Page 12 of The Wonder of War on Land

  CHAPTER VIII

  DIGGING IN

  A winter compounded of rain and fire had settled down heavily over theAisne Valley and the plain of Champagne, from Rheims to Verdun. Thechalky soil oozed gray and--red.

  Deadlocked, their grip at each other's throats, German and Frenchmanwatched each other across a narrow, noisome waste, now and foreverto become the symbol of all that is most horrible, most deadly, mostpitiable:

  No Man's Land!

  Tens of thousands of men waited for the word of command which shouldbid them expose themselves to the unsated appetite of hungry slaughter,tens of thousands of men waited inactive while death and mutilationchose them, one by one.

  A gray soil, a gray sky, and a gray doom.

  The only thing that moved was the shuddering skin of the earth as thebullets flayed it in streaks or the shells dug deep holes like thefestering sores of a foul disease. Not a blade of grass, not a weed,not a shrub remained; where leafy woods once had been, now only a fewscarred and slivered stumps pointed accusing fingers upward. It wasChaos come again.

  Where were the shouting hosts charged with valor, such as those who haddriven forward at La Fere Champenoise, when Foch's army saved France?

  Gone!

  Where were the gallant fights to save the guns, when men met in opencombat under the open sky?

  Gone!

  Where were the cavalry charges when squadrons with saber or with lanceclashed in a deadly but glorious shock?

  Gone!

  Where were the armies that had fought hand to hand in the streets ofCharleroi; that had snatched at and escaped from death alternately inthe great retreat; that had hurled themselves at each other with equalfury in the attack or the defense of Paris; that had charged up theslopes of Le Grand Couronne and the bluffs of the Aisne with equalgallantry, and, dying, still had shaken their fists in the face ofSlaughter?

  Gone, all gone!

  Aye, gone indeed, but where?

  Dug in!

  Horace, off duty for a few hours from his post as military telephonist,for which he had fitted himself to qualify when his work as a motorcyclist was done, looked at the smitten world. He tried to compare thewar before him with the war to which for one brief, wild month he hadbeen so close. There was no comparison.

  To nothing that the world has ever seen could the War of the Trenchesbe compared.

  It was a cold, invisible inferno, which, every morning and evening,spewed up its ghastly tale of dead and wounded; which, every eveningand morning, yielded up its line of staggering, weary, war-dulledfigures, glad to exchange the peril of death for the miserableexistence which was all that was possible behind the trenches in theplain of Champagne that first fearful winter.

  The war of men was over, only a war of murderous moles remained.

  In a rickety hovel behind the lines, which, as Horace's companion inthe telephone work declared, was "weather-proof only when there wasn'tany weather to put it to the proof," the boy had puzzled over thisnew warfare. At last, one day, the opportunity serving, he hunted uphis friend the veteran--now a sergeant-major--and learned the causesand the methods of the ditch-born strife.

  _Courtesy of "Le Miroir."_

  THE VALLEY OF THE DEAD.

  Bombardment of shrapnel and high explosive shell, forming a barragefire through which the men seen in the trench are about to plunge.]

  "Modern fighting," said the veteran, as he cleaned his rifle, a dailytask in that rust-devouring atmosphere, "is the result of modernweapons. Whereas a musket would take two minutes to load and had arange of only a couple of hundred yards, a modern rifle will firethirty shots a minute and over, and has a good killing range at analmost flat trajectory of a thousand yards. Suppose it takes a chargingforce of infantry six minutes to run a thousand yards, where a musketwould get in three shots a modern rifle would put in from 180 to 300shots, and would be firing almost continuously."

  "Men would have to be under cover to face that fire," agreed Horace.

  "More murderous than the rifle," the veteran continued, "is themachine-gun, which fires 600 shots a minute and can be operated by twomen. It is estimated as being equal to fifty men, but, in reality, itsdestructiveness in the hands of a good gunner is far higher. It's easyto handle, too, the Maxims weighing sixty pounds and our Hotchkissfifty-three pounds, because the English weapon is water-cooled and oursis air-cooled."

  "Which is best?"

  "Ours," replied the veteran promptly, "because a Maxim, when it'sfiring steadily, gets so hot that it boils the water and the enemy cansee the steam. Then he knows where you are and concentrates his fireand--you tuck in your toes and no one will ever wake you up."

  "Invisibility counts," said the boy.

  "It's the difference between life and death!" was the reply. "That'swhere the value of the trenches becomes evident. Since both rifles andmachine-guns have a flat trajectory, when they do strike the ground,they do it at a very slight angle. If your head is ten inches below thelevel of the ground, a thousand men can fire at you with rifles andmachine-guns a hundred yards away, and you can smoke a pipe comfortablyand listen to the song of the bullets overhead.

  "Shrapnel, especially when handled by the 'Soixante-Quinze,' which, inaddition to being the best field-gun in the world, has the best shellwith the best time-fuse, is more destructive against advancing troopsthan machine-gun and rifle-fire combined, when it is rightly timed.Of course, it is far harder to aim exactly and to time to the second.A shrapnel shell holds 300 bullets and a 'Soixante-Quinze' can firefifteen shells a minute. That means that one gun can send 4500 bulletsa minute into an advancing enemy, the bullets scattering in a fan shapefrom the burst of the shell. The Boches, by the way, waste a tremendousamount of ammunition in bursting their shrapnel too high. I got hit,myself, with three balls from a shell which had burst too far away andthey didn't even make a hole in my trousers; bruised me a bit, that wasall.

  "But you can see, my boy, when you've got rifle fire, machine-gun fireand shrapnel all looking for a different place to put a hole throughyou, a trench is the loveliest thing in the world, no matter if it'swet and slimy, full of smells and black with dried blood. The worstpool of filth would be a haven of refuge if only you could drop yourbody in it a few inches below the zone of certain death. If one getscaught once in the open, one never grumbles again about the labor ofdigging a trench."

  "But why are trenches so twisty?" asked Horace. "One misty day, when itwas safe, an aviator took me up a little way, and I had a chance tolook down on our trenches. I was only in the air a few minutes and wedidn't go very high, but, although I know this section pretty well, Icouldn't make head or tail out of our lines. They looked like a sort ofscrawly writing, or a spider's web stretched out and tangled up."

  "That's not a bad description," said the veteran thoughtfully, "theydo look a little like that, with the communication trenches for thecross-threads. But there are a good many reasons why the trenches aremade 'twisty' as you call it.

  "In the first place, a trench is made zigzag, so that, if the enemyshould make a sudden raid and seize a section of the trench, he can'tfire along it and enfilade you. Then a trench that wavers in longuneven lines is much safer against shell-fire, for, supposing that theenemy does get the range of a piece of trench, his range will be wrongfor the same trench ten yards farther on, the shells falling harmlesslyin the ground before it or behind it.

  "Besides that, a thin wavy line is much more difficult to see from anaeroplane than a straight line, because there are no straight lines innature. That's why we've had to stop putting straw in the trenches,the line of yellow was too easy to see from overhead."

  "Is that why trenches are made so narrow?" the boy asked. "I've oftenthought it silly to make them so that two people can hardly squeezepast each other. The stretcher-bearers growl about it all the time."

  "The ideal fire-trench," the veteran answered, "should be only abouteighteen inches wide and not quite four feet deep, the upthrown earthforming a parapet. It should b
e recessed here and there, and traversed.To pass a man, you have to slide sideways. The communicating trenchshould be about fifteen yards to the rear. It should be seven feet deepand about three feet wide.

  "Twenty-five yards in the rear is the cover trench, sixteen feetdeep, and wide enough to allow troops to march in single file. Thecommunication trenches from one line to another are always best astunnels, though sometimes they are open. Our trenches here are open,but," the veteran nodded sagely, "I don't think they ought to be. Thisis a chalk soil, and the whitish soil underneath shows too clearly whenyou throw it up."

  "The trenches wouldn't be so bad," said the lad, "if they weren'talways wet."

  "You can't change that," the veteran responded grimly, "unless you canfind some way to make water run up-hill. It stands to reason that ifyou dig holes in the ground and it rains--as it does nearly all thetime in this wretched northern country--the water is going to run intothose holes. If you bale it out by day, the Boches see you, and if youpump at night, they hear you. If it rains, the trenches are going to beknee-deep in water and you can't help it."

  "But how can you find your way, when one trench looks exactly likeanother and they're all twisting and turning like so many snakes tryingto get warm?"

  "You can't, unless you know the plans," the sergeant-major answered."You've no idea of the amount of work that our draughtsmen have todo, in mapping out these underground cities and thousands of miles ofditch-streets. I know my little section, of course, and each officerhas learned the tangle of trenches in which his command is likelyto operate. But the officers have to know the tangle of the enemy'strenches, too, and, what's more, when we attack, they have to be in thefront and guide us. An assault isn't just a blind drive over the top,it must have a definite goal and has to be reached a certain way. Theofficers have got to know the Boche roads as well as our own."

