It was about a seven miles drive from Udine before we reached the nearest point of the trenches. From a mound an extraordinary view could be got of the Austrian position, the general curve of both Unes being marked, as in Flanders, by the sausage balloons which float behind them. The Isonzo, which had been so bravely carried by the Italians, lay in front of me, a clear blue river, as broad as the Thames at Hampton Court. In a hollow to my left were the roofs of Gorizia, the town which the Italians were endeavouring to take. A long desolate ridge, the Carso, extended to the south of the town, and stretched down nearly to the sea. The crest was held by the Austrians, and the Italian trenches had been pushed within 50 yards of them. A lively bombardment was going on from either side, but so far as the infantry went there was none of that constant malignant petty warfare with which we were familiar in Flanders. I was anxious to see the Italian trenches, in order to compare them with our British methods, but save for the support and communication trenches I was courteously but firmly warned off.
Having got this general view of the position, I was anxious in the afternoon to visit Monfalcone, which is the small dockyard captured from the Austrians on the Adriatic. My kind Italian officer guides did not recommend the trip, as it was part of their great hospitality to shield their guest from any part of that danger which they were always ready to incur themselves. The only road to Monfalcone ran close to the Austrian position at the village of Ronchi, and afterwards kept parallel to it for some miles. I was told that it was only on odd days that the Austrian guns were active in this particular section, so determined to trust to luck that this might not be one of them. It proved, however, to be one of the worst on record, and we were not destined to see the dockyard to which we started.
The civilian cuts a ridiculous figure when he enlarges upon small adventures which may come his way — adventures which the soldier endures in silence as part of his everyday life. On this occasion, however, the episode was all our own, and had a sporting flavour in it which made it dramatic. I know now the feeling of tense expectation with which the driven grouse whirrs onwards towards the butt. I have been behind the butt before now, and it is only poetic justice that I should see the matter from the other point of view. As we approached Ronchi we could see shrapnel breaking over the road in front of us, but we had not yet realised that it was precisely for vehicles that the Austrians were waiting, and that they had the range marked down to a yard. We went down the road all out at a steady 50 miles an hour. The village was near, and it seemed that we had got past the place of danger. We had, in fact, just reached it. At this moment there was a noise as if the whole four tyres had gone simultaneously, a most terrific bang in our very ears, merging into a second sound like a reverberating blow upon an enormous gong. As I glanced up I saw three clouds immediately above my head, two of them white and the other of a rusty red. The air was full of flying metal, and the road, as we were told afterwards by an observer, was all churned up by it. The metal base of one of the shells was found plumb in the middle of the road just where our motor had been. It was our pace that saved us. The motor was an open one, and the three shells burst, according to one of my Italian companions, who was himself an artillery officer, about 10 metres above our heads. They threw forward, however, and we travelling at so great a pace, shot from under. Before they could get in another we had swung round the curve and under the lee of a house. The good Colonel wrung my hand in silence. They were both distressed, these good soldiers, under the impression that they had led me into danger. As a matter of fact it was I who owed them an apology, since they had enough risks in the way of business without taking others in order to gratify the whim of a visitor.
Our difficulties were by no means over. We found an ambulance lorry and a little group of infantry huddled under the same shelter, with the expression of people who had been caught in the rain. The road beyond was under heavy fire as well as that by which we had come. Had the Ostro-Boches dropped a high explosive upon us they would have had a good mixed bag. But apparently they were only out for fancy shooting and disdained a sitter. Presently there came a lull and the lorry moved on, but we soon heard a burst of firing which showed that they were after it. My companions had decided that it was out of the question for us to finish our excursion. We waited for some time, therefore, and were able finally to make our retreat on foot, being joined later by the car. So ended my visit to Monfalcone, the place I did not reach. I hear that two 10,000-ton steamers were left on the stocks there by the Austrians, but were disabled before they retired. Their cabin basins and other fittings were adorning the Italian dug-outs.
