This morning we got under way at half-past six. The day was hazy, threatening rain; mists rising from the ground made it impossible to see clearly for any great distance. The heavy atmosphere muffled the sound of guns so that it was difficult to judge their location even when we were fairly close upon them. The day was, however, a most advantageous one on which to move about near the front, provided one were careful to ascertain where, off in the mist, the enemy’s batteries lay.
We first reached the front at Roye-sur-Matz, which we found was occupied by a French colonial brigade. This place is about three miles from Lassigny, which is far within the German lines, and from which they have recently organized heavy attacks against the French forces. In Roye-sur-Matz the German shells were bursting, punctuated by the muffled slump of falling walls. The place had been deserted by its inhabitants, but Turcos and black Senegalese wandered about the ruined streets indifferent to the shell fire. For a week past there has been heavy fighting in the vicinity of Roye and Lassigny, probably the heaviest that has taken place in the Battle of the Aisne since the latter part of September. We drove slowly down the main street of the village looking for an officer who could tell us about the local geography. We finally met the acting brigadier, a French colonel, who informed us that it was not safe for us to continue more than a block farther in the direction in which we were going, as the far end of the village was “between the lines” and we would there come under the observation of the German sharpshooters. This officer said that the best way to follow the battle-line would be to turn back through the village and take the first road to the right.
We stayed in the village for half an hour longer, and then, faithfully following directions, went back and took the “first turn to the right,” which proved to be a narrow road whose existence the officer had forgotten and which was not at all the one he meant to recommend. We, ignorant of any mistake, went blindly on, down a little hill, across a small brook, and up a knoll opposite. In doing so we had actually passed out through the French lines and reached an elevation squarely between the two armies. The French positions were, as usual, concealed, and for the moment they were not firing, so that we remained blissfully unconscious of our dangerous position. Fortunately for us, the German lines were at this point half a mile away from the French, and owing to the mist and distance we were apparently unobserved, since we received no especial attention. As we reached the top of the knoll it began to rain, making us still less conspicuous and forcing us to stop and put up the top. We pulled up behind an isolated barn in order to be somewhat sheltered from stray shrapnel.
As we stood behind the barn, the bombarded village which we had just left lay below and behind us, and in front featureless fields sloped away toward some low wooded hills half a mile distant. Suddenly the constant rumbling of guns was interrupted by four quick, sharp explosions, and we perceived little wisps of smoke bluer than the mist trailing up through the tree tops of these hills. These explosions were French shells bursting over the German trenches, but we, naturally supposing ourselves to be within the French lines, at the moment thought it was a French battery firing a salvo.
While we were putting up the top, two French soldiers on picket duty came by and, lured by the unfailing bait of cigarettes, stopped to talk to us. Taking it for granted that we knew where we were, they did not mention our being between the lines, but told us of a great fight which had last Sunday taken place about two miles to the right of where we stood. They said that the German and French trenches there faced one another across a low field and were so near together that at night the French could hear the Germans singing. Some peculiarity in the contour of the land had led the enemy to think that here was a promising point to break through the French lines; consequently a series of violent attacks had been launched from Lassigny against this position. These attacks had repeatedly been repulsed with heavy losses and thousands of dead Germans lay in the field between the two sets of trenches.
I decided to ask permission to go over this recently contested area, and therefore turned back to Brigade headquarters in the village of Roye-sur-Matz, which we had just left. There, in a second talk with the officer who had previously directed us, I learned for the first time that we had taken the wrong road and been for a considerable time between the French and German armies, and only a few hundred yards from the German trenches. That we had there seen no signs of armies, guns, or entrenchments, indicates the curious characteristics of modern warfare, and the invisibility of all combatants even when actively engaged. The permission which I had desired to obtain to inspect the ground of the recent battle was refused as being too dangerous.
We later passed through the village of Guerbigny. Here, as at all times during our trip, the guns could be heard booming in the distance. At the farther end of the place a family of peasants, led by the grandfather, were packing their humble worldly goods into a big cart to which was hitched an exceedingly old white horse. They were very sad and explained simply, “C’est dur de partir.” They pointed across a field to a little church tower about a mile away, only dimly visible through the haze, which still hung low over the landscape, saying pathetically: “On bombarde ce hameau; c’est là les avant-postes des Français.” Our maps showed that the church tower was in the village of Erches. A straight road ran down to it from where we stood. The mist seemed to favor the possibility of our reaching this village without being too quickly observed by the Germans. We therefore promptly put on all speed and in a few seconds drew up under the lee of a battered house, which was on the advance line of the French army, and were in the midst of the battle. A French officer, who appeared out of the house, informed us that we were then actually within two hundred yards of the German trenches, so near, he said, that his men “knew the Germans in the opposing trenches by their first names.”
Seeing a modern battle demolishes all one’s preconceived ideas derived from descriptions of previous wars. One at least expects some sort of rapid and exciting action. In reality, as we stood in the very midst of the Battle of the Aisne, there was, in our immediate neighborhood, only a dead silence. At intervals an angry rumbling would break out somewhere in the distance, but in the trenches close to our elbows there was no sound or movement. No birds, no beasts, no men were anywhere to be seen. This uncanny silence would continue for twenty or thirty interminable seconds and then a shrapnel would burst close by, with a sharp, ugly, threatening bang which had no echo; then all lapsed into silence again. Each shrapnel only made the subsequent silence more intense, just as a man’s footsteps crunching through the snow-crust of a winter wilderness seem like a brutal intrusion on the absolute stillness.
We looked behind us and could see no signs of French troops; we peeped around the house corner and could perceive no indications of the enemy. It was a monotonous landscape which faded away through the mist to nothingness, and its only noticeable features were a few shell craters and two French soldiers sitting close by in the end of a trench. These men remained motionless so long before one of them moved that we began to think they were dead. Their comrades were all hidden in a bomb-proof trench which from any angle was invisible at a distance of a few yards. Several more officers came out of the house and chatted with us, or unconcernedly read newspapers which we distributed and made not the slightest break in their conversation when a shrapnel burst directly over our heads with ear-splitting nearness.