A Visit to Three Fronts, June 1916 by Arthur Conan Doyle (any book recommendations txt) 📖
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their coal and iron in the hands of the enemy, have been able to equal
the production of our great industrial centres. The steel, of course,
is supplied by us. To that extent we can claim credit for the result.
And so, after the ceremony of the walking-sticks, we bid adieu to the
lines of Soissons. To-morrow we start for a longer tour to the more
formidable district of the Argonne, the neighbour of Verdun, and itself
the scene of so much that is glorious and tragic.
II.
There is a couplet of Stevenson’s which haunts me, ‘There fell a war in
a woody place—in a land beyond the sea.’ I have just come back from
spending three wonderful dream days in that woody place. It lies with
the open, bosky country of Verdun on its immediate right, and the chalk
downs of Champagne upon its left. If one could imagine the lines being
taken right through our New Forest or the American Adirondacks it would
give some idea of the terrain, save that it is a very undulating
country of abrupt hills and dales. It is this peculiarity which has
made the war on this front different to any other, more picturesque and
more secret. In front the fighting lines are half in the clay soil,
half behind the shelter of fallen trunks. Between the two the main bulk
of the soldiers live like animals of the woodlands, burrowing on the
hillsides and among the roots of the trees. It is a war by itself, and
a very wonderful one to see. At three different points I have visited
the front in this broad region, wandering from the lines of one army
corps to that of another. In all three I found the same conditions, and
in all three I found also the same pleasing fact which I had discovered
at Soissons, that the fire of the French was at least five, and very
often ten shots to one of the Boche. It used not to be so. The Germans
used to scrupulously return shot for shot. But whether they have moved
their guns to the neighbouring Verdun, or whether, as is more likely,
all the munitions are going there, it is certain that they were very
outclassed upon the three days (June 10, 11, 12) which I allude to.
There were signs that for some reason their spirits were at a low ebb.
On the evening before our arrival the French had massed all their bands
at the front, and, in honour of the Russian victory, had played the
Marseillaise and the Russian National hymn, winding up with general
shoutings and objurgations calculated to annoy. Failing to stir up the
Boche, they had ended by a salute from a hundred shotted guns. After
trailing their coats up and down the line they had finally to give up
the attempt to draw the enemy. Want of food may possibly have caused a
decline in the German spirit. There is some reason to believe that they
feed up their fighting men at the places like Verdun or Hooge, where
they need all their energy, at the expense of the men who are on the
defensive. If so, we may find it out when we attack. The French
officers assured me that the prisoners and deserters made bitter
complaints of their scale of rations. And yet it is hard to believe
that the fine efforts of our enemy at Verdun are the work of
half-starved men.
*
To return to my personal impressions, it was at Chalons that we left
the Paris train—a town which was just touched by the most forward
ripple of the first great German floodtide. A drive of some twenty
miles took us to St. Menehould, and another ten brought us to the front
in the sector of Divisional-General H. A fine soldier this, and heaven
help Germany if he and his division get within its borders, for he is,
as one can see at a glance, a man of iron who has been goaded to
fierceness by all that his beloved country has endured. He is a man of
middle size, swarthy, hawk-like, very abrupt in his movements, with two
steel grey eyes, which are the most searching that mine have ever met.
His hospitality and courtesy to us were beyond all bounds, but there is
another side to him, and it is one which it is wiser not to provoke. In
person he took us to his lines, passing through the usual shot-torn
villages behind them. Where the road dips down into the great forest
there is one particular spot which is visible to the German artillery
observers. The General mentioned it at the time, but his remark seemed
to have no personal interest. We understood it better on our return in
the evening.
Now we found ourselves in the depths of the woods, primeval woods of
oak and beech in the deep clay soil that the great oak loves. There had
been rain and the forest paths were ankle deep in mire. Everywhere, to
right and left, soldiers’ faces, hard and rough from a year of open
air, gazed up at us from their burrows in the ground. Presently an
alert, blue-clad figure stood in the path to greet us. It was the
Colonel of the sector. He was ridiculously like Cyrano de Bergerac as
depicted by the late M. Coquelin, save that his nose was of more
moderate proportion. The ruddy colouring, the bristling feline
full-ended moustache, the solidity of pose, the backward tilt of the head,
the general suggestion of the bantam cock, were all there facing us as
he stood amid the leaves in the sunlight. Gauntlets and a long
rapier—nothing else was wanting. Something had amused Cyrano. His
moustache quivered with suppressed mirth, and his blue eyes were
demurely gleaming. Then the joke came out. He had spotted a German
working party, his guns had concentrated on it, and afterwards he had
seen the stretchers go forward. A grim joke, it may seem. But the
French see this war from a different angle to us. If we had the Boche
sitting on our heads for two years, and were not yet quite sure whether
we could ever get him off again, we should get Cyrano’s point of view.