My second day was devoted to a view of the Italian mountain warfare in the Carnic Alps. Besides the two great fronts, one of defence (Trentino) and one of offence (Isonzo), there were very many smaller valleys which had to be guarded. The total frontier line is over 400 miles, and it had all to be held against raids if not invasions. It was a most picturesque business. Far up in the Roccolana Valley I found the Alpini outposts, backed by artillery which had been brought into the most wonderful positions. They had taken 8-inch guns where a tourist could hardly take his knapsack. Neither side could ever make serious progress, but there were continual duels, gun against gun, or Alpini against Jaeger. In a little wayside house was the brigade Head-quarters, and here I was entertained to lunch. It was a scene that I shall remember. They drank to England. I raised my glass to Italia irredenta — might it soon be redenta. They all sprang to their feet and the circle of dark faces flashed into flame. They keep their souls and emotions, these people. I trust that ours may not become atrophied by self-suppression.
The last day spent on the Italian front was in the Trentino. From Verona a motor drive of about twenty-five miles takes one up the valley of the Adige, and past a place of evil augury for the Austrians, the field of Rivoli. Finally, after a long drive of winding gradients, always beside the Adige, we reached Ala, where we interviewed the Commander of the sector, a man who has done splendid work during the recent fighting. “By all means you can see my front. But no motor car, please. It draws fire, and others may be hit besides you.” We proceeded on foot, therefore, along a valley which branched at the end into two passes. In both very active fighting had been going on, and as we came up the guns were baying merrily, waking up most extraordinary echoes in the hills. It was difficult to believe that it was not thunder. There was one terrible voice that broke out from time to time in the mountains — the angry voice of the Holy Roman Empire. When it came all other sounds died down into nothing. It was — so I was told — the master gun, the vast 42-centimetre giant which brought down the pride of Liège and Namur. The Austrians had brought one or more from Innsbruck. The Italians assure me, however, as we have ourselves discovered, that in trench work beyond a certain point the size of the guns makes little matter.
We passed a burst dug-out by the roadside where a tragedy had occurred recently, for eight medical officers were killed in it by a single shell. There was no particular danger in the valley, however, and the aimed fire was all going across us to the fighting lines in the two passes above us. That to the right, the Valley of Buello, has seen some of the worst of the fighting. These two passes form the Italian left wing which has held firm all through. So has the right wing. It is only the centre which has been pushed in by the concentrated fire.
When we arrived at the spot where the two valleys forked we were halted, and were not permitted to advance to the front trenches which lay upon the crests above us. There were about 1,000 yards between the adversaries. I have seen types of some of the Bosnian and Croatian prisoners, men of poor physique and intelligence, but the Italians speak with chivalrous praise of the bravery of the Hungarians and of the Austrian Jaeger. Some of their proceedings disgusted them, however, and especially the fact that they used Russian prisoners to dig trenches under fire. There is no doubt of this, as some of the men were recaptured and were sent on to join their comrades in France. On the whole, however, it may be said that in the
Austro-Italian war there was nothing which corresponded with the extreme bitterness of our Western conflict. The presence or absence of the Hun makes all the difference.
It was a moment of depression at the Trentino front, as there had been a set back. I may flatter myself when I think that even one solitary figure in a British uniform striding about among them was good at that particular time to their eyes. They read of allies, but they never saw any. If they had, we might have been spared the subsequent disaster at Caporetto. Certainly I was heartily welcomed there, and surrounded all the time by great mobs of soldiers, who imagined, I suppose, that I was some one of importance.
That night found me back at Verona, and next morning I was on my way to Paris with sheaves of notes about the Italian soldiers which would, I hoped, make the British public more sympathetic towards them. I was told afterwards by the Foreign Office that my mission had been an unmixed success.
