By motor to the firing line

Foreword

Before the reader plunges into the following pages, it is only fair to warn him that the author's first effort as a war-correspondent was an unqualified failure. This was not alone the author's fault, since — though he be ever so ambitious — one cannot succeed as a war-correspondent unless there be a war to correspond about. The scene of this fruitless endeavor was on the Venezuelan coast at the time when certain of the European nations sent fleets to the Spanish Main in an effort to collect sums of money, long overdue, from the Castro government. Germany, the most aggressive of the Powers involved, had threatened to land marines on Venezuelan soil. The violation of the Monroe Doctrine could lead to only one eventuality. In anticipation of this, correspondents representing the leading journals of the United States and Europe gathered at La Guayra and Caracas, restlessly awaiting the commencement of hostilities, like chargers on the eve of battle.

But, for a very good reason — and that's another story — Germany did not land marines on Vene-

vii zuelan soil. The blockade was lifted and one by one the correspondents drifted back home to engage in more peaceful pursuits until the Russo- Japanese War again called them into action.

If we who went to the Spanish Main found no war to write about, the correspondents who for some eighteen months have made Paris their headquarters have been within a few hours' journey of the greatest general actions in history with only an occasional limited permit to view their various phases. The old-time freedom of the war correspondent has not only been curbed — it has been taken away from him and checked among the musty archives of the War Office. And with the withdrawal of many of his privileges, he has lost something of his former "camaraderie." The men I knew in Venezuela were working together in perfect harmony; if one was granted an interview or secured an important bit of information, he shared the story with the others.

In the Great War, the tendency has been — in many instances — to beat out the other fellow, to be the first to reach a beleaguered city or to visit a certain battleground or to explore exposed trenches close to the enemies' lines. As a matter of fact, since the correspondents usually visit the front in parties of from two to five, it is almost impossible

viii

FOREWORD

to obtain an exclusive story and I am reasonably sure that no privileges are extended to one group that are withheld from another. The War Office sends them into the same general positions, but the War Office cannot discount the element of chance. There are some men upon whom fate smiles and for them what commenced as a good imitation of a glorified Cook's Tour may be turned at the psychological moment into a vivid and dramatic experience. Bombardments have a habit of starting at unexpected times and places and certain staff officers are more lenient than others about escorting their charges into dangerous salients.

Once at the front, chance rather than privilege plays the more important part in affording the correspondent opportunities.

For example, as I looked out over the Aisne valley from a chateau east of Rheims there was only an occasional puff of white or yellow smoke in the distance to suggest that anything unusual was occurring in this wide stretch of peaceful landscape. Seven weeks later, another correspondent, standing in the same position, would have seen the same plain torn up by shrapnel and shell and echoing the thunder of thousands of guns as black masses of men rocked through the valley in the great Champagne offensive — the bitterest fighting in the west-

ix ern area since the Marne up to the launching of the present drive at Verdun.

At Bethany those of our party who went into the trenches would not have had to work their way out under a salvo from the German lines had not a captive balloon been aloft for observation at the moment when their motor car pulled up in the distance behind a clump of trees.

Again, although our autorisation for the Artois sector included a visit to Arras, I am sure that in the face of an unusually heavy bombardment we would not have been permitted to enter the town except that a fortunate drizzle of rain hid from view objects approaching over the roads raked by the German artillery. This same mist made possible our visit to Blangy, where the Germans occupied one corner of the brewery and the French all the rest of the same building and the lines were probably closer together than at any other point from the Vosges to the Channel.

It was because of an early morning haze clinging close to the ground that we made our interesting excursion over the battle-scarred hillside of Notre Dame de Lorette. It was because we were temporarily in charge of an intrepid officer who stretched to the utmost limit the bounds of his authority that we were allowed to crawl over the face

FOREWORD

of the hill into the trenches just captured from the Germans on the grand eperon. At this juncture, as the haze lifted beneath a hot sun, a certain head was not ducked far enough below the crumpled parapets to escape the watchful German observers and we had to make our way back to the bomb-proofs within the French lines through a steadyshower of projectiles.

Thus, on a few occasions, opportunity knocked at the door for us.

Months later, as I think of Notre Dame, I am reminded of the men I met there in the trenches. During the excursion over the hillside I took many photographs of the poilus and after my return to New York I mailed proofs to them. In each case an interesting post card or letter came in acknowledgment. With three of the men who had been in our personal escort, and to whom I sent also newspapers and magazines, I kept up a correspondence. One by one their letters ceased. The last — written after the desperate battles for the possession of Souchez and Givenchy — came from a private in a mitrailleuse company of the 26th Brigade. It described how he escaped injury by a miracle under the guns about the sugar mill. It spoke of the splendid courage and elan of his regiment. It added that all but one of the officers we had known

xi had come through the various actions in safety. Captain Pierre, whose photograph is one of my illustrations, had fallen while leading his men across a shell-swept area near Ablain St. Nazaire.

