A Visit to Three Fronts, June 1916 - Arthur Conan Doyle (best novels in english .TXT) 📗

Haking, pale, distinguished, intellectual; Landon a pleasant,

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