  "But how can they find that out?"

  "Aeroplanes with photographers and draughtsmen," came the reply."You've heard the story of the tattooed draughtsman?"

  "No," answered Horace, "I haven't."

  "He was a young fellow," the veteran began, "who was assigned to thejob of making a plan of the enemy's trenches opposite his part of theline. The Boche lines were on a little higher ground than ours at thatpoint, so that nothing could be seen from the fire trench. The youngdraughtsman went up in a machine several times, but there was a veryefficient battery of anti-aircraft guns a little back of their linesand the Archies would not let our Farman aeroplane come down low enoughfor a photograph to show anything definite.

  "This chap got desperate. He was bound to succeed, no matter whathappened to him. At last, one night, we caught a Boche patrol on NoMan's Land and wiped them out. As soon as the return fire slackened,the draughtsman, who had been in one of the dug-outs, crawled out,and, wriggling flat to where the Boches had fallen, he grabbed one ofthe dead men by the ankle and dragged him to our trench.

  "Then, unobtrusively and to our open-mouthed astonishment, the youngdraughtsman dressed himself in the dead man's uniform, read carefullyall the papers in the pockets, so that he might learn who it was he wascounterfeiting and bade us good-bye.

  "'There's just about one chance in a million,' he said, 'that I don'tget found out right away. If I am, then--' He clicked his tongue like atrigger. 'If I'm not caught and can manage to go back with the reliefand return again,' he said, 'as soon as I get to the trench I'll boltout of it, holding my left arm stretched out straight. You'll know bythat, it's me. They'll pot me from behind, of course, but I may gethalf-way over No Man's Land before they do. If I drop, just smother theplace where I fell with bullets so that the Boches don't have a chanceto sneak out and get me.'

  "'But that'll cut you to ribbons,' I said to him.

  "He shrugged his shoulders.

  "'I'll be dead, probably,' he said, 'and if I'm not and you kill me,then it's only five minutes' difference, anyway.

  "'Then, when it's night, let some of the fellows go out and drag me in.I've got an indelible pencil, and you'll find a map of the trenches onmy chest.'"

  "Did he go?"

  "He did," the veteran answered. "We watched close all that night, allthe next day and all the next night, till we were sure that he had beennabbed.

  "Then, suddenly, one of our chaps called,

  "'Here he comes!'

  "Sure enough, just as it was getting light enough to see, a figuredressed like a Boche came jumping out of the trench holding his leftarm stretched out straight and began a bolt across No Man's Land. Hewas running like a hare, but three or four rifles spoke. He dropped,wounded, and began to crawl, inch by inch, to our lines. Then they gota machine-gun full on him and began to spray him with bullets, like yousprinkle a flower-bed in summer.

  "He didn't wriggle very far.

  "We answered them hot and heavy. We didn't leave room for a worm tocrawl up to him, much less a man. Then, when night came, some of ourfellows drove a sap to where he lay and hooked down the body."

  "And the map?"

  "Scrawled on his bare chest, the way he said it would be," the veterananswered, "and underneath was written in the same smeared violet marksthe word:

  "'Victory!'"

  "You can't beat France when it comes to heroism!" declared Horace.

  "The English are just as nervy," answered the veteran. "Even in thetrenches, though, they fight differently. They make far fewer nightattacks than we do, and far more mines. There's few nights that theBritish haven't got a listening patrol out somewhere on the line."

  "I hear every one talking of a 'listening patrol,'" put in the lad;"tell me, Sergeant, just what a listening patrol is for."

  "To listen," answered the veteran laconically.

  "Of course, but for what?"

  The answer came, sinister,

  "Mines!"

  "Ah!" Horace had seen the effects of those most terrible of all weaponsof trench warfare.

  _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_

  LISTENING PATROL TRAPPED BY A STAR-SHELL.]

  _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_

  LOCATING ENEMY SAPPERS ON A LISTENING PATROL.]

  "You see," the veteran explained, "when trenches are well and solidlydug, especially the way the Germans build them; when solid machine-gunemplacements are made and properly manned with plenty of ammunition;when there is a concentration of artillery to support the trenches onboth sides, nobody can do much. Of course, they shell us all the time,and we shell them. They send over rifle-bombs and we shoot ammonal andvitriol grenades. Once in a while, if they're lucky, they'll land a'Minnenwerfer' in one of our trenches and then there's a little workfor the doctor and a lot for the grave-digger."

  "What's a 'Minnenwerfer'?"

  "A pleasant little toy the Germans have invented, which looks likea rubber ball at the end of a stick. Its right name is the 'Krupptrench howitzer.' It weighs only 120 pounds--at least one of them thatwe captured, weighed that--and can be handled by a couple of men.Although it has a caliber of only 2.1-inch it throws a shell of 16-inchdiameter."

  "How on earth can it do that?" asked the boy. "You can't squeeze a16-inch shell down a 2.1-inch muzzle!"

  "That's what the stick is for," came the reply. "The shell is round,like one of the old-fashioned cannon-balls you see piled up in villagesquares beside antiquated cannon. It weighs 200 pounds and has abursting charge of 86 pounds of tri-nitro-toluol. The shell is bored tothe center. You shove one end of the iron rod into the gun so that itsticks out about eight inches beyond the muzzle. Then you put the shellon the rod by the hole bored to the center. It looks like a toy balloonat the end of a child's toy cannon. Then you fire it, the iron rod isshot out, driving the bomb ahead of it and off she goes."

  "Will it go far?"

  "Far enough," the veteran said. "At an angle of projection of 45degrees with the low muzzle velocity of 200 feet per second, the rangeof the bomb is 1244 feet and it takes eight seconds to come. That's theonly good thing about it, sometimes you can hear it comi
ng soon enoughto dodge into a dug-out. But neither Minnenwerfers, nor the 5.6-inchnor even the 8.4-inch howitzers will win a trench. It takes mines to dothat.

  "So, in order to gain an advantage, one side or the other burrowsdeep tunnels in the earth, sometimes 16 feet down, sometimes 60, alldepending on the soil and the plan. The men work underground likemoles and they drive a long subterranean gallery until they come rightbelow an important point, maybe an officers' dug-out or a grenadedepot. Then they burrow upwards a bit, and put in a tremendous chargeof explosive, melinite or something like that, and fix an electricwire. The earth is then rammed back into the gallery, an electriccontact is made and whiz! bang! about forty tons of mixed heads, legs,bits of bomb-proof and earth go flying into the air, leaving a hole bigenough to build a bungalow in and never see the roof.

  "Then it's our turn. While the section of the Boche line is inconfusion we dash across, while our artillery, behind us, smothers therest of the line. We settle in the big hole and build our trenches fromit and we've gained a hundred yards and can pepper the Boche trenchesfrom their rear. A mine's a great thing, although, sometimes, it costsmore men to consolidate and hold a place like that than to take it.The British have beaten us all at that game. They've got small armiesof Welsh miners, doing nothing but that all day and all night long.They're used to it, it's their trade and they don't mind.

  "Now, a listening patrol, which is what I began to tell you about,is a patrol generally consisting of four men, under an officer, whichcreeps out on No Man's Land during the night. By approaching near theenemy trenches, listening with their ears to the ground, the men canhear if there is any one at work under them. The earth--as you ought toknow, being a telephonist--is a good conductor of sound, and if there'sany tricky business going on, a listening patrol can find it out."

  "What good does it do to know that some one is driving a mine underyou? Do you desert the trench, then, until they blow it up?"

  The veteran almost growled.

  "Does a Frenchman desert a trench!" he said. "No, we find out exactlywhere they're digging, and start a tunnel from our side, right belowthe other. Then, when they're working busily, a little explosionbelow them smashes their tunnel into soup and they're all dead--andburied--without troubling any one."

  "I shouldn't think a listening patrol would be so dangerous, then,"said the boy, "if you've only got to crawl out and listen."

  "But there's others listening, too! If they hear a move, or think thatthey hear a move, up goes a star shell, bright as day, to show yousprawled on the ground. Your only chance is to lie still, like a deadman. But, lots of times, even if they think you're dead they'll turn amachine-gun on you, just to make sure. You don't have to imitate beingdead any more, then. I know of six officers, right in this sector, whohave been killed in listening-patrol work, and I couldn't count howmany men."

  He leaned forward and stared out into space gloomily.

  "I don't call this--war," he said in a lower voice. "I can't call itwar when a soldier's chief weapons are a pickax and a spade for diggingtrenches--and graves. And--I wanted to be an officer!" He stared outupon the faded world and repeated slowly, "I wanted to be an officer! Iwanted to lead men into--that!"

  "You lead men now!" said the boy.

  The fire of responsibility and pride flashed back into the dull eyesand involuntarily the veteran stood up.

  "I lead men now," he cried, "and I'll lead them till we drive theGermans back from the last foot of the soil of France!"

