A Visit to Three Fronts, June 1916 by Arthur Conan Doyle (any book recommendations txt) 📖
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genial country squire. An elderly French General stands beside them.
British infantry keep the ground. In front are about fifty Frenchmen in
civil dress of every grade of life, workmen and gentlemen, in a double
rank. They are all so wounded that they are back in civil life, but
to-day they are to have some solace for their wounds. They lean heavily
on sticks, their bodies are twisted and maimed, but their faces are
shining with pride and joy. The French General draws his sword and
addresses them. One catches words like ‘honneur’ and ‘patrie.’ They
lean forward on their crutches, hanging on every syllable which comes
hissing and rasping from under that heavy white moustache. Then the
medals are pinned on. One poor lad is terribly wounded and needs two
sticks. A little girl runs out with some flowers. He leans forward and
tries to kiss her, but the crutches slip and he nearly falls upon her.
It was a pitiful but beautiful little scene.
Now the British candidates march up one by one for their medals, hale,
hearty men, brown and fit. There is a smart young officer of Scottish
Rifles; and then a selection of Worcesters, Welsh Fusiliers and Scots
Fusiliers, with one funny little Highlander, a tiny figure with a
soup-bowl helmet, a grinning boy’s face beneath it, and a bedraggled
uniform. ‘Many acts of great bravery’—such was the record for which he
was decorated. Even the French wounded smiled at his quaint appearance,
as they did at another Briton who had acquired the chewing-gum habit,
and came up for his medal as if he had been called suddenly in the
middle of his dinner, which he was still endeavouring to bolt. Then
came the end, with the National Anthem. The British regiment formed
fours and went past. To me that was the most impressive sight of any.
They were the Queen’s West Surreys, a veteran regiment of the great
Ypres battle. What grand fellows! As the order came ‘Eyes right,’ and
all those fierce, dark faces flashed round about us, I felt the might
of the British infantry, the intense individuality which is not
incompatible with the highest discipline. Much they had endured, but a
great spirit shone from their faces. I confess that as I looked at
those brave English lads, and thought of what we owe to them and to
their like who have passed on, I felt more emotional than befits a
Briton in foreign parts.
*
Now the ceremony was ended, and once again we set out for the front. It
was to an artillery observation post that we were bound, and once again
my description must be bounded by discretion. Suffice it, that in an
hour I found myself, together with a razor-keen young artillery
observer and an excellent old sportsman of a Russian prince, jammed
into a very small space, and staring through a slit at the German
lines. In front of us lay a vast plain, scarred and slashed, with bare
places at intervals, such as you see where gravel pits break a green
common. Not a sign of life or movement, save some wheeling crows. And
yet down there, within a mile or so, is the population of a city. Far
away a single train is puffing at the back of the German lines. We are
here on a definite errand. Away to the right, nearly three miles off,
is a small red house, dim to the eye but clear in the glasses, which is
suspected as a German post. It is to go up this afternoon. The gun is
some distance away, but I hear the telephone directions. ‘“Mother” will
soon do her in,’ remarks the gunner boy cheerfully. ‘Mother’ is the
name of the gun. ‘Give her five six three four,’ he cries through the
‘phone. ‘Mother’ utters a horrible bellow from somewhere on our right.
An enormous spout of smoke rises ten seconds later from near the house.
‘A little short,’ says our gunner. ‘Two and a half minutes left,’ adds
a little small voice, which represents another observer at a different
angle. ‘Raise her seven five,’ says our boy encouragingly. ‘Mother’
roars more angrily than ever. ‘How will that do?’ she seems to say.
‘One and a half right,’ says our invisible gossip. I wonder how the
folk in the house are feeling as the shells creep ever nearer. ‘Gun
laid, sir,’ says the telephone. ‘Fire!’ I am looking through my glass.
A flash of fire on the house, a huge pillar of dust and smoke—then it
settles, and an unbroken field is there. The German post has gone up.
‘It’s a dear little gun,’ says the officer boy. ‘And her shells are
reliable,’ remarked a senior behind us. ‘They vary with different
calibres, but “Mother” never goes wrong.’ The German line was very
quiet. ‘Pourquoi ils ne r�pondent pas?’ asked the Russian prince. ‘Yes,
they are quiet to-day,’ answered the senior. ‘But we get it in the neck
sometimes.’ We are all led off to be introduced to ‘Mother,’ who sits,
squat and black, amid twenty of her grimy children who wait upon and
feed her. She is an important person is ‘Mother,’ and her importance
grows. It gets clearer with every month that it is she, and only she,
who can lead us to the Rhine. She can and she will if the factories of
Britain can beat those of the Hun. See to it, you working men and women
of Britain. Work now if you rest for ever after, for the fate of Europe
and of all that is dear to us is in your hands. For ‘Mother’ is a
dainty eater, and needs good food and plenty. She is fond of strange
lodgings, too, in which she prefers safety to dignity. But that is a
dangerous subject.
