gas in such vast quantities as to eddy and swirl around the base of the hill and finally to submerge it. The crest disappeared from sight like a rock by the advancing tide. Out of the green death, finally, came two men. There appeared staggering towards the dug-out of the commanding officer of the Duke's regiment, two figures, an officer and an orderly. The officer was pale as death and when he spoke, his voice came hoarsely from his throat. Beside him, his orderly, with unbuttoned coat, his rifle clasped in his hand, swayed as he stood. The officer said slowly in his gasping voice:
"'They have gassed the Duke's. I believe I was the last man to leave the hill. The men are all up there dead. They were splendid. I thought I ought to come and report.'
"He died that night."
"But it couldn't be like that now," said Horace, "every one's got a gas-mask."
"That doesn't save everything," the veteran replied. "You've heard the story of the Zouave Bugler's last call?"
"No," said the boy, "tell me."
"It was during a strong German offensive on one of our exposed sectors," the sergeant-major began, "when our front trench was exposed to an extraordinarily intense shell-fire, accompanied by a terrific cloud of asphyxiating gas.
"The few survivors were almost in extremis, fighting furiously and doggedly, though without hope other than that of selling their lives as dearly as they could and sending as many Germans as possible to the halls of death which they had prepared for others.
"Help was absolutely necessary if the position was to be held, and, as the men knew well, if their position fell, others would be in danger. Yet, though reënforcements were imperative, any communication with the second line seemed impossible. The telephone wires were like the trenches, broken and pulverized, and no man could move from that inferno alive.
"There was only one way to give the news to those behind and that was by bugle. This meant certain death to the bugler, who would have to lower his gas mask to sound the call. The captain hesitated to give the order.
"The gallant clairon, however, did not wait for the word of command. As soon as he realized the danger, he tore off his protecting mask, sent his anguished appeal to his comrades in the rear and then lurched forward to die an agonizing death, though not in vain, for his brave deed had saved the day."
Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
When Hooded Demons take the Trenches.
British at Loos charging down on Germans first line. Note the two style of bombs and the Germans surrendering a machine gun. Also note the changed type of British gas masks.
"Great!" cried Horace, his eyes shining.
"Great, indeed," echoed the veteran, "great, but awful. That a man's life should depend not on his courage, not on his skill, not on his power, but on a piece of saturated gauze before his nose—that is awful, and it is not war."
"But masks are needed!"
"More than ever," the veteran agreed, "for since that time the Germans have invented three different kinds of asphyxiating gas: the gases which have a suffocating effect, so that men die from strangulation, mainly carbonic acid and nitrogen; the poisonous gases, in which men are killed by reason of the poison of the fumes, such as carbon monoxide and cyanogen; and the spasm gases, in which men are killed by the muscular and nervous spasms set up by the gases, such as chlorine, sulphuric acid and phosgene.[21] One of our men, who was a chemist in civil life, told me all about it."
"Which were the gases used at Ypres, where the poison gas business first began?"
"Chlorine and bromine," the other answered, "so this chemist chap told me. They get the chlorine by passing strong currents of electricity through sea-water by some process he explained but which I couldn't understand; and the bromine is a by-product that they make from the Strasburg salts. But there's some other gases like sulphurous anhydride and carbonyl chloride that I don't know much about."
"Did you find out how it is that the masks really prevent poisoning?" the boy asked.
"That's simple enough. Chlorine and bromine have what this chemist fellow called an 'affinity' for alkalies, and the gas combines with the alkali somehow, so that all the poisonous effect is lost. French, English and German masks are different in shape, but the idea is the same. The Germans have a mask which fits over the nose and mouth, filled with absorbent cotton treated with hyposulphite of sodium or sodium carbonate. The French and English have a mask that covers the whole head and which can be tucked under the collar of the tunic.
"The newest kind that we're using has a tin tube three inches long and an inch in diameter, prolonged on the exterior by a rubber appendix in which there is a valve opening outward. The valve cannot open inward at all. So, when poison gas is seen coming, you can put on your mask and take the tube in your teeth. You can't breathe through your mouth, then, because the valve in the pipe won't open inward, and none of the poison gas can get in. You breathe in through the nose and breathe out through the mouth."[22]
"It's awfully uncomfortable," said Horace; "they make me go around with a gas mask in my pocket, but every time I put it on for a few minutes, I'm glad enough to take it off again."