Those of us who have had our folk murdered by Zeppelins or tortured in
German prisons have probably got it already.
*
We passed in a little procession among the French soldiers, and viewed
their multifarious arrangements. For them we were a little break in a
monotonous life, and they formed up in lines as we passed. My own
British uniform and the civilian dresses of my two companions
interested them. As the General passed these groups, who formed
themselves up in perhaps a more familiar manner than would have been
usual in the British service, he glanced kindly at them with those
singular eyes of his, and once or twice addressed them as ‘Mes
enfants.’ One might conceive that all was ‘go as you please’ among the
French. So it is as long as you go in the right way. When you stray
from it you know it. As we passed a group of men standing on a low
ridge which overlooked us there was a sudden stop. I gazed round. The
General’s face was steel and cement. The eyes were cold and yet fiery,
sunlight upon icicles. Something had happened. Cyrano had sprung to his
side. His reddish moustache had shot forward beyond his nose, and it
bristled out like that of an angry cat. Both were looking up at the
group above us. One wretched man detached himself from his comrades and
sidled down the slope. No skipper and mate of a Yankee blood boat could
have looked more ferociously at a mutineer. And yet it was all over
some minor breach of discipline which was summarily disposed of by two
days of confinement. Then in an instant the faces relaxed, there was a
general buzz of relief and we were back at ‘Mes enfants’ again. But
don’t make any mistake as to discipline in the French army.
Trenches are trenches, and the main specialty of these in the Argonne
is that they are nearer to the enemy. In fact there are places where
they interlock, and where the advanced posts lie cheek by jowl with a
good steel plate to cover both cheek and jowl. We were brought to a
sap-head where the Germans were at the other side of a narrow forest
road. Had I leaned forward with extended hand and a Boche done the same
we could have touched. I looked across, but saw only a tangle of wire
and sticks. Even whispering was not permitted in these forward posts.
*
When we emerged from these hushed places of danger Cyrano took us all
to his dug-out, which was a tasty little cottage carved from the side
of a hill and faced with logs. He did the honours of the humble cabin
with the air of a seigneur in his ch�teau. There was little furniture,
but from some broken mansion he had extracted an iron fire-back, which
adorned his grate. It was a fine, mediaeval bit of work, with Venus, in
her traditional costume, in the centre of it. It seemed the last touch
in the picture of the gallant, virile Cyrano. I only met him this once,
nor shall I ever see him again, yet he stands a thing complete within
my memory. Even now as I write these lines he walks the leafy paths of
the Argonne, his fierce eyes ever searching for the Boche workers, his
red moustache bristling over their annihilation. He seems a figure out
of the past of France.
That night we dined with yet another type of the French soldier,
General A., who commands the corps of which my friend has one division.
Each of these French generals has a striking individuality of his own
which I wish I could fix upon paper. Their only common point is that
each seems to be a rare good soldier. The corps general is Athos with a
touch of d’Artagnan. He is well over six feet high, bluff, jovial, with
huge, up-curling moustache, and a voice that would rally a regiment. It
is a grand figure which should have been done by Van Dyck with lace
collar, hand on sword, and arm akimbo. Jovial and laughing was he, but
a stern and hard soldier was lurking behind the smiles. His name may
appear in history, and so may Humbert’s, who rules all the army of
which the other’s corps is a unit. Humbert is a Lord Robert’s figure,
small, wiry, quick-stepping, all steel and elastic, with a short,
sharp upturned moustache, which one could imagine as crackling with
electricity in moments of excitement like a cat’s fur. What he does or
says is quick, abrupt, and to the point. He fires his remarks like
pistol shots at this man or that. Once to my horror he fixed me with
his hard little eyes and demanded ‘Sherlock Holmes, est ce qu’il est un
soldat dans l’arm�e Anglaise?’ The whole table waited in an awful hush.
‘Mais, mon general,’ I stammered, ‘il est trop vieux pour service.’
There was general laughter, and I felt that I had scrambled out of an
awkward place.
And talking of awkward places, I had forgotten about that spot upon the
road whence the Boche observer could see our motorcars. He had
actually laid a gun upon it, the rascal, and waited all the long day
for our return. No sooner did we appear upon the slope than a shrapnel
shell burst
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