*
One more experience of this wonderful day—the most crowded with
impressions of my whole life. At night we take a car and drive north,
and ever north, until at a late hour we halt and climb a hill in the
darkness. Below is a wonderful sight. Down on the flats, in a huge
semi-circle, lights are rising and falling. They are very brilliant,
going up for a few seconds and then dying down. Sometimes a dozen are
in the air at one time. There are the dull thuds of explosions and an
occasional rat-tat-tat. I have seen nothing like it, but the nearest
comparison would be an enormous ten-mile railway station in full swing
at night, with signals winking, lamps waving, engines hissing and
carriages bumping. It is a terrible place down yonder, a place which
will live as long as military history is written, for it is the Ypres
Salient. What a salient it is, too! A huge curve, as outlined by the
lights, needing only a little more to be an encirclement. Something
caught the rope as it closed, and that something was the British
soldier. But it is a perilous place still by day and by night. Never
shall I forget the impression of ceaseless, malignant activity which
was borne in upon me by the white, winking lights, the red sudden
glares, and the horrible thudding noises in that place of death beneath
me.
II
In old days we had a great name as organisers. Then came a long period
when we deliberately adopted a policy of individuality and ‘go as you
please.’ Now once again in our sore need we have called on all our
power of administration and direction. But it has not deserted us. We
still have it in a supreme degree. Even in peace time we have shown it
in that vast, well-oiled, swift-running, noiseless machine called the
British Navy. But now our powers have risen with the need of them. The
expansion of the Navy has been a miracle, the management of the
transport a greater one, the formation of the new Army the greatest of
all time. To get the men was the least of the difficulties. To put them
here, with everything down to the lid of the last field saucepan in its
place, that is the marvel. The tools of the gunners, and of the
sappers, to say nothing of the knowledge of how to use them, are in
themselves a huge problem. But it has all been met and mastered, and
will be to the end. But don’t let us talk any more about the muddling
of the War Office. It has become just a little ridiculous.
*
I have told of my first day, when I visited the front trenches, saw the
work of ‘Mother,’ and finally that marvellous spectacle, the Ypres
Salient at night. I have passed the night at the headquarters of a
divisional-general, Capper, who might truly be called one of the two
fathers of the British flying force, for it was he, with Templer, who
laid the first foundations from which so great an organisation has
arisen. My morning was spent in visiting two fighting brigadiers,
cheery weather-beaten soldiers, respectful, as all our soldiers are, of
the prowess of the Hun, but serenely confident that we can beat him. In
company with one of them I ascended a hill, the reverse slope of which
was swarming with cheerful infantry in every stage of dishabille, for
they were cleaning up after the trenches. Once over the slope we
advanced with some care, and finally reached a certain spot from which
we looked down upon the German line. It was the advanced observation
post, about a thousand yards from the German trenches, with our own
trenches between us. We could see the two lines, sometimes only a few
yards, as it seemed, apart, extending for miles on either side. The
sinister silence and solitude were strangely dramatic. Such vast crowds
of men, such intensity of feeling, and yet only that open rolling
countryside, with never a movement in its whole expanse.
The afternoon saw us in the Square at Ypres. It is the city of a dream,
this modern Pompeii, destroyed, deserted and desecrated, but with a
sad, proud dignity which made you involuntarily lower your voice as you
passed through the ruined streets. It is a more considerable place than
I had imagined, with many traces of ancient grandeur. No words can
describe the absolute splintered wreck that the Huns have made of it.
The effect of some of the shells has been grotesque. One boiler-plated
water-tower, a thing forty or fifty feet high, was actually standing on
its head like a great metal top. There is not a living soul in the
place save a few pickets of soldiers, and a number of cats which become
fierce and dangerous. Now and then a shell still falls, but the Huns
probably know that the devastation is already complete.
We stood in the lonely grass-grown Square, once the busy centre of the
town, and we marvelled at the beauty of the smashed cathedral and the
tottering Cloth Hall beside it. Surely at their best they could not
have looked more wonderful than now. If they were preserved even so,
and if a heaven-inspired artist were to model a statue of Belgium in
front, Belgium with one hand pointing to the treaty by which Prussia
guaranteed her safety and the other to the sacrilege behind her, it
would make the most impressive group in the world. It was an evil day
for Belgium when her frontier was violated, but it was a worse one for
Germany. I venture to prophesy that it will be regarded by history as
the greatest military as well as political error that has ever been
made. Had the great guns that destroyed Li�ge made their
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