Out there

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Getting the Range 11

II. The Lonely Road to Zero .... 25

CHAPTER I "getting the range"

We are at the Front. "Zero" is Thursday morning — Tomorrow morning. The big "push" is now on.

Long after midnight we crawl into our bunks; but sleep is far, far away. To sleep is almost impossible, because of the clanking, stamping feet of the thousands of men who are marching by. The men marching past are "going in." Silent, resolute and determined they pass on into the night, no singing, no whistling, no talking. They are all rested, fully equipped and ready to face what lies ahead. Many have been in before and know what they must face. Others are going in for the first time ; nervous and uneasy, yet quietly marching on into the trenches. Over all of them hangs a deadly silence. Yet they are full of calm and quiet determination.

"Coming out" is another story. Dirty, 11 muddy and weary, yet cheerful and happy — behind them the smells, the rats, the bugs and all other creeping things, ahead of them a hot bath, clean clothes, warm food and sleep, sleep, sleep — just think of it! Of course they are singing. It is here the most simple things of life become great luxuries. Warm baths, hot food, plenty of smoke and dry clothes make life happy and contented.

We fall asleep with the song of the marching men who are "coming out" ringing in our ears:

Way down upon the Swannee River,

Far, far away, There's where my heart is turning ever,

There's where the old folks stay. All up and down the whole creation,

Sadly I roam.

Still sighing for the old plantation.

And for the old folks at home.

Early next morning, we are called out to see the Boche machine that is trying to get over the line. But the anti-aircraft guns cracking all around keep the Boche plane high in the heavens, and at last he turns and makes for his own line.

"GETTmG THE RANGE"

All day long we go up and down the lines. We enter villages where every single room in every single house has been built by shells, where absolutely the whole village has been pounded level with the ground.

The roads are jammed with traffic. On one side the men are marching up by the thousands — the great motor lorries are going forward with men and supplies — the gun carriages are carrying up fodder for the guns. The Despatch riders are going by on their motor cycles. All traffic makes way for these Dare-Devil riders. They go dashing by bearing their orders. The pigeon carriers with the cages of pigeons on their cycles are rushing for some objective far up the hne. In this war, man, beast and bird have all been drawTi into service. Wire and wireless may break down, so the pigeons are daily given their practice flight preparing for the time when they must do their bit in this death grapple.

On the other side of the road the men who have done their turn in the trenches are coming out, the empty lorries are coming back for supplies and ammunition. The empty gun carriages are rolling past.

In the fields all around us are the men drawn up in line for the final inspection. The young officers quietly move down the line. Rifles and bayonets must be perfect, for no sham battle lies ahead. Gas masks are examined; some are cast aside and fresh ones secured, for no man's life must be lost through an imperfect gas mask. All equipment must be in perfect condition.

The word "Forward" is given. They swing into the road that leads down the trench and "Over the Top."

High up in the heavens, the great observation balloons are hanging. The planes overhead are droning like great swarms of bees, as they keep back the German aviators who try to come over the line; also they are flying over Fritz's line, for in this war the aircraft are the eyes of the army.

Never have we seen crowds like the crowd we are now in, but, contrary to any other crowd, it all seems to be rushing forward with one single mind and with one single purpose,

"GETTING THE RANGE"

We start up Messiner Ridge some fifty feet apart, for high up we see the great German balloons which are always silently watching the activities on our side of the line, just as the balloons of the Allied forces are watching on Fritz's side. We can walk above the ground now. Fritz is not wasting shrapnel on lone men.

We step very carefully in order not to kick some unexploded bomb or fall into a shell hole. We are walking over ground where every single yard has been hit by shells; not only once, but time after time has it been churned and rechurned. We are treading in the valley of destruction and death — ^the entire hill has been swept by the broom of death. Every square foot has been made sacred by the best blood of the British Empire.

All around, the guns are carefully concealed in their gunpits. The camouflaging here must be perfect, all of the guns being under the eyes of the German observers who are constantly looking down over the lines. The "woolly bear" shrapnel is bursting, the great high shells are whistling over. On beyond the summit of the hill, the great high explosive shells are falling.

I had made up my mind just how I would act and feel when I came under shell fire, but it is one thing to sit by a comfortable fire and work out your theories and another thing to go up on the side of the hill with the shells falling all around. One of my friends, a former Harvard football captain, turned and asked me how I felt. "Almost scared to death," was my reply, and he answered, "So am I."