I have one other association with the Italian front which I may include here. It is embalmed in the Annals of the Psychic Research Society. I have several times in my life awakened from sleep with some strong impressions of knowledge gained still lingering in my brain. In one case, for example, I got the strange name Nalderu so vividly that I wrote it down between two stretches of insensibility and found it on the outside of my cheque book next morning. A month later I started for Australia in the S. S. Nalderu of which I had then never heard. In this particular Italian instance I got the word Piave, absolutely ringing in my head. I knew it as a river some 70 miles to the rear of the Italian front and quite unconnected with the war. None the less the impression was so strong that I wrote the incident down and had it signed by two witnesses. Months passed and the Italian battle line was rolled back to the Piave, which became a familiar word. Some said it would go back further. I was sure it would not. I argued that if the abnormal forces, whatever they may be, had taken such pains to impress the matter upon me, it must needs be good news which they were conveying, since I had needed cheering at the time. Therefore I felt sure that some great victory and the turning point of the war would come on the Piave. So sure was I that I wrote to my friend Mr. Lacon Watson, who was on the Italian front, and the incident got into the Italian press. It could have nothing but a good effect upon their morale. Finally it is a matter of history how completely my impression was justified, and how the most shattering victory of the whole war was gained at that very spot.
There is the fact, amply proved by documents and beyond all possible coincidence. As to the explanation some may say that our own subconscious self has power of foresight. If so it is a singularly dead instinct, seldom or never used. Others may say that our “dead “can see further than we, and try when we are asleep and in spiritual touch with us, to give us knowledge and consolation. The latter is my own solution of the mystery.
CHAPTER XXX. EXPERIENCES ON THE FRENCH FRONT
A Dreadful Reception — Robert Donald — Clemenceau — Soissons Cathedral — The Commandant’s Cane — The Extreme Outpost — Adonis — General Henneque — Cyrano in the Argonne — Tir Rapide — French Canadian — Wound Stripes.
WHEN I got back to Paris I had a dreadful reception, for as I dismounted from the railway car a British military policeman in his flat red cap stepped up to me and saluted.
“This is bad news, sir,” said he. “What is it? “I gasped. “Lord Kitchener, sir. Drowned!”
“Good God!” I cried.
“Yes, sir.” Suddenly the machine turned for a moment into a human being. “Too much talking in this war,” he said, and then in a moment was his stiff formal self again, and bustled off in search of deserters.
Kitchener dead! The words were like clods falling on my heart. One could not imagine him dead, that centre of energy and vitality. With a heavy spirit I drove back to my old quarters at the Hotel Crillon, fuller than ever of red-epauletted, sword-clanking Russians. I could have cursed them, for it was in visiting their rotten, crumbling country that our hero had met his end.
At the hotel I met by appointment Mr. Robert Donald, editor of the “Daily Chronicle,” which paper had been publishing my articles. Donald, a fine, solid Scot, had the advantage of talking good French and being in thorough touch with French conditions. With him I called upon M. Clemenceau, who had not at that time played any conspicuous part in the war, save as a violent critic. He lived modestly in a small house which showed that he had not used his power in the State and in journalism to any unfair personal advantage. He entered, a swarthy, wrinkled, white-haired man, with the face of a crabbed bulldog, and a cloth cap upon his head. He reminded me of old Jim Mace the bruiser, as I remember him in his final phase. His eyes looked angry, and he had a truculent, mischievous smile. I was not impressed by the judgment he showed in our conversation, if a squirt on one side and Niagara on the other can be called conversation. He was railing loudly at the English rate of exchange between the franc and the pound, which seemed to me very like kicking against the barometer. Mr. Donald, who is a real authority upon finance, asked him whether France was taking the rouble at its face value; but the roaring voice, like a strong gramophone with a blunt needle, submerged all argument. Against Joffre he roared his reproaches, and intimated that he had some one else up his sleeve who could very soon bring the war to an end. A volcano of a man, dangerous sometimes to his friends, and sometimes to his foes. Let me acknowledge that I did not at the time recognise that he would ever be the opposite number to Lloyd George, and that the pair would lead us to victory.
