Part 11 (1/2)

According to which front you are on, the trench is of mud, clay, chalk, sand-bags, or cement; it is ambushed in gardens and orchards, it winds through flooded mud flats, is hidden behind the ruins of wrecked villages, and is paved and reinforced with the stones and bricks from the smashed houses.

Of all the trenches the most curious were those of the Vosges. They were the most curious because, to use the last word one a.s.sociates with trenches, they are the most beautiful.

We started for the trenches of the Vosges from a certain place close to the German border. It was so close that in the inn a rifle-bullet from across the border had bored a hole in the cafe mirror.

The car climbed steadily. The swollen rivers flowed far below us, and then disappeared, and the slopes that fell away on one side of the road and rose on the other became smothered under giant pines. Above us they reached to the clouds, below us swept grandly across great valleys. There was no sign of human habitation, not even the hut of a charcoal-burner. Except for the road we might have been the first explorers of a primeval forest. We seemed as far removed from the France of cities, cultivated acres, stone bridges, and chateaux as Rip Van Winkle lost in the Catskills. The silence was the silence of the ocean.

We halted at what might have been a lumberman's camp. There were cabins of huge green logs with the moss still fresh and clinging, and smoke poured from mud chimneys. In the air was an enchanting odor of balsam and boiling coffee. It needed only a man in a Mackinaw coat with an axe to persuade us we had motored from a French village ten hundred years old into a perfectly new trading-post on the Saskatchewan.

But from the lumber camp the colonel appeared, and with him in the lead we started up a hill as sheer as a church roof. The freshly cut path reached upward in short, zigzag lengths. Its outer edge was sh.o.r.ed with the trunks of the trees cut down to make way for it. They were fastened with stakes, and against rain and snow helped to hold it in place. The soil, as the path showed, was of a pink stone. It cuts easily, and is the stone from which cathedrals have been built. That suggests that to an ambitious young sapling it offers little nutriment, but the pines, at least, seem to thrive on it. For centuries they have thrived on it. They towered over us to the height of eight stories. The ground beneath was hidden by the most exquisite moss, and moss climbed far up the tree trunks and covered the branches. They looked, as though to guard them from the cold, they had been swathed in green velvet. Except for the pink path we were in a world of green--green moss, green ferns, green tree trunks, green shadows. The little light that reached from above was like that which filters through the gla.s.s sides of an aquarium.

It was very beautiful, but was it war? We might have been in the Adirondacks in the private camp of one of our men of millions. You expected to see the fire-warden's red poster warning you to stamp out the ashes, and to be careful where you threw your matches. Then the path dived into a trench with pink walls, and, overhead, arches of green branches rising higher and higher until they interlocked and shut out the sky. The trench led to a barrier of logs as round as a flour-barrel, the openings plugged with moss, and the whole hidden in fresh pine boughs. It reminded you of those open barricades used in boar hunting, and behind which the German Emperor awaits the onslaught of thoroughly terrified pigs.

Like a bird's nest it clung to the side of the hill, and, across a valley, looked at a sister hill a quarter of a mile away.

”On that hill,” said the colonel, ”on a level with us, are the Germans.”

Had he told me that among the pine-trees across the valley Santa Claus manufactured his toys and stabled his reindeer I would have believed him. Had humpbacked dwarfs with beards peeped from behind the velvet tree trunks and doffed red nightcaps, had we discovered fairies dancing on the moss carpet, the surprised ones would have been the fairies.

In this enchanted forest to talk of Germans and war was ridiculous. We were speaking in ordinary tones, but in the stillness of the woods our voices carried, and from just below us a dog barked.

”Do you allow the men to bring dogs into the trenches?” I asked. ”Don't they give away your position?”

”That is not one of our dogs,” said the colonel. ”That is a German sentry dog. He has heard us talking.”

”But that dog is not across that valley,” I objected. ”He's on this hill. He's not two hundred yards below us.”

”But, yes, certainly,” said the colonel. Of the man on duty behind the log barrier he asked:

”How near are they?”

”Two hundred yards,” said the soldier. He grinned and, leaning over the top log, pointed directly beneath us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: War in the forest.

A cemetery for soldiers killed in the Vosges.]

It was as though we were on the roof of a house looking over the edge at some one on the front steps. I stared down through the giant pine-trees towering like masts, mysterious, motionless, silent with the silence of centuries. Through the interlacing boughs I saw only s.h.i.+fting shadows or, where a shaft of sunlight fell upon the moss, a flash of vivid green. Unable to believe, I shook my head. Even the _boche_ watchdog, now thoroughly annoyed, did not convince me. As though reading my doubts, an officer beckoned, and we stepped outside the breastworks and into an intricate cat's-cradle of barbed-wire. It was lashed to heavy stakes and wound around the tree trunks, and, had the officer not led the way, it would have been impossible for me to get either in or out.

At intervals, like clothes on a line, on the wires were strung empty tin cans, pans and pots, and gla.s.s bottles. To attempt to cross the entanglement would have made a noise like a peddler's cart b.u.mping over cobbles.

We came to the edge of the barb-wire, and what looked like part of a tree trunk turned into a man-sized bird's nest. The sentry in the nest had his back to us, and was peering intently down through the branches of the tree tops. He remained so long motionless that I thought he was not aware of our approach. But he had heard us. Only it was no part of his orders to make abrupt movements. With infinite caution, with the most considerate slowness, he turned, scowled, and waved us back. It was the care with which he made even so slight a gesture that persuaded me the Germans were as close as the colonel had said. My curiosity concerning them was satisfied. The sentry did not need to wave me back.

I was already on my way.

At the post of observation I saw a dog-kennel.

”There are watchdogs on our side, also?” I said.

”Yes,” the officer a.s.sented doubtfully.