I have deceived my reader if he believes the purpose of this introduction is to show wherein opportunity comes to the few correspondents in the Great War and overlooks the many. Nor am I writing it to beg his indulgence because the pages that follow — instead of reflecting the viewpoint of a strategist or the experienced writer of fiction — are rather the impressions of an illustrator who has spent the happiest days of his life motoring in France.

It has been written that I might pay a little tribute to the memory of the men I knew on the Notre Dame de Lorette hillside — the men whose letters no longer come to me.

W. H.

New York, March 3, 1916.

Xll

Table Of Contents

CHAPTEB PAGE

I. A VOYAGE OF ADVENTUEE 3

II. A NEW PARIS OF OLD MEMORIES 16

Chapter I

On our arrival in France we would not go up to the front by the ordinary methods of transportation. We would go up in a motor — my motor. The scheme from its inception had the advantage of simplicity. We would ship the car to Bordeaux. From there we would have no trouble reaching the various points along the line that stretches from the Vosges to the Channel. From Saint-Die I planned to nibble my way eastward, up to the front and back again, up to the front and back again. Thus we would have a look in at the forts about Verdun, at Saint-Mihiel, the Argonne district, Rheims, the Aisne Valley, Soissons, Compiegne, Arras, and the famous Artois sector about Notre Dame de Lorette. We would be armed with the proper passports, magazine credentials, touring-club membership cards and letters from influential Americans. Owen Johnson, the literary half of the expedition, had been educated in Paris and had many friends in the army and among the leaders of the new ministry. I had had some years' experience motoring in France and knew well most of the highways and byways along the battle front.

The scheme seemed feasible. But it had hardly gone beyond the preparatory stages before the skids were applied to it. Our plans were not altered by the conflicting advice of numerous friends. If I listened to them, I would not send my car to Bordeaux. I would send it to Marseilles instead. I would not take it abroad at all, but would rent one, with a military chauffeur, in Paris. Or again, it were best not to depend on a motor; the war in the western area had settled down to a long siege in fixed positions, and we could easily reach the front by either train or taxicab. Why, they were even running motor-bus excursions from Paris to the ruins of Senlis, where the German drive was checked on the eve of the Battle of the Marne!

We thought we knew more about all these things than our friends. But our confidence was jarred somewhat by the stories of returned travelers.

The Great Doors, Rheims Cathedral

From them it appeared that although the Touring Club of France was exploiting a propaganda in England showing the attractions of southern France for motorists, it was no simple matter to make your way about even as far away from the battle lines as Burgundy, Touraine, Gascony, and Provence. For foreigners to motor with any freedom in the northern provinces, with every main road and every lane guarded by Territorials, was out of the question.

I called up the French Line, and any lingering doubt in my mind was set at rest. It would cost nearly $400, or over twice as much as in peace times, to carry my car across the ocean. So I drove it down to the dead storage building and tucked it away for the summer.

Knowing what I did of freight rates, I was surprised to find so many crated motors on the pier. But they were trucks and ambulances consigned to the French army. And at adjoining piers, in place of the graceful liners of the White Star and Compagnie Generale Transatlantique was a nondescript fleet of battle-scarred tramps loading other crated trucks and dismembered aeroplanes consigned to Petrograd, Havre, London, and Genoa. Who ever heard of a ship in New York Harbor that boasted Rouen as her home port? Yet here was JLe Coq of Rouen, a rusty-sided thick-bellied hooker that had probably never before been more than two hundred miles beyond the mouth of the Seine. She had come in light with her propeller well exposed above the water line ; she would go out loaded to the gunwales with a cargo capable of blowing the adjoining wharves and shipping higher than the Woolworth tower.

There was an undercurrent of excitement on the Espagne as we neared the French coast. It was a gusty night, with banks of heavy clouds' rushing across the sky and occasional shafts of light on the horizon from a lighthouse or a protecting cruiser. In the smoke room, with the incandescent globes dimmed, the ports closed, and a woman in the adjoining salon still wearing the life belt in which she had appeared at dinner, we were not to lose sight of the utility of the motor-driven vehicle in the present war. At the time it was quite as interesting a subject as any other. Out of the mass of figures and details that floated through the hazy atmosphere I gathered that a story current at the time we sailed was untrue.

