I was led to a cunning loop-hole, and had a glimpse through it of a little framed picture of French countryside. There were fields, a road, a sloping hill beyond with trees. Quite close, about 30 or 40 yards away, was a low, red-tiled house. “They are there,” said our guide. “That is their outpost. We can hear them cough.” Only the guns were coughing that morning, so we heard nothing; but it was certainly wonderful to be so near to the enemy and yet in such peace. I suppose wondering visitors from Berlin were brought up also to hear the French cough. Modern warfare has certainly some extraordinary sides.
Then we were shown all the devices which a year of experience had suggested to the quick brains of our Allies. Every form of bomb, catapult, and trench mortar was ready to hand. Every method of cross-fire had been thought out to an exact degree. There was something, however, about the disposition of a machine gun which disturbed the Commandant. He called for the officer of the gun. His thin lips got thinner and his grey eyes more austere as we waited. Presently there emerged an extraordinarily handsome youth, dark as a Spaniard, from some rabbit hole. He faced the Commandant bravely, and answered back with respect but firmness. “Pourquoi? “asked the Commandant, and yet again “Pourquoi?” Adonis had an answer for everything. Both sides appealed to the big captain of snipers, who was clearly embarrassed. He stood on one leg and scratched his chin. Finally the Commandant turned away angrily in the midst of one of Adonis’ voluble sentences. His face showed that the matter was not ended. War is taken very seriously in the French Army, and any sort of professional mistake is very quickly punished. Many officers of high rank had been broken by the French during the war. There was no more forgiveness for the beaten General than there was in the days of the Republic when the delegate of the National Convention, with a patent portable guillotine, used to drop in at Head-quarters to support a more vigorous offensive.
It had come on to rain heavily, and we were forced to take refuge in the dug-out of the sniper. Eight of us sat in the deep gloom huddled closely together. The Commandant was still harping upon that ill-placed machine gun. He could not get over it. My imperfect ear for French could not follow all his complaints, but some defence of the offender brought forth a “Jamais! Jamais! Jamais! “which was rapped out as if it came from the gun itself. There were eight of us in an underground burrow, and some were smoking. Better a deluge than such an atmosphere as that. But if there was a thing upon earth which the French officer shied at it was rain and mud. The reason is that he was extraordinarily natty in his person. His charming blue uniform, his facings, his brown gaiters, boots and belts were always just as smart as paint. He was the dandy of the European War. I noticed officers in the trenches with their trousers carefully pressed.
The rain had now stopped, and we climbed from our burrow. Again we were led down that endless line of communication trench, again we stumbled through the ruins, again we emerged into the street where our cars were awaiting us. Above our heads the sharp artillery duel was going merrily forward. The French were firing three or four to one, which had been my experience at every point I had touched upon the Allied front. Thanks to the extraordinary zeal of the French workers, especially of the French women, and to the clever adoption of machinery by their engineers, their supplies were abundant.
Our next expedition carried us to Chalons, where the Huns of old met disaster. From Chalons we drove some twenty miles to St. Menehould, and learned that the trenches were about ten miles north. On this expedition there were Donald and I with an extraordinary Spaniard, half Don Quixote, half Gipsy troubadour, flat hatted and clad in brown corduroy, with a single arm, having, as we heard, lost the other in some broil. As he spoke no tongue but his own we were never on terms with him.
The front at the sector which we struck was under the control of General Henneque of the 10th Division. A fine soldier this, and Heaven help Germany if he and his division had invaded it, for he was, as one could see at a glance, a man of iron who had been goaded to fierceness by all that his beloved country had endured. He was a man of middle size, swarthy, hawk-like, very abrupt in his movements, with two steel-grey eyes, which were the most searching that mine have ever met. His hospitality and courtesy to us were beyond all bounds, but there is another side to him, and it is one which it were wiser not to provoke. In person he took us to his lines, passing through the usual shot-torn villages behind them. Where the road dipped down into the great forest there was one particular spot which was visible to the German artillery observers. The General mentioned it at the time, but his remark seemed to have no personal interest. We understood it better on our return in the evening.