The veteran shook his head.
"That's foolish," he said, "because you need to become accustomed to wearing it. Practice a little bit every day. If you don't, and suddenly find yourself in the middle of a gas cloud, you won't be able to stand it more than five minutes. You'll feel that you're choking for air. So you slip it off, just for a moment's relief, the green horror catches at your throat, and you're done."
"But, as you said yourself," protested the boy, "a cloud of gas passes over, and then it's gone."
"I said it used to be that way," the sergeant-major answered, "but it's not that way any more. The Germans don't send their gas from big fixed gasometers now; they have tanks which a man can carry on his back and from which the gas is jetted by compressed air. Infantry, with gas-masks on, can come right up behind the men carrying the gas tanks and, just as soon as the heavy poison fumes begin to fill the trenches, they charge."
"Isn't there any way of stopping it?"
"Only with a fearful amount of trouble and enormous expense. Poison gas, being heavier than the air, sinks. To keep it from sinking, then, you have to create a strong upward air current. Any bonfire will do that. If, when a cloud of gas approaches or when men carrying gas reservoirs approach the trenches, you can start a bonfire every few yards along the line, the poison gas will be sucked into this up-draught and dispersed by the heat. That has been done, several times, and it was the only defense of the British at Ypres, before the gas masks were hastily improvised. But that means hauling a lot of fuel to the front, and every pound of fuel transported means a pound less of provisions and munitions. Besides, as soon as we worked out that kind of defense, the Germans schemed a new way to use the gas. Now they put it into shells by compressed air. They have two of these gas shells which they call the 'T' type and the 'K' type."
"How do we know what they call them?"
"Because those letters are painted on the ogives of the shells. The 'T' shells are filled with a very dense gas, which disperses slowly. After a storm of these shells has fallen, the air is unbreathable for an hour or sometimes two, according to the dampness of the weather. The 'K' shells are filled with a more powerful spasm-gas, virulent in its effects, but which disperses rapidly.
"The first is used in curtain fire, when the Germans expect to be assaulted. A steady dropping bombardment of 'T' shells makes a gas-filled zone. Charging troops have to wear gas masks, for they must pass through it. Defending troops do not need to wear masks, and, as you know yourself, a man is twice as quick and agile without a mask.
"The second, or 'K' shell, is used when the enemy plans to make the assault. You can't see the shells coming, there is no evidence of any change in the enemy's lines which can be reported by an aëroplane. No one knows when the German artillery has received orders to change from high explosive or shrapnel to gas shells, when, suddenly, all along the line, there drops a concerted hail of gas shells, and in ten seconds half the men in the first line trenches are gassed. It takes about twenty seconds to put on a gas-mask properly. It is a horrible, vicious, and cowardly way of making war."
"But don't we use it, too?"
"We haven't yet," the veteran answered, "but we shall have to begin soon, in self-defense.[23] Then the Boches will be sorry that they began, for their own atrocious cruelty will return on their own heads. But we have a new invention, too, which is gaining us more ground than we lost by the poison gas."
"You mean the tanks?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to see a tank in action," said Horace, eagerly. "But I suppose we won't have them, here."
Courtesy of "L'Illustration."
The Approach of Doom.
British tank, first appearing at Flers (September 15, 1916) which drove the German Army into a panic of unreasoning terror.
"We shall," the veteran replied, "and soon. We shall be compelled to use them. The night before last, the Germans started using liquid fire on our lines. That's a wicked thing, too. From what I hear, it is a mixture of gasoline, paraffine and tar, forced out by compressed nitrogen and ignited at the point of a long tube. It throws a jet of fire twenty or even thirty yards.[24] It burns a man to a crisp where he stands. No gas-mask will stop that."
"And the tanks don't mind it?"
"A tank minds nothing," was the answer.
That very night, Horace learned what a tank looked like.
