The War on All Fronts: England's Effort / Letters to an American Friend

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

II

It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the table d'hôte, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks, and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with the latest news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide, the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A beautiful drive—far more beautiful than I had expected—over undulating country, with distant views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill, over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes back to me, where a road to the coast—that coast which the Germans so nearly reached!—diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was our destination—extraordinarily fine!—its ancient church a towered mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs into one harmonious whole."

But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending an avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century château, which is used by G.H.Q. as a hostel for its guests—allied and neutral correspondents, military attachés, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I found myself standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of it all, in a charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true manner of the genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled walls, an old armoire of the date, windows wide open to the spring sun, and a half-wild garden outside. A femme de ménage, much surprised to be waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is France!—and we are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has drawn our English hearts to it all these days.

A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly, where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor again, with Captain —— sitting in front. "You have your passes?" he asks us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can."

On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain —— and D. following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road; a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses, motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the little place gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one of the cooks (by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm not!" said the little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's Day I'm waitin' for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!"

He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?" It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.

We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time. We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road, with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we come back."

At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain —— regretfully, "but we brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village—a splendid fight."

Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed that no aeroplane overhead could guess it.

There it was—how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and northern workshops!—its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock—not so violent as I had expected—and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has sped on its way to the German trenches—with what result to human flesh and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that—till afterwards. At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group of men in the darkness held all one's nerves gripped.

In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the officers, in their billet, when our walk was done.

Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. "Look at that group of trees to your left—beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," said our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war. "Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter, and Captain —— was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back. Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write something about "the life of the soldiers in the trenches"—and that was the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt whether anything more—anything, at least, that was possible—could have deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman—even a nurse—has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English line, and the cup of impressions was full.

As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station. It was not for us—who could not help—to ask to go in. But the thought of it—there were some badly wounded in it—pursued me as we walked on through the beautiful evening.

A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything else in that crowded hour—those same companies of men we had seen sitting waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind the other, up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am accustomed to see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching through these Hertfordshire lanes. But this was different. The bearing was erect and manly, the faces perfectly cheerful; but there was the seriousness in them of men who knew well the work to which they were going. I caught a little quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We greeted them as they passed, with a shy "Good luck!" and they smiled shyly back, surprised, of course, to see a couple of women on that road. But there was no shyness towards the General. It was very evident that the relations between him and them were as good as affection and confidence on both sides could make them.

I still see the bright tea-table in that corner of a ruined farm, where our young officers presently greeted us—the General marking our maps to make clear where he had actually been—the Captain of the battery springing up to show off his gramophone—while the guns crashed at intervals close beside us, range-finding, probably, searching out a portion of the German line, under the direction of some hidden observer with his telephone. It was over all too quickly. Time was up, and soon the motor was speeding back towards the Divisional Headquarters. The General and I talked of war, and what could be done to stop it. A more practical religion "lifting mankind again"?—a new St. Francis, preaching the old things in new ways? "But in this war we had and we have no choice. We are fighting for civilisation and freedom, and we must go on till we win."