CHAPTER II.
A BIT OF HISTORY.
While Hal and Chester and their troop of British cavalry are preparing tomeet this unexpected attack, it will be well to introduce here a fewwords relating to the positions of the gigantic armies battling in Franceand Belgium.
The war had now been in progress for five months. From the time that theAllies had braced and checked the Germans in their rapid advance uponParis, and had assumed the offensive themselves, they had progressedconsistently, if slowly.
The Germans contested every inch of the ground, and all along the greatbattle line, stretching out for almost four hundred miles, the fightinghad been terrific. Day after day, week after week, month after month theterrible struggle had raged incessantly. The losses of all four armies,German, British, French and Belgian, had been enormous, although, up todate, it was admitted that the Germans had suffered the worst.
The conflict raged with advantage first to one side and then to theother. Assaults and counter-assaults were the order of the day. FromOstend, on the North Sea, now in the hands of the Germans, to thesouthern extremity of Alsace-Lorraine, the mighty hosts were locked in adeath grapple; but, in spite of the fearful execution of the weapons ofmodern warfare, there had been no really decisive engagement. Neitherside had suffered a severe blow.
In the North the Allies were being given powerful aid by a strong Britishfleet, which hurled its shells upon the Germans infesting that region,thus checking at the same time the threatened advance of the Kaiser'slegions upon Nieuport and Dunkirk, which the Germans planned to use asnaval bases for air raids on England.
The mighty siege and field guns of the Germans--which had been usedwith such telling effect upon Liege, Brussels, Antwerp and Ostend,battering the fortifications there to bits in practically no time atall--while immense in their power of destruction, were still not amatch for the longer range guns mounted by the British battleships.Consequently, long-range artillery duels in the north had been all infavor of British arms.
Terrific charges of the British troops, of whom there were now less thanhalf a million--Scotch, Irish, Canadians and Indians included--on thecontinent, had driven the Germans from Dixmude, Ypres and Armentieres,captured earlier in the war. Ostend had been shelled by the Britishfleet, and a show of force had been made in that vicinity, causing theGermans to believe that the Allies would attempt to reoccupy thisimportant seaport.
Farther south the French also had met with some success. Fromwithin striking distance of Paris the invaders had been driven backto the Marne, and from the Marne to the northern and eastern shoresof the Aisne.
But here the German line held.
The fighting along the Aisne, continuing without cessation, already hadbeen the bloodiest in the history of wars; and here, the French on oneside of the river, and the Germans on the other, the two great armies hadproceeded to intrench, making themselves as comfortable as possible, andconstructing huts and other substantial shelters against the icy hand ofKing Winter, who had come to rule over the battlefield.
The French cabinet, which had fled from Paris to Bordeaux when the Germanarmy drew close to Paris, had returned to the former capital, and affairsof state were being conducted as before. With several millions offighting men at the front, France still had an additional two million tohurl into the thick of the fray at the psychological moment.
Recruiting in England, slow at first, was now beginning to be moresatisfactory. Lord Kitchener had in the neighborhood of a million and ahalf men being trained and prepared for the rigors of war. These, also,would be hurled into the thick of the fight when the time was ripe.
It was plainly evident, however, that the Allies were content to holdtheir present lines. There was little doubt that it was their plan to letthe real fighting be held off till spring, when, by hurling an additionalthree million men into the field, they believed they could settle Germanmilitarism once and for all.
Rumors of other countries joining in the great war grew more rife daily.Portugal already had given assurances that she would throw her army tothe support of Great Britain should she be asked to do so. A greatdiplomatic _coup_--a great victory for British statesmanship--had clearedthe way for the entrance of Rumania and Greece into the war on the sideof the Allies. This _coup_ had been to gain from Bulgaria assurances thatBulgaria would not go to the support of Germany should Rumania andGreece take up arms.
The Italian populace, also, was clamoring for war. In Rome demonstrationsagainst Germany had become frequent and violent. It appeared to be only aquestion of time until Italy also would hurl her millions of trainedfighting men into the field in support of the Allies.
From Ostend the great battle line extended due south to Noyen, whereit branched off to the southeast. South of Noyen French soil hadbeen almost cleared of the Germans. Alsace had in turn been invadedby the French, who had penetrated to within twelve miles ofStrasbourg. The French troops also had progressed to within eightmiles of Metz, in Lorraine.