We then found ourselves in the depths of the woods — primeval woods of oak and beech in the deep clay soil that the great oak loves. There had been rain, and the forest paths were ankle deep in mire. Everywhere, to right and left, soldiers’ faces, hard and rough from a year of open air, gazed up at us from their burrows in the ground. Presently an alert, blue-clad figure stood in the path to greet us. It was the Colonel of the sector. He was ridiculously like Cyrano de Bergerac as depicted by the late M. Coquelin, save that his nose was of more moderate proportion. The ruddy colouring, the bristling, feline, full-ended moustache, the solidity of pose, the backward tilt of the head, the general suggestion of the bantam cock, were all there facing us as he stood amid the leaves in the sunlight. Gauntlets and a long rapier — nothing else was wanting. Something had amused Cyrano. His moustache quivered with suppressed mirth and his blue eyes were demurely gleaming. Then the joke came out. He had spotted a German working-party, his guns had concentrated on it, and afterwards he had seen the stretchers go forward. A grim joke, it may seem. But the French saw this war from a different angle to us. If we had had the Boche sitting on our heads for two years, and were not quite sure whether we could ever get him off again, we should get Cyrano’s point of view.
We passed in a little procession among the French soldiers, and viewed their multifarious arrangements. For them we were a little break in a monotonous life, and they formed up in lines as we passed. My own British uniform and the civilian dresses of my two companions interested them. As the General passed these groups, who formed themselves up in perhaps a more familiar manner than would have been usual in the British service, he glanced kindly at them with those singular eyes of his, and once or twice addressed them as “Mes enfants.” One might conceive that all was “go as you please “among the French. So it was as long as you went in the right way. When you strayed from it you knew it. As we passed a group of men standing on a low ridge which overlooked us there was a sudden stop. I gazed round. The General’s face was steel and cement. The eyes were cold and yet fiery, sunlight upon icicles. Something had happened. Cyrano had sprung to his side. His reddish moustache had shot forward beyond his nose, and it bristled out like that of an angry cat. Both were looking up at the group above us. One wretched man detached himself from his comrades and sidled down the slope. No skipper and mate of a Yankee blood boat could have looked more ferociously at a mutineer. And yet it was all over some minor breach of discipline which was summarily disposed of by two days of confinement. Then in an instant the faces relaxed, there was a general buzz of relief, and we were back at “Mes enfants” again.
Trenches are trenches, and the main speciality of those in the Argonne were that they were nearer to the enemy. In fact, there were places where they interlocked, and where the advanced posts lay cheek by jowl with a good steel plate to cover both cheek and jowl. We were brought to a sap-head where the Germans were at the other side of a narrow forest road. Had I leaned forward with extended hand and a Boche done the same we could have touched. I looked across, but saw only a tangle of wire and sticks. Even whispering was not permitted in those forward posts.
When we emerged from these hushed places of danger Cyrano took us all to his dug-out, which was a tasty little cottage carved from the side of a hill and faced with logs. He did the honours of the humble cabin with the air of a seigneur in his châ
teau. There was little furniture, but from some broken mansion he had extracted an iron fire-back, which adorned his grate. It was a fine, mediaeval bit of work, with Venus, in her traditional costume, in the centre of it. It seemed the last touch in the picture of the gallant virile Cyrano. I only met him this once, nor shall I ever see him again, yet he stands a thing complete within my memory. Always in the cinema of memory he will walk the leafy paths of the Argonne, his fierce eyes searching for the Boche workers, his red moustache bristling over their annihilation. He seems a figure out of the past of France.
