War's Dark Frame/The Persistent Bombardment
CHAPTER VII
THE PERSISTENT BOMBARDMENT
ON my return the familiar beauties of Paris acquired a new and precious meaning. It was possible more accurately to estimate the value of that epic moment when Von Kluck's flank was turned and the sinister invasion broken almost within sight of the fortifications. So I got a military permit and visited the region where Manoury's taxicab army flung itself on the extreme German right.
The flags waving over the graves were thicker than in Lorraine. They were like a strange and colourful grain. And irregularly scattered behind the pierced walls of the graveyard in each little village were the sepulchres of soldiers, buried where they had fallen.
Behind an ugly breach in a cemetery wall was the tomb of an officer, set at an angle.
“The captain, you see," one of the natives told me, was leaning against the wall watching the effect of his men's fire on the enemy when the shell fell just there. We came out in the evening and buried him." He took me to a flowering tree not far away and pointed out a polished round hole in the trunk.
That," he said, was made by a shell nearly spent. It struck its nose in and exploded its entire charge backwards. It killed two lieutenants who were standing in consultation just where you are.
Here are their graves, at your feet."
The inhabitants will relate a thousand such intimate details of the battle of the Marne. They understand it in no other language. It is, in fact, impossible for the layman to gaze across the field, sewn with tricolours, and interpret the miracle in any broader terms. But of the most intimate and desirable detail of all there was no one who could speak surely. I looked at a quiet and picturesque farm where Von Kluck had had his headquarters. I wondered what dramatic event had happened there, perhaps during the course of a moment or two, that had urged him to give the command to swing in across Paris. Had he run ahead of his supplies? Had an order been misinterpreted? Was a fit of petulance responsible? Had he lunched too well? There the German structure of forty years' growth had tumbled, and no one could tell what had happened at the pretty farm during that decisive moment. The closeness of the thing was impressive. As I stared I could hear from ahead the dull booming of guns from the vicinity of Soissons, and only a few miles behind me lay Paris.
Already, by direction of General Galiéni before his death, a number of monuments have been raised on the field of the Marne, yet it isn't the Mecca for Frenchmen one would expect The authorities see to that. They make a visit almost as difficult as the entrance of a front line trench. There are, it is just to say, military reasons of which it is better not to speak. They will probably keep the Marne closed to the ordinary visitor until the cnd of the war. I found it necessary to show my pass there more frequently than in the actual zone of operations. Any one who gets actually under fire is too well vouched for to start suspicion. Moreover, if he is a civilian he is always accompanied by a staff officer.
I had a charming young fellow during my visit to the Champagne front—small, constantly smiling, inclined, as far as one might be, to take war as a part of the day's work. He had been severely wounded in one of the early battles. That seemed to be the only portion of his own experiences that he thoroughly resented.
"It keeps me in a staff job," he mourned. I asked him what his sensations had been on first hearing the shells. He laughed.
"When the first shell whistled—whoo-ee-ee—I commanded my men to present arms.
That amused them, and was good. Then I told them to lie down."
This officer met a party of us in Epernay and drove us first of all to Rheims. The desecration of the cathedral is by no means a thing of the past. The bombardment continues according to the fancy of the German gunners.
We drove in past miles of shell screens, constructed between the road and the enemy of sheets of cheese cloth or masses of dead foliage. A soldier was our chauffeur. An orderly sat at his side. Above their heads were suspended helmets and a rifle. Out of the grey and rainy morning came the rumbling of guns.
The houses of the suburbs were marked with shell fragments. One or two men and women glided silently past us, clinging to the shelter of walls.
We swerved into a vast open space. At first I didn't realise. Then I left the car and, holding my breath, unconscious of the rain, stood gazing upward.
The cathedral of Rheims proves how absurdly conservative photography is. A picture of the twin towers and the rose window won't give you a sense of unbelievable tragedy, or an instinct to speak not at all or in whispers. That is because the horror of Rheims from the front is a matter of detail. The left hand tower rises in the shade of ashes. The semblance of figures, featureless and stripped, nevertheless have something human about them. They are like victims of the ancient trial by fire. Instinctively one glances at the brave little bronze figure on horseback which miraculously has survived each bombardment. More than ever Joan of Arc belongs here. Her attitude with fag uplifted is one of inspired command. She seems about to lead the wraiths of the cathedral to a stern reckoning.
