Part 8 (2/2)
The Boche watching the conflict appeared to hang almost immobile over the Quart. With a striking suddenness, another machine appeared behind him and above him. So unexpected was the approach of this second aeroplane that its appearance had a touch of the miraculous. It might have been created at that very moment in the sky. The Frenchman--for it was an aviator from the parc at Toul, since killed at Verdun, poor fellow--swooped beneath his antagonist and fired his machine gun at him.
The German answered with two shots of a carbine. The Frenchman fired again. Suddenly the German machine flopped to the right and swooped down; it then flopped to the left, the tail of the machine flew up, and the apparatus fell, not so swiftly as one might expect, down a thousand feet into The Wood. When I saw the wreckage, a few days afterwards, it looked like the spilt contents of a waste-paper basket, and the aviators, a pilot and an observer, had had to be collected from all over the landscape. The French buried them with full military honors.
Thanks to the use of a flame machine, the Germans succeeded in regaining the part of the ridge they had lost, but the French made it so hot for them that they abandoned it, and the contested trenches now lie in No Man's Land. All that night the whole Wood was illuminated, trench light after trench light rising over the dark branches. There would be a rocket like the trail of bronze-red powder sparks hanging for an instant in the sky, then a loud Plop! and the French light would spread out its parachute and sail slowly down the sky toward the river. The German lights (fusees eclairantes), cartridges of magnesium fired from a gun resembling a shotgun, burned only during their dazzling trajectory. At midnight the sky darkened with low, black rain clouds, upon whose surface the constant cannon fire flashed in pools of violet-white light.
Coming down from the plateau at two in the morning, I could see sharp jabs of cannon fire for thirty miles along the front on the other side of the Moselle.
Just after this attack a doctor of the army service was walking through the trenches in which the French had made their stand. He noticed something oddly skewered to a tree. He knocked it down with a stone, and a human heart fell at his feet.
The most interesting question of the whole business is, ”How do the soldiers stand it?” At the beginning of my own service, I thought Pont-a-Mousson, with its ruins, its danger, and its darkness, the most awful place on the face of the earth. After a little while, I grew accustomed to the decor, and when the time came for me to leave it, I went with as much regret as if I were leaving the friendliest, most peaceful of towns. First the decor, growing familiar, lost the keener edges of its horror, and then the life of the front--the violence, the destruction, the dying and the dead--all became casual, part of the day's work. A human being is profoundly affected by those about him; thus, when a new soldier finds himself for the first time in a trench, he is sustained by the att.i.tude of the veterans. Violence becomes the commonplace; sh.e.l.ls, gases, and flames are the things that life is made of. The war is another lesson in the power of the species to adapt itself to circ.u.mstances. When this power of adaptability has been reinforced by a tenacious national will ”to see the thing through,” men will stand h.e.l.l itself. The slow, dogged determination of the British cannot be more powerful than the resolution of the French. Their decision to continue at all costs has been reached by a purely intellectual process, and to enforce it, they have called upon those ancient foundations of the French character, the sober reasonableness and unbending will they inherit from Rome.
And a new religion has risen in the trenches, a faith much more akin to Mahomet than to Christ. It is a fatalism of action. The soldier finds his salvation in the belief that nothing will happen to him until his hour comes, and the logical corollary of this belief, that it does no good to worry, is his rock of ages. It is a curious thing to see poilus--peasants, artisans, scholars--completely in the grip of this philosophy. There has been a certain return to the Church of Rome, for which several reasons exist, the greatest being that the war has made men turn to spiritual things. Only an animal could be confronted with the pageant of heroism, the glory of sacrifice, and the presence of Death, and not be moved to a contemplation of the fountain-head of these sublime mysteries. But it is the upper cla.s.s which in particular has returned to the Church. Before the war, rationalist and genial skeptic, the educated Frenchman went to church because it was the thing to do, and because non-attendance would weaken an inst.i.tution which the world was by no means ready to lay aside. This same educated Frenchman, brought face to face with the mystery of human existence, has felt a real need of spiritual support, and consequently returned to the Church of his fathers.
The religious revival is a return of upper-cla.s.s prodigals to the fold, and a rekindling of the chilled brands of the faith of the amiably skeptical. The great ma.s.s of the nation has felt this spiritual force, but because the ma.s.s of the nation was always Catholic, nothing much has changed. I failed to find any trace of conversions among the still hostile working men of the towns, and the bred-in-the-bone Socialists.
The rallying of the conservative cla.s.ses about the Cross is also due to the fact that the war has exposed the mediocrity and sterile windiness of the old socialistic governments; this misgovernment the upper cla.s.ses have determined to end once they return from the trenches, and remembering that the Church of Rome was the enemy of the past administrations, cannot help regarding her with a certain friendliness.