  He strode off to his multifarious duties with swing and determinationin his step.

  It was three days after that when Horace, who was graduallyacclimatizing to the nerve-racking cannonade of the battlefield, becameconscious that it was steadily increasing in intensity. The clouds hunglow, muffling the resonance and emphasizing the sharp reports of thecannon. The moist, sluggish air, full of unimaginable odors, becamepungent with sulphur, powder, the burnt smell of calcined soil and thefumes of charred wool arising from the ignited clothing of the unburieddead on No Man's Land.

  Significant, too, that evening, was the appearance of wagon-loads ofwire. One of the men groaned aloud as he saw it,

  "Zut! That means some dodging of bullets to-night!"

  Never, till Time has ceased to be, will any man calculate the number ofdeaths which have been caused by that entrapment born in the brain ofsome fiend--wire entanglement.

  Wire! The strangler!

  Wire! The man-trap!

  Wire! That grips a soldier with malicious glee and holds him fast to animmediate or a lingering death.

  Wire! Which lies before every heroic effort, which throws its snakycoils around the feet and around the nerves of the bravest.

  Embodiment of hate, of diabolic trickery, of malign expectancy,arch-creator of despair--Wire!

  For every mile of fighting front, there are a thousand miles of wire,with a weight of 110 tons. For every mile of front, 12,000 standardsand 12,000 pickets must be used. Withal, that thousand miles of wirehas cost a thousand lives to put it up and keep it in repair, that,when the time may come, it may cost the lives of two thousand of theenemy.

  Just as the character of the fighting shows the nature of troops, sodoes the wire that they use. The German wire is put up by machinery.It is a harder, tougher wire than is used by the Allies, with curvedbarbs, altogether a more efficient thing in itself. But, by reason ofthat very solidity, it affords greater resistance to shell-fire, andtherefore, under heavy bombardment, funnels of passage can be driventhrough it, by which troops may assault the trenches it is designed toprotect.

  British wire is thinner, lighter, sharper. It is irregularlyconstructed, with pitfalls. It is largely put up by knife-rests,afterwards staked to the ground. It stretches over a wide space,as a rule, with the result that while shell-fire beats it down andexplosions may uproot the stakes, the ground remains a hideous tangleof treachery for the feet.

  A form of wire used on the French front consists of two spiralcoils, four feet in diameter, wound loosely in opposite directionsand entangled. It is so loose and yields so little resistance thatshell-fire, however much it may blow the coils into the air, onlyentangles it the more. The spiral coils retain their form. Moreover,most important of all, it cannot be crossed by throwing planks upon it,for the coils give way and the plank drops in between. Nothing but abridge of hurdles--or the bodies of dead men--will serve for passageover it.

  Well the soldiers knew what the strengthening of wire under anincreased bombardment implied.

  The Germans were preparing to assault.

  If further assurance were needed, Horace found it in the tramping offeet as reenforcements came rolling up from the rear. What men werethese?

  These were the unafraid!

  These were the terror of the enemy!

  The Moroccan Division! Chosen for the moments of danger, picked foroccasions when savage ferocity is required, the Africans wait for theword of command.

  _Courtesy of "The Sphere."_

  FRENCH TANK CUTTING WIRE.

  Note the lower lines and greater speed of the French design comparedwith the British, more mobile but less powerful.]

  "They march past," said Henri Barbusse, describing them at the front,"with faces red brown, yellow or chestnut, their beards scanty andfine, or thick and frizzled, their greatcoats yellowish-green, andtheir muddy helmets displaying the crescent instead of our grenade.From flat or angular faces, burnished like new coins, one would saythat their eyes shine like balls of ivory and onyx. Here and there inthe file, towering above the rest, comes the impassive black face of aSenegalese sharpshooter. The red flag with a green hand in the centergoes behind the company.

  "These demon-men, who seem carved of yellow wood, of bronze or ofebony, are grave and taciturn; their faces are disquieting and secret,like the threat of a snare suddenly found at your feet. These men aredrunk with eagerness for the bayonet and from their hands there is noquarter. The German cry of surrender, 'Kamerad!' they answer with abayonet thrust,
waist-high."

  Their presence, also, told its story.

  A counter-assault was planned.

  Rarely do the Moroccans hold the trenches. It is not their kind offighting, nor would their bodies, used to the sun of North Africa,endure the cold and wet of the muddy trench. They are the troops of theadvance. There are no prisoners, no wounded, after they have leapedinto a trench. Their trail is the trail of savage death.

  All the next day the bombardment increased in violence, and Horace,at his military switchboard, plugged calls to distant quarters forreenforcements. Everywhere along the line, when the early dusk fell,men were standing to arms or marching to the threatened sector.

  One section of trench was wiped out with the concentration of highexplosive shells; wire, fire trench, communication trench and theirliving defenders being blown into an unrecognizable, pockmarked mass.Another trench was hastily dug behind and craftily wired. There theassault would come.

  The noise was deafening, maddening. One felt the slow approach ofinsanity. Men sprang up here and there with frantic cries that theappalling nerve-racking din might cease, even for a second. A few wentmad, and their hands were bound by their comrades until the crisis waspast.

  A gray, evil earth; a gray, evil sky, with bomb-dropping aeroplanesoverhead like vultures waiting to swoop down upon their carrion prey.Upon that scene night fell.

  On that small section of the trenches not less than 50,000 projectileshad fallen that evening. The shrill whistling of bullets, the baby'swail of falling torpedoes, the spattering "whit" "whit" of ricochettingfuses, the six-fold squall of the 77's, the whine of the smallhowitzers, and the roar of large shell formed a shrieking arch in thetortured and glutted air.

  Nor was the French artillery silent. The batteries of "Soixante-Quinze"replied incessantly. From time to time the bellow as of a prehistoricbull told that the 8.2-inch gun was bodily tearing holes and men inthe enemy's trenches. The long thin Rimailho sent its 5.9-inch shellwith the swift flight of a vengeful meteor and the new great 10-inchhowitzer looped its 240-pound shell upon the dug-outs where the menwere sheltering. There is neither shelter nor men after that shell hasfallen.

  The guards in the advance trenches were redoubled. Extra supplies ofbombs and hand-grenades were served out.

  Under arms, silent, expectant, grim, stood the Moroccan brigade. Theirturn was coming, soon.

  The night dragged on. No one went to sleep, for sleep was impossibleunder the fury of noise.

  The Germans, systematic in everything, over-systematic in everything,never commence an assault before midnight. At half-past eleven o'clock,Horace plugged in for the order to be given for the barrage fire tobegin.

  The whirlwind of vertically-falling flame shut off the German lines ina tawny curtain of annihilation.

  Now and then rockets shot up, red, green and white, writing artillerymessages on the sky.

  The calcium whiteness of star shells illuminated the gruesome zone ofNo Man's Land, void, deserted and desolate.

  On its horrid bleakness, nothing moved. Its pallid stillnessintensified the menace.

  Officers and men glanced anxiously at the watches fastened on theirwrists.

  Behind, the Moroccan brigade stood motionless. They even laughed ineagerness. It was a jangling laugh. White men who heard it, shivered.

  It was not yet midnight, but, suddenly, a vicious crackle of rifles farto the left suggested that there, the moment was at hand.

  Not yet the attack, it was a patrol of German wire-cutters, trying tosneak up under cover to make an opening.

  "Cr-a-a-a-a-ck!"

  A machine-gun spoke. The wire-cutters pitched headlong. The youngofficer, wounded, tried to crawl back to the lines.

  "Crack!"

  One rifle spoke. Even at night a sharpshooter does not miss. The figureof the German officer moved no more.

  The German bombardment, hitherto directed against the batteries far tothe rear, began to draw forward. It approached the rear of the trencheswhere the dug-out for the telephone was situated.

  "Afraid?" the officer asked Horace.

  "Yes," the boy answered, "but game!"

  A shell fell a dozen yards away. The burst smashed in the roof of thedug-out. A flying piece of concrete grazed the officer's cheek. It bledfreely.

  "Hit, sir?" the boy asked anxiously.

  "Nothing! My cheek!"

  He telephoned an order.

  The Moroccans, unwillingly, take cover in a shelter-trench. Theydislike the underground, but it is no use to stand and be shot downuselessly.

  Bombs and grenades fall like a hail of fire.

  The telephone bell rings continuously. Every one of the seventeen wiresrunning to the switchboard is working. Horace is on the alert, hisfingers as electric as the wires he is handling.

  A growing nervousness runs through the lines, making the whole armytingle like a single human organism vibrant with life.

  All the world is in activity or in readiness.

  Medical troops pass by, carrying out the wounded from the bombardment.

  An enemy patrol dashes forward to destroy the wire, knowing that itwill never return alive. It is met by a storm of rifle-fire, but thosewho survive, cut. A hole is made. The last German falls.