We entered the desolate structure. I removed my hat. A staff officer shrugged his shoulders.
"That is not necessary," he said. “So many men have been killed in here that the edifice is no longer consecrated.”
His comment expressed, perhaps, more than its intention. For there is a depressive feeling within whose source is certainly more remote than the emptiness and the battered walls and pillars. The emptiness reaches you first of all. The aisles are vast, the open spaces apparently endless. Pigeons, flying between the tracery of the eyeless windows and about the roof, accent the sense of distance. And it is out of this emptiness that the feeling of depression steals. There were with me officers and soldiers hardened to the filth and corruption of war. Some of us had seen devastation more complete and no less excusable than this. Yet no one failed to respond to that sense of suffering which seemed to have survived its physical source. It is, of course, impossible to say how far our knowledge of what had happened here gave birth to such thoughts. It is merely significant that we all experienced them. One visualised rows of bandaged and groaning men, stretched on the straw or crawling about with awkward, incoherent motions, like mutilated insects. The vaulting seemed to retain the echoes of cries and curses. Openings showed where the Germans had sent incendiary shells to burn their own wounded
Such anguish leaves something behind it.
We went about softly—almost on tip-toe. Through the emptiness we experienced a sense of obstacles. We walked carefully so as not to stumble over the shadows that remained.
In the Place again we had a moment to appreciate the shattered surroundings of the cathedral. The miracle of the preservation of the statue of Joan of Arc was more impressive. Within the
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| The effect of heavy Shells in Rheims |
The New and the Old | Poilus Billeted in Rheims |
entire range of our vision it was the only object that had not been violently disturbed. No wonder there were flowers at its base and flags at the pedestal. No wonder the inhabitants had devised a prayer and printed it and placed it on the iron railing at the front. We read it with a thrill.
"Joan of Arc—Pray for us—Bring to France the victory."
We turned away to be taught under the guidance of our staff officer that the ruin in Rheims isn't limited to the vicinity of the cathedral. We wandered with him through the gardens of the archbishop's palace, staring at the ghosts of that structure nearly as famous as the cathedral itself. Roses were in bloom along the hedges. There seemed a design about their growth in such a place, a mockery of the Prussian spirit of conquest, a reminder of the indestructibility of the soul of beauty.
We wandered sadly through the best residential district of the city. The few houses that were still serviceable were marked with numerals.
"The number of people the cellars will hold," the officer explained.
While the greater proportion of the population had left or had been killed, those that remained were quietly illustrative of the extraordinary determination of the French. Two women, met in that mass of the rubbish of homes, remain in my mind.
We had been compelled to leave the automobile.
For many blocks we hadn't seen a habitable structure. As we climbed around a corner over a hill of rubbish I heard a feminine cry of surprise. Ahead was a house which by comparison had suffered slightly. The glass had been replaced by boards. The front door could not be closed. Countless pieces of shell had scarred the exterior, A young woman leant from the upper story. The surprise in her face at seeing civilians here matched our amazement at the sight of her graceful figure in such surroundings. We stopped and chatted with her.
"You live here?"
"But certainly. Why not?"
"You have a great deal of courage."
She shrugged her shoulders,
"It is my home, is it not?” she said. "Enough is left of it, so I stay at home."
"And the shells?"
She laughed.
“The shells! They follow one anyway, and there isn't much to bring them here now."
Farther on in a less damaged quarter a little old woman, wearing the universal black, came up and spoke to the staff officer. A basket was slung over her arm. Evidently she was going marketing.
"Pardon me, Monsieur le Capitain," she said, "I am a little confused. The hour of the bombardment remains the same? The Rue de la is safe at this hour?"
We smiled, but the captain, who was accustomed to such queries, replied seriously:
“The hour is unchanged, but I wouldn't advise madame. The Rue de la—is likely to be unpleasant at any time."
She shrugged her shoulders—that invariable gesture that has acquired a quality of renunciation.
“ It makes no difference. Another route will do as well. One must order one's life according to the clock of the shells."
And she wandered away, her basket resting comfortably in the crook of her elbow.