Donald had arranged that he and I should visit the French lines in the Argonne, which was as near as we could get to Verdun, where the battle was at its height. There were a few days to spare, however, and in the meantime I got a chance of going to the Soissons front, along with Leo Maxse, editor of the “National Review,” and a M. Chevillon, who had written an excellent book on British co-operation in the war. Maxse, a dark little man, all nerves and ginger, might well plume himself that he was one of those who had foreseen the war and most loudly demanded preparation. Chevillon was a grey-bearded, father-of-a-family type, and could speak English, which promoted our closer acquaintance, as my French is adventurous but not always successful. A captain of French Intelligence, a small, silent man, took the fourth place in the car.
When our posterity hear that it was easy to run out from Paris to the line, to spend a full day on the line, and to be back again in Paris for dinner, it will make them appreciate how close a thing was the war. We passed in the first instance the Woods of Villars Cotteret, where the Guards had turned upon the German van on September 1, 1914. Eighty Guardsmen were buried in the village cemetery, among them a nephew of Maxse’s, to whose tomb we now made pious pilgrimage. Among the trees on either side of the road I noticed other graves of soldiers, buried where they had fallen.
Soissons proved to be a considerable wreck, though it was far from being an Ypres. But the cathedral would, and will, make many a patriotic Frenchman weep. These savages cannot keep their hands off a beautiful church. Here, absolutely unchanged through the ages, was the spot where St. Louis had dedicated himself to the Crusade. Every stone of it was holy. And now the lovely old stained-glass strewed the floor, and the roof lay in a huge heap across the central aisle. A dog was climbing over it as we entered. No wonder the French fought well. Such sights would drive the mildest man to desperation. The abbé, a good priest, with a large humorous face, took us over his shattered domain. When I pointed out the desecration of the dog he shrugged his shoulders and said: “What matter? It will have to be reconsecrated, anyhow.” He connived at my gathering up some splinters of the rich old stained-glass as souvenirs for my wife. He was full of reminiscences of the German occupation of the place. One of his personal anecdotes was indeed marvellous.
It was that a lady in the local ambulance had vowed to kiss the first French soldier who re-entered the town. She did so, and it proved to be her husband. The abbé was a good, kind, truthful man — but he had a humorous face.
A w
alk down a ruined street brought one to the opening of the trenches. There were marks upon the walls of the German occupation, “Berlin-Paris,” with an arrow of direction, adorning one corner. At another the 76th Regiment had commemorated the fact that they were there in 1870 and again in 1914. If the Soissons folk are wise, they will keep these inscriptions as reminders to the rising generation. I could imagine, however, that their inclination will be to whitewash, fumigate, and forget.
A sudden turn among some broken walls took one into the communication trench. Our guide was a Commandant of the Staff, a tall, thin man with hard, grey eyes and a severe face. It was the more severe towards us, as I gathered that he had been deluded into the belief that only about one out of six of our soldiers went to the trenches. For the moment he was not friends with the English. As we went along, however, we gradually got on better terms, we discovered a twinkle in the hard, grey eyes, and the day ended with an exchange of walking-sticks between him and me and a renewal of the Entente. May my cane grow into a marshal’s baton!
A charming young artillery subaltern was our guide in that maze of trenches, and we walked and walked and walked, with a brisk exchange of compliments between the “75’s “of the French and the “77’s “of the Germans going on high over our heads. The trenches were boarded at the sides, and had a more permanent look than those of Flanders. Presently we met a fine, brown-faced, upstanding boy, as keen as a razor, who commanded this particular section. A little farther on a helmeted captain of infantry, who was an expert sniper, joined our little party. Now we were at the very front trench. I had expected to see primeval men, bearded and shaggy. But the “Poilus “have disappeared. The men around me were clean and dapper to a remarkable degree. I gathered, however, that they had their internal difficulties. On one board I read an old inscription: “He is a Boche, but he is the inseparable companion of a French soldier.” Above was a rude drawing of a louse.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 1434