The average life of a horse in the army was not one week. It was considerably longer. The average term of service of a motor truck at the front was not three weeks, but the vehicle would continue on the job as long as they cared to give it attention. The speaker was a manufacturer from the West who had sold two hundred chassis to the French Government shortly after the outbreak of the war. He said that more trucks were in the repair shop through incompetent or reckless driving than as a result of shell fire. Of his large consignment not more than a dozen had been severely damaged by the German artillery and only one so completely wrecked that it had to be scrapped.

There were no taxicabs waiting on the quay at Bordeaux to whisk us up to the hotel. In fact, there were no cabs of any kind waiting on the quay. A mysterious wireless message received on board the night before made things easy for us with the officials. Johnson was thereby enabled to catch the "Rapide" for Paris while I remained behind to pass our luggage through the customs and send it to the station. This done, I looked in vain for a taxi or a cab. I hailed a bus marked "Service de Ville," but it was engaged. Then I stopped an electric car.

The conductor was a woman in black, and she was very businesslike. It occurred to me that if taxis were so scarce in Bordeaux we might have some difficulty in renting an automobile in Paris.

Early in the morning, as we had come up the Garonne past the famous vineyards of the Medoc I had noticed files of German prisoners at work under guard in the shipyards and fields. At Bordeaux four women out of five were in mourning, young men were conspicuous by their absence, and the brilliantly lighted cafes on the Allees de Tourny closed at half past ten at night.

The next day, as I looked out of the windows of the Paris express, I thought that the countryside of France never looked more peaceful, the landscape more smiling and prosperous.

A little later we passed a hospital train at Libourne. A second train rattled into the station just as we were pulling out. The seriously wounded were lying on stretchers hung in the third-class carriages, those less dangerously hurt sitting at the windows or standing on crutches in the open doors — everywhere white bandages and slings, heads swathed in lint, bodies tossing uneasily on the narrow cots. A smell of ether and antiseptics pervaded the station. In the center of each train was a darkgreen carriage with sterilizing plant, operating room, and X-ray motor, "The gift of Baroness " lettered in white on the outside. Two

long trainloads of broken humanity, the harvest of one day's operations in a sector of the battle line! The war was being brought closer to me.

As we traveled on it was evident that private motor cars had been to a large extent swept off the roads of France. This was all familiar country. It was with a real feeling of emotion that I gazed on that long, white highway, deserted now except for an occasional cart or a few black specks where a group of peasant women were returning from the fields. This was route nationale No. 10 — many times had I driven over it on my way from Paris to the Pyrenees. And I fancied I could hear through the clatter of trucks on the rails the rhythmic purr of the motor as my car swept on through long avenues of trees.

Angouleme passed, where were quartered many troops in peace times. I recollected driving through its narrow streets in the twilight when red-legged piou-pious were so plentiful that they seemed to hop up out of the chinks between the cobbles. They are bearded poilus now, with sterner lines in their faces and a look in their eyes one never forgets. At Poitiers I was reminded of the horrible little hotel across from the Gare wherein I passed an unhappynight. Red Cross nurses and boy scouts ("boy scoots" the French call them) were in the station waiting with trays of fruit and sandwiches for a trainload of wounded shortly due.

At a little station nearing Tours a group of soldiers in full marching equipment were waiting to entrain for the north. Stuck in their caps or held in their hands were nosegays of wild flowers. A little Cuban girl in my compartment leaned out of the window. "Tuez les boches!" she cried. They smiled and waved their nosegays as the train crawled on.

We were now in the valley of the Loire, in Balzac's sunny province of Touraine. That other deserted ribbon of road to the right is route nationale No. 152, that runs through the Chateaux country westward to the ancient Province of Anjou. A flood of motor memories swept over me. At Tours Robert Lorraine, before he had become famous as an aviator and been wounded while serving his country in Flanders, had dashed proudly up

The Espagne coming up the Gironde to the hotel doorway in his little runabout. At Amboise, under the shadow of the ancient castle that rears its walls above the shimmering river, I had worked part of a night over a recalcitrant feed pipe. At Chaumont we had climbed up through the rain to the chateau and stumbled into the presence of a royal personage from England. Blois, Chambord, Beaugency, Orleans — each historic place had for me some intimate recollection of the friends with whom I had toured in France. Ah, mes amis! I thought of you, and I wondered if we would ever live any of these days over again after the country that we loved with a real affection had emerged triumphant from the greatest crisis in her history.

Chapter II

Uniforms of blue and red and black with gold braid were more than usually conspicuous in the surging crowd at the Gare d'Orleans when we arrived in Paris. There were more women in black on the station platform and a dearth of taxi autos in the rank outside. A private motor drawn up at the curb was lost among low gray machines with an army number in white on the bonnet. No, while the station and quai beyond took on a familiar appearance, the Paris of this evening was not the same Paris of many other June evenings in less eventful years.

