Part 27 (1/2)

We left our landing place for the front on the Tuesday and got there on Sat.u.r.day night. The Germans had just reached Liege then, and we got into action on the Sunday morning. The first thing we did was to blow up a bridge to stop the Germans from crossing. Then we came into action behind a lot of houses attached to the main street. We were there about ten minutes when the houses started to fall around us. The poor people were buried alive. I saw poor children getting knocked down by bursting sh.e.l.ls.

The next move was to advance across where there was a Red Cross hospital. They dropped sh.e.l.ls from airs.h.i.+ps and fired on it until the place was burned down to the ground. Then they got a big plan on to retire and let the French get behind them. We retired eight miles, but we had to fight until we were forced to move again. We got as far as Le Cateau on Tuesday night. We camped there until 2 o'clock next morning.

Then we all heard there was a big fight coming off, so we all got together and cleared the field for action. [The letter mentions the numbers of men engaged, and states that the Germans were in the proportion of three to one.] We cut them down like rats. We could see them coming on us in heaps and dropping like hail. The Colonel pa.s.sed along the line and said, ”Stick it, boys.”

I tell you, mother, it was awful to see your own comrades dropping down--some getting their heads blown off and others their legs and arms. I was fighting with my s.h.i.+rt off. A piece of sh.e.l.l went right through my s.h.i.+rt at the back and never touched me. It stuck into a bag of earth which we put between the wheels to stop bullets.

We were there, all busy fighting, when an airs.h.i.+p came right over the line and dropped a bomb, which caused a terrible lot of smoke. Of course, that gave the Germans our range. Then the sh.e.l.ls were dropping on us thick. We looked across the line and saw the German guns coming toward us. We turned our two centre guns on them and sent them yards in the air. I reckon I saw one German go quite twenty yards in the air.

Just after that a sh.e.l.l burst right over our gun. That one got me out of action. I had to get off the field the best way I could. The bullets were going all around me on the way off; you see, they got completely around us. I went about two miles and met a Red Cross cart. I was taken to St. Quentin Hospital.

We were sh.e.l.led out of there about 2 in the morning, and then taken in a train and taken down to a plain near Rouen. Next morning we were put on a s.h.i.+p for dear old England.

The First German Prisoners

[From The London Times.]

_The following letter from a soldier at the front who has taken part in the first fighting appears in the Temps of Paris, Aug. 16:_

We are now able to realize the state of mind in which they arrive. The army corps to which I belong has already brought its guns into action.

We have seen prisoners, and we have observed battlefields, and we have noticed a thing or two. First of all, these prisoners are not the least bit fanatics. Many of them don't know what they are fighting about. They have been told a thousand phantasmagoria--that France had declared war, that the Belgians and the Italians were helping the Germans, &c.; and one of them was tremendously proud at having the Czar Nicholas as his honorary Colonel! They were taken for the most part in isolated patrols, and it happened so often that it was impossible to get others to start off on reconnoissances, since their comrades never came back and they had no desire to share a like fate.

The prisoners are gentle and calm, and follow with their eyes the bits of bread which are pa.s.sed about near them and which one gives them, and they eat them voraciously. For two days they have only received two rations of coffee. Their appet.i.te is so great that, though in presence of a French officer they will click their heels together properly, they never cease at the same time to munch noisily and to fill out their hollow cheeks.

One feels that they believe us French to be up to every sort of devilment, that we are going to undress them, to take their papers, and they tremble from head to foot in fear of being shot. Even when you give them a cigarette, it does not seem to allay their mistrust. One of them, who was dying of thirst, would not drink the water that was offered him before the gendarme had tasted it in front of him.

They are all astonished at their adventure. They had been told that they were going to enter Maubeuge in company with the Belgians; to seize Maubeuge would be as easy as taking a _cafe au lait_--and there they are without their _cafe au lait_!

The officers are absolutely different. Prussian pride gave them an a.s.surance which their mishap has transformed into irritation. A young Baron Lieutenant, like von Forstner, pretended that he couldn't make his bed, and refused to answer before simple soldiers. He couldn't feel anything but the humiliation of being a prisoner, and couldn't get accustomed to his new situation.

We found on the field of battle the medicine chest of a vet., who jotted down his impressions from minute to minute. When he was killed he was writing: ”I see the sh.e.l.ls bursting with a white smoke in the sky, which is lighted up from the south; luckily my helmet protects me from sunstroke.” Evidently he was on an excursion, this veterinary surgeon, and was counting on coming to Paris, and had taken the most minute precautions of hygiene and of elegance. He was provided with scent and eau de cologne. He had even brought with him a rose ointment for the nails, and a superb gilt shoulder-belt which was to raise his prestige for when he pa.s.sed under the Arc de Triomphe. The battery to which he belonged is annihilated now. We could observe on the spot the terrific effect of our artillery, which was very well commanded. Six abandoned guns, of which three are impossible to move, are there on the ground with all their crews, all their officers, all their horses--the pieces still mounted, riddled with splinters. They were taken back to the rear, and attracted all the way along the curiosity of the soldiers, with their sumptuous armorial bearings and their motto, _Ultima regis ratio_.

But this lesson seems to have made a bit of an impression on the Germans who have fled, and it has given a new energy to our troops, because the battery to which we owe this success did not have a single man wounded.

The Germans seem to be forty years behind the times. They go on just as in 1870. With childish and barbarous imagination they see _francs-tireurs_ everywhere and can't yet believe that we have a regular army quite close to the frontier.

They arrive in a village toward 8 in the morning; three French dragoons are there as patrols. When the German column is within range, the three dragoons bring down the Colonel and dash off at full gallop from the other end of the village. The Germans are furious and swear that they have been attacked by _francs-tireurs_, and that they are going to inflict punishment. They seize the cure, a notable inhabitant, and two or three peasants, and take them off to be present at the burning of their houses, while waiting to be executed themselves.

I have this story from the cure, who arrived to us absolutely done, with his ca.s.sock in rags, without a hat on, after a day of shocks such as he has certainly never had in his life before. Although he has got the superb beard of a missionary, they made him march with the cha.s.seurs, hitting him with the b.u.t.ts of their rifles till the moment when the French shrapnel arrived. Then it was _sauve qui peut_. Our brave cure saw all his butchers fall around him. When the noise had finished, five unarmed German cha.s.seurs rushed toward him crying with their great, thick accent, ”Catholics, Catholics!” They were Poles who were flying from the army and coming over to our lines. ”With my own arms,” said the cure proudly, ”I made five prisoners.”

Altogether bewilderment, softness, and indifference on the part of the men; vanity, cruelty, and foolery on the part of the officers. Those are the virtues which they offered us on first acquaintance. Just compare them with ours!

Two Letters From the Trenches

[From The London Times, Oct. 25, 1914.]