Etext of Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger
by Alan Seeger
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
Mcmxviii
Published May, 1917

Jeune l‚gionnaire, enthousiaste et ‚nergique, aimant
passionn‚ment la France. Engag‚ volontaire au d‚but des
hostilit‚s, a fait preuve au cours de la campagne d'un entrain et
d'un courage admirables.---Glorieusement tomb‚ le 4 juillet 1916.
(Citation … l'ordre du jour de la Division du Maroc, 25 d‚cembre
1916.)

PREFATORY NOTE

THOSE who have read the published poems of Alan Seeger and
the sympathetic sketch of his life by Mr. William Archer, in his
introduction, cannot have failed to appreciate the motives that led
the young American, in his great love for France and her cause, to
take up arms in her behalf as a common soldier in the ranks of the
Foreign Legion. But it is one thing to yield to a generous impulse
and quite another to adhere faithfully to a high resolve through
wretched and tiresome hours of unaccustomed hardship and
distasteful surroundings. In these pages, written from day to day
and from week to week, unchanged and unpolished by
afterthought, in the endeavor to make them appear nobler and
more consistent than they were when first set down in diary or
intimate letter,---no word will be found, either of complaint, of
wavering or of discouragement. The miseries of life in the
trenches, the exhaustion from long marches, the ennui of inaction,
are related simply and faithfully, but, at the same time, they are
accepted as the inevitable lot of the soldier and borne with
patience pending the arrival of the hour of battle, for which he
longs. Even when cramped in the trenches, this lover of beauty can
take keen pleasure in an occasional glimpse of a picturesque vista
through the cr‚neaux; nor, when his endurance is taxed to the
utmost to hold out until the end of a march that lays low many a
stronger man among his comrades, does he fail to remember and
record the sunlit verdure of the meadows bordering the dusty road
along which he toils, with heavy burden, weary almost to the point
of dropping. In the lonely vigils of sentry duty, during the hours
between night and dawn, when the most courageous feel spirit and
hope at the lowest ebb, he can find consolation in "a kind of
comradeship with the stars."

So a knowledge of the character and life of Alan Seeger would not
be complete without the revelation of patient endurance and
steadfast devotion to an ideal contained in this volume. While they
lend a confirmatory value to his later poems, written during the
same period, they enhance, by contrast, the beauty of his earlier
verse, the product of years when the pleasures of life were his goal,
and danger and self-sacrifice unthought of. One has only to turn
from almost any page of this book, chosen at random, to the
sonnets of "Juvenilia," to discover a new pathos in the lines and to
feel more keenly the extent and nobility of the renouncement.

But these pages tell not merely of strain and trial. There are
glorious moments of exultation in taking part in the mightiest
struggle of history. There is the thrill of the "Marseillaise" and the
weird martial music of the Tirailleurs. There is rejoicing in the
contact with other brave and strong men. There is the pride of
surmounting toil and hardship, which outlasts the suffering. And in
spite of the love of life which endured to the last---inferior only to
his conviction that a life could only be worth living when filled
with the most vivid emotions,---we know that the manner of Alan
Seeger's death was that which he himself had chosen. It threw a
brighter and clearer light upon his word and deed and so dignified
both that they will live the longer for the years that were cut off
from his life on earth. There is solace, too, in the remembrance of
what he had written, when the sight of death had become familiar
and the peril of it imminent:

"Death is nothing terrible after all. It may mean something more
wonderful than life. It cannot possibly mean anything worse to the
good soldier."

CONTENTS

PREFATORY NOTE 
CHAPTER I. SEPTEMBER 27---DECEMBER 4, 1914. 
Drilling at Toulouse. Camp de Mailly. A test of endurance. Sham
battles. Distant cannonade. Vestiges of the recent battle. Vertus.
The march to the front. Hautvilliers. The vineyards of Champagne.
Verzy. Verzenay. A view of Reims. A 55-kilometer march. Fismes.
Cuiry-les-Chaudardes. First days in the trenches. The nightly
fusillades. Camping in the woods. Bulgarian battle hymn. 
CHAPTER II. DECEMBER 8, 1914 
Sentry duty. The r“le of the common soldier. Discomforts and
misery of life in the trenches. The commissariat. The continual
struggle of the artillery. 
CHAPTER III. DECEMBER 14, 1914---JANUARY 11, 1915 
A dangerous position. The trench dugout. Christmas in Cuiry. A
walk to Beaurieux. New Year's Day. Visit to Chaudardes.
Adventure on petit poste. 
CHAPTER IV. FEBRUARY 5, 1915 
The Kaiser's birthday. A desolate village. The ruined chƒteaux. An
empty wine cellar. An immaculate library. The sentinel's
hallucinations. Comforts of a cellar. A coup d'audace. 
CHAPTER V. FEBRUARY 17---MARCH 24, 1915. 
The deadlock. A narrow escape. Varying types of l‚gionnaires. A
promenade. Manoeuvres. The "Marseillaise." 
CHAPTER VI APRIL 15---APRIL 28, 1915. 
Rousseau's "Confessions." Routine of the trenches. Work and
exercises at the rear. Night patrol. Death between the lines.
German letters. Enemies' courtesies. 
CHAPTER VII. MAY 10---JUNE 15, 1915 
The Lusitania. Fus‚es ‚clairantes. The coming of spring. Dangers
of trench life. An impending change of scene. On the march.
Ludes. Puisieulx. The Ferme, d'Alger. La Pompelle. The Aisne
valley. Review of the eight months on the front. 
CHAPTER VIII. JUNE 18---AUGUST 8, 1915 
Magneux. Chƒlons-sur-Vesle. The first line trenches. A quiet
sector. German rejoicings over the news from Russia. Salut in the
village church. The MS at Bruges. Permission in Paris. Back to the
trenches. Belgians and Russians leave the Legion. Departure for
Haute-Sa“ne. Journey in cattle cars. Vesoul. Plancher-Bas. "Le
Cheval Blanc." Pleasant days in the rear. A review at
Chaux-la-Chapelle. The "nouba." General Lyautey. A walk with
Victor Chapman. For love of France. The tragedies of the village. I 
CHAPTER IX. AUGUST 10---SEPTEMBER 24, 1915 
A brigade march. The Ballon de Servance. The view of the Alps.
An improvised band. The Ballon d'Alsace. V‚trigne. In Alsace at
last. Anniversary of enlistment. Return to Plancher, Bas. Alsatian
school-children learn the "Marseillaise." A chance to leave the
Legion. Reviewed by the Pr‚sident de la R‚publique. Departure
from Plancher-Bas. To St.-Hilaire by rail. March to Suippes. Night
work with pick and shovel. The order from Joffre. Violent
cannonade. The great battle imminent. 
CHAPTER X. OCTOBER 4, 1915---APRIL 13, 1916 
The Battle of Champagne. Occupation of the German first line
trenches. Terror-stricken prisoners. Four days under bombardment.
The German second line holds. Failure to break through. The
French soldier contrasted with the German. Review after the
battle. A false report. The unimportance of the individual. In the
rear. A week's permission in Paris. The Ford party. In hospital.
Cong‚ de convalescence.. Biarritz. Recovery of MS from Bruges.
CHAPTER XI. MAY 12---JUNE 28, 1916 
A month in Paris. A view of the invaded country. The death of
Colette. A visit to the German barbed wire. Bellinglise.
Subterranean lodgings. The "Ode to the Memory of the American
Volunteers fallen for France." A forest abode. The welcome colis.
Quiet preceding the Somme offensive. The last sonnet. A hard
march. Leaving for the attack in first wave....
CHAPTER XII CONCLUSION
"Alan Seeger, Class of 1910."  from M.A. DeWolfe Howe,
Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War Against Germany,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920,.

CHAPTER I. SEPTEMBER 27-DECEMBER 4, 1914

Drilling at Toulouse. Camp de Mailly. A test of endurance. Sham
battles. Distant cannonade. Vestiges of the recent battle. Vertus.
The march to the front. Hautvilliers. The vineyards of Champagne.
Verzy. Verzenay. A view of Reims. A 55-kilometer march. Fismes.
Cuiry-les-Chaudardes. First days in the trenches. The nightly
fusillades. Camping in the woods. Bulgarian battle hymn.
.
DIARY

Toulouse, Sunday, September 27, 1914.---Fifth Sunday since
enlistment. The arbor of a little inn on the highroad running east
from Toulouse. Beautiful sunny afternoon. Peace. The stir of the
leaves; noise of poultry in the yards near by; distant church bells,
warm southern sunlight flooding the wide corn-fields and
vineyards.

Everything is ready for departure today. We shall leave tomorrow
or next day for an unknown destination. Some say Antwerp, some
Chƒlons.

TO HIS MOTHER
2me R‚giment Etranger,
Bataillon C, Ire Cie., 3me Section,
TOULOUSE, Sept. 28, 1914.

We are still held up here, though all preparations for departure
have been made and every one expected to be off yesterday. We
are entirely equipped down to our three days' rations and 120
rounds of cartridges. The wagons are all laden and the horses
requisitioned. The suspense is exciting, for no one has any idea
where we shall be sent.

We have been putting in our time here at very hard drilling and are
supposed to have learned in six weeks what the ordinary recruit in
times of peace takes all his two years at. We rise at 5 and work
stops in the afternoon at 5. A twelve hours day at one sou a day. I
hope to earn higher wages than this in time to come but I never
expect to work harder. The early rising hour is splendid, for it
gives one the chance to see the most beautiful part of these
beautiful autumn days in the South. We march up to a lovely open
field on the end of the ridge behind the barracks, walking right into
the rising sun. From this the panorama, spread about on three sides
is incomparably fine,---yellow cornfields, vineyards, harvest-fields
where the workers and their teams can be seen moving about in
tiny figures,---poplars, little hamlets and church-towers, and far
away to the south the blue line of the Pyrenees, the high peaks
capped with snow. It makes one in love with life, it is all so
peaceful and beautiful. But Nature to me is not only hills and blue
skies and flowers, but the Universe, the totality of things, reality as
it most obviously presents itself to us, and in this universe strife
and sternness play as big a part as love and tenderness, and cannot
be shirked by one whose will it is to rule his life in accordance
with the cosmic forces he sees in play about him. I hope you see
the thing as I do and think that I have done well, being without
responsibilities and with no one to suffer materially by my
decision, in taking upon my shoulders, too, the burden that so
much of humanity is suffering under and, rather than stand
ingloriously aside when the opportunity was given me, doing my
share for the side that I think right. . . .

Letters are taking such a long while to come from America now
that I have not much expected to hear from you yet and in fact
have heard nothing since I left London last month. But I ought to
get something soon in answer to my letter from Rouen. I hope it
will show you in good spirits, as you ought to be, for I am playing
a part that I trust you will be proud of. . . .

DIARY

Camp de Mailly, Sunday, October 4.---Left Toulouse Wednesday
at noon. Marched through the streets behind our clairons. Came
here via Limoges, Bourges, Auxerre and Troyes. Beautiful country
last afternoon around Saucerre. Uncomfortable nights.

Mailly apparently was about the furthest point reached by the
Germans before the French success in the battle of the Marne
forced them to retreat. There are numerous vestiges of the recent
battle. Some of the buildings in the village are damaged by shells,
some that we passed yesterday morning in the train completely
demolished. Entrenchments in the fields.

Yesterday we heard cannon for the first time. All day long the
occasional rumble of heavy siege guns came from the direction of
the frontier. The distance must have been 60 or 70 kilometers. This
makes drilling interesting.

Last night two Germans were found in the woods near here by a
patrol. One was dead from hunger and exposure and the other
nearly so. He said the reason they had not surrendered was that
their officers had told them that they would be shot. He said also
that there were thirty or forty others in hiding in the neighborhood.

We are four battalions here, two of the first regiment of the Legion
and two of the second.

Sunday, October 11, 1914.---Very beautiful fall days during the
past week. The atmosphere has been quite clear, revealing the
most distant horizons of the open, rolling, sparsely cultivated
country of this part of France. The first frosts of nights full of stars
have begun to color the trees so that each tufted top stands out
separate in the yellow sunlight that floods out of skies without a
cloud. This weather is unusual; the gray winter days will set in
soon.

Yesterday we took a seven-hour march that made the most demand
on our endurance that has yet been called for. Only one man fell
out, however. We pitched our tents in a high field and went
through the entire exercise of bivouacking, taking our sacks inside
and lying down six men to a tent. I was sure we were preparing to
spend the night, when the order was given to break camp and in a
few minutes all the orderly labor was undone. The company was
then formed in colonnes de demi-section par un and we started
back to camp across country, making a wide detour. The whole
distance was one continuous battlefield. Everywhere were
exploded and unexploded shells. In the woods we came upon
several abandoned French knapsacks but found no bodies, though
the woods are probably full of them still.

This morning comes the unexpected news of the fall of Antwerp.
This is the most important event of the war to date. It means the
entire subjugation of Belgium. The Germans, as far as I can see,
occupy all the territory they have coveted and all that they would
keep in the event of their ultimate victory. It is my idea that they
will now wage a defensive war entirely, limiting themselves to
holding what they have. The impending winter will wonderfully
favor them in this plan of campaign. The strong defensive lines
they have reared on their front will enable them to detach large
forces to cope with the Russians. On the whole, their situation
seems good and the task of the French and English in driving them
back a desperately hard one.