The forward move by the southern army of France had been sudden, and theGermans had been forced to give way under the desperation and courage ofthe French troops.
Once before, in the earlier days of the war, the French had reached Metzand Strasbourg, but had been hurled back by overwhelming numbers of theenemy and forced to retreat well into France. Then the German line inAlsace and Lorraine had been weakened to hurl denser masses of Germansupon the British and Belgians in the north.
The French had not been slow to take advantage of this weakening of thesouthern army of the Kaiser, and, immediately bringing great pressure tobear, had cleared French territory of the invader in the south.
But the French commander did not stop with this. Alsace and Lorraine,French soil until after the Franco-Prussian war, when it had been awardedto Prussia as the spoils of war, must be recaptured. The French pressedon and the Germans gave way before them.
Meantime, in the Soissons region the French also had been makingprogress; but the Kaiser, evidently becoming alarmed by the greatpressure being exercised by the French in Alsace-Lorraine--in order torelieve the pressure--immediately made a show of strength near Soissons,seeking thereby to cause the French to withdraw troops fromAlsace-Lorraine to reenforce the army of the Soissons to stem the newGerman advance there.
Taken somewhat unawares by the suddenness of the German assault upontheir lines near Soissons, the French were forced to give back. Theybraced immediately, however, and the succeeding day regained the groundlost in the first German assault.
Then the Germans made another show of strength at Verdun, southeast ofSoissons. General Joffre immediately hurled a new force to the support ofthe French army at that point.
Meanwhile, as the result of the German assaults upon Soissons andVerdun, in an effort to lessen the pressure being brought to bear by theFrench in Alsace-Lorraine, there had been a lull in the fighting in thelatter regions.
Word from the eastern theater of war brought the news that Russia had anew big army advancing upon the Germans in Poland from the east,threatening to outflank the army that had penetrated to within fiftymiles of Warsaw, the capital and chief city of Poland. This, it wastaken, would mean that Germany would either have to retreat within herown borders into East Prussia, or else that troops would have to bedispatched from the west to reenforce those in the east.
In this event there was little doubt that General French and GeneralJoffre would immediately order another allied advance along theentire front.
News of the utter annihilation of three Turkish army corps in theCaucasus by the Russians also cheered the British, French and Belgiantroops, as did news that the Russians had cleared the way for theirlong-deferred invasion of Hungary, and, ultimately, of Austria.
So far, from the Allies' point of view, the one big disappointment of thewar had been the inaction of the British and French fleets. True, severalengagements of minor importance had been fought, chief of which was thesinking of a German fleet of five ships by a British squadron in thewaters
of the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Argentina.
But the fact that the German fleet, although blockaded, after five monthsof the war had not been destroyed, was causing considerable adversecriticism in England and France. Several German sea raids--by cruisersand submarines which had successfully run the blockade--had causedcondemnation of Great Britain's naval policy.
In spite of the fact that only in one instance had such a raid resultedin any serious damage, the British Admiralty had been roundly censured.Germany's policy of "whittling down" the British fleet, so that theGermans could give battle on even terms, while by no means successfulthus far, had nevertheless considerably reduced the size of the Englishnavy. Some of her first-class cruisers, and one formidable dreadnoughthad been sunk.
The French fleet in the Adriatic and in the Mediterranean had beenequally as inactive, although a squadron of British and French ships evennow was attempting to destroy the Turkish fortifications along theDardanelles, that a passage of the straits might be forced. So far this,too, had been unsuccessful.
The fighting in France and Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine had now become aseries of battles for the possession of the various trenches that hadbeen dug. True, long-range artillery duels raged almost incessantly, butthe mass of both armies lay in the trenches, now attacking and capturingthe enemy's trenches, now being attacked and being driven out again.
Besides the artillery duels there were, of course, occasional skirmishesbetween the cavalry, some growing to the proportions of real battles. Butthe results of these had never been decisive. The mighty armies weregripped in a deadlock, and indications pointed to this deadlock beingmaintained until spring, when, with the disappearance of fiercesnowstorms and the breaking up of the terrific cold, a decisive battlemight be fought.
This was the situation up to date, when Hal and Chester, with the troopof cavalry, set out on a reconnaissance of the enemy's position on thefirst day of January, 1915.
Boy Allies in the Trenches; Or, Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne Page 2