Lying in a shell hole, I noticed the engineers putting in a line of white posts. This is the path back from "No Man's Land" for the men who fall and must walk back — "the walking wounded."

This may seem strange in the light of all the talk we have heard back in America regarding the way the men go into the line cheering and singing. I have yet to meet a man under shell fire who says he likes it. Men do not Uke it. I firmly believe that every single man who goes into the line for the first time is truly frightened. Men do not come to like it, but they do become reconciled

"GETTING THE RANGE"

to it, and certainly in a sense accustomed to the heavy shell fire. But walking into shell fire never is a habit they have to break.

We lie on the edge of a great crater which had been made by one of the seventeen mines which had been touched off in June, when thousands of Germans "went west" and the Allies took another step toward Berlin. The crater is one hundred and fifty feet across, eighty to one hundred feet deep, and four hundred to five hundred feet around.

A few hundred feet down the side of the hill the German high explosive shells are bursting near one of the British batteries, which they succeeded in locating. Every few minutes a shell comes over. It bursts uncomfortably near where the men are working their guns. As the shell explodes, the men duck into the dugout around the gun, waiting for the rocks, stones and pieces of shell which have broken high in the air to come down. Then they rush out of the dugout, load the gun, and fire it without apparent excitement. In spite of the fact that they know Fritz has located their gun, they "carry on."

Our attention is now directed to the sky. Eight German planes are coming over toward the British lines. Everywhere the British planes are climbing up to get to them. The anti-aircraft guns are firing. There are no braver men in the world than these "Knights of the Air." High up in the heavens they wend their solitary and lonely flight where constant presence of mind, superb confidence and heroic bravery, are always required. They rush to glorious victory, bringing down the enemy machine — or to their own sudden death.

We may well lie spellbound as we watch the battle of democracy fought out far above the earth — far above the shells, which are bursting below the planes.

We leave Messiner Ridge and go to Wytschaete Hill, and wander in and around the great guns — it fairly bristles with them.

We walk in and around the German dugouts, for it was here they stubbornly fought for every inch of ground. We are told that we are standing near one of the famous "O Pips" (observation points) of the whole sali-

"GETTING THE RANGE"

ent, an observation point that was never discovered until after the line was captured. We try to discover it, but all we can see is a large number of snags and stumps of old trees. At last our hands are placed upon an old snag of a tree sticking about six feet above the ground. We find upon investigation it is a gas pipe covered with bark. Mounted in it had been a periscope pointing toward the British lines.

It is sticking up out of a "pill box." The machine guns which were mounted inside had swept the British lines as well as the artillery fire which was directed from it. Many a brave British lad had "gone west" because of this hell trap.

We stand in an old Y, M. C. A. dugout and watch the secretary, who is an old Padre past sixty-five years of age, handing out the piece of chocolate, a cigarette or a cup of tea to many a lad who is making his last visit to the dugout. Two weeks ago they were using a dugout farther up the line. It was blown to pieces and every man was killed.

Fortunately the secretary was outside. For 19 three months he has been on or near his present location. He does not look into the face of a single man who is not in the presence of death. "I never have seen a more Christlike service than that which you are rendering here," I told him. He replies with a smile, "Why, I am not doing anything, just sticking it out and taking things as they come." You can hear his last word to the men as they go by — "Goodbye, lads, good luck and God bless you."

Near one of the guns stands a young Lieutenant. He asks us if we don't "want to see the show."

There he stands, megaphone in hand, hitting his leather legging with his little walking stick, calling out to the great five machines of death all under the sound of his voice — "Fire, number one — fire, number two — ^fire, number three." And each is fired.

We take our stand behind one of the great guns — watching.

After the shell has gone screaming from the end of the gun, the Sergeant and his men rush up. They throw into the gun another

"GETTING THE RANGE" shell, then the charge. The breech is slammed

shut.

The sergeant jumps back, stands at attention and calls out, "Number one ready to fire,

Sir."

Far up in the heavens over our heads hangs a great captive balloon. In the balloon is a young British officer. His field glasses are screwed to his eyes, telephone receiver to his ears. He is the eyes and the director of the battery by which we are standing. Intently he watches down over the line to see where the shells are falling. As the shell explodes he calls into his telephone his directions for the next shell. "Change No. one— point five —left seven O."