TO HIS MOTHER

Camp de Mailly,

AUBE, France, October 17, 1914.

. . After two weeks here and less than two months from enlistment
we are actually going at last to the firing line. By the time you
receive this we shall already perhaps have had our baptˆme de feu.
We have been engaged in the hardest kind of hard work,---two
weeks of beautiful autumn weather on the whole, frosty nights and
sunny days and beautiful coloring on the sparse foliage that breaks
here and there the wide rolling expanses of open country. Every
day from the distance to the north has come the booming of the
cannon around Reims and the lines along the Meuse. We have had
splendid sham battles, firing dozens of rounds of blank cartridges.
Between the bonds de vingt mŠtres, when we lie on the ground,
resting the sack on one side and with one's ear in the grass, it has
been wonderful to hear this steady pounding of the distant
cannonade.

But imagine how thrilling it will be tomorrow and the following
days, marching toward the front with the noise of battle growing
continually louder before us. I could tell you where we are going
but I do not want to run any risk of having this letter stopped by
the censor. The whole regiment is going, four battalions, about
4,000 men. You have no idea how beautiful it is to see the troops
undulating along the road in front of one in colonnes par quatre as
far as the eye can see with the captains and lieutenants on
horseback at the head of their companies.

I am keeping a diary in a desultory sort of way, but aside from this
I am quite incapable of any such literary effort as you suggest, for
one simply has not the time. Tomorrow the real hardship and
privations begin. But I go into action with the lightest of light
hearts. The hard work and moments of frightful fatigue have not
broken but hardened me and I am in excellent health and spirits.
Do not worry, for the chances are small of not returning and I think
you can count on seeing me at Fairlea next summer, for I shall
certainly return after the war to see you all and recuperate. I am
happy and full of excitement over the wonderful days that are
ahead. It was such a comfort to receive your letter and know that
you approved of my action. Be sure that I shall play the part well
for I was never in better health nor felt my manhood more keenly.

CARTE POSTALE, POSTMARKED VERTUS 20 OCT. 1914

This is the second night's halt of our march to the front. All our
way has been one immense battle-field, little villages that are
nothing but heaps of ruins, fields torn with artillery fire and heaped
with the fresh graves of the soldiers, buried where they fell, a rude
cross above and the k‚pi rouge. It was a magnificent victory for the
French, that the world does not fully realize. I think we are
marching to victory too, but whatever we are going to we are going
triumphantly. Reims is 47 kilometers away, the Germans 15
beyond.

DIARY

Vertus, October 20, 1914.---Made a short morning's walk of 16
kilometers,---still through the great battle-field. The Germans
retreated along the road we marched over. Everywhere in the fields
on either hand were the holes made by the obus and the graves
beside them where the men fell. Extraordinary evidences of the
artillery fire. Pine woods with the branches all ripped to pieces;
large sized trees broken clean off in the middle. Though several
weeks have passed since the battle, the fields are still littered with
d‚bris. Today we passed through the villages of Marsain and
BergŠres. The first was completely destroyed, not a house on the
main street had escaped the fire. Nothing but blackened walls and
here and there the inhabitants standing with sullen faces in their
ruined doorways. The scene of the marching column down the
ruined street,---a scene that will become familiar to us,---was
imposing.

We are in Champagne now and the hillsides, covered with
yellowing vineyards, made lovely landscapes along the road,
although the weather is still gray and melancholy.

Hautvilliers, prŠs d'Epernay.---Made a march Of about 9.8
kilometers. Foggy weather that spoiled the beauties of what would
have been a charming landscape. No more signs of battle;
everywhere the yellow-green vineyards of Champagne. Passed
through Chonilly. Expected to be cantonned in Epernay but kept
on in spite of considerable fatigue to this lovely little village on the
hilltop. Lodged in a most delightful place, a chƒteau which seems
once to have been a cloister, right behind the old church. We are to
sleep in the loft of a barn, where the straw is plentiful. There is a
pleasant terrace-garden here, full of flowers, overlooking the
valley; the view must be beautiful on sunny days. It seems we are
going to Reims tomorrow, or close to it. We are attached to the
cinquiŠme arm‚e. Lots of troops in Epernay; they lined the
sidewalks and watched us pass. Paris autobuses in the streets. All
bridges had been blown up and were replaced by temporary
structures.

Verzy, October 22, 1914.---Made an early start from Hautvilliers
and marched here, a distance of about 30 kilometers, with only
hour halts. A hard walk; a great many fell out from fatigue. Passed
through many villages; the road between Louvois and Verzy, over
wooded hills brilliant with autumn foliage, was particularly lovely.
Passed camps full of African troops; automobiles filled with
officers and autobuses with provisions showed us that we were
approaching the front. During our last halt in the woods the
colonel passed along the lines with a group of officers and three
generals. Shortly afterwards the sergeant returned and announced
the extraordinarily unexpected news that we were to stay in Verzy
till four o'clock and then leave immediately for the trenches that
are only five or ten kilometers beyond here. It is two o'clock now.
We are actually to be under fire then immediately. A cloudy,
dismal day with occasional drizzling rains. No sound of battle
here; everything quiet.

Verzenay, October 23.---Half of the regiment was sent to the
trenches last night, a battalion of the first and a battalion of the
second. Our men slept in Verzy in their harness, that is, wearing
the cartridge belt, with sack and gun at our head. At four we got up
and, assembling, marched here, a distance of only a few
kilometers, where we were billeted again, in a stable at the end of
the Rue Veuve Pommery. On the way we passed lots of wagons
and cavalry. There were three graves by the roadside at a place
Where we stopped, a post above each and a placard reading:
Espion, traitre … son pays.

TO HIS MOTHER

October 23, 1914.

It will surely interest you to get a letter from the front though I
have only time to write a word. I cannot tell you the name of the
village where we are cantonned, for reasons of expediency. We are
about 17 kilometers southeast of Reims. I am sitting on the
curbstone of a street at the edge of the town. The houses end
abruptly and the yellow vineyards begin here. The view is broad
and uninterrupted to the crest, ten kilometers or so across the
valley. Between this and ourselves are the lines of the two armies.
A fierce cannonading is going on continually and I lift my eyes
from the sheet at each report to see the puffs of smoke two or three
miles off. The Germans have been firing salvos of four shots over
a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel
that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with
explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines.
Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go
tonight. We have made a march of about 7.5 kilometers in four
days and are now on the front, ready to be called on at any
moment. I am feeling fine, in my element, for I have always
thirsted for this kind of thing, to be present always where the
pulsations are liveliest. Every minute here is worth weeks of
ordinary experience. How beautiful the view is here, over the
sunny vineyards! And what a curious anomaly. On this slope the
grape pickers are singing merrily at their work, on the other the
batteries are roaring. Boom! Boom!

This will spoil one for any other kind of life. The yellow afternoon
sunlight is sloping gloriously across this beautiful valley of
Champagne. I must mail this now.. There is too much to be said
and too little time to say it. . . .

DIARY

Verzenay, October 25, 1914.---On guard from four to six this
morning. Mitrailleuse and rifle fire from the lines. Our company
assembled this afternoon and we took a fine walk through the
woods on the heights above Verzenay. From the open crests there
were wonderful views across the valley. Reims was plainly visible
in the middle distance, to the northwest. Could see the cathedral
clearly and the church of Saint Remy and the heights at the east of
the town where the Pommery works are and where I stood on an
evening a year ago this summer when I visited Reims with A. G.
The autumn foliage, on the hills, the vineyards on the slopes, the
delicate tints in the eastern sky, all under a pale afternoon sun,
were very beautiful. I think we were going to have some
manoeuvres, but the appearance of some German aeroplanes
coming directly towards us and passing overhead put an end to this
plan. We ended by gathering wood for the kitchen. Afterwards we
sat a long time on the grassy knolls, watching the lines across the
valley. Aeroplanes circled continually overhead on reconnaissance
and were bombarded with shrapnel from the lines below, without
any apparent damage.

Cuiry-les-Chaudardes, Aisne, October 28.---Yesterday our 9me
escouade was waked early and hustled off into the darkness before
the rest. Our sacks were taken and lifted into a wagon; we found
that we were to be the escort of the pack train and the mitrailleuse
section. A long day's march was promised us to counteract the
comfort of marching without sack. It was in fact the hardest day
we have had. We marched with small and few interruptions from
6.30 in the morning to 10.30 at night, in which time we covered
probably about 55 kilometers. No food except the scraps we had in
our musettes. We passed over roads that wind along the southern
slope of the valley where Reims is situated. For miles the city lay
on our right, but passing at the closest not nearer than six or seven
miles I could not see clearly the extent of the damage to the
cathedral. The villages lie close together here; the Prussians had
passed through them all, but we saw no signs of war except at
Marfaux, which had been completely destroyed by fire. Arrived at
Fismes after nightfall and exceedingly fatigued, expected to be
cantonned there, but kept on marching through the town and out
into the dark country again. The cannonade that had been very
violent all the afternoon grew louder as we advanced northward
directly toward the lines. At 10.30 we halted and were told to
spread our blankets in the field beside the road.

I was given sentry duty immediately on arriving and remained in
front of the wagons until midnight. During this time an attack by
one side or the other took place on the lines only a few kilometers
from our encampment. For twenty minutes or so the rifle and
mitrailleuse fire was continuous, broken every few seconds by the
booming of the artillery, while magnesium lights were shot off
from the trenches to light up the battle field. Very impressive in
the darkness. Only a few hours before, a soldier of the 127me had
been telling me at Fismes how his regiment had made such a
charge a couple of days ago and had been practically wiped out,
leaving 700 dead on the field. At midnight I lay down on the wet
ground and managed to get some sleep before three, when we got
up again and continued the march 10 or 12 kilometers to this
wretched village, where we are lodged for the day in a dirty stable.

Here we are just behind the lines. We are resting and go into the
trenches tonight. At last we shall be under fire.

October 29.---Slept here last night, contrary to expectation. We
were all reviewed this morning, in the fields lining the road to
Beaurieux, by the general. He showed the captains a new method
of marching in single columns under artillery fire and we returned
to Cuiry in this formation. Hope to go into the trenches tonight;
they are only four kilometers over the hill from here. We have
come to the point where fighting is the only thing to do. In this
little village there is not a thing to be bought of any kind, not even
a morsel of bread or a drop of wine. We have a foretaste of what
we shall have to go through in the future. All that we shall have to
eat will come from the kitchen of the regiment, and that in small
quantities. The poor will be as well off as the rich and money will
be the most useless thing we carry.

November 4, 1914.---Back in Cuiry again. We marched away a
week ago through the forests under a moonlit sky. The road was
merely a recent clearing through the trees to move the artillery
over and was almost impassably muddy. Arrived at the outer line
of trenches I was sent forward into a little trench in the fields to
stay awake all night with a half-dozen others on sentinel duty. Rien
signal‚. Next day was peaceful and we spent it perfecting the little
bomb-proof shelters along the lines. It was a day well spent, for the
Germans that up to this time had been content to direct their fire
over our heads on the French batteries behind us began now to turn
it on our trenches, informed no doubt by their aeroplanes that
buzzed continually overhead. The salvos of shrapnel began
bursting in the woods all about us and we were compelled to stay
under cover all day long. Darkness would hardly begin before a
fusillade would start from the lines near by, the cry of "Aux armes,
aux tranch‚es!" would run from door to door and we would hasten
out into the night to wait in the muddy ditches while the bullets
whistled about us. But these fusillades would always die out,
provoked probably only by German patrols seeking to discover our
position. After the first experience we were forced to stay up all
night, but later we became used to it and were allowed to go back
to our holes to sleep. In this way we would hustle out into the
darkness four or five times in a single night, at first a little uneasy,
but in the end only bothered. In the daytime we slept, oblivious to
the shells that burst around us. Cannon of all calibre and at all
distances---occasional rifle fire and mitrailleuses---continual
whirring of aeroplanes overhead---whistle of passing
shells---peculiar report of those bursting high in the air, directed
against the aeroplanes.

Four days and four nights of this, in which our company lost two
killed and nine wounded. Van der Veldt was killed instantly by a
shrapnel ball in the doorway of his hut, only 15 or 20 yards from
ours. The position of our trenches was the border of a wood facing
the crest where the little village of Craonnelle is situated.
Returning here we had a day of repose and then spent the last two
at hard labor, digging trenches behind the outer lines. Tonight we
go up into the woods again, it seems, this time not to the first line
but as reserve. The company that relieved us has had a hard time,
they say, and has already lost four killed.