All the taxicabs had been commandeered by the time I had collected our various trunks and parcels. The driver of the horse-drawn vehicle that fell to my lot knew naught of the Hotel Meyerbeer, Le vieux Parisien this, a cabby of the old type — bulbous nose, glazed hat, red vest and a horse that supported himself unsteadily on his underpinnings.

He — the driver — was a relic of the old slow-moving days before the era of the taxi auto. The war had brought him and his spavined steed back to life again. The cloud that swept before it the young chauffeur and his little motor passed him by — a derelict. Rejuvenated he was again roaming the streets that had been his in another generation.

To my faulty pronunciation I blamed the fact that he could not understand my direction. I first called it the Hotel Meyerbeer. Then I tried it a number of ways — Meyarbare, Meerbeer, Mayerbeer — and to all he shook his head. I was about to go to another hotel and let Johnson find me with the aid of the police when a cocher in the gathering multitude remembered that the name had been changed to the Hotel Alexandre III.

After effecting a junction with my advance guard at the hotel I learned that at the beginning of the war, in the first rage against everything German in name — streets, plays, wines, individuals, merchant houses — Meyerbeer had flaunted his Teutonic patronymic above the chestnut trees that encircle the Rond Point des Champs Elysees. The proprietor, although three of his sons had been mobilized and were fighting with the French forces in Alsace and at the Marne, yielded to popular clamor and a new gilt sign appeared on his roof and a new name on the hotel stationery.

I am still wondering whether the old cabby could not understand my French or was merely too patriotic to carry a fare to a hotel with a German appellation.

On the first night in Paris — and for many nights thereafter — I was disturbed by a drumming, droning noise. It came out of the darkness, sometimes close to my bedroom window, sometimes high in the sky overhead. It was the throb of the aeroplanes over Paris. To guard against Zeppelins and the bomb-dropping Taubes of the early days of the war, a certain number of French aviators ascended at dusk each evening and patrolled to and fro over the city until daybreak.

I have been kept awake by various noises in my travels — by the clanging trolley cars of a middle western town, by the little hoot owls of the Tuscan hills, by the echoing footsteps in Waterport Street, Gibraltar, and by the shrill cries of the hawkers in Cadiz and Seville. But this insistent droning of the throbbing motors overhead was a new experi-

Cuirassiers in the procession escorting the remains of Rouget de 1'Isle, Paris ence. I found myself watching for it. I finally became accustomed to it and it bothered me no more than the occasional honk honk of a taxi in the Champs Elysees or the restless hum just before dawn as the city stirs before it awakes.

The automobile agent in Paris to whom we had been referred was eager to rent us a car. With it, he thought, we might get as far as Versailles, Versailles being distant from Paris about eight miles. We found later from those in authority that we might with proper passports motor into the southern provinces — through the Midi or along the Riviera. But motor toward the battle front on the north or east — never. Not even with a military chauffeur, and the military chauffeurs had been mobilized long since. Thus within a few hours our well-laid plans were completely upset. It was evident that while the French War Office was glad of American sympathy it looked upon the confusion of the German invaders as a more pressing matter than the granting of privileges to American correspondents.

After our mission had become known and while Johnson, pursuing another tack, was busy with the heads of bureaus looking for our authorisation, there came to our hotel ambitious young motorists eager to escort us up to the front. They placed their cars at our disposal — provided they could go along to drive us. Some of them had served as ambulance or dispatch bearers during the early days of the war. They still carried their little pink driving licenses. But they were useless now because, as the vast organization back of the lines became systematized, only chauffeurs regularly mobilized in the French army were allowed in the automobile service.

The days of waiting that followed our arrival were quiet but not uneventful. While negotiations proceeded we lived in a state of uncertainty, for at any moment word might come from the War Office that would send us up to the front. There were many times in this well-ordered city that it was impossible to comprehend the situation — to realize that an invading army was being held in check on a long front whose nearest point was less than two hours' distance away by automobile.

During this period of anticipation, we came to know a new Paris, a Paris bereft of its gaiety and frivolity, a city of a great resolve and of a lofty and unconquerable spirit. If on the surface there were few material changes, it was in the inner consciousness of the city that a greater change had taken place. We noticed this particularly in the hotels. One had a feeling that a soul had crept into their empty shells and that those of us who lived in them were no longer strangers but shared with this people a common menace and united in a common prayer that France might win in the great struggle for her independence.

