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

above us, but somewhat behind me, as well as to the left.

Had it been straight the second car would have got it, and there might

have been a vacancy in one of the chief editorial chairs in London. The

General shouted to the driver to speed up, and we were soon safe from

the German gunners. One gets perfectly immune to noises in these

scenes, for the guns which surround you make louder crashes than any

shell which bursts about you. It is only when you actually see the

cloud over you that your thoughts come back to yourself, and that you

realise that in this wonderful drama you may be a useless super, but

none the less you are on the stage and not in the stalls.

 

*

 

Next morning we were down in the front trenches again at another

portion of the line. Far away on our right, from a spot named the

Observatory, we could see the extreme left of the Verdun position and

shells bursting on the Fille Morte. To the north of us was a broad

expanse of sunny France, nestling villages, scattered ch�teaux, rustic

churches, and all as inaccessible as if it were the moon. It is a

terrible thing this German bar—a thing unthinkable to Britons. To

stand on the edge of Yorkshire and look into Lancashire feeling that it

is in other hands, that our fellow-countrymen are suffering there and

waiting, waiting, for help, and that we cannot, after two years, come a

yard nearer to them—would it not break our hearts? Can I wonder that

there is no smile upon the grim faces of these Frenchmen! But when the

bar is broken, when the line sweeps forward, as most surely it will,

when French bayonets gleam on yonder uplands and French flags break

from those village spires—ah, what a day that will be! Men will die

that day from the pure, delirious joy of it. We cannot think what it

means to France, and the less so because she stands so nobly patient

waiting for her hour.

 

Yet another type of French general takes us round this morning! He,

too, is a man apart, an unforgettable man. Conceive a man with a large

broad good-humoured face, and two placid, dark seal’s eyes which gaze

gently into yours. He is young and has pink cheeks and a soft voice.

Such is one of the most redoubtable fighters of France, this General of

Division D. His former staff officers told me something of the man. He

is a philosopher, a fatalist, impervious to fear, a dreamer of distant

dreams amid the most furious bombardment. The weight of the French

assault upon the terrible labyrinth fell at one time upon the brigade

which he then commanded. He led them day after day gathering up Germans

with the detached air of the man of science who is hunting for

specimens. In whatever shell-hole he might chance to lunch he had his

cloth spread and decorated with wild flowers plucked from the edge. If

fate be kind to him he will go far. Apart from his valour he is

admitted to be one of the most scientific soldiers of France.

 

From the Observatory we saw the destruction of a German trench. There

had been signs of work upon it, so it was decided to close it down. It

was a very visible brown streak a thousand yards away. The word was

passed back to the ‘75’s’ in the rear. There was a ‘tir rapide’ over

our heads. My word, the man who stands fast under a ‘tir rapide,’ be he

Boche, French or British, is a man of mettle! The mere passage of the

shells was awe-inspiring, at first like the screaming of a wintry wind,

and then thickening into the howling of a pack of wolves. The trench

was a line of terrific explosions. Then the dust settled down and all

was still. Where were the ants who had made the nest? Were they buried

beneath it? Or had they got from under? No one could say.

 

There was one little gun which fascinated me, and I stood for some time

watching it. Its three gunners, enormous helmeted men, evidently loved

it, and touched it with a swift but tender touch in every movement.

When it was fired it ran up an inclined plane to take off the recoil,

rushing up and then turning and rattling down again upon the gunners

who were used to its ways. The first time it did it, I was standing

behind it, and I don’t know which moved quickest—the gun or I.

 

French officers above a certain rank develop and show their own

individuality. In the lower grades the conditions of service enforce a

certain uniformity. The British officer is a British gentleman first,

and an officer afterwards. The Frenchman is an officer first, though

none the less the gentleman stands behind it. One very strange type we

met, however, in these Argonne Woods. He was a French-Canadian who had

been a French soldier, had founded a homestead in far Alberta, and had

now come back of his own will, though a naturalised Briton, to the old

flag. He spoke English of a kind, the quality and quantity being

equally extraordinary. It poured from him and was, so far as it was

intelligible, of the woolly Western variety. His views on the Germans

were the most emphatic we had met. ‘These Godam sons of’—well, let us

say ‘Canines!’ he would shriek, shaking his fist at the woods to the

north of him. A good man was our compatriot, for he had a very recent

Legion of Honour pinned upon his breast. He had been put with a few men

on Hill 285, a sort of volcano stuffed with mines, and was told to

telephone when he needed relief. He refused to telephone and remained

there for three weeks. ‘We sit like a rabbit in his hall,’ he

explained. He had only one grievance. There were many wild boars in the

forest, but the infantry were too busy to get them. ‘The Godam

Artillaree he get the wild pig!’ Out of his pocket he pulled a picture

of a frame-house with snow round it, and a lady with two children on

the stoop. It was his homestead at Trochu, seventy miles north of

Calgary.

 

*

 

It was the evening of the third day that we turned our faces to Paris

once more. It was my last view of the French. The roar of their guns

went far with me upon my way. Soldiers of France, farewell! In your own

phrase I salute you! Many have seen you who had more knowledge by which

to judge your manifold virtues, many also who had more skill to draw

you as you are, but never one, I am sure, who admired you more than I.

Great was the French soldier under Louis the Sun-King, great too under

Napoleon, but never was he greater than to-day.

 

And so it is back to England and to home. I feel sobered and solemn

from all that I have seen. It is a blind vision which does not see more

than the men and the guns, which does not catch something of the

terrific spiritual conflict which is at the heart of it.

 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

—He is trampling out the vineyard where the grapes of wrath are stored.

 

We have found no inspired singer yet, like Julia Howe, to voice the

divine meaning of it all—that meaning which is more than numbers or

guns upon the day of battle. But who can see the adult manhood of

Europe standing in a double line, waiting for a signal to throw

themselves upon each other, without knowing that he has looked upon the

most terrific of all the dealings between the creature below and that

great force above, which works so strangely towards some distant but

glorious end?

 

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

 

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