November 10, 1914.---Fifth day of our second period in the
trenches. Five days and nights of pure misery. We came up here
Thursday evening, a foggy, moonlit night, bright enough to show
the fields through which we ascended, spattered with shell-holes as
thick as molehills, and the pine woods full of shattered trunks and
broken branches. The Germans had been trying to destroy the
Chƒteau des Blancs Sablons, below which our kitchens are
situated, but by some miracle it has escaped. It is here that the
‚tat-major is lodged. Our position this time has been a claypit on a
high summit above the chƒteau. Owing to its exposed and
dangerous character very formidable bombproofs have been built
at this point of the line. To these we have been confined for five
days from morning to night. A big hole here in the pit, a few yards
from our door, marks the place where three men of Bataillon D
were killed by a shell only a few days before our arrival. We
expected a heavy bombardment, but five days of continuous fog
have made the firing very infrequent, though we have heard heavy
cannonading at other points of the line. A brancardier was killed a
few days ago and there have been a few wounded. It is a miserable
life to be condemned to, shivering in these wretched holes, in the
cold and the dirt and semidarkness. It is impossible to cross the
open spaces in daylight, so that we can only get food by going to
the kitchens before dawn and after sundown. The increasing cold
will make this kind of existence almost insupportable, with its
accompaniments of vermin and dysentery. Could we only attack or
be attacked ! I would hear the order with delight. The real courage
of the soldier is not in facing the balls, but the fatigue and
discomfort and misery. Tonight we are to be relieved, but whether
we are going back to Cuiry or just to the last line of trenches down
by the chƒteau I don't know. What a winter's prospect if our
campaigning is only going to be to alternate between these two
phases of inaction and discomfort!

TO HIS FATHER

November 12, 1914.

I am writing you from our encampment in the woods, a few miles
behind the firstline trenches, from which we have just returned for
the fifth time. We usually go to a little village where the
headquarters of our regiment are, but the Germans bombarded this
at long range a few days ago and seem to have done considerable
damage. The church has been knocked down and about thirty were
killed among the population and the, artillerymen quartered there.
A shell entered the hay-loft where we had slept only a few days
before, killed five and wounded thirteen. So we are camping in the
forest now in a big dugout that we have helped to build in other
periods of so-called repose.

This is what is distressing about the kind of warfare we are up
against---being harried like this by an invisible enemy and standing
up against all the dangers of battle without any of its exhilaration
or enthusiasm. From Belfort to the sea now it is the guerre des
tranch‚es. I have tried to describe a little what this means in an
article that I have managed to accomplish amid the worst of
conditions for writing and which I will send you when it appears.
In comparison with it a bayonet charge would be desirable and the
command welcome to us all.

I am glad to hear that Mother does not worry too much. You
probably can follow things well enough to know that I have not
been in the North, where the losses have been heavy, but in the
center where there has been more or less of a deadlock since the
battle of the Marne, and the infantry has not figured much except
as artillery support. As long as this condition lasts the danger is
very slight and it may last all winter. If it does it will be more to
your satisfaction than mine. . .

TO HIS MOTHER

November 17, 1914.

I haven't seen any more of the little cards I sent you, so I will write
a few lines to let you know that I am well and take the risk of the
letter getting through. As you may see by the stationery, I have
already received the valise and the contents were most welcome. It
arrived by the wagon while we were camping in the woods. I just
had time to mark the things, to transfer what I could carry to my
sack and give the rest to comrades. Thaw took the zarape; I had a
good blanket already. It was out of the question to carry the extra
weight; you see all the property we now have must go on our backs
on the marches and the weight would astonish you a little could
you lift it. I am now well equipped for any weather. Yesterday we
had our first flurry of snow, so you see how opportunely the things
arrived. . . .

Unfortunately I left my MS. with a printer in Bruges, which is now
in the hands of the Germans and the center of the fiercest fighting.
After the war I shall return there and look it up. And then I shall
think of America again. With my volume and my m‚daille
comm‚morative I fancy I should have enough to account for my
European visit in point of thought and action. This experience will
teach me the sweetness and worth of the common things of life.
The world will be more beautiful to me in consequence. So wait
and count on my being with you next summer.

DIARY

December 4, 1914.---Back in the same trenches. Matters have
improved here. A well-to-do fermier sends a fourgon in to Fismes
every few days, which brings back abundant provisions that the
soldiers can buy at moderate prices. In this way we were able to
fill our sacks with chocolate and canned stuff in sufficient quantity
to tide us over the six days. The trenches have been much
improved by the last section. The roof has been made water-tight,
more barbed wire has been strung in front, and the earth out of the
deepened ditches has been piled round the walls, making the
dugout much warmer. By stuffing the cr‚neaux with straw we are
now allowed to make fires at night, so we can heat our gamelles
and lie down to sleep in a warm atmosphere. This emplacement is
on the whole the pleasantest of any we have been in. The dugout is
not uncomfortable now, for we have widened it sufficiently and
covered the earth deep with straw; the view in front through the
cr‚neaux is very cheerful, a broad field and orchard stretching
from our position to the crest; behind is a little stream in the
woods where we can wash, and there is a spring. close to a ruined
mill where we can fill our canteens. Here there is a post of the 73d
regiment and one can fraternize with the soldiers and hear the
narratives of men who have been in the thick of it since the
beginning of the war. We went on a patrol a few nights ago,
advanced well in front of the lines and walked to the outskirts of
Craonnelle, where we entered an old barn and brought back
armfuls of straw for the dugout.

CHOUMU MARITZA

Choumu Maritza okrvavena 
Platch‚ oudovitza 
Liouto remiena.
Marche, marche, 
Zarigrade ie nache. 
Raz, dva, trie, 
Mladu boulgarie.
Boulgari mili
Napred da vrvim
Ca svitchku cili,
Gueneral ie c nac
Marche, marche, etc.
(Translation)

Coule Maritza ensanglant‚e, 
Les veuves pleurent 
GriŠvement bless‚es.
Marche, marche, 
Constantinople est … nous. 
Un, deux, trois, 
Jeunes Bulgares.
Chers Bulgares
Nous devons avancer
Avec toutes nos forces, 
Notre g‚n‚ral est avec nous.
Marche, marche, etc.

This is the Bulgarian national hymn. My camarade d'armes
Hulmaja taught it to me and we used to sing it on the marches
around Mailly and coming here to the front. He wrote this out for
me one day in the trenches and I wrote for him four stanzas of the
"Marseillaise."

CHAPTER II  DECEMBER 8, 1914

Sentry duty. The r“le of the common soldier. Discomforts and
misery of life in the trenches. The commissariat. The continual
struggle of the artillery.

TO THE "NEW YORK SUN"

December 8, 1914.

This is our fourth period of service in the trenches since coming to
the front a month ago. We left our camp in the woods down by the
chƒteau before daybreak this morning and marched up the hill in
single file under the winter stars. Passing the second line trenches,
we walked for some time down a road, torn up here and there with
shell holes and obstructed now and then with shattered trees.
Through openings in the woods we could see that we were
marching along a high ridge and on either hand vaporous depths
and distances expanded, the darkness broken sometimes by a far
light or the momentary glow of a magnesium rocket sent up from
the German lines.

There is something fascinating if one is stationed on sentry duty
immediately after arrival in watching the dawn slowly illumine
one of these new landscapes from a position taken up under cover
of darkness. The other section has been relieved and departs, we
are given the consigne by the preceding sentinel and are left alone
behind a mound of dirt facing the north and the blank, perilous
night. Slowly the mystery that it shrouds resolves as the gray light
steals over the eastern hills. Like a photograph in the washing its
high lights and shadows come gradually forth. The light splash in
the foreground becomes a ruined chƒteau, the gray streak a
demolished village.

The details come out on the hillside opposite, where the silent
trenches of the enemy are hidden a few hundred meters away. We
find ourselves in a woody, mountainous country, with broad
horizons and streaks of mist in the valleys. Our position is
excellent this time, a high crest, with open land sloping down from
the trenches and plenty of barbed wire strung along immediately in
front. It would be a hard task to carry such a line, and there is not
much danger that the enemy will try.

With increasing daylight the sentinel takes a sheltered position and
surveys his new environment through little gaps where the mounds
have been creneIlated and covered with branches. Suddenly he
starts as a metallic bang rings out from the woods immediately
behind him. It is the unmistakable voice of a French 75 starting the
day's artillery duel. By the time the sentinel is relieved, in broad
daylight, the cannonade is general all along the line. He surrenders
his post to a comrade and crawls down into his bombproof dugout
almost reluctantly for the long day of inactive waiting has
commenced.

Rather than imitate my comrades, who are filling the chamber with
all the various noises of profound slumber, I shall try to while
away some of its tedium by giving you a description of the life of a
volunteer in the French army at one of the least exciting points of
the present front---that is the mid-centre.

After the brilliant French victory in the battle of the Marne, the
Germans, defeated in their attack on Paris, fell back to a line about
midway between the capital and the frontier and intrenched
themselves strongly along the crests well to the north of the River
Aisne. The French, following close on their heels, took up
whatever positions, they could find or win immediately behind and
sat down no less strongly fortified along a line separated from that
of the enemy by distances of usually only a few hundred meters. A
deadlock ensued here, and the theatre of critical activity shifted to
the north, where the issue is still at stake in the tremendous battle
for the possession of the seaboard and the base for an enveloping
movement which may be decisive. Toward the east the operations
have become pretty much confined to the artillery, pending the
result of the fighting in the north, which must be decided before an
advance can be undertaken by either side on other points of the
line.

True, occasionally a violent fusillade to the right or left of us
shows that attacks are being made and at any moment are likely to
be made, but these are only local struggles for position, and in
general the infantry on the centre are being utilized only to support
the long line of batteries that all along this immense front are
harrying each other at short distances across field and forest and
vineyard.

This style of warfare is extremely modern and for the artillerymen
is doubtless very interesting, but for the poor common soldier it is
anything but romantic. His r“le is simply to dig himself a hole in
the ground and to keep hidden in it as tightly as possible.
Continually under the fire of the opposing batteries, he is yet never
allowed to get a glimpse of the enemy. Exposed to all the dangers
of war, but with none of its enthusiasms or splendid ‚lan, he is
condemned to sit like an animal in its burrow and hear the shells
whistle over his head and take their little daily toll from his
comrades.

The winter morning dawns with gray skies and the hoar frost on
the fields. His feet are numb, his canteen frozen, but he is not
allowed to make a fire. The winter night falls, with its prospect of
sentry duty and the continual apprehension of the hurried call to
arms; he is not even permitted to light a candle, but must fold
himself in his blanket and lie down cramped in the dirty straw to
sleep as best he may. How different from the popular notion of the
evening campfire, the songs and good cheer.

Cramped quarters breed ill temper and disputes. The impossibility
of the simplest kind of personal cleanliness makes vermin a
universal ill, against which there is no remedy. Cold, dirt,
discomfort, are the ever present conditions, and the soldier's life
comes to mean to him simply the test of the most misery that the
human organism can support. He longs for an attack, to face the
barbed wire and the mitrailleuse, anything for a little freedom and
function for body and soul.

My comrade in arms is a young Servian, who went through all the
Balkan campaign until the war broke out with the Bulgarians.
Then he deserted at Salonica, for he was unwilling to fight against
his brother people, and his mother too was a Bulgarian. After the
triumphs of the campaign in Macedonia the present method of
fighting, is almost insupportable to him, and he frets pitiably under
the forced inaction. In the Balkans there was no fighting behind
earthworks, but all was in the open field and at the point of the
bayonet, and seldom did the Turks await the fury of the shock.

In the evening there was no lying down in the cold and darkness,
but around blazing campfires the soldiers sang the ancient
victorious p‘ans of their people and danced their national dances.
Sometimes they would kindle a big bonfire at some distance from
their camp and keep only a lot of little fires among themselves.
The Turks would bombard the big fire all night, but around the
little ones the soldiers would be left in peace. In the squalor and
darkness of our subterranean quarters he tells me often of the
glories of those days and of the wonderful exploits of his people
---the onslaught at Kumanovo and the charge at Dibra, where he
was shot through the body and laid up in hospital for a month and
a half.

It is ignoble, this style of warfare, he exclaims. Instead of bringing
out all that is noble in a man it brings out only his worse
self---meanness and greed and ill temper. We are not, in fact,
leading the life of men at all, but that of animals, living in holes in
the ground and only showing our heads outside to, fight and to
feed.

Amid the monotony of this kind of existence the matter of eating
assumes an importance altogether amusing to one who gives it
only very secondary consideration in time of peace. It is in fact the
supreme if not the only event of the day. In France the soldier is
very well cared for in this respect. In cantonment and under all
normal conditions he receives ordinarily coffee and an ample day's
ration of good bread the first thing in the morning; then at 10 and
at 5 he is served with soup, meat and a vegetable, excellently
cooked, coffee and wine, not to mention such little occasional
luxuries as chocolate, confitures, brandy, etc.

In the trenches this programme is necessarily modified by the
distance from the kitchens and the impossibility of passing back
and forth in daylight on account of the artillery fire. When we first
came to the trenches we made the mistake of having our kitchen
too near in the woods. Whether it was the smoke that gave it away
or one of the hostile aeroplanes that buzz continually over our
heads the Germans soon found its range and with one man killed
and half a dozen wounded the cooking brigade was forced to move
back to the chƒteau and take up its quarters at a point in the woods
at three or four kilometers from the line of the trenches.