  A French patrol rushes out to mend the gap, throwing coils here andthere and is, in its turn, wiped out by grenadiers.

  The hateful eyes of searchlights peer over the zone of destruction. Itis deserted--as yet.

  What is that--a shout?

  Midnight!

  There is one last furious burst from trench mortars, howitzers and guns.

  The white lights, with all the accusing whiteness of the fingers of athousand dead, cease their groping and point to the farther side of NoMan's Land.

  They come!

  Black in the whiteness of that intense light, the wave rolls up.

  The silent plain crawls with running, staggering, falling, crawlingmen. The gray-white expanse speckles rapidly with its spotting of dead.

  Into the barrage of fire the wave plunges. It is the end, surely,nothing can get through.

  The miracle of escape is demonstrated again. If the masses be largeenough, you cannot kill them all. With two-thirds dead, ten thousandmen break through. They plunge forward with lowered heads and bristleof bayonets. Every third man is a bomb-thrower.

  "Let them come nearer, boys!"

  Every man holds his breath.

  "Fire!"

  A solid blast of flame outlines the fire trench. In the white glareof searchlights and star-shells illumining the scene as though by acontinuous river of lightning, the wave is seen to waver. Some fallflat, others sink down quietly, others, again, drop to hands andknees and crawl on, yet others, clutched by the wounded in theirdeath-grip, free themselves with a bayonet thrust--their brothers,their comrades!--and rush on.

  The machine guns claim their prey by scores, by hundreds every minute.It does not stop the wave.

  Their eyes fixed and staring, as though they were figures in their ownnightmares, they leap into the trench, hurling a last shower of handgrenades as they come.

  It is the butt and the steel now.

  They have reached the trench but they have not won it.

  Around each machine gun a special fight gathers.

  Another wave is coming. It passes through the barrage fire again anddashes for the trench, already half taken.

  Ah! What is that?

  The 75's!

  The strident roar of unnumbered batteries, with shells timed to thesecond, breaks loose behind the French lines. The second wave meetsthat wall of lead. It does not waver, it collapses.

  A third wave--how they are driven on to death, those Germans!

  The first wave is nearly gone now, the hand to hand struggle in thetrench is nearly over and the reserves are creeping in.

  But the third wave?

  Four mines explode simultaneously. Scores of bodies are thrown in theair. Dozens are thrown down by the sheer impact of the air
.

  The moment has come.

  "Africans! On!"

  There is no shouting as they leap over the parapet, but the glitter oftheir eyes suffices.

  The third wave breaks and flees.

  "Forward, my children, forward!"

  The cry of the officers runs along the line.

  The men do not need to be told. The Germans have failed. Now is thecounter-assault. Now they have a taste of their own medicine.

  "Forward, my children, forward!"

  But they, too, have machine guns; they, too, have rifles; they, too,have shrapnel and their wire entanglements stretch before us. TheFrench fall as their men fall, but the French commanders will not wastelife like theirs.

  "Fall back, my children, they have had enough!"

  Slowly the bombardment dies down to a watchful fire against arepetition of the assault. With countless false alarms the hours ofthe night pass by.

  The gray day breaks slowly.

  The trenches are full of dead and No Man's Land is a sight of redoubledhorror.

  Full daylight comes and shows the scene as desolate as ever, the longline of trenches stretching unbroken from Switzerland to the sea.

  All the heroism, the courage, the mad endeavor, the agony, theslaughter, what has it brought to either side?

  Nothing.

  All that the official communiques can say, whether sent out from Berlinor from Paris, will be:

  "The enemy's attack was repulsed."

  Has nothing been gained?

  Yes! The French trenches are still French. From this much of Frenchsoil the foreigner's foot is banished. Aggression, greed, and hatehave made another violent effort to win a strip of territory for theirbefouling and blackening touch, have tried--and the motionless figureson No Man's Land are France's answer.

  Yesterday's clouds have fled and the golden sunshine floods the ravagedfields; it pours into the windows of field hospitals on the French andGerman sides alike, it blesses with the hope of the future the soldierwho will recover and eases the pain of him who looks upon his last sun;it shows the African sharpening his steel for the next charge, and thegeneral planning the next assault; it shines into distant countrieswhence men are coming to take the places of those that have gone before.

  Heroes all!

  Yet the communique says only:

  "The enemy made a violent assault and was repulsed."

  CHAPTER IX

  THE DEMON FACES

  "Croquier!"

  "But yes, my boy, it is I!"

  The boy ran forward eagerly to greet his old friend, for the momentignoring the dogs by which he was surrounded, and then stopped andlooked fixedly at his comrade.

  "Your arm?" he queried.

  The hunchback shrugged one shoulder.

  "It is gone, as you see," he answered.

  "But how?"

  "It was my fate, no doubt," the other responded. "Destiny had decidedthat I should give an arm to the Germans; so, since the militaryauthorities would not give me the opportunity to lose it at the front,I left it behind me in Paris."

  "What happened?" Horace persisted.

  "It was a little nothing," the hunchback replied. "A German birddropped a shell out of his beak on the munitions factory where I wasworking."

  "And a splinter hit you?"

  "Several."

  "Why didn't you dodge?"

  "I couldn't. You see," the hunchback continued, "there was a girlthere."

  "And then?" demanded the lad impatiently. "Don't stammer so, Croquier,tell the story!"

  "It was a tiny nothing," his comrade repeated, somewhat shamefacedly."It was this way. In the factory where I was working, there were manybrave girls working also, brave girls, for the work was dangerous. Itwas especially dangerous, because there was a church on one side and ahospital near by. A Boche aviator always tries to hit a hospital whenhe can. The Red Cross to him is as it would be to a bull."

  "I've noticed that," the boy agreed. "At the front, here, they shellthe field hospitals every chance they get. But tell the story!"

  "One foggy morning, then," the hunchback went on, "about a week beforeChristmas, an aviator who had escaped our air-sentries by reason of themist, let fall a bomb. I feel sure it was meant for the hospital, butit hit us instead. I was working on the top floor. The bomb--it wasquite a little one--came through the roof. I happened to be the one tosee it coming and I saw, at once, that it would fall on the stone benchin front of which the girls were working.

  "It was not the time for politeness, you understand, so I swept my leftarm round, and the girl who was working next to me fell down flat.

  "I must have been a little slow in bringing down my arm after I hadswung it round, for the shell struck the bench at the same second andthe splinters collected in my hand and wrist. The hand was almost quitecut off. The doctors said it was a lovely amputation--they are drollfellows, those doctors--but to make the matter more sure, they cut offmy arm a little higher, as you see. It was to prevent infection, theysaid."

  "And the girl?"

  The hunchback looked grave.

  "She was black and blue for a week," he said. "You see, I am ratherstrong and perhaps I hit her a little too hard."

  "But you saved her life!"

  "That, of course," said the Frenchman, simply; "what else would any onedo?"

  "And were you the only one hurt?"

  "Alas, no!" sighed Croquier. "It is there that I was a fool. If I hadhit two girls, one on either side, it would have been very good. But Ihad a sharp tool in my right hand and I did not think of it. The bravelittle one on that side was killed. No one else was hurt. It was awonderful escape."

  "I don't quite see it that way," the boy retorted. "One girl killed andone man crippled, by a small aeroplane bomb, looks to me more like acatastrophe than an escape. What happened to the girl whose life yousaved?"

  "She was as kind as she was brave," the hunchback answered. "She wasvery rich, or, rather, she had been so before the war, though she hadput on workmen's clothes and was slaving in a munitions factory. Shewas doing it for France.

  "Every day that I was in the hospital she came to see me after workinghours. So did other of the operatives. They were all very kind, butshe was the kindest. It was she who secured permission for me to havethe 'captive Kaiser' on the little table beside my hospital bed. Thedoctors could refuse her nothing. She had a smile, ah! one to remember!"

  Horace smiled at the mental picture of the grim, black eagle with theyellow eyes, iron-caged, in the white, cool cleanliness of a hospitalward.

  "It was Mademoiselle Chandon, too," Croquier continued, "who enabled meto come here to the front. I am a general, no less, my boy, now. I amthe General of this army of dogs."

  "So I see," the lad agreed. "But I didn't know that you knew anythingabout dogs."

  "Have you forgotten, my boy," the hunchback answered, "that, when I wasa small urchin, I traveled with the circus? I am sure I have told youstories of that time. My master was the animal trainer and many werethe tricks that he taught me. One does not forget what one has learnedin childhood.

  "Mademoiselle Chandon, she whose pretty face I was so fortunate as tosave with my arm, formerly was rich, as I have said. Before the war,her father had owned magnificent kennels and he was forever lamentingthat he could not give his dogs to the army. But they were not trained.

  "'But I, Mademoiselle,' I said to her, 'behold, I can train dogs. Thatdoes not take two hands!'