That night we dined with yet another type of the French soldier, General Antoine, who commanded the corps of which my friend had one division. Each of these French generals had a striking individuality of his own which I wish I could fix upon paper. Their only common point was that each seemed to be a rare good soldier. The Corps General was Athos with a touch of d’Artagnan. He was well over 6 feet high, bluff, jovial, with huge, upcurling moustache, and a voice that would rally a regiment. It was a grand figure, which should have been done by Van Dyck, with lace collar, hand on sword, and arm akimbo. Jovial and laughing was he, but a stern and hard soldier was lurking behind the smiles. His name has appeared in history, and so has Humbert’s, who ruled all the army of which the other corps is a unit. Humbert was a Lord Robert’s figure, small, wiry, quick-stepping, all steel and elastic, with a short, upturned moustache, which one could imagine as crackling with electricity in moments of excitement like a cat’s fur. What he does or says is quick, abrupt, and to the point. He fires his remarks like pistol shots at this man or that. Once to my horror he fixed me with his hard little eyes and demanded; “Sherlock Holmes, est-ce qu’il est un soldat dans l’armée Anglaise? “The whole table waited in an awful hush. “Mais, mon general,” I stammered, “il est trop vieux pour service.” There was general laughter, and I felt that I had scrambled out of an awkward place.
And talking of awkward places, I had forgotten about that spot upon the road whence the Boche observer could see our motor-cars. He had actually laid a gun upon it, the rascal, and waited all the long day for our return. No sooner did we appear upon the slope than a shrapnel shell burst above us, but somewhat behind me, as well as to the left. Had it been straight the second car would have got it, and there might have been a vacancy in one of the chief editorial chairs in London. The General shouted to the driver to speed up, and we were soon safe from the German gunners. One got perfectly immune to noises in these scenes, for the guns which surrounded you made louder crashes than any shell which burst about you. It is only when you actually saw the cloud over you that your thoughts came back to yourself, and that you realised that in this wonderful drama you might be a useless super, but none the less you were on the stage and not in the stalls.
Next morning we were down in the front trenches again at another portion of the line. Far away on our right, from a spot named the Observatory, we could see the extreme left of the Verdun position and shells bursting on the Fille Morte. To the north of us was a broad expanse of sunny France, nestling villages, scattered châteaux, rustic churches, and all as inaccessible as if it were the moon. It was a terrible thing this German bar — a thing unthinkable to Britons. To stand on the edge of Yorkshire and look into Lancashire feeling that it was in other hands, that our fellow-countrymen were suffering there and waiting, waiting for help, and that we could not, after two years, come a yard nearer to them — would it not break our hearts? Could I wonder that there was no smile upon the grim faces of those Frenchmen! But when the bar was broken, when the line swept forward, when French bayonets gleamed on those uplands and French flags broke from those village spires — ah, what a day that was! Men died that day from the pure delirious joy of it.
Yet another type of French General took us round this morning! He, too, was a man apart, an unforgettable man. Conceive a man with a large, broad, good-humoured face, and two placid, dark, seal’s eyes which gazed gently into yours. He was young, and had pink cheeks and a soft voice. Such was one of the most redoubtable fighters of France, this General of Division Dupont. His former Staff officers told me something of the man. He was a philosopher, a fatalist, impervious to fear, a dreamer of distant dreams amid the most furious bombardment. The weight of the French assault upon the terrible Labyrinth fell at one time upon the brigade which he then commanded. He led them day after day gathering up Germans with the detached air of the man of science who is hunting for specimens. In whatever shell-hole he might chance to lunch he had his cloth spread and decorated with wild flowers plucked from the edge. I wrote of him at the time: “If Fate be kind to him, he will go far.” As a matter of fact, before the end of the war he was one of the most influential members of the General Staff, so my prophetic power was amply vindicated.
From the Observatory we saw the destruction of a German trench. There had been signs of work upon it, so it was decided to close it down. It was a very visible brown streak a thousand yards away. The word was passed back to the “75’s “in the rear. There was a “tir rapide “over our heads. My word, the man who stands fast under a “tir rapide,” be he Boche, French or British, is a man of mettle! The mere passage of the shells was awe-inspiring, at first like the screaming of a wintry wind, and then thickening into the howling of a pack of wolves. The trench was a line of terrific explosions. Then the dust settled down and all was still. Where were the ants who had made the nest? Were they buried beneath it? Or had they got from under? No one could say.