Since then the matter of ravitaillement is arranged as follows:
every morning at 3 o'clock a squad of men leaves the trenches and
returns before daybreak with the day's provisions---bread and
coffee, cheese and preserved foods, such as cold meat, pƒt‚s,
sardines, etc. The ration is very small, but the nature of life in the
trenches is not such as to sharpen one's appetite. In the evening
another squad leaves immediately after sundown. Every one waits
eagerly to hear the clink of the pails returning in the dark. It is a
good meal, a soup, or stew of some kind, as hot as can be expected
in view of the distance from the kitchen fires, coffee and wine, and
we all gather about with our little tins for the distribution.

These nightly trips to the kitchen are sometimes a matter of
considerable difficulty, for frequent changes of position often find
us unfamiliar with the course of the paths through the woods,
which are newly cut, impassably muddy and ill defined.
Notwithstanding the danger of going astray in swamp and thicket
and the labor of bringing back a heavy load in the dark it is
considered a privilege to be assigned to this duty because it gives a
little activity to relieve the day's tedium. Single file, with rifle
strapped to shoulders, we flounder on, wet to the ankles, the black
forest all around, each man carrying half a dozen canteens besides
his other burdens. Our water comes from a spring down by the
chƒteau.

To supplement the regular rations with little luxuries such as
butter, cheese, preserves and especially chocolate is a matter that
occupies more of the young soldier's thoughts than the invisible
enemy. Our corporal told us the other day that there wasn't a man
in the squad who wouldn't exchange his rifle for a jar of jam. It is
true that we think more about securing these trifles than, we do
about keeping our rifles clean. Nor is it an easy matter to get such
things. The country where we are now has been thoroughly fought
over, so that the poor inhabitants and their stocks of goods have
suffered severely from the continual passing of troops in action.
The countryside is stripped as a field by locusts.

In the village where we are billeted during our intervals of rest
between periods in the trenches there is not a thing to be had for
any price. Our pocket money is so much waste paper. By sending
to remote towns, paying commissions and exorbitant prices, one
can manage to get a few things. Once in the trenches these articles
are precious beyond gold. In the course of bartering services are
paid for in chocolate, for money is held as worthless for wages.

Though modern warfare does not allow us to think more about
fighting than eating, still we do not actually forget that we are on a
battle line. Ever over our heads goes on the precise and scientific
struggle of the artillery. Packed elbow to elbow in these obscure
galleries one might be content to squat all day long, auditor of the
magnificent orchestra of battle, were it not that one becomes so
soon habituated to it that it is no longer magnificent. We hear the
voices of cannon of all calibres and at all distances. We learn to
read the score and distinguish the instruments. Near us are field
batteries; far away are siege guns. Over all there is the
unmistakable, sharp, metallic twang of the French 75, the whistle
of its shell and the lesser report of its explosion. When the German
batteries answer the whistle and explosion outdistance the voice of
the cannon.

When one hears the sifflement the danger has already passed. The
shells which burst immediately overhead and rattle on the roof of
our bombproof dugout come unheralded. Sometimes they come
singly, sometimes in rapid salvos of two or three or four.
Shrapnel's explosive report is followed by the whiz of the flying
balls. Contact shells or marmites explode more impressively, so
that the earth trembles. Shrapnel shatters trees and snaps good
sized trunks as if they were twigs; contact shells dig holes eight or
ten feet across all over fields. When lines are close, as ours are
now, sniping goes on all the time, especially from the German
side. At night sometimes a violent fusillade will bring us to arms;
out of our burrows we tumble to find the hillsides ablaze with the
Bengal lights from the German trenches, where our enemies are as
alert and mystified and uneasy as we are.

None of these alarms has come to anything where we were, but we
hear prolonged roars of rifle fire, punctuated with steady booming
of artillery, from the line alongside us sometimes, which make us
realize that a desperate attack is always possible.

In clear weather aeroplanes buzz overhead all day long. Both sides
bombard at them with shrapnel, which makes a queer little whir
when it explodes high in the air. Never have I seen the lines bring
an airman down, for the puffs of yellow smoke break too low, and
high up in the clouds the machine goes humming on,
contemptuously dropping its signal fuses. A few days ago I did see
a German aeroplane sent to the ground by a French monoplane.

We were in camp in the woods behind the lines when the familiar
outline of a Taube against the winter sky drove us into hiding in
our cabin. Suddenly, without having noticed its approach, I saw a
French aeroplane close with its enemy. There was the popping
volley of a mitrailleuse and the wounded German machine dipped
abruptly and came down in a long volplane, but I could not see
whether the pilot had height enough to make his own lines before
his wheels struck the ground.

It is toward evening that the cannonade is .always fiercest. With
darkness it almost completely subsides. Then the sleepy soldiers,
cramped and dishevelled, crawl out of their holes, rouse
themselves, stretch their legs and take the air. Everybody turns out
like factory workmen at 5 o'clock. The kitchen squad departs,
others set to work repairing smashed defensive earthworks and the
night's first sentinels go on.

Sentry duty, which may be all that is melancholy if the night is bad
and the winter wind moans through the pines, may bring moments
of exaltation if the cloud banks roll back, if the moonlight breaks
over the windless hills or the heavens blaze with the beauty of the
northern stars. It has been so for the last few nights, since I
commenced these notes. A cold wave has frozen all the bad ways;
a light snow has fallen and at night the moonlight flooding out of a
frosty sky illumines all the wide landscape to its utmost horizons.
In the hollow the white shell and chimneys of the ruined chƒteau
stand out among the black pine groves; on the crest opposite one
can trace clear as in daylight the groves and walls and roadways
among which wind the silent and uncertain lines of the enemy's
trenches.

Standing facing them from his ramparts the sentinel has ample
time for reflection. Alone under the stars, war in its cosmic rather
than its moral aspect reveals itself to him. Regarded from this
more abstract plane the question of right and wrong disappears.
Peoples war because strife is the law of nature and force the
ultimate arbitrament among humanity no less than in the rest of
the universe. He is on the side he is fighting for, not in the last
analysis from ethical motives at all, but because destiny has set
him in such a constellation. The sense of his responsibility is
strong upon him. Playing a part in the life of nations he is taking
part in the largest movement his planet allows him.

He thrills with the sense of filling an appointed necessary place in
the conflict of hosts, and facing the enemy's crest above which the
Great Bear wheels upward to the zenith, he feels, with a sublimity
of enthusiasm that he has never before known, a kind of
companionship with the stars!

Six days is the regular period for service in the trenches under
normal conditions. Often enough it seems close to the limit of
physical and moral strain which a man can bear. The last night the
company packs up its belongings and either in the twilight of
evening or dawn assembles and waits for the shadowy arrival of
the relieving sections, to whom the position is surrendered without
regret. We march back over the wretched roads and pass our three
days' interval of so-called rest either billeted in the stables and
haylofts of the village or encamped in the woods around the
chƒteau.

In bad weather the first is the more agreeable, for one has a tight
roof over his head, can wash, and fraternize with the artillerymen
and the soldiers of other regiments. But if the skies are clear it is
pleasant to camp by the chƒteau, where a steep hillside in the
forest is covered with the rude little cabins that the soldiers put up
when the leaves were still on the branches. Here one may make
fires at will, and at nightfall, with the smell of wood smoke and
the twinkle of lights among the trees, the conditions of life in the
army come closer to what we imagined they would be when we
enlisted.

Such then is the part that has been assigned us in our first month of
field service---a not very active part so far but one which novelty
has made interesting. How long will it continue? What change will
the future bring us? This is the most frequent subject of surmise
and discussion in trench and cantonment. If our winter is to be
nothing but a series of alternations between the discomforts of
crowded dugout and squalid village there is not one of us who
would not be glad to be shifted immediately to the north to bear all
the rigors of an open campaign in order to share some of its action.
But if victory in the north determines an advance all along the line
it will be as well to be at this point as at any other.

North of us, behind the bristling crest, the frontier is not far.
Between and directly on our road is the cathedral city on the hill.
Little more than a year ago I walked in its ancient streets and from
its lofty ramparts in the shade of its cluster of Gothic towers,
looked off eastward at twilight over the broad, beautiful landscape.
To dream of re-entering this city as we would re-enter it has filled
many a night's watch. The crest opposite us would have been
carried at the point of the bayonet, our ranks would have been
thinned, but the flag would still wave in the undulating line of blue
and red as it winds up the hillside to the town and rolls through the
antique gateway, and our officers would look never so gallant
riding at the head of each battle-worn company.

The midwinter afternoon would bathe in ruddy splendor the
beautiful towers and flag bedecked balconies. From the, one would
peal forth the thunder of welcoming bells, from the other the
acclamation of thousands. The army of deliverance, we would
enter the narrow streets of the ancient city, the first stage of our
long victorious advance would be accomplished, and amid the
benedictions of a ransomed people our hearts would dilate with
that supreme emotion that life can offer, that emotion idealized on
the fields of France, of her revolution and empire, whose name is
that of the winged figure that her soldiers love to picture at the
head of their victorious battalions---la Gloire!

CHAPTER III  DECEMBER 14, 1914---JANUARY 11, 1915

A dangerous position. The trench dugout. Christmas in Cuiry. A
walk to Beaurieux. New Year's Day. Visit to Chaudardes.
Adventure on petit poste.

TO THE "NEW YORK SUN"

December 14, 1914.

We have been camping in the woods for the last three days. These
intervals of rest between our periods of service in the trenches are
usually passed in cantonment at X-----, a few kilometers behind the
lines. During our last absence the Germans got its range well and
bombarded at long distance across the hills. The precision of their
fire seems to have astonished those who witnessed it. At half past
10 at night the shells began to fall on the peaceful little village.
When they ceased thirty soldiers and inhabitants bad been killed.

In the hayloft where we had slept a few nights before a marmite
crashed through the roof and killed five outright and wounded
thirteen of our comrades of another company. So we did not return
to X----- this time. Those who remained in the village spent their
time pulling down what was left of the church tower, whose
peaked belfry, showing across the ridge, gave away the position of
our headquarters to the hostile batteries. We halted half way and
went into camp in a huge bombproof hut in the sand under the
bleak branches of the winter forest.

This morning we came back to the trenches for the sixth time. I
happen to have kept track of our periods of trench duty (though I
have lost count of the days of the week and month), but there is
really nothing to distinguish this from the other stages of the
monotonous existence that this guerre des tranch‚es imposes upon
us at present. Once more the reveil in the dark, the hasty packing
and departure, the march out of the woods and up the hillside, this
time under the last quarter of the last moon of the year. A screen of
driven clouds pales its radiance and hides the stars.

Crest after crest the forested hills spread out beneath and around
us in the vast twilight. A pine grove crowns the ridge that we are
mounting under cover of darkness. We have been told that the
position we are going to occupy is one of extreme danger from
artillery fire. It is not the gruesome recitals of the ambulance men
that make us believe it. It is not the riven branches nor the
craterlike holes half full of rain water in the fields. On the border
of the grove are the, fresh graves of our comrades. They have
written the soldiers' names on the bars of the little crosses; on the
poles droop their red k‚pis.

The section to be relieved is waiting for us in the shadow of the
pine grove. Once more the hasty transfer, the descent into the
black dugout, the jostling and disputes as the men get placed in the
dark. A chill wind sweeps through the underground gallery. Some
one strikes a match and tries to rekindle with straw from the floor
the embers that smoulder here and there in holes picked out of the
wall. The sergeant stops him before he has gone very far. It will
soon be daylight, when no blue smoke must be seen curling out of
the pine trees.

And while we are getting settled a brusque voice of command calls
in through the doorway. Formally forbidden to go out during the
day. It is a sinister confirmation of the reports of the peril of our
situation. Certainly, shivering here in the unfamiliar dark, the
prospect of the six days before us is not cheerful.

Guerre des tranch‚es! What is it that this word "trench" conveys to
those who read it continually in the war bulletins---those who are
disinterested, with curiosity; those whose hearts are at the front,
with anguish? Probably much of what it would have conveyed to
me before the war---a kind of open irrigation ditch where the
soldiers had to fight up to their knees in water, how they slept and
how they ate being questions I did not ask myself. Certainly the
condition of the combatants is not anything like this, yet on the
other hand the comfort and elaborate construction of some of these
works of defence, such as I have seen them described by soldiers
in their letters home, are of examples which I at least have never
had the good fortune to inhabit.

The typical trench dugout resembles catacombs more than
anything else. A long gallery is cut in the ground with pick and
shovel. Its dimensions are about those of the cages which Louis
XI. devised for those of his prisoners whom he wished especially
to torture, that is, the height is not great enough to permit a man to
stand up and the breadth does not allow him to stretch out. Down
the length of one curving wall the soldiers sit huddled, pressed
close, elbow to elbow. They are smoking, eating morsels of dry
bread or staring blankly at the wall in front of them. Their legs are
wrapped in blankets, their heads in mufflers.

Slung or piled about them, filling every inch of extra space, are
rifles, sacks, cartridge belts and other equipment. A villainous
draught sweeps by. Tobacco smoke and steaming breath show how
swiftly it drives through. The floors are covered with straw, in
which vermin breed. The straw is always caked with mud left by
boots which come in loaded down and go out clean. To get new
straw we sometimes make a patrol in the night to the outskirts of a
ruined village in front of our lines and take what we need from a
deserted stable. It is our most exciting diversion just now.

