With the French Army in the Argonne.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 215, 6 October 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

With the French Army in the Argonne.

By SIR A. COXAN DOYLE.

There is a couplet of Stevenson's which haunts me, " There fell a war in a woody place —in a land beyond the sea." I have just come back from spending three wonderful dream days in t'hat woody plane. It lies with thj open, bosky country of Verdun on its immediate right, and the chalk downs of Champagne upon its left. If one could imagine the lines being taken right through our New Forest it would give some idea of the terrain, save that it is a very undulating country of abrupt hills and dales. It is this peculiarity which has made the war on this front different from any other, more picturesque and more secret. In front the fighting lines are half in the clay soil, half behind the shelter of fallen trunks. Between the two the main bulk of the soldiers I've like animals of the woodlands, burrowing on the hillsides and among the roots of the trees. It is a war by itself, and a very wonderful one to see.

At three different points I have visited the front in this broad region, wandering from the lines of one army corps to that of another. In all three I found the same conditions, and in all three I found also the same pleasing fact which I had discovered at Soissons, that the fire of the French was at least five, and very often ten, shots to one of the Boche. It used not to be so. The Germans used scrupulously to return shot for shot. But whether they have moved their guns to the neighbouring Verdun, or whether, as is more likely, all the munitions are going there, it is certain that they were much outclassed upon the three days (June 10, 11, 12) to which I allude. There were signs that for some reason their spirits were at a ltfw ebb.

* * * To return to my personal impression : It was at Chalons that we lefr the Paris train—a town which was touched by the most forward ripple of the first great German flood t'.de. A drive of some 20 miles took us to St. Menehould, and another ten brought us to the front in the sector of th-? Divisional General. A fine soldier th'.3 and heaven help Germany if he ai>d -.jiis division got within its borders, for Sgpio is, as one can see at a glance, a man of iron who has been goaded to fierceness by all that his beloved eount'v has endured. He is a man of middle size, swarthy, hawk-like, very abrupt iu his movements, with two steel-grey eyes, which are the most Searching that mine have ever met. His hospitality and courtesy to us were beyond all bounds, but there is another side to him, and it is one which it : s wiser not to provoke. In person lie took us to his lines, passing through the usual shot-torn villages behind them. Where tb,e road dips into the great forest there is one particular spot which is visible to the German artillery observers. The General mentioned 't at the time, but his remark seemed to have no personal interest. We understood it better on our return in tho evening. Now we found ourselves in the depths of the woods, primeval woods of oak and beech in the deep clay soil that the great oak loves There had been rain and the for,est- paths were ankle deep in mire. Everywhere, to rjght and left, soldiers' faces, hard and rough from a year of open air, gazed up at us from their burrows in the ground. Presently an alert, blue-clad figure stood ; n the path to greet us It was the colonel of the sector. He was ridiculously like Cyrano de Bergerac as depicted by the late M. Coquelin, save that his nose was of more moderate proportion. The ruddy colouring, the bristling, feline, full-ended moustache, the solidity of pose, the backward tilt of the head, the genera! suggestion of the bantam cock, were all there facing us as he stood amid the leaves in the sunlight. Gauntlet; and a long rapier—nothing else was wanting. Something had amused Cyrano. His moustache quivered with suppressed mirth, and his blue eyes were demurely gleaming. Then tho joke came out. He had spotted a German working party, his guns had concentrated on it, and afterwards he had seen the stretchers go forward. A grim joke, it may seem. But the French see this war from a different angle to us. 1/ we had the Boche sitting 011 our heads, and were not yet quite sure whether we could ever get him otf again, we should get Cyrano's point of vic-w Those of us who hare had our foik murdered by Zeppelins or tortured in German prisons have probably got it already. We passed in a little procession among the French soldiers, and viewed their muit ; farious arrangements. For them we were a little break in a monotonous life, <and they formed up in lines as we passed. My own British uniform and the civilian dresses of my two companions interested them. As tho General passed these groups, who formed themselves up in perhaps a more familiar manner than would have been usual in the Brtish services, he glanced kindly ait hem with those singular eyes of his. and once or twice addressed them as "Mes enfants." One conceive that all was "go as yon plvaso" among the French. So : t is ; s long as you go in the right way. When you stray from it you know it. As \\e |,issed a group of men standing on a low ridge which overlooked us there was a sudden stop. 1 gazed round. The General's face was steel anil cement The eyes were cold and yet fiery, sunlight upon icicles. Something had hap* penod. Cyrano had sprung to his sid.e His reddish moustache had shot forward beyond his nose, .and it bristled (,ut like that of an angry cat. Both were looking up at tho group afiove us. One wretched man detached himself from Irs comrades and sidled down the slope. No skipper and mate of a Yankee blood boat could have looked more ferociously at a mutineer. And \ot it was all over some minor brea !i of d : s( ipline which was summarily disposed of by two days of confinement Then in an instant the faces relaxed there was a general buzz of relief, and we were back at "Mes enfants" again. But don't make any mistake as to discipline 111 the French army. Trenches are trenches, and tho n. 0 sn.'cially of tli/'so in tho Are..mo that they are uoarei to r! e1 n. "iv. hi fact there ar.e places' i . tli. > int. : lock, and where t' d-vis- <• I p ~-j I'o cheek by iow' We ««•..- '.rr.i,jln a head v.-i --re Gene-m- w< t « a f jJ,, !.•',■ .I.'.- of 1 nar;'<:t >; o-t r ,n ! f|l' i' • .MM ~1 I'll ith i, .n't ">i.| ; 1 !!-. ' ■ •! >m tit. ..me ... .... u i : . • lied. I looki 'I across. i,.. . . . !ane'e <if wire and Tv • » 'iern_ was not per.l Ii ■' 1 ard posts. T ' V d ned w;th vet anr.?'., !' • Ihe Frem-li o'd or, the. r; *. .-a ,v'jo (•oß!r'»o'J< 'he c..rp- of h my friend has e.revUrision. Ka< h fij, these French 0e:-a';4jsa stiik'r.g individuality of his ov, 11 \ a s!i I could fix upon paper. T7i«-V onlv common point is that each he

