From the Trenches: Louvain to the Aisne, the First Record of an Eye-Witness

by Geoffrey Winthrop Young

Some of the small towns had again guards, military or civic, who gave us pause; while each protested that the new military control had made some different kind of "pass" necessary. Some wanted a red one, some a blue. Some wanted a "visé" from the local Maire. Fortunately during most of the hot day, the Maires were absent or asleep, and it was agreed to be better to wake the one at the next village. The next village was generally also asserted to be a regimental headquarters. In these cases it usually proved to be utterly deserted.

In one little town, near Clermont, we came in for a strange echo of the war. A woman in a high cart drove past quickly, while we were talking with the Maire and the woman of the inn. There was a sudden silence. Then a dramatic, passionate outburst from the handsome, sibyl-faced hostess, who had two sons at the war:

"Think of it: that woman! There were three of our soldiers chased from the fight at Creil. They took refuge with her. She is rich and has a garden. She hid them in the hayloft; threw their uniforms in the garden. The Germans came. They slept in her house. They said: 'We are forced to fight; it is not of our seeking: the French attacked us.' They found the uniforms. They put a pistol to her breast: 'We will shoot you if you do not say where are those soldiers.' She cried: "In the loft." They shot them; all three. The traitress!—and it would have been so easy for a woman to lie!"

A village near Creil itself gave us another echo. A German field-cap hung over the forge. The old smith, one of the last men now left in the village, explained it had fallen from the head of one of three or four German soldiers who had been chased through the street a few days before. "It shall hang there till the owner returns for it," he added grimly, "May my great-grandchildren see it still hanging so!"

And yet one more, and this within sound of the guns, that have been echoing nearer or fainter these last days. A woman ran out of the door of a solitary cottage towards Senlis, waving her arm. One stops quickly these days. A man was dying inside. She had burned his uniform; but I knew at once he was a German. He had been shot while scouting; had hid himself, and crawled to her house. We did what we could for him. From him I learned that the Germans are already reinforcing to meet the western move, and of many things that are hidden from us—no doubt, for our good—or vaguely guessed at. It was no matter of "communication with the enemy"; he was already past the line that divides small irritable tribal mortals; he was joining issue with the last great common foe.

We left him to die in the care of the woman who had not "passed by on the other side." Her son would visit her shortly—she had refused to leave her cottage—and would bury him in the field. No one else was to know.

This is the meaning of the machine of war: The man joins the machine for the honour of the nation. The machine drives him, one of a nameless herd, for a few days, beyond his strength, to his death, for the honour of the machine. And yet the nation is made up of the men; and the machine is made up of the men; and the men die. But for such machines we should know better what is the honour of the nation—that is, of the men—for the men would judge of it, as men, for themselves.

We approached as near as we could venture—for we were behind the enemy—north of Betz and close to the sound of the guns. We saw as much as anyone is likely to see of the fighting in such warfare: the distant sight of greeny-white smoke-balls bursting over trees on a far hill; the slight movement, round the edges of distant woods that sloped towards us, of small grey dots, that were assumed to be the enemy.

Returning across the north of Paris by circuitous ways, we came round by the west, through the entrenched positions. During the day, we passed over five bridges already mined with dynamite, and one wooden bridge with the props half cut through. It is a stimulating experience to crawl over bridges, like Kew Bridge for size and sunny situation, with the warning from armed soldiers at either end that too much vibration may send them exploding into the air, or dropping into the river. We are warned to avoid even the comfort of a cigarette; and there are other impediments to make the passage tortuous and exciting.

The one relief on nearing Paris is the infection of its unconquerable gaiety. After days in the terrible "war atmosphere," every face suspicious, every mile a wrestle with the shadow of puzzled mistrust, it was a lightening of the whole evening when two veteran "grey moustaches" levelled their muskets on a bridge, and threatened to shoot us with a twinkle in their blue eyes—the first smile of the day.