The roof of the dugout is built by laying long logs across the top of
the excavation; felling trees for these coverings occupies a large
part of our rest intervals. On the completeness with which these
beams are covered with earth depends the comfort and safety of
the trench. Wicker screens are often made and laid across the logs,
sods are fitted over the screens so as to make a tight covering and
then loose earth is thrown back on top. This is an effective
protection against all but the heaviest shells. If the roof is badly
made, out of branches, for instance, the rain drips through and
makes life even more miserable inside.

Where the lines run close together the soldiers sleep in the simple
trenches and fire through small holes in the wall of the combined
trench and dugout. Generally there is room to build the trenches
out in front of the dugout or alongside. There is a section of a
company of infantry for each trench, and between the trenches
there are deep communication ditches.

A squad has stayed behind in the woods to bring us the day's
provisions. Before daylight it arrives and the distribution takes
place. Great loaves of bread are handed down the line; each man
takes his ration of half a loaf. There is one box of sardines for each
two men. A cup of coffee, a small piece of cheese, a bar of
chocolate must last us all day, until darkness permits another
squad to leave the trench to go down after the evening soup. After
food comes mail. Too much praise cannot be given the
Government for handling the soldiers' mail so well. There are daily
distributions on the firing line.

The short winter day has dawned. Its feeble light falls through the
narrow doorways and all is now clear in the crowded dugout. The
sound of voices grows less and less as the men fold themselves
into their blankets, and one by one, tired out by the night watch, go
off to sleep. I never could do this and have always fought against
sleepiness in the morning. For with our life of darkness and chill I
find a little sunlight, even if all I can get is through a narrow
dugout door, is indispensable for the brightening of one's hours of
reflection. I usually wait until the first cheee-pann-pann-pann! of
the shrapnel bursting overhead marks the opening of the
artilleryman's working day before I tumble off to sleep.

The smell of the wicker screens and the branches in the dirt on top
of the trench reminds me of Christmas odors in American houses
decorated with green things for the holidays. Then the smell of
powder from the shrapnel kills the holiday reminder. I dare say
Christmas will pass here without any change in our style of life.
The insolent crest across the valley will still stand up, inviting steel
to come and take it, and we shall go on waiting as patiently as we
can for the day when we shall be ordered to advance against the
shell and steel of the invisible enemy.

It will be a happy day for all of us, for uncomfortable inaction has
more terrors than shell and steel.

DIARY

December 22, 1914.---Returned to Cuiry after five days in
trenches. Will be here, it seems, until Christmas. Great things
seem to be brewing. Rumors of a general advance in preparation.
Last night a violent cannonade and rifle fire all along the line,---the
first about eight o'clock, the second at midnight just after I had
come in from guard. Hope this means business.

Went to a farm near by today and, waiting for coffee to be heated,
missed rassemblement of company at noon. May get into trouble
for this later but it has given me at least a free afternoon. An
afternoon of memorable beauty; mild, sunny weather and loveliest
blue skies. Sitting enjoying it on a pile of betteraves in the field
behind Cuiry. It is so seldom one can get off by oneself to have a
little solitude and time for uninterrupted reflection. I shall never
forget the beauty of this winter landscape, the delicate skies, the
little villages under their smoking roofs. Am feeling perfectly
happy and contented. This life agrees with me; there will be war
for many years to come in Europe and I shall continue to be a
soldier as long as there is war.

December 31, 1914.---Spent a unique and agreeable kind of
Christmas in Cuiry, brightened by thoughtful friends in Paris, who
sent us all packages laden with everything good to eat and wear.
Christmas Day itself was one of the most beautiful of cold winter
days. Rose early and walked up to the farm over the frost-whitened
hillside. Hot coffee and bread. Beauty of dawn, white landscape
and steaming village. Pleasure of opening packages and reading
letters in the hayloft. After morning soup, rassemblement and
march off to work.

But I played truant again and slipping off with gun slung over
shoulder walked alone (not without considerable risk) to
Beaurieux. The soldier to whom I had given my wash the week
before had been moved to Beaurieux, and as it was absolutely
necessary to have the change of clothing, I had to be so far
unscrupulous. Beautiful walk through the sunny fields.
Accomplished object in Beaurieux and enjoyed walking about
town, buying the few little things that were to be bought and
talking to soldiers of other regiments. Home at sundown. Heated
plum-pudding and made hot chocolate after supper and stayed up
late talking in candle-lit loft.

January 5, 1915.---We left the Moulin trenches and marched back
to Cuiry on New Year's eve. Spent a pleasant four days there. On
New Year's Day we rose before daybreak and the whole section
was marched off to take a bath. We walked to Maizy and then
turned off down the Canal de l'Aisne. At a point several miles
beyond where the poteaux read about 16 kilometers to
Berry-au-Bac and 34 to Soissons we came to a big sugar refinery.
Here were excellent facilities for bathing and each man had a fine
hot shower and the cold water hose turned on him afterwards if he
wished. In a barge moored on the canal-side a woman sold us hot
coffee and bread too. This little excursion was a pleasant diversion
taking us for a moment out of the narrow circumscription we had
been moving in for the past two months.

I had always been anxious to visit the little neighboring town of
Chaudardes, whose picturesque belfry peeps up over the hillside
only a few kilometers to the east. This was a good occasion and so
in the afternoon, which was one of lovely skies and mild weather, I
walked over. The little church proved to be exquisite both in line
and in the patina of the old stones. It had not been desecrated
either, like the poor little church at Cuiry, where the legionaries
are quartered regularly now, sleeping in the pews, eating off the
altar and raising a laugh sometimes by going through vulgar
mockeries of the Catholic ritual. On the contrary, all was neat and
well kept up inside. There was no one there when I entered except
a soldier of the 36me, who was playing very well on the little
organ. I sat long and listened to him in the peace and quiet of the
little white-washed interior.

Wandering about the village later I came across another soldier in
a black sweater with an American flag pinned to it. I remarked in
accosting him that it was the drapeau de mon pays and by so doing
made a charming afternoon acquaintance. It appears that the man,
who was an Alsatian, had become liable to military service in the
French army in some way, but going to the United States when he
was 14 had escaped doing it. He was given amnesty, however, on
condition of being mobilizable in case of war. Travelling on the
Continent therefore at the outbreak of hostilities, he went
immediately to his d‚p“t at Caen when the order to mobilize came
out and became incorporated in the 36me de ligne. He was made
cook for the sous-officiers' mess, in which capacity he was serving
when I met him. He took me around to the kitchen and, seeing that
his battalion was leaving for the trenches that evening and soup
was early on that account, he made me stop and gave me a warm
meal before returning to Cuiry. He gave me all kinds of provisions
too and took me over to a ferme, where I met a young sergeant
who spoke English well. We had coffee together and he told me all
kinds of anecdotes about the experiences of the 36me. I returned to
Cuiry at sundown.

To HIS FATHER

January 11, 1915.

After weeks of inaction in trenches where the danger of attack was
slight and there was nothing worse to be feared than the constant
artillery fire, our company was moved last time into the little
village of C-----, the most dangerous part of the sector we are
holding, where the line runs too close under the crest occupied by
the Germans to be menaced by bombardment but where the patrols
come down every night and harass our outposts in the most
nerve-racking kind of warfare. Four days almost without sleep,
constant assignment to petit poste, sometimes 12 out of 24 hours
on guard in the most dangerous positions. It was in one of these
that I came for the first time in immediate contact with the enemy
in a most unfortunate affair. I was standing guard under the wall of
a chƒteau park with a comrade when a patrol sneaked up on the
other side and threw a hand grenade over, which sputtered a
moment at our feet and went out without exploding. Without
crying to arms, I left the other sentry on the spot and walked down
to the petit poste, about 100 metres away and called out the
corporal of the guard. We walked back to the spot together and
had hardly arrived when another bomb came over, which exploded
among us with a tremendous detonation. In the confusion that
followed the attacking party burst in the door that covered a breach
in the wall at this spot and poured a volley into our midst, killing
our corporal instantly and getting away before we had time to fire
a shot.

On the 20th we shall have been three months at the front.
Persistent rumors have it that we are going to be sent back to
Orl‚ans for a while on that date to rest. The English and Belgians
in the regiment are going to their respective armies and the
battalion is going to be generally reorganized. . . .

CHAPTER IV FEBRUARY 5, 1915

The Kaiser's birthday. A desolate village. The ruined chƒteaux. An
empty wine cellar. An immaculate library. The sentinel's
hallucinations. Comforts of a cellar. A coup d'audace.

TO THE "NEW YORK SUN"

February 5, 1915.

We are back in cantonment after eight days on the firing line. This
is the longest stretch we have yet done without relief. The reason?
The Kaiser's birthday. We looked for trouble on that day and there
was no lack of indications that we were going to have it. There has
been talk of a mysterious paper thrown into the lines with the
warning that a general attack was to be made. And in the still
winter nights behind the hostile crest the continual noise of distant
trains and motors could be heard, bespeaking a concentration
somewhere along the line.

The preceding night I was out on sentinel duty. In a clear sky, the
moon, a few nights from the full, flooded the hillsides, making it
impossible for patrols to circulate. Not a shot was being fired. The
sinister silence confirmed every suspicion that something was
under way. At midnight a French battery behind us broke it rudely
and ironically by firing twelve times in succession over the crest as
a birthday greeting. The enemy did not respond. And so the long
night wore away and the day came and passed without incident for
us.

The blow had fallen on some other point of the line. Strewn
pitifully along the summit of the crest opposite we who were on
guard could still see the bodies of the French soldiers where they
have been lying ever since September, when the magnificent ‚lan
of the battle of the Marne finally broke on this bleak hillside and
ever since when both sides have been sitting facing each other,
neither risking the perils of a further attack. Once more we have
been cheated in our hope for action, but it may not be for long.

The greatest change has come over our life here lately. In my last
letter I described the soldier's days and nights in the trenches, and I
am afraid I drew a rather gloomy though by no means exaggerated
picture. For the last month, however, we have not been living in
trenches at all, but in a ruined village. It has been much more
romantic. Along the vast battle line from Belfort to the sea each
regiment has its sector of a few kilometers to defend.

Ours is a corner of field and forest fronting on the semicircular
crest of the plateau where the enemy are intrenched---a good
foothold on one end of the crescent, too. Here the soldiers live in
the earthen dugouts, amid all the discomforts I described. But at
the foot of the hill, corresponding exactly to the position of the
stage in a Greek theatre, lies the village of C-----. From all the
various points of the sector that we have been assigned to its
battered houses and great burned down chƒteau have been visible.
Other companies, though, had held it up to a month ago, when it
came round to our turn.

It was under the full moon of a month past that we marched into
C----- for the first time. I shall never forget the impressiveness of
that stealthy, silent entrance. We had left our cantonment at
midnight. Five or six kilometers through the forest and the road
came out into a pleasant open country, covered with orchards.
Sharply silhouetted in the moonlight against the black slopes of the
plateau behind were the bright walls and peaked tile roofs of the,
typical little French town. I had become familiar in our march to
the front from Mailly with the tragedy of these pretty centres of
peace and happiness made desolate by war. But no scene of ruin
that we passed through exceeded the spectacle that met our eyes
here.

There had been no general conflagration in C----- it is true, for the
Germans had not had time to fire it as they have done
systematically wherever they could. But there was literally not a
house that had not been riddled with shrapnel or disembowelled by
the deadly "marmites " that must have fallen on it in a perfect
inferno of fire. Picking our way through the d‚bris that littered the
streets we filed in through that picture of desolation that makes
always so striking a background for a column of infantry
advancing.

Poor ruined villages of northern France! There they lie like so
many silent graveyards, each little house the tomb of some
scattered family's happiness. Where are the simple, peace loving
country folk that dwelt here when these windows were squares of
yellow lampIight, not, as now, blank as holes in a skull? The men
away at the war or already in their graves; the women and children
refugees in the south, dependent upon charity. The pity of it all is
that the French guns have done and have had to do the material
damage.

When the Germans marched back in August there was no
resistance to their advance. But it was with the artillery close on
their heels that they were chased out in September. It is frightful to
think that only at such a price can the French regain their
conquered territory. If the enemy are to be driven across the
frontier does it not mean that every town and village between must
be laid in ruins? The alternative is staggering. . . .

At C----- our quarters are most picturesque. They are the wine
cellars of the village's two chƒteaux. Here the soldiers have been
able to bring straw, coal and candles, and with a good roof over
their heads, safe from shells and from rain, enjoy a degree of
comfort quite exceptional for a position where the crack of the
German mausers as they snipe at sentinels seems at our very doors
and where the mitrailleuse upon the hillside could rake our cellar
door itself were it not for the encircling groves.

The big chƒteau has been completely burned down. Nothing
remains but the shell. It sits in the midst of an immense, heavily
wooded park, the wall of which, several kilometers long, forms
part of our line of defence. Pretty paths intersect the dense groves.
There are benches, here and there, fountains and summer houses.
The lawn that encircles the chƒteau slopes down behind to a
charming little artificial lake. Everything bespeaks the pleasure
retreat of some man of wealth and taste. Before the ruined
mansion, truly seigniorial in its proportions, stand ancestral pines.