None of the great guns are being fired by charge, all of them are being directed by an observation officer who sees where they are falling and directs his battery accordingly. If not in a balloon, then away up in the front line or in No Man's Land in an old ruin or a shell hole, lies the young observation officer. He must be more careful than the officer in the balloon, for he is exposed many times to the German snipers. If they can kill the observation officer, they have blinded the eyes of the Battery.

Carefully from his "O Pip" (observation point) he whispers his orders into his telephone receiver. Again the eyes of the battery may be away up in that little British air plane. It is dodging in and out of the German shrapnel exploding all around as it darts here and there over Fritz's line, ticking off his directions on his wireless.

Beside the battery some fifteen or twenty feet below the ground in an old dugout sit two young officers, telephone receivers to their ears, receiving the orders that are coming from the observation officer. Quietly and calmly they check on their charts where the shells have fallen, for an accurate record must be kept of all the shells in reciprocal gun fire.

They call up the directions to the young officer who is calling out the orders to these five great machines of death.

As we look at our watch within three minutes after the shell has been fired from one of these great guns, orders are received,

"GETTING THE RAJSFGE"

checked up and our Young Friend is calling out again:

"Number one, change."

Immediately the man who is working the gun changes the range, jumps back with string in hand, ready to pull; the Sergeant once more calls out, "Number one ready to fire. Sir/'

"Number one, fire."

Finally word comes back:

"Number one or number two repeat."

We know what this means. They have found the range.

"See if you can follow the shell with your eyes," calls the Lieutenant as I stand behind the firing battery.

Taking my stand some twenty feet behind the gun, with open mouth and lax body, for the concussion is terrible, I focus my eyes in line with the barrel of the great gun. It is fired. I fail to see the shell and decide that the talk about seeing a shell in the air is all false. But the young lieutenant insists that I can see it if I stand at the right place and direct my eyes properly. I change my position and get all set, but just before the word is given to fire a great 12-inch Howitzer some distance behind me was fired, and I am quite certain that the men on the battery made up their minds I had decided to follow the shell as I jumped into the air. Certainly I must have broken the high jump record for all time, in spite of my two hundred and twenty-five pounds of weight. It goes without stating that the men on the battery had a big laugh at my expense.

Once more I get set, eyes in line with the gun. The word comes "Fire," and my eyes catch the great shell as it goes screaming into the sky on its errand of duty and destruction. For an instant far into the distance we follow its flight.

All around us the great guns are barking and moaning — surely nothing could be so terrible. But stop a moment — This is not battle. It is only reciprocal gunfire — getting the range — setting the stage for tomorrow morning — for "Zero."

Chapter II

Tomorrow morning is Zero, the hour or time set for going over the top.

Never have we seen crowds before. It is a great sea of human life. The roads are throbbing and jammed with the surging, seething mass; thousands of men are going in. The motor lorries are going up with supplies; the gun carriage is loaded with food for the big guns.

Men are coming out, empty lorries come back, gun carriages return for food for the ever greedy guns.

Little miniature railroad trains are hauling up their loads of ammunition and supplies. All up and down the lines these little narrow gauge railroad lines feed the front. They are quickly constructed and wind in and out among the shell holes. They remind you of the little railroad trains at Coney Island or any amusement park back home. But here their mission is one of duty and not of pleasure.

Everything is centered on the most important factor in war — the lad in the front line trench. He must be well fed and kept with an abundance of supplies and ammunition.

In the fields, thousands of men are in line, getting final words of counsel from the young officers before they begin the march that leads to Gethsemane.

We go from building to building, cellar to cellar, dugout to dugout. Everywhere are men. We go down one of the most famous roads of the war — ^the road to Ypres. Again the crowds. We come to Hell's Crossing, where thousands come and go, and where hundreds have "gone west." It is on the railroad stations, crossroads and moving troops that Fritz tries to train his guns.

The traffic is regulated by traffic "cops" who stand under the rain of shells. Never have we seen the traffic better regulated on any corner of Fifth Avenue, New York, than it is out in France on the crossroads within the line. Even over here traffic cops display great personal bravery. They stand unprotected in the center of the road. Fritz is trying his best to drop his shells on their heads. In one section thirty-five men won decorations at this work.

All day before the battle, not a single man smiles. No one whistles. There is subdued talking. No laughing, no cheering, no singing, no bands playing. The only band we heard all day was a band in the center of a great group of men lined up, who were soon to start in. It was playing a hymn.