a rare good soldier. The corps General > is Athos with a touch of d'Artagnjin. Ho is well over six feet high, bluff, i jovial, with huge, upcurling mousi tache, and a voice that would rally a j regiment. It is >a. grand figure, which I should have been done by Van Dyek I with lace collar hand on sword, and i arm akimbo. Jovial and laughing was j he, but stern and hard soldier was I lurking behind his smiles. His name ! may appear m history, and so may l Humbert's, who rules all the army of ; which the other's corps is a unit. Humi bert is a Lord Roberts figure, small. • wiry, qmck-stepp'ng, all steel and elasJ tic, with a short, s'harp, upturned i moustache, which one could imagine as ! crackling with electricity in moments iof excitement like a cat's fur. What ; he does or says is quick, like pistol i shots at tlrs man or that. Once to ' my horror he fixed me with his hard , little eyes and demanded "Sherlock ■ Holmes, est ce qu'il est un soldat dans j I'armee Anglaise?" The whole table i waited in an awful hush. "Mais, inon i general," I stammered, "II est trop vieux pour service." There was general laughter, and I felt that I had scrambled out of an awkward place.

j And talking of awkward places, I bad i forgotten about that spot upon the ' road whence the Boche observer could ' see our motor-cars. He had actually , laid & gun upon it, the rascal, and ■ waited for our return. No sooner did j we appear upon the slope than a shrap- ■ nel shell burst above us, but somewhat behind me, as well as to the left. Had it- been straight the second car would have got : t, and there might have been a vacancy in one of the chief editorial i chairs in London. The General shoutj ed to the driver to speed up, and tte I 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 actu- ' ally see the cloud over you that your , thoughts come back to yourself, and j that you realise that in this wonder--1 ful drama you may be a useless super. , but none the less you arc on the stage ■ and not in the stalls.

Next morning we were down in the front trenches again at another portion of the l ne. Far away on our right, from a spot named the Observatory, we could sec 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 chateaux, rustic churches, and all as inaccessible as if it were the moon. It is a terrible tiring, 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 fellowcountryman ore 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 ; s no smile upon the grim faces of these Frenchmen? But when the bar is broken, when the line sweeps forward, as most surely jt will —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, <nnd the less so because &he stands so nobly patient waiting for her h-ur.

Vet another type of French Genera! takes us round this morning. He, too, is a man apart, an unforgettable man. Conee ; ve ia 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. His former staff officers told me something of the man. He is a philosopher, a fatalist, impervious to fear, a dreamer of d : stant 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 lie might chance to lunch he had his cloth spread and decorated with wild flowers plucked from the edge. If fate oe kind to h ni he will go far. Apart from his valour, he is admitted to be one of the most scientific sold ; ,ers of Franco. 1' roni 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. Tho word was passed hack to the seventy-lives in the rear. I hero was a tir rapide" over our heads. My word, the man who stands last under a " tr rapide," be he Boche French, or LYitish, is a man of mettl?' The mere passage of the shells was awe. inspiring, at iirst like the screaming of a wintry wind, and then thickening into the howling of a pack of wolves. Tho tivnti! was a line ot terrific explosion-;. Then the dust settled down and all waa still. \\ ere they bur et! beneath it.;' Or bad they got from under;' No one could sai'.

French officers above a certain rank (levelop and show their own individuality. In the lower grades the conditions ol service enforce a certain uniformity. The British officer 'is a British gentleman iirst. and an officer afterwards. The Frenchman : s an offi. cor first, though none th.e less the gentleman stands behind it. One very strange type we met, however, in these Areontie woods. He was a FrenchCanadian who bad been a French soldier, had founded a homestead it* far Alberta, and liaci now come back of Ins oh n will, though a naturalised Briton, to the old flag. He spoke Engl'sh of a kind, the quahty and quantity being equally extraordinary. It poured from him, and was, so far as was intelligible, ol the woolly Western variety Ills views 011 the Germans wore the 1111:- 1 emphatic we bad met. "These Godarn sons ol"—well, let us say "enn■nes! he would shriek, shaking bis h-t at tiie woods to tho north of liirn. \ good man was our compatriot, for he i id a very recent Legion of Honour 1 l ined upon b s breast. He had been 1 with af. w men on Hill 2-5, a sort . yd'-nno stuffed with mines, and was j- •! to telephone when lie needed relic i el used to teh phone and reed there lor three weeks. "Wo s i, like, a rabbit in his hall," he explained. Hi* bad only one criovaneo. I here won l many wild boars in the finest, but the nfantrv wore too busy to /l"t them. "The Godarn Artillaire ho get the wild pig!" Out of his pocket ho pulled a. picture of a frame-house with snow round it, and a woman with two children on the stoop. It was his homestead at Trochu, 70 miles north of Calvary.

rf was the evening of the third day that, we turned our facos to Paris on e

more. It was my last view o£ t!ie French. Tlio 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 tii„t 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 terriffic sp:ritual conflict which is at tlie heart of it. Mine ryes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord l — is trampling out the vineyard where, the grapes of wrath are stored. Wo 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 lino, waiting for a signal to throw themselves upon one another, without knowing that ho has looked upon the most terrific of all the dealings between the creature belo.v and that great force above which works so strangely towards some distant but glorious end?