Nothing could be more romantic on a moonlit night than the view
of these silent walls gleaming amid the great black cones; nothing
more eerie than the silent grove, in which there is never the
complete assurance that the park wall completely separates one
from the lurking enemy.

The little chƒteau is in the town itself, surrounded by no
considerable estate. It has been ripped open with bombardment,
but was not set on fire. Strange enough, the pillaging of six months
has not begun to exhaust the loot that litters its floors knee deep.
Here all the possessions of some once comfortable family lie
scattered about as they have been pulled from desk, cupboard and
bureau. Sheets and pillowcases lie mixed up with family
photographs and correspondence in a chaos of disorder.

Most pathetic to me was a little girl's postcard collection---cards
from all over Europe, with their little messages of love or greeting.
But most precious were the remains of a beautiful library, the last
thing to be violated by the rude hands that have ransacked
everything else and left not a bottle of wine in the whole town.
Here, stacked just as they were before the invasion, I found finely
bound, immaculate sets of Rousseau, Voltaire, Corneille and
Racine. The wind and rain that blew in through the immense rents
in the walls had not yet harmed them in the least. They were as
fresh as the day they left the famous early nineteenth century
presses of which they were the choicest examples.

I took away a few of these volumes, esteeming that the pious duty
of rescuing an old book doomed otherwise to certain destruction
might absolve me from the gravity of the charge that such an act
made me liable to.

The advanced position that we hold in this village and the fact that
we are far in front of our own batteries minimizes the danger from
artillery fire. Few shells, in fact, fall on C---- nowadays, then only
when a group of soldiers expose themselves unnecessarily. But
every night the patrols come down from the hillsides, and we are
out against that war of ruse and surprise, of treachery and stealth,
which is most trying to the strongest nerves. Under these
conditions sentinel duty ceases to have the air of a mere formality;
it means a grave danger, a terrible responsibility. And seeing that
the guard cannot be too rigid at this point we are all forced to
undergo with heartbreaking frequency the ordeal of the petit poste.

The petit poste is the outpost which furnishes the most advanced
sentinels before the enemy. Its composition and general
arrangement may vary according to circumstances, but typically
they are as follows: At daybreak a dozen men and a corporal go
out to the position and install themselves behind the rude shelters
or defences that have been constructed.

During the day the guard is simply two men on two hour watches.
At night, however, the post is broken up into three little posts of
four men each. These are in turn divided into relays of two, which
alternate at intervals of one or two hours, as they choose, so that
each man has six or seven hours on guard during the night. At
daybreak the whole squad is in turn relieved, for picket duty on
petit poste is always twenty-four hours. During that time, whether
on guard or off, no one is supposed to sleep.

To us, who are lodged now regularly in the cellars of the big
chƒteau, guard usually falls at points along the park wall. At
sunset, in little groups of four, we take up positions at a door, on a
scaffolding rigged up inside, or in a little trench dug without.
"Guard" means standing here with every nerve strained on the dark
world outside; relief, sitting huddled in a blanket near by, walking
up and down to shake off drowsiness or stamping the feet to drive
out the cold.

When moon or star light makes it possible to see some distance
into the orchard, field, or grove outside this job is not so bad. But
when the sky is covered and complete darkness draws the lurking
menace down to within a few meters of this post then the sentinel
creates for himself a thousand imaginary dangers.

As the night wears on the tension begins to tell. The senses of sight
and hearing become subject to strange hallucinations. Surely some
one is whispering out there in the darkness. Or else it is a low
whistle, or such signals as pass between the members of a patrol.
A black spot in the night takes shape and seems to move. A human
form detaches itself from a tree trunk. As a shot rings out near by
along the wall the sentry's hand tightens on his rifle.

The very suspicion of a sound, a broken twig or a trodden stone,
may startle him so that he can hear his heart beat. And so, with
finger on trigger and every nerve tense he waits, alarmed enough
to entertain the illusion but master enough of himself not to fire till
the mark is sure.

"More than he who looks for the morning!" Never have I realized
the force of this verse as in the interminable fourteen hours of
these winter nights. It is heralded now by the morning star. In the
last hours of darkness, amid the summer constellations just
beginning to appear, the beautiful planet rises, marvellous,
resplendent. Not long after the green glow of dawn mantles over
the east. The landscape begins to grow visible, the black spots
come out in all their innocuous detail. The little groups of men
return to the central post. Here the relieving squad comes up
before the stars have completely disappeared and the tired
watchers are free to return to the chƒteau.

If the ordeal has been hard the compensation is delightful. I have
said that the degree of comfort we enjoy in the cellars of the
chƒteau far exceeds any that we had in the trenches. In these
subterranean quarters, completely hidden from the enemy, nothing
prevents us from burning as many candles as we like. The village
cellars provide us with all the coal we need; its haylofts are still
full of beautiful sheaves of unthreshed grain, just as they were
stacked in midsummer last. By means of the little lake in the park
close at hand we are able to keep at least comfortably clean. With
these simple necessities attended to we have been able to make
ourselves perfectly at home in the great stone vaults of the ruined
mansion.

Here in the first hour after dawn the scene is most animated and
picturesque. One by one the petits postes return. The men throw
down their sacks and by candle light arrange their places for the
day and hang up their rifles and equipment. The long, nervous
tension finds relief in a hubbub of conversation. "Did you fire ? "
"What did the volley mean at such a place and such a time?" A
hundred questions pass as comrades reassembling seek to piece
together the incidents of the night. Perhaps we ourselves have had
a patrol out, and the adventures of these men are eagerly sought
after and listened to.

Meanwhile the distribution of food takes place. A hot sup of coffee
awaits the soldiers returning from petit poste in the morning. The
soldier also "touches" his day's rations of wine, which, heated with
a little sugar, makes an excellent sleeping potion. But most
precious is the little measure of amber "taffia," or sweet rum, that
is doled out only in the trenches and at the front. There is nothing
like it for reviving the spirits after a night in the cold. A delicious
languor steals through the limbs. Gradually the conversation
subsides. One by one the candles are blown out. The soldier lays
out his sleeping place carefully, lingers over his preparations, so as
to know in its fulness of sensual delight the bliss of falling to
sleep.

How insipid beside it seem all the refinements of comfort that
peace permits! Though we return to them once more we will never
think without fondness of the luxury it was in these days of
strenuous toil and robust health to lie down after a night's watch, in
the straw covered cellar bottom of our ruined chƒteau.

Life, then, in C----- is infinitely more picturesque, more
interesting, and more comfortable than life in the trenches, which
is the lot of by far the greater part of the troops along the present
battle front. What it gains in these respects, however, it loses in
excitement. The village itself is without strategic importance, so
that the likelihood of an attack en masse at this point is less than at
most others. The German position on the plateau above is so
strong that, on the one hand, they have no reason to want to better
it here, and, on the other hand, the French have more advantageous
things to do than to risk a frontal assault.

Their lines at this point, then, are little more than the maintenance
of contact with those of the enemy, their real defensive works, in
case of need, being well in the rear. This ground has not been very
closely contested and there is plenty of latitude to circulate in
between. Confined to the underground shelters during the day by
the artillery that thunders continually all around, yet little parties
are free to go out at night and pursue more primitive and more
exciting methods of warfare. If prolonged inaction becomes too
exasperating there is always this nocturnal man hunting to break
the monotony and no lack of volunteers for it. The simplest form
of it is what we call "shooting up a petit poste."

Under the big pines in the chƒteau park we left a little mound and
cross the first time we returned from C-----. In modern warfare,
where the chances for individual prowess are so reduced, one must
give credit to the man who can achieve it one way or another, even
if he be an enemy. And it was a little coup d'audace, well
conceived and well executed, that cost us the life of our corporal
the first night at the chƒteau.

The third guard had just gone on. Two sentinels were placed at a
point in the wall where the breach made by a shell had been rudely
barricaded. Enough of the hole was left open to command a view
of the hillside approaches by which an attack might be delivered,
but of the ground immediately on the other side nothing at all. The
moon had just risen.

The sentinels had hardly been on long enough to reconnoitre their
post when a grenade fell at their very feet. The fuse sputtered a
second and went out without explosion. A bolt out of the blue
could not have astonished the two men more. With sickening
certainty the realization came upon them that the enemy had
approached without their knowledge and were standing there two
yards away without their being able to strike a blow in
self-defence.

It was a moment for quick decision. Yet no course of action that
presented itself seemed very satisfactory. To fire was useless, for
no possible angle commanded the ground just behind the wall. The
call to arms might have precipitated the danger, which still
hanging in suspense offered a better opportunity for overcoming.
Leaving his comrade at the breach, therefore, the mobile sentry ran
down to the petit poste, which was only about fifty yards along the
walk, and called up the corporal of the guard, warning him of what
had occurred.

A little incredulous, the old soldier buckled on his equipment, took
his rifle, and preceding the sentinel, walked up the path toward the
barricade. Before he had time to arrive another fuse appeared
spinning over the wall at the same spot. Realizing the danger, he
cried out to the sentinel who had remained, to save himself. He
had hardly spoken when the bomb burst with a terrific explosion.
Turning toward the petit poste the corporal shouted "Aux armes! "
These were his last words. Almost simultaneously with the
explosion of the grenade the enemy burst in the barricade, fired
down through the smoke, and were off again before the bewildered
men inside had time to answer. They shot well, for almost with the
first ball the old veteran of Morocco and Tonkin fell, struck in the
temple, and never moved again.

That night there was not much difference at petit poste between
the two hours on guard and the two hours off. Every one was on
the alert, keyed up with apprehension. But nothing happened, as
indeed there was no reason to suppose that anything would. Only
about midnight, from far up on the hillside, a diabolical cry came
down, more like an animal's than a man's, a blood-curdling yell of
mockery and exultation.

In that cry all the evolution of centuries was levelled. I seemed to
hear the yell of the warrior of the stone age over his fallen enemy.
It was one of those antidotes to civilization of which this war can
offer so many to the searcher after extraordinary sensations.

CHAPTER V  FEBRUARY 17---MARCH 24, 1915

The deadlock. A narrow escape. Varying types of l‚gionnaires. A
promenade. Manoeuvres. The "Marseillaise."
.
TO HIS MOTHER

February 17, 1915.

You are quite wrong about my not realizing what I was going into
when I enlisted. I had not been living for two years in Europe
without coming to understand the situation very well and I was
under no illusion that the conflict which was to decide the fate of
empires and remake the map of Europe would be a matter of a few
months. I knew that it would be a fight to the finish, just as our
Civil War was. The conflagration, far from diminishing, seems to
be spreading. The lull during the winter has allowed each side on
this front to fortify itself so strongly that, in my opinion, the
deadlock here is permanent. On the Eastern front the Russians
under French direction may be able to accomplish something, but
so far the Germans seem to have had all the best of it. The easiest
solution to see is the entrance of Italy into the hostilities, which
might have the same effect as Roumania's action in the Balkan
War. But personally I can see no end at present. It will probably
come about through influences other than military and such as are
quite unforeseen now. At all events I do not expect to be liberated
this year. . . .

Our Jan. 20 rumor of going to Orl‚ans evaporated into thin air.
Now it is Feb. 27 to Vincennes. Someone has suggested that they
really meant Feb. 29th. But I do hope we shall have a little change
of air soon. Will stop now for it is hard writing amid a Babel of
conversation.

TO HIS FATHER

February 26, 1915.

We have been here for six days in the trenches, out beyond the
ruined village of C----- and half way up the hill to the enemy's
lines. It is quite the most advanced post we have held so far. We
are not in fear of an attack here but the danger from patrols out
looking for trouble has kept us on the alert these last nights. Guard
all night, sleep all day,---that has been the programme. The moon
has made the strain much less than it would have been had the
nights been dark. These advanced posts are really the least
dangerous, for one is not exposed to the artillery fire, can sleep all
day in peace, or, standing at the door of the dugout, watch the
shells raising the mischief with the lines in the rear.

I was shot a few days ago coming in from sentinel duty. I exposed
myself for about two seconds at a point where the communication
ditch is not deep enough. One of the snipers who keep cracking
away with their Mausers at any one who shows his head came
within an ace of getting me. The ball just grazed my arm, tore the
sleeve of my capote and raised a lump on the biceps which is still
sore, but the skin was not broken and the wound was not serious
enough to make me leave the ranks.

The Germans are marvellous. You hear their rifles only a few
hundred metres off, you feel them about you all the time, and yet
you can never see them. Only last night when the moon set behind
the crest, it silhouetted the heads of two sentinels in their big
trench on top.

Rumors continue to circulate about our going to be relieved and
sent to a third line position for a while for a rest. It is four months
now that we have been on the firing line,---four months with the
noise of the cannon continually in our ears. The latest is that the
whole 18th Army Corps, of which we are a unit, is to be replaced
by a division of the new English troops. I shall like a little change,
but I am becoming resigned to this life and accept with equanimity
anything that comes along. I see no end to the thing; it may go on
for years. . . .

(On back of picture postcard showing French infantry crossing
C-----)

March 3,1915.