The Americans in Paris were not now clamoring for money and government escort home. The rabble that stormed the embassy doors at the outbreak of the war had long since returned and in its place were citizens of another type. Some were salesmen for various American munition and motor truck factories, but the majority were here for a less material purpose, to serve in the American Ambulance at Neuilly, in the various branch hospitals in the provinces, in the relief clearing houses and in countless other ways that Americans have adopted of showing where their sympathies lie. Architects graduated from the Beaux Arts and painters from the different ateliers had not forgotten the debt they owed to France for her inspiration and encouragement. And surgeons, physicians, nurses and women of wealth were giving their services to lessen the suffering caused by the war.

These men and women have done much to maintain a balance in France. Their generosity and unselfishness have offset in the eyes of the people the feeble policies of a government that has done everything in its power to shatter American prestige and the ideals for which American patriotism has stood.

There was a charming view from my window. In the foreground the blooming chestnuts with their lush foliage, on either hand the wide stretches of the Champs Elysees, in the distance beyond the Avenue Montaigne and the river the lofty skeleton of the Eiffel Tower. On the Espagne in mid ocean we received news of the world and the daily communique of the War Office from the Eiffel Tower. Its wireless is of vital importance and they guard the Tower carefully. Mitrailleuses are mounted on the platforms and a guard of soldiers is stationed around the base. There are also mitrailleuses in place of the statuary that formerly crowned the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs Elysees. A friend of ours, a nurse at Neuilly, who lives close to the Arch, says that on the night of the y

Zeppelin raid there was an infernal racket from the machine guns trying to pot the cigar-shaped intruder in the sky. She felt that the whole war was being fought out just beyond her bedroom window.

The other day a yellow dirigible flew about the Eiffel Tower, then pointed its nose upward, hung above in the sky for a while and sailed off toward the flying field at Buc. This, I think, was the day that Warneford lost his life at Buc. He had destroyed a Zeppelin single-handed and was being lionized in Paris. After luncheon with a number of friends at the Ritz he drove away in his motor. Two hours later word came in by telephone that his machine had buckled under him and that he and his guest, the American correspondent Needham, had been killed.

We missed the long procession of fashionable vehicles in the Champs Elysees, en route to the Bois. In its place an occasional gray motor passes, or a taxicab, or a lumbering horse-drawn bus filled with convalescent wounded out for an airing. The Avenue d'Antin leads into the Rond Point on our right. Out of it at times come regiments of infantry changing barracks, or, in full equipment, march-

n ing to a railway station to entrain for the front. Again a Red- Cross ambulance dashes out of the street and across the open place. Its destination also is the railway station but its mission is to carry back the wounded. Spahi soldiers, distinguished by their picturesque costumes and lofty hats, or poilus in red kepis and long light blue coats, amble about beneath the trees. Their legs are bandaged or their arms are in slings and they walk with the help of crutches and canes. Some of them bask in the sun on the benches or stand in the crowd with the children further down the avenue in front of the Guignol.

Many of the great hotels of the neighborhood — the Elysee Palace, Astoria and Hotel d'lena — have been converted into hospitals and fly the flag of the other Allies — Russia, Japan and Great Britain.

The spirit of sympathy and consideration that prevails throughout the city holds even the taxi drivers in its grip. I was standing one day on an island of safety in front of the Madeleine. A convalescent soldier, with emaciated cheeks, pale face and using a heavy stick as a prop to his bandaged leg, was crossing in front of me. A long file of taxis bore down on him from the Boulevard des

Capucines. This man, who had braved the big guns and shrapnel of the trenches, stood panicstricken, frightened and irresolute. The leading taxi came to a dead stop and the long procession of vehicles behind it followed suit. The driver beckoned to the soldier and said soothingly, as he might speak to a child, "Allez done! mon enfant!" And the line waited patiently until the invalid had crossed over to the opposite curb.

The streets and shops of Paris! What stories you will yield up when the great war is over and there are abler pens than mine to tell them !

With Charles Butler, the architect, back in Paris to work in the American Relief and be near his old comrades of the Beaux Arts, I went into an art shop in the neighborhood of the school to buy some materials. There were no young clerks, they were all mobilise. The good woman in charge of the shop showed us a letter just received from an infantry sergeant in a prison camp "somewhere in France." He enclosed a long list of water-color supplies, carefully made out in a hand like copperplate — Whatman board, brushes, paints and erasers — that were to be sent to him for one of his prisoners. The prisoner was an Austrian nobleman and was very triste, he said. He was an amateur painter and the water-color sketches would serve to pass the long, monotonous daj^s in the camp. He, the sergeant, would be personally responsible for the payment of the account.