The nearer we get to the firing line the finer the type of soldier. They are the magnificent Britishers of Kitchener's First Army. It makes you proud to see them marching by, dirty and wet with sweat. I watched two battalions come through; they had marched twenty miles through the sun with new issue [pg 074] boots; a few of them had fallen out, and other men and officers were carrying their equipment and rifles; many of the officers carried two rifles.
I am now well within sound of the guns. A German Taube was shelled as it came over our firing line yesterday. One man was lying on his back asleep with his hat over his eyes, when a piece of shrapnel from one of the “Archies” hit him in the stomach—result: one blasphemous, indignant casualty. From the road I can see one of the observation balloons, a queer sausage-shaped airship. We may be moved up into the thick of it at any time now.
I have been over into Belgium to-day: crossed the frontier on my motor bike; the roads are terrible, all this beastly “pavé” cobblestones; awful stuff to ride over on a motor cycle. Shell holes on both sides of the road, and I saw three graves in the corner of a hop garden. All along the road there were dozens and dozens of old [pg 075] London motor buses, taking men to the trenches. They still have the advertisements on them and are driven by the bus-drivers themselves. Three hundred came over with their own machines. They are now soldiers. The observation balloon I mentioned yesterday was shelled down to-day.
I am writing this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have been filled in, all the wreckage cleared, and they have a new mayor.
It is not yet 7 a.m. I am an orderly officer and have to take the men out for a run at six. I came back and bought a London “Daily Mail” of yesterday from a country-woman. We are at least three miles from the town, [pg 076] but they are enterprising enough to bring papers to us at this time in the morning. A “Daily Mail” costs four cents.
Since I last wrote I have been up to the front line. Everything is different from what you imagine. The German trenches are easily distinguished through glasses; their sand-bags are multi-colored. Shrapnel was bursting over ruins of an old town in their lines. When you look through a periscope at the wilderness, it is difficult to imagine that thousands of soldiers on both sides have burrowed themselves into the earth. The evidence of their alertness is shown by their snipers, who are always busy whenever the target is up.
A battery of eight-inch howitzers was opening fire. Our battery commander, hearing this, sent us up. The guns, big fellows, were well concealed. They were painted in protective colors and covered with screens of branches to prevent aerial observation. In the grounds all over the place were dug-outs, deep rabbit burrows, ten or twelve feet down, [pg 077] into which everybody went immediately. The Germans started their “hate.” The firing is done by hand cord; other big guns are fired electrically. An enormous flash, an ear-splitting crash, a great sheet of flame from the muzzle, and two hundred pounds of steel is sent tearing through the air to the “Kultur” exponents. The whole gun lifts off the ground and runs back on its oil-compression springs. These guns are moved by their own caterpillar tractors which are kept somewhere close by. In three quarters of an hour they can get them started on the road. The ground for these emplacements was the orchard of a chateau. While we were there a whistle blew three times, an order shouted; immediately the guns were covered up and the men took cover. The enemy had sent an aeroplane to locate them. If they could once find them, hundreds of shells would rain on this spot in a few minutes. At a few yards' distance I couldn't see the guns myself. The “Hows” were firing at a house in the German lines which had been giving [pg 078] trouble. In three rounds they got it and then started in to “dust” the neighborhood. Of course, the firing is indirect. The officers and men who are with the guns don't see the effects. Apparently they fire straight away in the air. The observation is done by the forward observing officer in the fire trenches who corrects them by 'phone.
After the appointed number of rounds had been fired, we adjourned to the chateau, a fine house, marble mantelpiece, plaster ceilings, gilt mirror panels, etc. It has still a few pieces of furniture left, no carpets, most of the windows are smashed; shells have visited it, but chiefly in splinters. I saw one picture on the wall with a hole drilled in by a shrapnel bullet which had gone clean through as though it had been drilled. It hadn't smashed the glass otherwise. From a window of the room, which the officers use as a mess, a neat row of graves is to be seen. Outside there are great shell holes, most of them big enough to bury a horse. Suddenly a shriek and a deafening explosion [pg 079] occurred in the garden. “Sixty-pound shrapnel! Evening hate,” said an artillery sub. We left! We had been sent up to see the guns fire and not to be fired at.