  "She clapped her little palms together with delight and ran away to herbig house in the town, which was being used as a hospital for the blind.

  "It was, perhaps, about a week after that, that the old nobleman,her grandfather, came to see me in the hospital. It must needs be hergrandfather who came. Her father was an officer in the Cuirassiers. Thefamily had given all their automobiles to the army for staff purposes,so the old nobleman came himself through the streets on foot.

  _Courtesy of "La Grande Guerre."_

  MACHINE-GUN DOG-TE
AM IN BELGIUM.]

  _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_

  EACH KENNEL INHABITED BY ONE WISE, SILENT DOG.

  Note that these kennels are drilled out of solid rock as a protectionagainst dropping shells.]

  "'So, my fine fellow,' he said to me, 'after saving my daughter's life,you want to train my dogs so that they may get crippled, eh?'

  "'That is as Monsieur le Comte wishes,' I made reply.

  "'I shall give myself the pleasure of taking you to the country with mewhen I go, next week,' he said.

  "Ah, it is the old families who understand true courtesy!

  "He had nearly a hundred dogs. They were a little too much inbred,perhaps, and therefore over-nervous, but good dogs. Monsieur le Comtegave me the gardener's cottage to live in--the gardener is in thetrenches at Verdun--and I spent two happy months teaching the dogs."

  "That's why my letters never reached you, then," said Horace. "I alwayswrote to our old address."

  "I think the landlady died when I was in the hospital," answeredCroquier. "She fell ill soon after you left. And, you remember, she wasvery old."

  "She was old," the boy agreed. "But why didn't you ever write to me?"

  "I did, many times. Naturally, I wrote to the Motorcycle Corps of theFourth Army, but I never received a response."

  "Of course," said the boy thoughtfully, "that wouldn't reach me. My oldmotor-cycle has been idle for several months. When I found that therewasn't any more dispatch work to do, I took a military telephone courseat the camp school."

  "So you're a telephonist, now!"

  "And you're a dog general!"

  "I have some beauties, too!" Croquier looked around at the littlerock-cut kennels with manifest pride. "They're so clever that I'mafraid, some morning, I'll come out and find them all talking."

  "What do you teach them to do?" asked Horace, smiling at theexaggeration.

  "I train them into three different lines of work," the hunchbackanswered. "One set is taught to serve on listening-posts and to assiston sentry duty, another group is trained to carry messages, and thethird group is taught to hunt for the wounded when a battle has beenraging over a large space of ground."

  "What does a dog do at a listening-post?" Horace asked. "Does he barkwhen he hears something?"

  "Not a bark, not a sound!" the hunchback answered. "I teach them tobite a man's ankles gently, so!" He bent down and with his strongfingers nipped Horace just above the heel. "Then the sentry knows thatthere is an alarm, for a dog's hearing is much keener than a man's. Ifthe sentry is lying down, I teach the dog to pay no attention to himbut to run to the sentry at the next listening-post. Then the secondsentry knows that there is an alarm, and also that the man at the nextpost is either dead or wounded. From that listening-post a message issent back, sometimes by telephone, sometimes by messenger, sometimes bymessage or liaison dog. Star shells are meantime shot up to illuminethat particular bit of trench, and the machine guns spray death there."

  "And the message dogs, how do you work them?" the boy asked.

  "The dogs of liaison are used on advanced post work, or in saps, orwhen tunneling is done for a mine. Sometimes it is necessary to sendback for reenforcements and a man cannot be spared. Then a messageis attached to a dog's neck and he is told to go. He gallops back tothe headquarters which is his home for the time being and the man incharge takes the message and gives him a feed. The dogs are kept hungryand they know that whenever they take a message they will get a gooddinner. I tell you, my boy, they do not stop to play along the road!"

  "And the Red Cross dogs?"

  "I have only a few of those," the hunchback answered, "chiefly Belgiandogs, because the Red Cross is using a great many dogs from Mount St.Bernard, dogs which have already been taught by the monks to findtravelers lost in the snow.

  "Then I have ratting terriers, a few rough-coated fox terriers, whichhave a natural instinct for fighting rats, and a number of Irishterriers which have to be trained to the work. When properly taught,they are much the better."

  "I don't see why," the boy objected; "I should think that dogs whichdidn't have to be trained would be keener after the rats."

  "So they are," the trainer replied, "if we were dealing with ordinaryrats. But the savage rats which have developed in the trenches,creatures which are sometimes ferocious enough to kill and devourthe severely wounded, are sometimes more than the snappy littlefox-terriers can manage. Some of those rats have a body eight incheslong from snout to root of tail and weigh over a pound. The hard wirycoat and tough skin of the Irish terrier is a good protection againstthe terrible down-slashing stroke of a rat's teeth. Besides which, theIrish terrier is a much more determined fighter, when aroused, andhis square jaw is far more powerful than that of his black-and-whitecousin."

  _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_

  MESSAGE DOG WEARING GAS MASK.

  In order to escape poison fumes, dogs of the liaison have to be trainedto wear masks, like soldiers.]

  "Why not use ferrets to drive the rats out the trenches, just as theydo to drive them out of granaries and warehouses in the city?"

  "Too unsafe," the hunchback answered. "We can't spare men enough tosend them rat-hunting with ferrets, and if we simply turned the ferretsloose, they might multiply so fast that they would kill off all therats and then become a tenfold worse danger. A ferret is twice as longas a rat and is the most murderous creature that draws the breath oflife. A plague of ferrets would be fearful. They would be worse thanpoison gas, which is the thing that troubles me most in the kennelshere."

  "Why here?" asked the boy in surprise, "you're far enough in the rearto escape poison gas, surely?"

  "Yes, but my dogs have to work at the front," the hunchback explained,"and they need protection, just as much as the men in the fire trench.The dogs have to become accustomed to wearing gas-masks, just likesoldiers. It's hard on the dogs, too, because a dog doesn't breathemuch through his nose when he's running but through his mouth and sothe mask has to be made in a different way.

  "You'd never believe the amount of trouble I have in trying to teach mydogs to keep from scratching the gas-masks off with their paws. I'vegot some little puppies that I keep in gas-masks all the time. I onlytake their alkali-soaked bonnets off at their breakfast and dinnertime. They even sleep in them."

  "Poor little beggars!" exclaimed Horace, "and they haven't even got thesatisfaction of realizing why they have to do it."

  "Well," said the hunchback, gravely, "I always tell them 'It's forFrance!' Because," he added, half-seriously, "one can never tell howmuch a dog understands."

  Horace spent the whole of his day off duty with his old friend andreturned that evening to his telephone station, full of stories of thehunchback's wonderful dogs. With great gusto he recounted to his friendthe veteran the story of the canine gas-masks.

  "Luckily, as yet we haven't needed them here," the sergeant-majoranswered, "though I suppose we may expect gas at any time. It's adirty, sneaking way of making war, I think! The Boches only startedthat against the British because they hate them so. You know their'Chant of Hate':

  "'You we hate with a lasting hate, We will never forego our hate, Hateby water and hate by land, Hate of the head and hate of the hand, Welove as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone, England!'When you hate anybody as much as that, I suppose, even poison gas seemsjustified."

  "One hardly realizes," said Horace, thoughtfully, "that any nationcould work up such a hate."

  "Germany is worse poisoned by her hate than any one of our poorasphyxiated soldiers is poisoned by their chlorine gas. Yet it's aterrible thing to be gassed. I saw some of its victims on that sectorto which I was transferred for a while, this spring. A gassed man ismade blind and dumb; sometimes the sight returns, and sometimes it doesnot. The tongue is swollen to nearly double its normal size, ulceratedand blotched with black patches. The lungs are attacked so badly thatquite often the blood vessels burst and the man chokes to death withbubbling fr
othy blood. The arms and legs turn a mottled violet color.The pulse is no more than a faint flutter. Even those who recover havetheir health so badly wrecked that they can never march or work again.To lift the hands over the head a few times drives a gassed man into aviolent perspiration, and to walk upstairs produces exhaustion, whileothers, for the rest of their lives, will never be able to eat a solidmeal."

  "But did that poison gas do the Germans any good?" the boy asked. "Didit achieve any military gain?"

  "Yes," the veteran admitted, "it did. It almost won them the war. Ifthey had known as much about poison gas when they started it as theydo now, they would have gobbled up the little piece of Belgium whichthey have never been able to win and thus secured a hold on the EnglishChannel coast."

  "What stopped them?"

  "Two things," the veteran replied, "the valor of the Canadians andthe fact that the poison gas system which they used at the beginningwas fixed and not mobile. When the fiendish fumes were first directedagainst fighting troops, they were projected from fixed gasometers, andthe pipes leading from them were permanent and solidly made, so thatthey would not leak gas into their own trenches. That meant that thefumes could only be wafted from the one fixed point."

  "When was it first used?"