As he was going off duty at midnight, he saw a squat colossal monster come lumbering up through the dusk. A huge rotating belt on either side dragged the Juggernaut car forward, while two wheels behind served for steering. Two protected windows in the front gave place for machine guns of the heavier patterns, and sponsons on either side mounted three machine guns operating through small openings. There were thus eight machine guns to each tank. When it is remembered that the fire of a protected machine gun is equal to fifty men, each tank represented an invulnerable company of 400 men. Moreover, not a shot need be wasted. In full fire, a tank could eject 4,800 shots per minute, or 80 bullets per second, and could carry its own fuel and ammunition.
Against the British-invented tanks all the light German trench artillery was powerless. The tank-pilots and gunners wore gas masks, hence gas could not stop them. Rifle bullets glanced from the armor-plate of the tank like hail striking on a window pane. Machine guns peppered its steel skin with no more effect than if the bullets had been pointed peas. Liquid fire found no entrance, even if a projector could be brought near. Nothing could damage a tank save a high explosive shell from the heavy batteries in the rear, and no artillerist in the world could hope to strike a small moving object several miles away.
Early next morning the two tanks advanced. There was no road. They needed none. With a grotesque, crawling gait, they waddled down and up shell holes, lurched over trenches and belly-crawled ahead.
There was nothing they resembled so much as huge antediluvian tortoises which passed unscathed amid the most ferocious prehistoric beasts, secure in the massive protection of their shelly backs. A hurricane of shot greeted them, till their outlines were dimmed to view in the blue of flying steel. Not a bullet penetrated.
Slowly, cumbrously, uncouthly, careening nose down, into a hole, climbing askew nose upwards, they sidled menacingly a tortuous course to the German lines.
Wire!
Much the tanks cared for wire! They waddled on regardlessly, heeding the barbed trap no more than as though pieces of pack-thread had been stretched along the ground. Such of the wire as was tight enough they snapped, the rest they stamped deep into the mud.
Down and up!
The tanks straddled the German first-line trench.
So far, they had been voiceless.
There had not been sign nor sound of human leading. They were the incarnation in metal of grotesque terror. They seemed as an evil dream of machines that had developed life: inhuman, monstrous, dire.
Then they spoke.
The German trenches on either side were swept clean of men by that concentrated tornado spout of slaughter.
The French infantry yelled with delight and plunged into the fray after the tanks. One of the giants lifted an eyelid, as a forward window opened to let through a torrent of machine-gun fire. The blast scorched and ravaged the ground before it.
With a grunt the tanks heaved their prodigious menace on.
The Germans did not wait for their coming. They scattered and fled in all directions. They were willing enough to invent new distortions of war, such as poison gas and liquid fire, but, in childish unreason, they became furious when any new device was directed against them.
Yet still the brutes of steel crawled onward, growling, as their sponsons spit flame.
For six months the trenches on either side had remained unbroken. In sixty minutes, two tanks, backed up by the French infantry, had driven the Germans back, captured a thousand prisoners, taken several score machine guns and frightened an entire German army corps into wild-eyed and headlong panic. Its morale was broken and in spite of their officers' commands, they dared not return to the charge.
The French captured and consolidated the trenches, which were underground forts of surprising strength. One of the communication trenches was more than a hundred yards long, completely lined with timber and carried so deep underground as to be safe from anything but mining. There were dug-outs entered through a steel door, two stories in depth, with spacious rooms closely boarded. In one such dug-out, there were evidences that one of the officers had been living in comfort, with his wife and child. Another was fitted with a hydraulic mechanism for sending up excavated earth to be used in sand bags.
Some of the larger dug-outs could easily hold a platoon of men in complete security. Several tunnels led to sniper stations, like a manhole to a sewer, reaching the surface at high points. These were well timbered, with iron ladders. The trenches were lined with concrete, warm and dry. The manual labor was astounding. Contrasted with the French trenches, roughly built and damp, the German advantages all winter had been enormous.
The distant German batteries, changing their range to the location of their former trenches, commenced a heavy bombardment, but the consolidation had been rapidly effected, the French artillery had advanced without delay, engineering companies had put up new wire entanglements, and though, for a week without cessation, the Germans charged again and again, they were pushed back with heavy losses. And when, ten days later, an attack was made in force, Mesdames Tank waddled to the front again and the Germans fled in dismay. Little by little the German line was pushed back, little by little the soil of France was rewon.
