"When I entered Dixmude one night in the middle of October the first bombardment was over, but from both sides the heavy shells flew across the town. From the end of the main street came an incessant noise of rifles and machine guns. Unaimed bullets wailed through the air, and pattered as they struck the walls. Flaming houses shed a light upon the ruined streets, but only one house looked inhabited, and all the others which were not burning stood silent and empty, expecting destruction.
"That one house was used as an outlying hospital or dressing-place nearest the firing line, and the wounded had to be led or carried only two or three hundred yards to reach it. They sat on the dining-room chairs or lay helpless on the floor. A few surgeons were at work upon them, cutting off loose fingers and throwing them into basins, plugging black holes that welled up instantly through the plug, straining bandages, which in a minute ceased to be white, round legs and heads. The smell of fresh, warm blood was thick on the air. One man lay deep in his blood. You could not have supposed that anyone had so much in him. Another's head had lost on one side all human semblance, and was a hideous pulp of eye and ear and jaw. Another, with chest torn open, lay gasping for the few minutes left of life. And as I waited for the ambulance more were brought in, and always more.
"In a complacent and comfortable account of hospital work I lately read that 'deaths from wounds are happily rare; one surgeon put the number as low as 2 per cent.' Happy hospital, far away in Paris or some Isle of the Blest! The further from the front the fewer the deaths, because so many have died already.
"In the nearest hospitals to the front, half the wounded, and on some days more than half, die where they are put. Often they die in the ambulance, and one's care in drawing them out is wasted, for they will never feel again. I found one always took the same care, though the greenish-yellow of the exposed hands or feet showed the truth. Laid on the floor of the main hospital itself, some screamed or moaned, some whimpered like sick children, especially in their sleep, some lay quiet, with glazed eyes out of which sight was passing. Mere fragments of mankind were there extended, limbs pounded into mash, heads split open, intestines hanging out from gashes. Did those bones—did that exquisite network of living tissue and contrivances for life—cost no more in the breeding than to be hewed and smashed and pulped like this? Shrapnel—shrapnel—it was nearly always the same. For this is, above all, an artillery war, and both sides are justly proud of their efficiency in guns."
GOVERNMENT RETURNS TO PARIS
Confidence of safety having been restored in the French capital, the Paris bourse reopened on December 7, after having been closed since September 3. President Poincaré transferred his official residence back to Paris from Bordeaux on December 9 and a meeting of the French cabinet was held in Paris on December 11, for the first time since the capital was threatened by the German advance at the end of August.
BRITISH NAVAL VICTORY
In the second week of December the British navy avenged the defeat of Rear Admiral Cradock's squadron off the Chilean coast in November, when a powerful special fleet, under Vice-Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee, encountered the German cruiser fleet, under Admiral von Spee, off the Falkland Islands and practically destroyed it. Only one of the five German cruisers escaped. The flagship Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau, the Leipzig and the Nurnberg were sunk in the action, which lasted for five hours, and the German admiral with three of his sons and most of the officers and men of the German crews perished. The British losses were inconsiderable.
This sea fight in the South Atlantic was the most important engagement in which British men-of-war had participated since the era of Napoleon. The sailing of the British fleet in quest of Admiral von Spee's squadron had been kept secret and the news of the victory was therefore especially welcome to the people of England, who had been considerably worried by a succession of minor naval losses inflicted by German cruisers, submarines and mines. The action was gallantly fought on both sides. The advantage in weight of metal and range of guns lay on the side of the British, and the battle was decided at long range. Admiral von Spee, refusing to surrender, in spite of the odds against him, went down with his ship. The flagship of the victorious admiral, Sir Frederick Sturdee, was the modern battle cruiser Invincible. A number of the German sailors were rescued by the British after the engagement and sent as prisoners of war to England. The total German loss was over 2,000 officers and men.
Fine strategy was shown by the British admiralty in sending Admiral Sturdee to South American waters. He was ordered to sea from his desk as chief of the British naval board, after Von Spee's Chilean victory in November, and was placed in command of some of the fastest and most powerful cruisers of the British fleet. The entire affair, from the time the admiral left London until he succeeded in finding and sinking the German squadron in the South Atlantic, took about a month—a truly remarkable exploit.