Men who have written their last home letters, drawn up their last will in their pay books, and broken their home ties, are not going into the lines smihng and laughing. Their loved ones, to whom they have said goodbye, mean just as much to them as any of our loved ones over here. We do not smile in the presence of death. Why should they over there?

As Harry Lauder says: "You know, you do not need to talk to the laddies who are going to go 'over the top' about God. They are thinking about God and about home." And they are.

We look at them. Their faces look as if cut out of the stone of the hills. The most lonesome road any man ever trod is the road that man takes who goes down the road into the trench to go "over the top."

That is the most lonesome road outside the path Christ took when He went into the Garden of Gethsemane. You can almost imagine that they are saying: "If possible, let this cup pass, but — not my will. Thy will be done."

The only words I have ever found to describe it are Mansfield's: "They go up like Kings in a Pageant to the imminent death."

Kings! every man a King.

We are walking over ground where every yard has been hit by shells, and churned and re-churned. Every foot has been soaked and made sacred by British blood. The shrapnel burst, the great shells buzz and scream, but on they go. Among the tens of thousands of transfigured faces, not a single one would have turned back. Up the road they are going, into that Garden of Gethsemane. Into the garden of awful suspense and anxiety.

There to wait quietly in the presence of death until the moment that they are called on to go "over the top" — on to the cross! They are facing eternity. Looming up before them is the memory of life with all its joys. Before them possible death or terrible wounds, but certain victory over material things.

Back in America, some tell me the men out there are not interested in religion. They may not be interested in the kind some people think about. They are not particularly interested in Hell. They know more about it than Dante ever dreamed of writing.

They have been through Hell, so they are not interested in it. But they are mightily interested in God. I have never spoken the name of Christ out there, that a great silence did not come over the audience.

Lying in the edge of one of the great craters, we watch Fritz's line. Down there it is! No, not what we had expected, for all we can see is a great desert of destruction and devastation. No life of any sort. Only the British shells bursting there tell us that is Fritz's line.

The planes are flying in the air overhead. The guns behind us are sending over their message of death.

The men are going by. If they are Australians every man of them that goes by the Y. M. C. A. dugout is handed an extra large piece of chocolate. No! He is not to eat it, not unless he falls wounded in "No Man's Land" and cannot crawl back. Then he can eat it, and then only. As they go by there, the last human touch they are having with the outside world is a cup of tea or a bit of tobacco, or a piece of chocolate in a Y, M. C. A. dugout.

We remember one Canadian regiment that had gone past a dugout similar to this, all getting cups of tea. The next morning "over the top!" Seventy only came out whole. A cup of hot tea or a smoke means more to your boy out there than a garage full of cars waiting for him back home.

We spend the evening in the huts and dug- 30

Cellar on the Ypres Salient

Interior of the Cellar A Rare Treat— A Fireplace at the Front outs. The atmosphere is tense. Everyone is quiet and talking only in a low voice. All know tomorrow is "Zero." While little is being said about tomorrow morning, all are thinking about it. The men here will not be going "over the top," but their pals up the lines will, and that hurts almost more than if they themselves were going over. The companionship at the front is one of the most wonderful things that the war has brought out.

The giving of one's life for another is no mere recital of words. Sacrifice is commonplace among these men who are constantly offering their lives for home and country.

As we go out into the open we find the night one of the darkest and wettest of the whole summer. The ground under foot is slippery and muddy. A heavy fog is hanging over the lines as if to hide the tragedy that is soon to take place.

Around ten o'clock the great Hell Gates burst open. There comes forth a mighty rushing, charging sound as of an awful thunder and wind storm. The heavens are lit with the flash of thousands of guns. The earth is shaking and trembling. Imagine the most terrific thunderclap you ever heard multiplied by eight long hours!

The Barrage is on!

The shells are raining all over the German lines, tearing up front line trenches and barb wire entanglements, destroying back roads and avenues of approach. Places where troops are assembled are being covered as by hail. The batteries are being so completely "strafed" that they seem to waver and hesitate, dazed and unable to reply. Thousands of British shells are going over while only hundreds are coming back. Fritz is now getting what he gave in 1914, only he is now being repaid with compound interest.

The roads back of the British Front are deserted. Only the staff cars going and coming. The troops are in the trenches all ready and waiting for "Zero."

All is set, the curtain is ready to go up.