But this issue of past misgovernment will be fought out on purely secular grounds, and the Church will be only a sympathizer behind the fray. The manner in which the French priests have fought and died is worthy of the admiration of the world. Never in the history of any country has the national religion been so closely enmeshed in the national life. The older clergy, as a rule, have been attached to the medical services of the front, serving as hospital orderlies and stretcher-bearers, but the younger priests have been put right into the army and are fighting to-day as common soldiers. There are hundreds of officer-priests--captains and lieutenants of the regular army.
But the real religion of the front is the philosophy of Mahomet. Life will end only when Death has been decreed by Fate, and the Boches are the unbelievers. After all, Islam in its great days was a virile faith, the faith of a race of soldiers.
Chapter VII
The Town In The Trenches
At the beginning of the war the German plan of campaign was to take France on the flank by marching through Belgium, and once the success of this northern venture a.s.sured, strike at the Verdun-Belfort line which had baffled them in the first instance. Had they not lost the battle of the Marne, this second venture might have proved successful, for the body of the French army was fighting in the north, and the remaining troops would have been discouraged by the capture of Paris. On the eve of the battle of the Marne the campaign seeming to be well in hand in the north, a German invasion of Lorraine began, one army striking at the defenses of the great plateau which slopes from the Vosges to the Moselle, and the other attempting to ascend the valley of the river. It was this second army which entered Pont-a-Mousson.
Immediately following the declaration of hostilities the troops who had been quartered in the town were withdrawn, and the town was left open to the enemy who, going very cautiously, was on his way from Metz. For several weeks in August, this city, almost directly on the frontier, saw no soldiers, French or German. It was a time of dramatic suspense. The best recital of it I ever heard came from the lips of the housekeeper of Wisteria Villa, a splendid, brave French woman who had never left her post. She was short, of a clear, tanned complexion, and always had her hair tightly rolled up in a little cla.s.sic pug. She was as fearless of sh.e.l.ls as a soldier in the trenches, and once went to a deserted orchard, practically in the trenches, to get some apples for Messieurs les Americains. When asked why she did not get them at a safer place, she replied that she did not have to pay for these apples as the land belonged to her father! Her ear for sh.e.l.ls was the most accurate of the neighborhood, and when a deafening crash would shake the kettles on the stove and rattle the teacups, she could tell you exactly from what direction it had come and the probable caliber. I remember one morning seeing her wash dishes while the Germans were sh.e.l.ling the corner I have already described. The window over the sink opened directly on the dangerous area, and she might have been killed any minute by a flying eclat. Standing with her hands in the soapy water, or wiping dry the hideous blue-and-white dinner service of Wisteria Villa, she never even bothered to look up to see where the sh.e.l.ls were landing. Two ”seventy-sevens” went off with a horrid pop; ”Those are only 'seventy-sevens,'” she murmured as if to herself. A fearful swish was next heard and the house rocked to the din of an explosion. ”That's a 'two hundred and ten'--the rogues--oh, the rogues!” she exclaimed in the tone she might have used in scolding a depraved boy.
At night, when the kitchen was cleared up, she sat down to write her daily letter to her soldier son, and once this duty finished, liked nothing better than a friendly chat. She knew the history of Pont-a-Mousson and Montauville and the inhabitants thereof by heart; she had tales to tell of the shrewdness of the peasants and diverting anecdotes of their manners and morals. These stories she told very well and picturesquely.
”The first thing we saw was the President's poster saying not to be alarmed, that the measures of military preparation were required by circ.u.mstances (les evenements) and did not mean war. Then over this bill the maire posted a notice that in case of a real mobilization (une mobilisation serieuse) they would ring the tocsin. At eleven o'clock the tocsin rang, oh, la la, monsieur, what a fracas! All the bells in the town, Saint-Martin, Saint-Laurent, the hotel de ville. Immediately all our troops went away. We did not want to see them go. 'We shall be back again,' they said. They liked Pont-a-Mousson. Such good young fellows!
The butcher's wife has heard that only fifty-five of the six hundred who were here are alive. They were of the active forces (de l'active). A great many people followed the soldiers. So for two weeks we were left all alone, wondering what was to become of us. And all the time we heard frightful stories about the villages beyond Nancy. On the nth of August we heard cannon for the first time, and on the 12th and the 14th we were bombarded. On the 4th of September, at five o'clock in the evening, the bells began to ring again. Everybody ran out to find the reason. Les Allemands--they were not then called Boches--were coming. Baoum! went the bridge over the Moselle. Everybody went into their houses, so that the Germans came down streets absolutely deserted. I peeked from my window blind. The Boches came down the road from Norroy, les Uhlans, the infantry--how big and ugly they all were. And their officers were so stiff (raide). They were not like our bons pet.i.ts soldats Francais. In the morning I went out to get some bread.
”'Eh la, good woman' (bonne femme), said a grand Boche to me.
”'What do you want?' said I.
”'Are there any soldats francais in the town?' said the Boche.
”'How should I know?' I answered.
”'You do not want to tell, good woman.'
”'I do not know.'
”'Are there any francs-tireurs (civilian snipers) in this town?'
”'Don't bother me; I'm going for some bread.'
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