Here is the way we look marching, 1'arme … la bretelle. After six
days repos we are going back again to the trenches tonight. In the
course of a few weeks we expect to be reviewed by General Joffre,
after which we shall probably go back to a second-line position for
a rest. There is no chance of serious work before this time. We are
just night watchmen at present, which does not please me, but
which ought to comfort Mother.

TO HIS MOTHER

March 12, 1915.

From today on, no more letters nor correspondence of any kind
goes out until further notice. As this rule seems to apply to all
regiments, it is probably motivated by military reasons. But if it
were caused by nothing except a disgraceful article like that of
-----'s that you sent me it would not be too severe. I should not
think that I would need to tell you that that article is simply the
low joke of a mind that thinks it funny to tell lies. If his lies did
nothing worse than belittle his comrades who are here for motives
that he is unable to conceive, it would be only dishonorable. But
when it comes to throwing discredit on the French government that
in all its treatment of us has been generous beyond anything that
one would think possible, it is too shameful for any words to
characterize. This man like many others of his type was long ago
eliminated from our ranks, for a person buoyed up by no noble
purpose is the first to succumb to the hardships of the winter that
we have been through. A miserable weakling, incapable of feeling
any generous emotion or conceiving any noble ideal, among the
first to surrender in the face of suffering, he gives full rein to his
perverted American sense of humor now that he can warm his feet
amid the comforts of civilization again and it is his comrades who
remain in the face of danger and suffering that must bear the
odium that an act like that will throw on the name "American" as
soon as it is brought to the notice of the authorities.

I should long ago have pulled strings to get into another regiment
were it not, as I say and as I expected, that the winter's trials have
pretty well weeded out the objectionable specimens and that the
d‚p“ts have sent us up to replace them men that are men and an
honor to fight beside. . . . We have many Belgians with us here.
Some French boys came up with the last reinforcement who were
to commence their service this year or next and who were caught
in conquered provinces when the Prussians came in. One was a
prisoner in Lun‚ville three weeks until the French came back and
drove out the invaders. Another was the youngest of six sons in a
little town near Valenciennes. His five brothers were mobilized at
the beginning of the war. When the Germans entered his village he
was taken prisoner with all the other young men of military age
and made to dig trenches for his captors. He managed to escape
one night in the fog and cross the lines. There was nothing left for
him but to engage in the Legion, for all his papers were lost. His
mother and father remain behind in the village which is still in the
hands of the Germans. If you can figure to yourself that mother,
whose six sons are in the French army, not one of whom she has
had any news from since August, you will have some idea of what
is being gone through with over here. . . .

TO THE "NEW YORK SUN"

ON THE AISNE 

March 24,1915.

Among so many hours in the soldier's life that modern warfare
makes monotonous and unromantic there come those too when the
heart expands with accesses of enthusiasm that more than
compensate for all his hardships and suffering. Such was the
afternoon of the review we passed the other day before the General
of our army corps.

All the morning in the hayloft of our cantonment we labored
cleaning from rifle and equipment, clothes and person, their
evidence of the week in the trenches from which we had just
returned. At noon under the most beautiful of spring skies we
marched out of the village two battalions strong.

It was pleasant this little promenade, to escape for a while from
the narrow circumscription to which we are so strictly confined
and get a glimpse of the outer world again from which we have
been so long and so completely isolated. Here the littlest things
were novel and charming---to pass through new landscapes and
villages, to look on women and children again, to see automobiles
and get a whiff of gasolene that has the strongest power of evoking
associations and bringing back the life that we have left so far, far
behind. In contrast with the sinister lifelessness and suspense that
reigns along the front, here, as soon as one is out of the zone of
artillery fire, all is bustle and busy operations. Along the roads
were the camps of the engineers and d‚p“ts filled with material for
defence and military works-piles of lumber, pontoon bridges in
sections, infinite rolls of barbed wire, thousands of new picks and
shovels neatly laid out, that raised groans from the men as they
passed, for C‘sar's remark about the spade having won him more
than the sword holds curiously true in the Gallic wars of today, at
least so far as our experience has gone.

The roads were teeming with life, lumbering wagons and mule
trains mingling with thundering motor lorries and Paris auto buses
in the immense work of ravitaillement, motor cyclists whizzing
back and forth with despatches, chic officers lounging back in the
depths of luxurious limousines that were once the pride of the
boulevards. Whereas on the firing line each unit has a sense of
terrible detachment, here we could feel reassuringly the nation
working behind us, the tightened sinews of that great, complex
system of which we are but the ultimate points of pressure in the
mighty effort it is making.

For fifteen kilometers or so we marched back over hill and vale,
singing the chansons de route of the French soldier---along poplar
lined canals where the big p‚niches are stalled, through
picturesque villages where the civilians, returned to their
reconquered territory, came to their doors and greeted us as we
passed. Once we passed a group of German prisoners working on
the roads. They looked neat and well cared for and took
good-naturedly enough the stream of banter as we marched by.

On the sunny plateau we were joined by the two relief battalions of
the regiment that holds the sector to our left, and all were drawn
up on the plain in columns of sections by four, a fine spectacle.
We had not waited long when the General appeared down the
road. He was superbly mounted, was followed by a dragoon
bearing the tricolor on his lance and an escort of about a dozen
horsemen. Four thousand bayonets flashed in the air as he rode by.
Then the band struck up the march of the Second Chasseurs and
under the mounted figure, silhouetted on a little knoll, we paraded
by to its stirring strains. At the same time, with a great fracas, a
big, armed monoplane rose from the fields nearby and commenced
circling overhead to protect us from the attack of any hostile
aircraft to which our serried ranks offered so tempting a mark.

Again we manoeuvred in position and while the ‚tats-majors were
conversing we stacked rifles, laid down our sacks and broke ranks.
I took the occasion to seek out a soldier of the -----Šme and learn
something of the kind of life they are leading on the plateau to our
left. It is much more thrilling than ours apparently. The position is
one of considerable strategic importance, so that the lines run
within a stone's throw of each other, Sapping and mining go on
incessantly. The noise of rifle firing never stops up there on the
crest, and the nights are lit up continually with the glare of
magnesium rockets. As if the menace of having the trench blown
up at any moment under their feet was not trial enough, the
proximity of the lines at this point subject the French soldiers to
the fire of the "minenwerfer," or bomb thrower, those engines of
destruction that were one of the several novelties that German
prevision introduced into the present war.

The projectiles, as I understand it, are thrown from a spring gun,
and not by explosive force, so that there is no explosion on their
leaving the cannon. A sentinel with a whistle stands in the French
line; whenever he sees one of these bombs arrive he gives the
signal and anybody that is outside in the trenches dives into the
nearest shelter at hand till the terrific explosion that they produce
is past. Fortunately the fire of these machines cannot be trained
with much accuracy.

I asked this soldier if they had been attacked lately and he
described to me their last engagement, a typical assault in the
desperate kind of struggle that goes on at these points of close
contact along the front. A ditch has been dug previously to the very
edge of our lines of barbed wire. For hours before the attack is to
be delivered the trenches are deluged with artillery fire so intense
that the French are unable to man their first line defences, but must
remain back in the communicating galleries waiting the decisive
moment.

Suddenly the guns are silent and simultaneously the enemy pours
out of the ditch forty, thirty yards away. Some carry wire cutters,
others hold the rifle in the left hand and with the right shower the
trenches with grenades that they draw from sacks slung over the
shoulder. The French rush to their cr‚naux. The roar of rifle and
machine gun fire bursts out, and a brief, ferocious struggle ensues,
which is simply a question of the speed and number of balls that
can be discharged in a given number of seconds and the speed and
number of men that in the same time can be rushed against the
position.

The attack in question was a complete failure and only resulted in
piling higher the heaps of dead that lie where they fell in the
continuous battle that at this point has been going on now for six
months, with alternations of success that in no case can be
estimated in more than fractions of a hundred meters.

Before I had time to gather details of this affair from my comrade
of the ----Šme the order "Sac au dos" ran through the ranks.
Ba‹onnette au canon!" "Pr‚sentez-armes!" went from captain to
captain. Again the flash of the 4,000 bayonets. And while the
battalions stood there, silent, motionless, the band broke out into
the "Marseillaise."

At the first bars of the familiar strains even the horses felt the
wave of emotion that rippled over the field and whinnied in
accompaniment. There was something sublime about it there in
such a place and under such circumstances. Unconsciously our lips
framed the words of the wonderful song. Instinctively our eyes
turned to the north. There on the furthest ramparts of the bare hills
was the faint white line that marked the enemy's trenches, and two
hundred, one hundred, fifty yards below, our own, where the
comrades of our alternating battalions were even then engaged in
the grim conflict-pressing always on, desperately, determinedly,
heroically.

Quoi, ces cohortes ‚trangŠres 

Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!

How marvellously every phrase of the song of 1792 applied to the
situation of 1915!

Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes 

Mugir ces f‚roces soldats?

The crisis was the same, the passion the same! May our hearts in
the hour when the supreme demand is to be made on us be fired
with the same enthusiasm that filled them as we stood there on the
sunny plateau listening to the Battle Hymn of the Army of the
Rhine!

All were in high spirits as we marched home that evening. We
took a short cut, cross-country, for it was already getting dark
enough to traverse without danger the field where we passed a
while exposed to the distant artillery. The last glow of sunset
shone down the gray valley, illumining with a brazen lustre the
windings of the river as we tramped back over the pontoon bridge
and into cantonment again. Something breathed unmistakably of
spring and the eve of great events.

And that night in our candle-lit loft we uncorked bottles of
bubbling champagne. Again the strains of the noble hymn broke
spontaneously from our lips. And clinking our tin army cups, with
the spell of the afternoon still strong upon us, we raised them there
together, and we too drank to "the day."

CHAPTER VI  APRIL 15---APRIL 28, 1915

Rousseau's "Confessions." Routine of the trenches. Work and
exercises at the rear. Night patrol. Death between the lines.
German letters. Enemies' courtesies.

TO HIS SISTER

(Written in pencil on the fly leaves of 

"Les Confessions de J.-J. Rousseau," GenŠve, MDCCLXXXII.)

April 15, 1915.

We have just come back from six days in C----- where we were
cantonn‚s in the caves of the petit chƒteau that I described in my
last letter in the Sun. We put in a very pleasant week here,---nine
hours of guard at night in our outposts up on the hillside; in the
daytime sleep, or foraging in the ruined villages, loafing in the
pretty garden of the chƒteau or reading up in the library. We have
cleaned this up now, and it is an altogether curious sensation to
recline here in an easy-chair, reading some fine old book, and just
taking the precaution not to stay in front of the glassless windows
through which the sharpshooters can snipe at you from their posts
in the thickets on the slopes of the plateau, not six hundred metres
away. Sometimes our artillery opens up and then you lay down
your book for a while and, looking through a peek-hole, watch the
75's and 120's throw up fountains of dirt and d‚bris all along the
line of the enemy's trenches.

Here is a volume from the library. I hope it will become one of the
treasures on your shelves. It must be a very early if not the first
edition of the "Confessions." You see it is only the first half,
published probably before the work was completed. I have never
read the "Confessions" except desultorily, but I am very fond of
the "Promenades," which you will also find here, especially the
fifth, about the Ile St. Pierre.

Spring has come here at last and we are having beautiful weather. I
am going in swimming in the Aisne this afternoon for the first
time. In fine health and spirits. . . .

TO THE "NEW YORK SUN"'

ON THE AISNE, 

April 28,1915.

I have delayed writing in the hope that something would happen
here exciting enough to make really interesting reading. The
London Times brings vivid accounts of the fighting at Neuve
Chapelle and the copies of the Matin and Journal have personal
narratives of the men who saw action in the Wo‰vre and in
Champagne. Besides these, full of the real flavor of battle, what is
there for one to say who belongs to those units that have only been
waiting inactive, preparing for the great events that advancing
spring ought to be bringing nearer and nearer?

Yet on the other hand these units form really the great majority of
the forces now on the front, as the scantiness of the official
communiqu‚s readily shows, and a description of our life during
this interlude may have the interest at least of being typical of that
of most of our several million other French and English comrades.

My Servian friend was telling me last night how at one time in his
country's history there was a class of soldiers who remained
continually mobilized on the frontier, always on a war footing
ready to defend their land. These were the Granichari, around
whom popular imagination has woven a whole cycle of poetry and
romance. By means of signal fires they gave warning of the Turks'
approach. As we stood on guard back in the reserve trenches, alert
for the fusillade that would mean the calling to arms of our
company, it seemed to me that much the same thing was the case
in France to-day. Only, whereas in old Servia these defenders were
a picked corps of men, here it is practically the entire able bodied
male population who make a living wall across the country that
they are there to protect or perish for.

In this line our situation is about as agreeable as is consistent with
a state of war, which indeed, we are often able almost to forget.
Our earlier discomforts were largely due to ignorance and an
inevitable inability to adapt ourselves to the conditions of a kind of
warfare that even to the old soldiers among us was a novelty. Six
months have taught us all many things; our life is now arranged
with methodical regularity and proceeds along a fixed schedule.