  "On April 22," the veteran answered.[20] "It was the Duke ofWuertemberg's army which had the foul dishonor of being the first toemploy the evil thing. About five o'clock in the evening, from thebase of the German trenches and over a considerable stretch of theline, there appeared vague jets of whitish mist. Like the vapors froma witch's caldron they gathered and swirled until they settled intoa definite low-hanging cloud-bank, greenish-brown below and yellowabove, where it reflected the rays of the sinking sun. This ominousbank of vapor, impelled by a northeastern breeze, drifted slowly acrossthe space which separated the two lines, just at the point where theBritish and French commands joined hands. The southernly drift of thewind drove it down the line.

  "The French troops, staring over the top of their parapet at thiscurious cloud, which, for the time being, ensured them a temporaryrelief from the continuous bombardment, were observed suddenly to throwup their hands, to clutch at their throats and to fall to the ground inthe agonies of asphyxiation.

  "Many lay where they had fallen, while their comrades, absolutelyhelpless against this diabolical agency, rushed madly out of themephitic mist and made for the rear, overrunning the lines of trenchesbehind them. Some never halted until they had reached Ypres, whileothers rushed westwards and put the canal between themselves and theenemy.

  "The Germans, meanwhile, advanced, and took possession of thesuccessive lines of trenches, tenanted only by dead garrisons, whoseblackened faces, contorted figures and lips fringed with blood and foamfrom their bursting lungs, showed the agonies in which they had died.Some thousands of stupefied prisoners, eight batteries of 75's and fourBritish batteries were the trophies won by this disgraceful victory.

  _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_

  THE ZOUAVE BUGLER'S LAST CALL.

  "... he tore off his protecting mask, sent his anguished appeal to hiscomrades in the rear, and then lurched forward to die an agonizingdeath."]

  "It was especially terrifying to the Africans. They were ready forany form of fighting, but brigades such as the Moroccans, born andbrought up under a vivid primitive fear of sorcery, were--for the firsttime in their history--driven into panic. They were willing to chargeagainst men, no matter what the odds, but not against magic, and ourofficers had great difficulty in rallying them, even two or three daysafterwards. When, however, the Algerian and Moroccan troops becameconvinced that it was the work of men and not of afrits or djinns, theyhad but one desire--revenge.

  "Yet the Germans gained far less by this advantage than they shouldhave done, for they wasted their time in consolidating the trenchesthey had won. A marvelous opening was before them, but for lack ofpersonal dash, their best opportunity passed away forever. 'They soldtheir souls as soldiers,' as one of the English writers, Sir ConanDoyle, expressed it, 'but the Devil's price was a poor one. Had theGermans had a corps of cavalry ready and passed them through the gap,it would have been the most dangerous moment of the war.'"

  "'They sold their souls as soldiers, but the Devil's price was a poorone.' That's a good phrase," repeated Horace, "I'll remember it."

  "It was really the most dangerous moment of the war," the veterancontinued, "for it was the only time in the war that the Germansactually broke through. They had not broken through in Belgium. Theyhad not broken through--save for advance cavalry--at Charleroi. Theyhad not broken through on the British left in the retreat from Mons,though it was a near shave. They had not broken through at Foch's rightin the Battle of the Marne, though in a few hours more they must havedone so. But they broke through at Ypres. The initial poison gas attackpierced the Allied lines for the first time.

  "Then the hidebound German strategy, which wins a few battles for themand loses twice as many more, became their ruin. Finding themselveson the farther side of the line, it seemed a supreme opportunity toadopt flanking tactics. The Canadians--whom the Germans hated equallywith the Australians and twice as much as the English, if that werepossible--held the line to the north of the sector which had beenpierced by the aid of poison gas. The Germans hungrily turned on theCanadians to encircle and crumple them up.

  "They soon found that they had clutched a spiny thistle in bare hands.

  "From three sides they advanced upon the Canadians, ranging theirartillery in a devastating cross-fire. Not a man in the Canadianregiments expected to survive. Few did. In the teeth of everyconceivable projectile, Canadian reenforcements came up to dare anddie. Again the Germans, having recharged their reservoirs, opened theirpoison gas valves. But the direction of the attack was different andthe wind blew the fumes away. The Germans, though in gas-masks (wornfor the first time that day), were not sufficiently protected andhundreds died from their own infernal device. The gas was shut off. Inthe night the wind changed and on Friday morning another discharge ofgas was sent against the Canadian lines.

  "The Canadian Highlanders received that discharge, and, though theyshowed themselves to be among the most gallant soldiers who ever foughtlike heroes in a righteous cause, they were compelled to fall back.Yet, even so, the Teutons did not break the line. On every side, theGerman forces poured in. They threw army corps after army corps intothe gap. At one time, there were fourteen Germans against one Canadian,and the artillery concentration was as sixty shells to one.

  "Yet the men held firm, knowing, that hour by hour, even minute byminute, the gap behind them was being closed by reenforcements.They died, and died willingly, to save the day. Neither poisongas--remember, they had no masks, for the gas was a surprise only ofthe night before--artillery, nor overwhelming odds could break theline. The officers ran to the foremost places in the trenches anddied, fighting, with the men. Every Canadian reserve was hurled intothe breach, to charge and counter-attack for a few minutes beforethey died, that others, following, also might hold the foe for a fewmoments, and then die.

  "By the middle of Friday morning, British reenforcing brigades hadcome up. They reached the Canadian lines.

  "The British halted, sent up a cheer for Canada, for a heroic fightseldom equaled in the annals of war, a fight which has given Canada aglory equal to the splendor of Belgium at Liege, of France at the Marneand of the Irish and Scotch at the Aisne, and, cheering still, theBritish drove at the Germans.

  "Without a single moment of rest for two days and nights, the strugglecontinued, and, by Sunday morning, the gap was closed and the Germanopportunity was gone. Every advance was dammed back by rifle-fire, eventhough the fingers that pulled the triggers were already writhing inthe intolerable agony which precedes a death from asphyxiating gas.

  "Once, indeed, during the second British charge, all seemed lost, forthe charge failed, and halted. For a moment it seemed to give way, thena cry ran along the English lines.

  "'The Bowmen! The Bowme
n of Agincourt!'

  "And the British, peering through the cloud of gas, saw, before them,the ghostly shapes of ranks upon ranks of English archers, such as hadfought upon the field of Europe exactly five hundred years before.Their short armor gleamed against the hideous greenish cloud and thebowstrings twanged as they released the cloth-yard arrow shafts, drawnto the head.

  "Once before, at Mons, at the time when St. George also had appeared onthe right wing of the English, the left wing had seen the bowmen, whenthey drove back the flanking German host, and victory had been theirsfor the moment.

  "Remembering this, triumph rang in the shout which reverberated throughthe English lines:

  "'The Bowmen! The Bowmen of Agincourt!'

  "Neither poison gas, explosive shells, machine-guns, rifles nor bayonetcould stop that rush. Backed up by three brigades of Indian troops, theEnglish charged. They reached the front line of the trenches when oncemore the ominous yellow-green mist rolled on. In a moment the Indianswere encircled by the dead fumes. Many of the men died where theystood. The mephitic cloud passed slowly over, but every man who was notdead was stupefied. Into the mass the rifle and shrapnel fire fell. Ofone of the Indian regiments, seventy answered the roll-call that night,in another, only eleven.

  "The famous Hill 60 was taken by gas. There, with a favorable wind,the Boches poured out gas in such vast quantities as to eddy and swirlaround the base of the hill and finally to submerge it. The crestdisappeared from sight like a rock by the advancing tide. Out of thegreen death, finally, came two men. There appeared staggering towardsthe dug-out of the commanding officer of the Duke's regiment, twofigures, an officer and an orderly. The officer was pale as death andwhen he spoke, his voice came hoarsely from his throat. Beside him, hisorderly, with unbuttoned coat, his rifle clasped in his hand, swayed ashe stood. The officer said slowly in his gasping voice:

  "'They have gassed the Duke's. I believe I was the last man to leavethe hill. The men are all up there dead. They were splendid. I thoughtI ought to come and report.'

  "He died that night."

  "But it couldn't be like that now," said Horace, "every one's got agas-mask."

  "That doesn't save everything," the veteran replied. "You've heard thestory of the Zouave Bugler's last call?"

  "No," said the boy, "tell me."

  "It was during a strong German offensive on one of our exposedsectors," the sergeant-major began, "when our front trench was exposedto an extraordinarily intense shell-fire, accompanied by a terrificcloud of asphyxiating gas.

  "The few survivors were almost in extremis, fighting furiously anddoggedly, though without hope other than that of selling their livesas dearly as they could and sending as many Germans as possible to thehalls of death which they had prepared for others.

  "Help was absolutely necessary if the position was to be held, and,as the men knew well, if their position fell, others would be indanger. Yet, though reenforcements were imperative, any communicationwith the second line seemed impossible. The telephone wires were likethe trenches, broken and pulverized, and no man could move from thatinferno alive.