But, for Horace, the end was not yet.
One bright spring morning, while busy at his switchboard in the little shelter which had been constructed for the telephone, the boy heard a thin, high whistle and a small shell crashed through the roof. It struck the floor and exploded, thin splinters flying in every direction.
Dazed with surprise that he had not been blown up sky high, Horace realized that this could not be a high explosive bomb. It must be a gas shell.
With a beating heart, he held his breath and seized his gas-mask, his fingers fumbling in his haste as he put it on, wondering, as he did so, that he had seen no green or yellow fumes arise.
British Official Sketch
Bringing up Food for the Firing Line Through a Poison Gas Cloud.
Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."
The Battle of Demon Faces Flinging Bombs in a Mist of Green Death
One minute, two minutes passed, and no fumes arose. Cautiously the boy lifted a corner of the mask and gave the merest little sniff. He smelt nothing.
It was a false alarm!
Profoundly grateful over his escape, Horace decided that by some happy accident, the shell which had fallen had been a gas shell, but, by some accident of manufacture, it had escaped being filled. Evidently, he was born lucky, he thought. Had it been a high-explosive shell, it would have blown him to atoms; had the shell been filled with gas, he would have been poisoned before he had time to put on his mask.
Five minutes passed.
Then the boy noticed, on the under side of his legs, just where his weight touched the edge of the chair, a curious prickling sensation, as though he had been stung with nettles. Unconsciously, he rubbed the place with his hand.
That instant, wherever the weight of his hand had been, the prickling began. His hand, too, began to smart.
Something was happening. A vague discomfort spread over the skin of his entire body.
He blinked his eyes. The sight was dim and blurred. He could not see clearly the holes in which to put his telephone plugs and, when he picked one up, his fingers were burning so that he let them fall.
Something was happening.
His flesh felt raw about his neck where the collar touched it, and where his skin had touched the chair, fire seemed to be eating him.
A black and purple light was blinding him, heavy fingers pressed on his eyeballs.
Gropingly he managed to find the wire to headquarters.
"I'm going blind," he mumbled, in a thick voice he could not recognize as his own, "send relief."
Relief came half an hour later and the men found Horace on the floor, his clothing half-torn from his body and his shrill screams sunk into hard, husky moanings.
The stretcher-bearers took him to the nearest dressing station.
One look was enough for the examining doctor.
"Put on rubber gloves," he said to his assistant, "take off every stitch he has and burn the clothes. Don't let them touch anything. Burn the canvas of that stretcher. Get the 'phone instruments out of that shelter and burn the shelter. Tell the operator who is there now to change his clothes and burn them, too, and tell him to come here for treatment, quickly!"
"Why, Doctor, what is it?" the assistant asked.
"Blister gas," the doctor answered, "the newest horror of those German fiends.[25] You can't see it, can't smell it, don't know it's there, but ten minutes after you've been near it, the vile stuff raises a thousand blisters on the skin. The poison will sometimes stay in the clothes for weeks. Even the wood of a chair will hold the venom."
"But is it fatal?"
"Victims die from the pain, sometimes," the doctor answered. "Take this boy here. He's had an awful dose, because, as I understand, the shell burst right in the shelter and he soaked it in. He'll be unconscious for quite a while and in about three days all those blisters will break. His body will be nothing but a sheet of raw flesh. We'll have to keep him under morphine and we'll be lucky if he pulls through."
For two long awful weeks Horace lay in a drugged state which left him dulled and yet conscious of pain. The agony rose above the anæsthetic.
At last, exhausted, weak and still in acute torment, he came to himself, to find the hunchback standing beside his bed.
The lad looked up feebly.
"Oh, Croquier," he said, speaking with a still raw throat, "I've been having such a queer dream."
The hunchback leaned forward to listen to the weary, croaking voice.
"I dreamed that Father was over here, in American uniform, and that he said:
"'We're here, my son, at last. We've lagged in late, after France and Britain's heroism, that they may show us what we still can do to save the world from the Hun.'
"And, Croquier, he had in his hand the cage with the 'captive Kaiser'!"
The hunchback leaned low over the bed.
"Remember Madame Maubin!" he said. "That, my boy, was not a dream, but a prophecy!"
THE END