At four o'clock we rush down the deserted road by motor car and go on to the hillside overlooking the great Ypres salient. The staff officers are here, all silent and tense. We are now looking upon one of the most colossal dramas ever staged and executed in the history of mankind— every actor a small pawn in the pageant of destruction and death.

No longer is it "Fire Number One," "Fire Number Two," but all around us thousands of great hounds of hell are barking and howling as they send their messages of destruction and death into the German lines.

A million men are in the trenches and in the line of reserves, ready to make the great push into Flanders. Every single individual among the million must "go over" alone. The heavens are red. There is no talking. The noise is terrific. The "Very lights" are going up. The "star" shells are bursting. Occasionally a great German shell bursts near by, and comes roaring out above the awful sounds to which we are listening.

Five o'clock — We sit down in the mud and cover our faces as the rain commences. We realize that this will increase the horrors of going over the top.

Yes, they went over at Vimy Ridge in 35

April on a fine clear morning when the sim was shining, and in the afternoon the snow came on. As the "waves" of men went over day after day at Vimy, I am told that possibly as many men died from drowning in shell holes as died from the bullets.

Did you get it? The hundreds and thousands of shells falling and the rain coming down and the muck forming! Why don't they go forward more? Because they can go only as far as they are able to cover the advance with their own guns.

Five-thirty comes. We know that they are thinking of the home folks. It is my little daughter's birthday. All of them have loved ones at home who mean as much to them as mine do to me. But they must carry on.

Shortly before six o'clock the barrage becomes even more intense as the grand climax approaches.

Six o'clock — dead silence — all the guns stop firing.

Now only the occasional bursting of a German shell, while over all hangs a deathlike silence. But over the top they go into the mouth of HelL For now the hand-to-hand fight is on as Tommy dashes forward to drive the Germans that are left out of their holes. As he springs to the top of the parapet and charges across "No Man's Land," he must face mustard gas that is odorless and invisible and may not show its effects for many hours. But at last it will get in its deadly work of burning and searing his body wherever his body is wet from perspiration or rain. He faces tear gas that blinds him, gas that suffocates and chokes him unless he immediately gets on his gas mask. He goes into the forest of barb wire over ground that is mined, under the "woolly bear" shrapnel. He charges machine guns that mow as the scythe mows the grain. He faces hand bombs, hquid fire and cold steel bayonets.

Tell me of a Hell which equals that!

CHAPTER III 'the path of the wALKmG wounded"

The guns are now roaring. Shells are screaming and bursting, the bullets whizzing and whining, the planes buzzing overhead. Men are going up in endless streams. The counter attack is on.

The moment they go "over the top," those who reach the German trench at once clear the trench of the men that have survived the barrage. They immediately begin to entrench themselves as the waves of their own troops keep coming over behind them, rush up to them or help to dig themselves in, for as soon as they go over the top, Fritz begins his barrage on these advancing men. Also he has turned on his barrage to prevent the reinforcements from being brought up. This is called the counter attack.

Day after day many times into weeks and months the battle rages backward and forward, wave after wave of men going over,

"THE WALKING WOUNDED"

counter attack after counter attack being staged.

But we forget all else save the human cost as our eyes rest on the suffering, bleeding men that are coming down the path of the "Walking Wounded." The day before, lying in a shell hole, I had seen the engineers putting in two rows of white posts. Turning to Harry Holmes I asked him, "What are they putting those in for?" "For the walking wounded tomorrow morning," was his reply.

"You know many days ago I was sent for by the General Director of Medical Service and asked if I could get ready, as Zero would be this morning." Asking a Y. M. C. A. secretary if he could get ready for a battle? Yes, and before you have ceased reading this chapter you will understand why.

We are now in a Y. M. C. A. dugout, in the edge of that hell, watching the staggering, creeping, weaving line of men who have gone "over the top" only a short time before and have stopped a piece of shell, machine gun bullet, shrapnel, or what not. Now they are coming down the path of the white posts that guides them back to the dressing station, which is now flooded with the men who have done their bit. The minute a man is wounded and out, if possible he starts back on his painful journey to relief and help. Of course there are large numbers who cannot walk, who are down and out, and it is these men who are being carried back by the brave stretcher bearers. They keep going "over the top" until at last they become a part of the procession of suffering, bleeding men who are coming down the path which is only traveled by men who have caught a glimpse of eternity, who have faced death in "No Man's Land."