Told in gallant deeds

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Arthur Clough.

After the German army had fallen back a long, long way, close on a hundred miles, they suddenly came to a stop, and prepared for a new and desperate stand.

Gradually, those of us who were watching anxiously from far off, learnt what the men at the front knew almost at once; General von Kluck had decided to turn and face his pursuers along the line of the river Aisne. It was an excellent choice. This river, broad and deep, was one of the easiest to defend in the whole of Europe. Moreover, von Kluck was well aware that in days of peace cunning Germans, masquerading in many cases as quiet wine merchants, had prepared there a series of almost impregnable trenches. Now the word impregnable means “impossible to take,” and when our officers, later, saw the trenches out of which the Germans had been driven, they declared that our men would have held them for ever!

It was there, in the beautiful country of vineyards and of the low, swelling hills which surround the famous town of Rheims, that began what has come to be known as the Battle of the Aisne.

I expect most of you know the meaning of the word “fortress.” Those of you who don’t will understand it best if I tell you that in old days every castle was a fortress. It was so built with ramparts, battlements, and little narrow windows, that every stone of it could be defended, either by archers with bows and arrows, or with men and guns.

Now the most striking fact about the great Battle of the Aisne, which, beginning on September 10, was to last longer than any previous battle in the history of the world, was that on the German side it was exactly like fortress or castle fighting. I mean that the Germans, with a foresight which did credit to their cleverness, had evidently thought it possible, though not probable, that they might be pushed far back, as in fact they were. They had, therefore, prepared long beforehand trenches and quarries which, from a little way off, actually looked like the battlements of a castle. There, snugly hidden behind natural and artificial ramparts, they were able to keep the British troops and those of our ally at bay during many long weary days.

The German trenches were all ready for the enemy to step into them, but every British and French trench had to be dug out and prepared at short notice. This, however, was soon done, and then there began that strange “life in the trenches,” of which so many vivid accounts were written home by officers and privates.

You will certainly want to know what a trench is like. A one-man trench is best described by its other name, “dug-out.” It is a large, neat hole, cut so deeply in the ground that a man can stand upright in it without being seen.

There is a great art in digging a trench. When finished it should be not unlike a tiny cottage room; the floor, however, is quite unlike that of a room, for instead of being flat it is slightly sloped, so that any rain that gets in may run away quickly. At the side there is a step, so that the occupier, when he cares to do so, can cautiously raise his head above the ground and look round. The best trenches have a kind of roof or head-cover. This protects the man inside, not only from rain and sun, but also from the awful bullets which come out of the shrapnel shells.

It is interesting to know that the shrapnel shell, which has done such deadly harm in this war both to ourselves and to the enemy, is called after a distinguished English soldier, General Henry Shrapnel, who invented it. On the park gates of the ancestral home of the Shrapnel family near Trowbridge are still to be seen inscribed the names of over twenty battles won with the aid of this shell. Sir George Wood, who commanded the artillery at Waterloo, declared that we owed to shrapnel the recovery of La Haye Sainte, on which part of the battle depended.