By a system of reliefs by alternating battalions the disposition of
our time is as follows: Six days in the first line trenches, six days
repose in our village headquarters ten kilometers back; then six
days reserve in the woods; six days again in the village, and so the
routine recommences. Thus we have three distinct kinds of
existence. I will give you a description of each one of these.

Of the three periods, every one of us would agree, that at the
outposts is by far the pleasantest. For one thing we are fairly free
from bombardment, being at a difficult angle under the enemy's
crest. And even more important, we are entirely free from work.
The soldier does not object to danger, which it is his business to
face, but he does decidedly object to the hard labor incident to
trench warfare, which he feels is really not his affair at all, but that
of the engineer corps, whose number, however, is quite inadequate
to the immensity of the task. The pleasantest of our life here is due
also to the fact that our company's sector is not open country, but
the ruined village that I described to you in my last letter, where
we are able to provide ourselves with comforts which our
comrades in the trenches must do without.

At C----- nowadays we are housed in a little building that was once
the stable or garage of the petit chateau. During the night every
one mounts guard in the trenches up the hillside; in daytime the
sentinel furnished by a single post is all that is necessary, making it
possible for the rest of us to enjoy complete repose and freedom.

At sundown we assemble in the court of the chƒteau, with blanket
and tent cover and march out to the posts. Some of these are in a
cemetery that got in the way of the flood tide of the Battle of the
Aisne. The retreating Germans must have made a stand behind the
mounds and grave stones, for the place has been frightfully
bombarded. The shells that do not respect even the dead have
shattered the monuments and burst open the sepulchres. Quantities
of chloride of lime, liberally sprinkled about, are a remedy that is
not much better than the evil, and the rats as big as rabbits that
scurry under the banks and hedges and discourage one from lying
down between watches make this the least desirable of all posts.

Better are the trenches further up the hillside, where in the calm of
night, disturbed only occasionally by a fusillade or the cannon's
double boom, one can contemplate at his ease the vast panorama
spread out below, dim under the circling stars or emerging in the
pale lustre of beautiful dawns.

Further up the slope the voices of the enemy are plainly audible.
Even wider to them stretch those magnificent horizons, and I often
wonder with what feelings they regard them. Beyond the utmost
ridges they had once penetrated, before our victory at the Marne
threw them back to the bitterly contested plateau, strewing all the
fields and roadsides between with their dead. There below them
southward---tempting, provoking---lies expanded, almost
coquettishly, the fair realm of France, and over behind the sunset
hills---Paris! Violators outwitted, is it the regret of an irretrievable
defeat that fills their long watches up there, or the hope of making
another and more successful assault?

All our outposts now, no less than our main lines of defence, are
protected by formidable barbed wire entanglements, behind which
we can rest secure from the surprises that cost us lives in the early
days of the campaign. The Germans have done no less on their
side. In fact night resounds with the hammering of stakes from all
directions and in the quiet of his lonesome watch the sentinel
imagines with amazement what will be the cost of life for either
army that attempts to break through a line which seven months of
continuous work have fortified with all the murderous defences
that ingenuity can devise.

At 3 o'clock now the east begins to pale, and an hour later the posts
can return. Picking up our blankets we hurry down the hillside,
through the cemetery and back to the chƒteau on the edge of the
village. An hour of animated conversation ensues as the day's
distribution is made and the places laid in the straw. Then a fine
siesta until the cry of "soupe" calls us all out again around 11
o'clock.

In the long afternoons no one has any desire to sleep. Warm
sunshine fills the enclosed garden of the chƒteau. Here the birds
are singing and the buds swelling. Shielded from the sharpshooters
up the hillside, one can write, sew, clean his gun and equipment,
or attend to the hundred little things that fill the soldier's idle
hours. Or he can walk in the chƒteau through a shell hole in the
wall, climb to the first floor over a staircase level with d‚bris, and
picking his way through the litter of insecure floors find out the
little library, where beautiful books still line the shelves. Here he
can read under the strangest conditions imaginable Rousseau's
"Confessions" or Voltaire's "History of Charles XII."

On the evening of the seventh day, when we are to be relieved, we
go out into the village and bring back loads of unthreshed grain
that American harvesting machinery has bound into most
convenient little bundles. These we strap on our sacks to take back
to the village in the rear for bedding. I was curious to know the
weight we carried on these marches, and finding a twenty kilo
weight I balanced a plank and placed this on the other end. Sack,
cartridge belt and portable pick more than tipped it up, besides
which one must add rifle, two haversacks strung over each
shoulder and two canteens. But such is the hardening of a winter's
campaign that one can carry this load of well over sixty pounds ten
kilometers (six miles) back over a sandy road with only one stop
and feel none the worse for it at the end.

Our life during the six days in the rear is of a nature designed to
counteract the effect of the six days of enforced inaction at the
front. It means chiefly work and field exercises. There is always
one afternoon of target practice when, after many a period in the
trenches without seeing a mark, it is a pleasure to hear the Lebel
speak and to get a line on one's marksmanship. In a big abandoned
sugar refinery some eight or ten kilometers down the valley some
fine hot showers have been arranged for all the troops in this
section and a march down here with soap and towel comes on
every visit to the rear and is greatly enjoyed by all.

Though these weekly returns to the rear are a relief after the strain
of outpost work the element of danger is not really any further
removed, for the village is well within the range of artillery fire,
though hid by an intervening ridge, and shells came whistling into
it occasionally, especially in reprisal for some misadventure on
the. firing line. Thus the depot of the regiment on our right, who
had wiped out a German post a few days before, was bombarded
the other evening, and the pretty village whose old Gothic church
peeks over the green ridge a mile east of us was veiled for half an
hour in clouds of black smoke and the dust of the explosions in the
narrow streets. A chance shell that came through the roof of a
building where an artillery regiment was cantoned in our village
one night cost more lives than were lost during their whole retreat
from Belgium.

The third period---that in the reserve trenches a mile back in the
forest from the front line--- is the six days that are looked forward
to generally with least pleasure. This is because it is the duty of the
companies in reserve to work on the defences and the labor is
infinite. Here we live in earthen dugouts, like all the rest of the
trenches, the bottom covered with straw brought from C----- and
the roof made of bags heaped over with branches and dirt.

Though the week in the second line is the period of hardest work it
also brings opportunities for the most excitement, for the
companies in reserve are also those which furnish the night patrols
of reconnaissance. Patrouille! How the heart beats to hear the word
go round in the afternoon and to learn that one has been chosen to
take part in it. To escape from the eternal confinement of the
trenches, to stalk out into the perilous zone between the lines and
there where death may lurk in every thicket and uncertainty
encompasses one close as the night, to court danger for several
hours under a fine starlit sky, this is the one breath of true romance
that we get in the monotonous routine of trench warfare.

I have always thought that in a sense this night patrol work was the
most exacting on the nerves of all soldier's duties. In great actions
where comrades fight elbow to elbow there are all sorts of external
stimulants and supports. Each man is his neighbor's prop, there is
the spoken and the unspoken encouragement, and borne up on a
wave of contagious enthusiasm, individuals act no longer as such
but in mass and every one is as brave as the bravest. Besides one
sees clearly, knows from which direction the danger will come and
pretty much what to expect, and usually has ample time to prepare
himself and muster up all his forces for the shock.

To the member of the little company creeping out over a
battlefield in cold blood in the dead of night, all this is lacking.
From every side the menace points, behind every turn the ambush
may be hidden. He has nothing to rely on but his own sang-froid.
Advancing over the ground strewn with bodies he faces in every
shadow the possibility of the sudden volley at point blank that will
lay him cold among them. It is a kind of adventure that the true
sportsman will appreciate.

We went out, fifteen men, a few nights ago to reconnoitre a new
ditch that had appeared on the face of the hillside high up under
the German lines. The moon in its first quarter, highly veiled by
clouds, made the conditions good. We left about 9 o'clock,
marching by twos down the wood road to C-----. Once more the
familiar passage through its barricaded streets, between its riddled
walls and skeleton roofs and we walked on beyond and up the hill
through a communication ditch to the outer trenches. Here a few
brief instructions were given and the chef de poste was advised to
tell his sentinels of our sortie and so we waded out over the barbed
wire, for all the world like launching off over the surf from the
security of land into the perilous unknown beyond.

The night was warm and windless. There were fruit trees all about
this part of the hillside. They were clouded with bloom, reminding
one of Japanese prints. But another odor as we advanced mingled
with that of the blossoms, an odor that, congealed all through the
winter, is becoming more and more intense and pervasive as the
warm weather increases. Among the breaths of April, fragrant of
love and the rebirth of life, it intrudes, the sickening
antithesis---pungent, penetrating, exciting to madness and ferocity,
as the other to tenderness and desire---the odor of carrion and of
death.

We had not gone fifty steps when they began to appear, these
disturbing relics of the great battle that terminated here on
September 20 last, when these hillsides ran with blood. From that
day, when our present lines were established, not a living soul had
been in this area in daylight, and the rare few who have crossed it
at night have been only the fugitive patrols like our own. What
wonder then if the dead lie as they fell in the fighting seven
months ago. Shapeless, dark masses as one approaches them in the
dim moonlight, they come out suddenly at a few steps off in their
disfigured humanity, and peering down one can distinguish arms
and legs and, last and most unspeakable, the features.

Single or in heaps or files they lie---in attitudes of heroism or fear,
of anguish or of pity-some shielding their heads with their sacks
from the hail of shrapnel, many with the little "first aid" package
of bandages in their hands, with which they have tried to stanch
their wounds. Frenchmen and Germans alike, rigid bundles of
soaked cloth, filling the thickets, sodden into the muddy beet
fields, bare and exposed around the trenches on the bleak upper
slopes and amid sacks, broken guns and all the litter of the
battlefield.

The sight is one which may well be unnerving the first time, but
one soon gets used to it, and comes to look upon these images of
death with no more emotion than on the empty cartridge cases
around them---which, indeed, in a way they do resemble. Having
served their purpose the material shell remains, while their vitality
has been dispersed into the universe to enter into new
combinations in that eternal conservation of energy which is the
scientist's faith and that imperishability of anything that is
beautiful in the human personality, which is the poet's.

In general our patrols try to avoid useless collisions, which, as the
English manual puts it, "serve no good end, give rise to reprisals
and disturb the main body." But of course there is always the
chance of running into an enemy's party, and this not infrequently
happens, as the sudden fusillades along the hillside show. If a
patrol comes close and an enemy's post is alarmed they throw up a
fus‚e---one of the many German innovations in this war which go
to show their superior preparedness. The repeated flare of these on
a dark night outlines in white fire their battle fronts across the
continent.

They have perfected two varieties, both far better than our own,
which appeared on this part of the front only a short while ago.
One is simply a ball of magnesium or calcium light that is thrown
like the ball out of a Roman candle, its brilliance beginning just as
it reaches the apex of its curving flight and lasting just during its
slow fall, thus lighting up all the surrounding country for several
seconds with the most intense glare. The other is the same kind of
light, only of longer duration. It is projected by a bomb thrower to
that side of the zone to be examined from which the wind is
blowing. At the height of about a hundred feet a little explosion
lights and at the same time liberates the fire ball, which is
ingeniously suspended to a little parachute. It floats therefore
horizontally on the wind back over the field of danger, lasting for
several minutes and illuminating the country for miles around with
a brilliance in which every blade of grass can be seen. When this
occurs the patrouilleurs flop into any shelter they can find or, lying
among the dead, escape detection as best they may.

The progress of a patrol is necessarily slow and much of the time
is spent flat on the ground. As one's position is often enough right
next to a body, curiosity may overcome his scruples, and so he can
bring back souvenirs that will the next day be the admiration of his
comrades---enemy's rifles and other insignia. A notorious pilferer
among us brought in five pairs of new shoes that he had found
strapped to a German sack the other night.

The most interesting finds of the kind that I have seen were some
letters that a man brought in a few nights ago from a German body
up on the hill. They were postcards, dated the last of August and
the first of September last. I wish I had taken them down textually
so that you could share some of the emotion that was mine,
contrasting with the poor shell of humanity up there in the grass
these so living tokens of the ties that once bound him to earth. It
was Austin Dobson's "After Sedan" exactly. The cards, that were
wonderfully preserved, were addressed to a certain "Muskatier
Maier, bei Strasburg, the 136th Regiment of Bavarian Infantry," if
I remember correctly. They were headed "Mein Lieber Bruder,"
"Lieber Sohn"---simple little family messages, reflecting a father's
pride, a sister's love, a mother's fears. Far away in some German
village they have long since found his name in the lists of missing.
But soon we will go out in the night and bury these bodies nearest
our lines as a sanitary measure, and the manner of his death or the
place of his nameless grave they will never know.

Patrol work is the only way of winning laurels in the absence of
actual fighting, and the little parties that go out have no end of
adventures that make the conversation of the camp for days to
come. Seven weeks ago two Polish deserters came into the lines
and gave us valuable information. That night the patrol that went
out left the prisoners' menu card for that day stuck on the barbed
wire in front of a German post. A few days ago another patrol
passing the same spot found a basket in which the Germans had
placed two bottles of Munich beer, a box of cigarettes, some
chocolate, sandwiches and other samp