  "There was only one way to give the news to those behind and that wasby bugle. This meant certain death to the bugler, who would have tolower his gas mask to sound the call. The captain hesitated to give theorder.

  "The gallant _clairon_, however, did not wait for the word of command.As soon as he realized the danger, he tore off his protecting mask,sent his anguished appeal to his comrades in the rear and thenlurched forward to die an agonizing death, though not in vain, for hisbrave deed had saved the day."

  _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_

  WHEN HOODED DEMONS TAKE THE TRENCHES.

  British at Loos charging down on Germans first line. Note the two styleof bombs and the Germans surrendering a machine gun. Also note thechanged type of British gas masks.]

  "Great!" cried Horace, his eyes shining.

  "Great, indeed," echoed the veteran, "great, but awful. That a man'slife should depend not on his courage, not on his skill, not on hispower, but on a piece of saturated gauze before his nose--that isawful, and it is not war."

  "But masks are needed!"

  "More than ever," the veteran agreed, "for since that time the Germanshave invented three different kinds of asphyxiating gas: the gaseswhich have a suffocating effect, so that men die from strangulation,mainly carbonic acid and nitrogen; the poisonous gases, in whichmen are killed by reason of the poison of the fumes, such as carbonmonoxide and cyanogen; and the spasm gases, in which men are killed bythe muscular and nervous spasms set up by the gases, such as chlorine,sulphuric acid and phosgene.[21] One of our men, who was a chemist incivil life, told me all about it."

  "Which were the gases used at Ypres, where the poison gas businessfirst began?"

  "Chlorine and bromine," the other answered, "so this chemist chap toldme. They get the chlorine by passing strong currents of electricitythrough sea-water by some process he explained but which I couldn'tunderstand; and the bromine is a by-product that they make from theStrasburg salts. But there's some other gases like sulphurous anhydrideand carbonyl chloride that I don't know much about."

  "Did you find out how it is that the masks really prevent poisoning?"the boy asked.

  "That's simple enough. Chlorine and bromine have what this chemistfellow called an 'affinity' for alkalies, and the gas combines withthe alkali somehow, so that all the poisonous effect is lost. French,English and German masks are different in shape, but the idea is thesame. The Germans have a mask which fits over the nose and mouth,filled with absorbent cotton treated with hyposulphite of sodium orsodium carbonate. The French and English have a mask that covers thewhole head and which can be tucked under the collar of the tunic.

  "The newest kind that we're using has a tin tube three inches long andan inch in diameter, prolonged on the exterior by a rubber appendix inwhich there is a valve opening outward. The valve cannot open inwardat all. So, when poison gas is seen coming, you can put on your maskand take the tube in your teeth. You can't breathe through your mouth,then, because the valve in the pipe won't open inward, and none of thepoison gas can get in. You breathe in through the nose and breathe outthrough the mouth."[22]

  "It's awfully uncomfortable," said Horace; "they make me go around witha gas mask in my pocket, but every time I put it on for a few minutes,I'm glad enough to take it off again."

  The veteran shook his head.

  "That's foolish," he said, "because you need to become accustomed towearing it. Practice a little bit every day. If you don't, and suddenlyfind yourself in the middle of a gas cloud, you won't be able to standit more than five minutes. You'll feel that you're choking for air. Soyou slip it off, just for a moment's relief, the green horror catchesat your throat, and you're done."

  "But, as you said yourself," protested the boy, "a cloud of gas passesover, and then it's gone."

  "I said it used to be that way," the sergeant-major answered, "butit's not that way any more. The Germans don't send their gas from bigfixed gasometers now; they have tanks which a man can carry on his backand from which the gas is jetted by compressed air. Infantry, withgas-masks on, can come right up behind the men carrying the gas tanksand, just as soon as the heavy poison fumes begin to fill the trenches,they charge."

  "Isn't there any way of stopping it?"

  "Only with a fearful amount of trouble and enormous expense. Poisongas, being heavier than the air, sinks. To keep it from sinking,then, you have to create a strong upward air current. Any bonfirewill do that. If, when a cloud of gas approaches or when men carryinggas reservoirs approach the trenches, you can start a bonfire everyfew yards along the line, the poison gas will be sucked into thisup-draught and dispersed by the heat. That has been done, severaltimes, and it was the only defense of the British at Ypres, before thegas masks were hastily improvised. But that means hauling a lot of fuelto the front, and every pound of fuel transported means a pound lessof provisions and munitions. Besides, as soon
as we worked out thatkind of defense, the Germans schemed a new way to use the gas. Now theyput it into shells by compressed air. They have two of these gas shellswhich they call the 'T' type and the 'K' type."

  "How do we know what they call them?"

  "Because those letters are painted on the ogives of the shells. The'T' shells are filled with a very dense gas, which disperses slowly.After a storm of these shells has fallen, the air is unbreathable foran hour or sometimes two, according to the dampness of the weather. The'K' shells are filled with a more powerful spasm-gas, virulent in itseffects, but which disperses rapidly.

  "The first is used in curtain fire, when the Germans expect to beassaulted. A steady dropping bombardment of 'T' shells makes agas-filled zone. Charging troops have to wear gas masks, for they mustpass through it. Defending troops do not need to wear masks, and, asyou know yourself, a man is twice as quick and agile without a mask.

  "The second, or 'K' shell, is used when the enemy plans to make theassault. You can't see the shells coming, there is no evidence of anychange in the enemy's lines which can be reported by an aeroplane.No one knows when the German artillery has received orders to changefrom high explosive or shrapnel to gas shells, when, suddenly, allalong the line, there drops a concerted hail of gas shells, and in tenseconds half the men in the first line trenches are gassed. It takesabout twenty seconds to put on a gas-mask properly. It is a horrible,vicious, and cowardly way of making war."

  "But don't we use it, too?"

  "We haven't yet," the veteran answered, "but we shall have to beginsoon, in self-defense.[23] Then the Boches will be sorry that theybegan, for their own atrocious cruelty will return on their own heads.But we have a new invention, too, which is gaining us more ground thanwe lost by the poison gas."

  "You mean the tanks?"

  "Yes."

  "I'd like to see a tank in action," said Horace, eagerly. "But Isuppose we won't have them, here."

  _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_

  THE APPROACH OF DOOM.

  British tank, first appearing at Flers (September 15, 1916) which drovethe German Army into a panic of unreasoning terror.]

  "We shall," the veteran replied, "and soon. We shall be compelled touse them. The night before last, the Germans started using liquidfire on our lines. That's a wicked thing, too. From what I hear, itis a mixture of gasoline, paraffine and tar, forced out by compressednitrogen and ignited at the point of a long tube. It throws a jet offire twenty or even thirty yards.[24] It burns a man to a crisp wherehe stands. No gas-mask will stop that."

  "And the tanks don't mind it?"

  "A tank minds nothing," was the answer.

  That very night, Horace learned what a tank looked like.

  As he was going off duty at midnight, he saw a squat colossal monstercome lumbering up through the dusk. A huge rotating belt on either sidedragged the Juggernaut car forward, while two wheels behind served forsteering. Two protected windows in the front gave place for machineguns of the heavier patterns, and sponsons on either side mounted threemachine guns operating through small openings. There were thus eightmachine guns to each tank. When it is remembered that the fire of aprotected machine gun is equal to fifty men, each tank represented aninvulnerable company of 400 men. Moreover, not a shot need be wasted.In full fire, a tank could eject 4,800 shots per minute, or 80 bulletsper second, and could carry its own fuel and ammunition.

  Against the British-invented tanks all the light German trenchartillery was powerless. The tank-pilots and gunners wore gas masks,hence gas could not stop them. Rifle bullets glanced from thearmor-plate of the tank like hail striking on a window pane. Machineguns peppered its steel skin with no more effect than if the bulletshad been pointed peas. Liquid fire found no entrance, even if aprojector could be brought near. Nothing could damage a tank save ahigh explosive shell from the heavy batteries in the rear, and noartillerist in the world could hope to strike a small moving objectseveral miles away.

  Early next morning the two tanks advanced. There was no road. Theyneeded none. With a grotesque, crawling gait, they waddled down and upshell holes, lurched over trenches and belly-crawled ahead.

  There was nothing they resembled so much as huge antediluvian tortoiseswhich passed unscathed amid the most ferocious prehistoric beasts,secure in the massive protection of their shelly backs. A hurricane ofshot greeted them, till their outlines were dimmed to view in the blueof flying steel. Not a bullet penetrated.

  Slowly, cumbrously, uncouthly, careening nose down, into a hole,climbing askew nose upwards, they sidled menacingly a tortuous courseto the German lines.

  Wire!

  Much the tanks cared for wire! They waddled on regardlessly, heedingthe barbed trap no more than as though pieces of pack-thread had beenstretched along the ground. Such of the wire as was tight enough theysnapped, the rest they stamped deep into the mud.

