The day before yesterday, when I was out at one of our posts on the front, an Austrian 88 mm. shell fell in a crowd of mules and their drivers. Fortunately no one was hurt (by one of the freaks of shells), but three mules were killed by the splinters. That night, with some misgivings, I tried a steak from the hind-quarter of a five-year-old mule. It was bully. When you come to think of it, a mule is just as good food as a steer.
A week ago I was waiting at a front post for some wounded, when a mule train came by, packed with the huge winged aerial torpedoes so much in vogue just now. Each mule carried four of these truly formidable things. As the last mule passed, he slipped on the muddy slope, his feet flew out, and down he came with a whack, torpedoes and all. You ought to have seen us scatter,—officers, men, and mule-drivers,—like fragments of a bursting shell. As the mule showed signs of struggling, we had to rush back and gingerly remove the load before helping him up.
These torpedoes play a great part in war nowadays. They are cheap to manufacture, carry an enormous bursting charge, and—shot out of small mortar-like guns, into which the steel or wooden "stem" of the torpedo is inserted—have a range of six or seven hundred yards. On days of attack you can see them, like huge black birds, soar slowly up from behind the trenches, hang poised for an instant, and dart down to make their formidable explosion, which sends clouds of débris, timber, and dirt, high into the air. Their fragments are very bad—long, thin, jagged things that come whizzing by and inflict terrible wounds. Many of them are equipped with "trailers," which outline their course in a shower of crimson sparks; and on nights of attack the sky is scored with their fiery trails.
A night attack is a wonderful thing to see: the steady solemn thunder of the guns, the sky glaring with star-shells and trails, the trenches flaming and roaring with bursting shell. It is like a vast natural phenomenon,—Krakatoa or Mont Pelée,—too vast and cataclysmic to be man's handiwork; and yet, into the maelstrom of spouting flames, hissing steel, shattering explosions, insignificant little creatures like you and me will presently run—offering, with sublime courage, their tender bodies to be burned and pierced and mangled. To me that is war's one redeeming feature—it brings out in men a courage that is of the spirit alone—above all earthly things.
April 23, 1917
I am sitting again in the little post I told you about in my last letter. The old lady is tidying up the café, the early morning sun is shining in gayly through the many-paned windows, and outside, along the picket-line, the mules are squealing and kicking while they have their morning bath. Pretty soon I shall go out foraging for a brace of eggs, and with these, a piece of cheese, and some coffee shall make my déjeuner.
The local barrack is the only one I have found where one simply cannot eat, as the cook and his kitchen are unspeakable. Unless he has been caught out in a shower, he has certainly gone without a bath since the war started. After a glance at him and at his kitchen even the most callous poilu rebels.
We have now, attached to our section as mechanic, a French private who is rather an unusual type—a rich manufacturer in civil life, who, through some kink of character, has not risen in the army. He put in a year in the trenches and then, being middle-aged, was put behind the lines. He speaks English, is splendidly educated, and has traveled everywhere, but is too indifferent to public opinion ever to make an officer, or even a non-com. In his factory he had a packer, earning seven francs a day, who was also mobilized, and who has now risen to the rank of lieutenant. Think of the gulf between a poilu and a French officer, with his authority, his galons and superb red-and-gold hat, and then consider that this lieutenant's idea of a permission is to go home, put on his oldest clothes, and spend the seven days working at his old job of packing and heading barrels. It takes France to produce this sort of thing.
The siege warfare to which, owing to strategic reasons, we are reduced in our part of the lines, with both sides playing the part of besieged and besiegers, gives rise to a curious unwritten understanding between ourselves and the enemy. Take the hospital corps, their first-aid posts and ambulances. The Germans must know perfectly well where the posts are, but they scarcely ever shell them—not from any humanitarian reason, but because if they did, the French would promptly blow theirs to pieces. It is a curious sensation to live in such a place, with the knowledge that this is the only reason you enjoy your comparative safety. Likewise our ambulances. I often go over a road in perfectly plain view of the Boche, only a few hundred yards distant, and though shells and shrapnel often come my way, I am confident none of them are aimed at me. The proof of it is that no one has ever taken a pot-shot at me with rifle or machine-gun, either one of which would be a sure thing at the range. The other day an officer invited me down to see his newly completed observatory—a cunningly built, almost invisible stronghold on the crest of a hill, which commanded a superb view of the trenches and German territory behind them. It chanced to be an afternoon of unusual interest. The trenches, about eight hundred yards distant, were spread like a map beneath us,—a labyrinth of zigzag ditches and boyaux,—all cunningly laid out on principles which I have been studying. With the powerful glasses lent me, I could make out the thickets of wire before the first lines. A heavy bombardment was in progress, and all along the lines, as far as the eye could see, clouds of smoke and earth were springing up and settling slowly down. Not a living being was in sight. Far off to the south, a flock of observation balloons floated motionless, high in air, like fat, hovering birds. Suddenly the man beside me, who had been staring through his glasses at a twenty-acre patch of woods a couple of miles away, gave an excited exclamation. "I have spotted it—the new battery of heavy guns that has been annoying us; they were too bold, for once."
Sure enough, I thought I made out a thin wisp of smoke trailing among the tree-tops at the south end of the wood.