There was one little gun which fascinated me, and I stood for some time watching it. Its three gunners, enormous helmeted men, evidently loved it, and touched it with a swift but tender touch in every movement. When it was fired it ran up an inclined plane to take off the recoil, rushing up and then turning and rattling down again upon the gunners who were used to its ways. The first time it did it, I was standing behind it, and I don’t know which jumped quickest — the gun or I.
French officers above a certain rank develop and show their own individuality. In the lower grades the conditions of service enforce a certain uniformity. The British officer is a British gentleman first, and an officer afterwards. The Frenchman is an officer first, though none the less the gentleman stands behind it. One very strange type we met, however, in these Argonne Woods. He was a French-Canadian who had been a French soldier, had founded a homestead in far Alberta, and had now come back of his own will, though a naturalised Briton, to the old flag. He spoke English of a kind, the quality and quantity being equally extraordinary. It poured from him and was, so far as it was intelligible, of the woolly Western variety. His views on the Germans were the most emphatic we had met. “These Godam sons of “ — well, let us say “Canines!” he would shriek, shaking his fist at the woods to the north of him. A good man was our compatriot, for he had a very recent Legion of Honour pinned upon his breast. He had been put with a few men on Hill 285, a sort of volcano stuffed with mines, and was told to telephone when he needed relief. He refused to telephone, and remained there for three weeks. “We sit like one rabbit in his hall,” he explained. He had only one grievance — there were many wild boars in the forest, but the infantry were too busy to get them. “The Godam Artillaree he get the wild pig! “Out of his pocket he pulled a picture of a frame house with snow round it, and a lady with two children on the stoep. It was his homestead at Trochu, seventy miles north of Calgary.
It was the evening of the third day that we turned our faces towards Paris once more. It was my last view of the French. The roar of their guns went far with me upon my way. I wrote at the time: “Soldiers of France, farewell! In your own phrase, I salute you! Many have seen you who had more knowledge by which to judge your manifold virtues, many also who had more skill to draw you as you are, but never one, I am sure, who admired you more than I. Great was the French soldier, under Louis the Sim-King, great too under Napoleon, but never was he greater than to-day.”
But in spite of all their bravery only two things saved France, her fiel
d guns and the intervention of England. Surely she should have a reckoning with her pre-war military authorities. Imagine unwarlike Britain, protected by the sea, and yet having a high standard of musketry, heavy guns with every division, and khaki uniforms, while warlike France, under the very shadow of Germany, had poor musketry, primeval uniforms and no heavy guns. As to her early views of strategy they were lamentable. Every British critic, above all Lord Kitchener, knew that the attack would swing round through Belgium. France concentrated all her preparation upon the Eastern frontier. It was clear also that the weaker power should be on the defensive and so bring her enemy by heavier losses down to her own weight. France attacked and broke herself in an impossible venture. There should have been a heavy reckoning against some one. The fate of England as well as of France was imperilled by the false estimates of the French General Staff.
One small visible result of my journey was the establishment of wound stripes upon the uniforms of the British. I had been struck by this very human touch among the French, which gave a man some credit and therefore some consolation for his sufferings. I represented the matter when I came back. Lest I seem to claim more than is true, I append General Robertson’s letter. The second sentence refers to that campaign for the use of armour which I had prosecuted so long, and with some success as regards helmets, though there the credit was mostly due to Dr. Saleeby, among civilians. The letter runs thus:
War Office, August 14, 1916.
Many thanks for sending me a copy of your little book. I will certainly see what can be done in regard to armour. You will remember that I took your previous tip as regards badges for wounded men.
Yours very truly, W. R. Robertson.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 1435