  Down and up!

  The tanks straddled the German first-line trench.

  So far, they had been voiceless.

  There had not been sign nor sound of human leading. They were theincarnation in metal of grotesque terror. They seemed as an evil dreamof machines that had developed life: inhuman, monstrous, dire.

  Then they spoke.

  The German trenches on either side were swept clean of men by thatconcentrated tornado spout of slaughter.

  The French infantry yelled with delight and plunged into the fray afterthe tanks. One of the giants lifted an eyelid, as a forward windowopened to let through a torrent of machine-gun fire. The blast scorchedand ravaged the ground before it.

  With a grunt the tanks heaved their prodigious menace on.

  The Germans did not wait for their coming. They scattered and fled inall directions. They were willing enough to invent new distortions ofwar, such as poison gas and liquid fire, but, in childish unreason,they became furious when any new device was directed against them.

  Yet still the brutes of steel crawled onward, growling, as theirsponsons spit flame.

  For six months the trenches on either side had remained unbroken. Insixty minutes, two tanks, backed up by the French infantry, had driventhe Germans back, captured a thousand prisoners, taken several scoremachine guns and frightened an entire German army corps into wild-eyedand headlong panic. Its morale was broken and in spite of theirofficers' commands, they dared not return to the charge.

  The French captured and consolidated the trenches, which wereunderground forts of surprising strength. One of the communicationtrenches was more than a hundred yards long, completely lined withtimber and carried so deep underground as to be safe from anything butmining. There were dug-outs entered through a steel door, two storiesin depth, with spacious rooms closely boarded. In one such dug-out,there were evidences that one of the officers had been living incomfort, with his wife and child. Another was fitted with a hydraulicmechanism for sending up excavated earth to be used in sand bags.

  Some of the larger dug-outs could easily hold a platoon of men incomplete security. Several tunnels led to sniper stations, likea manhole to a sewer, reaching the surface at high points. Thesewere well timbered, with iron ladders. The trenches were lined withconcrete, warm and dry. The manual labor was astounding. Contrastedwith the French trenches, roughly built and damp, the German advantagesall winter had been enormous.

  The distant German batteries, changing their range to the locationof their former trenches, commenced a heavy bombardment, but theconsolidation had been rapidly effected, the French artillery hadadvanced without delay, engineering companies had put up new wireentanglements, and though, for a week without cessation, the Germanscharged again and again, they were pushed back with heavy losses.And when, ten days later, an attack was made in force, Mesdames Tankwaddled to the front again and the Germans fled in dismay. Little bylittle the German line was pushed back, little by little the soil ofFrance was rewon.

  But, for Horace, the end was not yet.

  One bright spring morning, while busy at his switchboard in t
he littleshelter which had been constructed for the telephone, the boy hearda thin, high whistle and a small shell crashed through the roof. Itstruck the floor and exploded, thin splinters flying in every direction.

  Dazed with surprise that he had not been blown up sky high, Horacerealized that this could not be a high explosive bomb. It must be a gasshell.

  With a beating heart, he held his breath and seized his gas-mask, hisfingers fumbling in his haste as he put it on, wondering, as he didso, that he had seen no green or yellow fumes arise.

  _British Official Sketch_

  BRINGING UP FOOD FOR THE FIRING LINE THROUGH A POISON GAS CLOUD.]

  _Courtesy of "Illustrated London News."_

  THE BATTLE OF DEMON FACES FLINGING BOMBS IN A MIST OF GREEN DEATH]

  One minute, two minutes passed, and no fumes arose. Cautiously the boylifted a corner of the mask and gave the merest little sniff. He smeltnothing.

  It was a false alarm!

  Profoundly grateful over his escape, Horace decided that by some happyaccident, the shell which had fallen had been a gas shell, but, by someaccident of manufacture, it had escaped being filled. Evidently, he wasborn lucky, he thought. Had it been a high-explosive shell, it wouldhave blown him to atoms; had the shell been filled with gas, he wouldhave been poisoned before he had time to put on his mask.

  Five minutes passed.

  Then the boy noticed, on the under side of his legs, just where hisweight touched the edge of the chair, a curious prickling sensation,as though he had been stung with nettles. Unconsciously, he rubbed theplace with his hand.

  That instant, wherever the weight of his hand had been, the pricklingbegan. His hand, too, began to smart.

  Something was happening. A vague discomfort spread over the skin ofhis entire body.

  He blinked his eyes. The sight was dim and blurred. He could not seeclearly the holes in which to put his telephone plugs and, when hepicked one up, his fingers were burning so that he let them fall.

  Something was happening.

  His flesh felt raw about his neck where the collar touched it, andwhere his skin had touched the chair, fire seemed to be eating him.

  A black and purple light was blinding him, heavy fingers pressed on hiseyeballs.

  Gropingly he managed to find the wire to headquarters.

  "I'm going blind," he mumbled, in a thick voice he could not recognizeas his own, "send relief."

  Relief came half an hour later and the men found Horace on the floor,his clothing half-torn from his body and his shrill screams sunk intohard, husky moanings.

  The stretcher-bearers took him to the nearest dressing station.

  One look was enough for the examining doctor.

  "Put on rubber gloves," he said to his assistant, "take off everystitch he has and burn the clothes. Don't let them touch anything. Burnthe canvas of that stretcher. Get the 'phone instruments out of thatshelter and burn the shelter. Tell the operator who is there now tochange his clothes and burn them, too, and tell him to come here fortreatment, quickly!"

  "Why, Doctor, what is it?" the assistant asked.

  "Blister gas," the doctor answered, "the newest horror of those Germanfiends.[25] You can't see it, can't smell it, don't know it's there,but ten minutes after you've been near it, the vile stuff raises athousand blisters on the skin. The poison will sometimes stay in theclothes for weeks. Even the wood of a chair will hold the venom."

  "But is it fatal?"

  "Victims die from the pain, sometimes," the doctor answered. "Take thisboy here. He's had an awful dose, because, as I understand, the shellburst right in the shelter and he soaked it in. He'll be unconsciousfor quite a while and in about three days all those blisters willbreak. His body will be nothing but a sheet of raw flesh. We'll have tokeep him under morphine and we'll be lucky if he pulls through."

  For two long awful weeks Horace lay in a drugged state which left himdulled and yet conscious of pain. The agony rose above the anaesthetic.

  At last, exhausted, weak and still in acute torment, he came tohimself, to find the hunchback standing beside his bed.

  The lad looked up feebly.

  "Oh, Croquier," he said, speaking with a still raw throat, "I've beenhaving such a queer dream."

  The hunchback leaned forward to listen to the weary, croaking voice.

  "I dreamed that Father was over here, in American uniform, and that hesaid:

  "'We're here, my son, at last. We've lagged in late, after France andBritain's heroism, that they may show us what we still can do to savethe world from the Hun.'

  "And, Croquier, he had in his hand the cage with the 'captive Kaiser'!"

  The hunchback leaned low over the bed.

  "Remember Madame Maubin!" he said. "That, my boy, was not a dream, buta prophecy!"

  THE END

  FOOTNOTES:

  [20] Official British report, April 27, 1915. No poisonous gases orbombs had been used by the Allies prior to this time.

  [21] This anticipates a little the development of poisonous gases. Someof these forms were not in use until 1917.

  [22] This is the main principle. It is to be remembered that newdevices are constantly being experimented with and put into use on thefront.

  [23] The Allies refrained from using asphyxiating gases for severalmonths, but by 1918, they had attained superiority in their use.

  [24] First used in the spring of 1917.

  [25] This gas was a development of 1918; it is known as _gas vesical_.

  * * * * * *

  Transcriber's note:

  Retained some inconsistent hyphenation (e.g. gun-fire vs. gunfire).

  Added missing umlauts to "Wuertemberg" in multiple places.

  Page v, changed "in not" to "is not."

  Page vi, changed "L'illustration" to "L'Illustration" and "Le MondeIllustre" to "Le Monde Illustre" for consistency with image captions.

  Page viii, changed "Liege" to "Liege" for consistency.

  Page 100, removed unnecessary quote before "I--I--."

  Page 104, changed "Evidenly" to "Evidently."

  Page 122, changed "in second" to "in seconds."

  Page 156, changed "near-by" to "near by" for consistency.

  Page 172, removed "he" from "he declared the hunchback."

  Page 178, changed "French speak" to "French speaks."

  Page 228, added missing close quote after "Yes, sir."

  Page 241, changed "is orders" to "'is orders."

  Page 252, changed comma to period after "upon the map."

  Page 259, removed unnecessary comma from "Two days, later."

  Page 308, changed "aeroplane" to "aeroplane" for consistency.

  Page 311, changed "aeroplane" to "aeroplane" for consistency.

  Page 350, changed "writters" to "writers."

  Page 355, changed period to colon after "gasping voice."

  Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends