Letters From France. I

January 22, 1917.
WE were put on active duty at the front about the first of the year; in fact, I spent New Year’s night in a dugout within pistol-shot of the Germans. It was quite a celebration, as the French government had provided champagne, cakes, and oranges for all, and every one was feeling in a cheery mood. When dinner was over, each of us chipped in his day’s ration of army wine (about a pint), and with a little brandy, some oranges, sugar, and a packet of spices I had been commissioned to get, we brewed a magnificent bowl of hot punch, or mulled wine. First ‘The day of victory’ was toasted, then, ‘France’; then, with typical French consideration, ‘The United States.’ After that, each man’s family at home received a health; so you may be interested to know that your health and happiness for 1917 were drunk in a first-class abri by a crowd of first-class fellows, as all French soldiers are.
The next day was a typical one, so I will sketch it for you, to give an idea of how we live and what we do. When the party broke up it was late, so we turned in at once, in a deep strong dugout, which is safe against anything short of a direct hit by a very heavy shell. Once or twice, as I dropped off to sleep, I thought I heard furtive scamperings and gnawings, but all was quiet until just before daybreak, when we were awakened by a terrifying scream from a small and inoffensive soldier who does clerical work in the office of the médecin chef. The poor fellow has a horror of rats, and usually sleeps with head and toes tightly bundled up. I flashed on my electric torch at the first scream and caught a glimpse of an enormous rat — fully the size of a small fox terrier, I assure you! — streaking it for his hole. The next minute I made out the unfortunate little soldier holding with both hands one ear, from which the nocturnal visitor had bitten a large mouthful, while he did a frantic dance around the floor. First came a titter, then a choked laugh, and finally the whole dugout howled with uncontrollable mirth, until the victim wound on his puttees and stalked out, much offended, to get some iodine for his ear.
As we had laughed ourselves wide awake, I passed around some cigarettes, while another fellow went down for a pot of coffee. Dressing consists of putting on one’s shoes, puttees and tunic — when I feel particularly sybaritic I take off my necktie at night.
For once the sun came up in a clear blue sky and shone down frostily on a clear white world — a metre of snow on the ground, and pines like Christmas trees. It was wonderfully still: far away on a hillside some one was chopping wood, and beyond the German lines I could hear a cock crow. After stopping to ask the telephonist if there were any calls, I took towel and soap and tooth-brush and walked to the watering trough, where a stream of icy water runs constantly. As I strolled back, a thumping explosion came from the trenches — some enthusiast had tossed a grenade across as a New Year’s greeting to the Boche. Retaliatory thumps followed, and suddenly a machine-gun burst out with its abrupt stutter. Louder and louder grew the racket as gusts of firing swept up and down the lines, until a battery of 75’s took a hand from the hills half a mile behind us. Crack-whang-crack, they went, like the snapping of some enormous whip, and I could hear their shells whine viciously overhead.
An orderly appeared shortly, to inform me that I must make ready to take out a few wounded. My load consisted of one poor fellow on a stretcher, still and invisible under his swathing of blankets, and two very lively chaps, — each with a leg smashed, but able to sit up and talk at a great rate. We offered them stretchers, but they were refused with gay contempt. They hopped forward to their seats, smiling and nodding good-bye to the stretcherbearers. Despite my efforts one of them bumped his wounded leg and a little involuntary gasp escaped him. ‘Ca pique, mon vieux,’ he explained apologetically; ‘mais ça ne fait rien — allez!’
At the hospital, several miles back, there was the usual wait for papers, and as I handed cigarettes to my two plucky passengers, I explained that hospital book-keeping was tiresome but necessary. Suddenly the blood-stained blankets on the stretcher moved and a pale, but calm and quizzical face, looked up into mine: ‘Oh, là là! C’est une guerre de papier; donnez-moi une cigarette!’ You can’t down men of this calibre.
Just before bedtime another call came from a dressing-station at the extreme front. It was a thick night, snowing heavily, and black as ink, and I had to drive three kilometres, without light of any kind, over a narrow winding road crowded with traffic of every description. How one does it I can scarcely say. War seems to consist in doing the impossible by a series of apparent miracles. Ears and eyes must be connected in some way. Driving in pitchy blackness, straining every sense and calling every nerve to aid one’s eyes, it seems that vision is impaired if ears are covered.
At the posts, just behind the lines, where one waits for wounded to come in from the trenches, I spend idle hours, chatting or playing dominoes. Our little circle comprises a remarkable variety of types: one hears French of every patois, from the half-Spanish drawl of the Mediterranean, to the clipped negatives and throaty r of Paris.
As inventors of racy slang we Americans are miles behind the French. Your pipe is ‘ Mélanie’ (also your sweetheart, for some unknown reason). One’s mess is ‘la popote,’ a shrapnel helmet is a ‘casserole,’ a machine-gun is a ‘moulin à café.’ Bed is ironically called ‘plumard’; and when a bursting shell sends out its spray of buzzing steel, the cry is ‘Attention aux mouches!’ [Look out for the flies!] Government tobacco is known, aptly, as ‘foin’ [hay]. If one wants a cigarette, and has a paper but no tobacco, one extends the paper toward a better-provided friend saying, ‘Kindly sign this.’ And so on.

February 18.
I had an interesting day yesterday. The commandant asked for a car — he is the head medical officer — to visit some posts, and I was lucky enough to land the job. He is a charming, cultivated man, and made it very pleasant for his chauffeur. We visited a number of posts, inspecting new dugout emergency hospitals, and vaccinating the stretcher-bearers against typhoid — a most amusing process, as these middleaged fellows have the same horror of a doctor that a child has of a dentist. Reluctant was scarcely the word.
Finally we left the car (at the invitation of the artillery officer) and walked a couple of miles through the woods to see a new observation post. The last few hundred yards we made at a sneaking walk, talking only in whispers, till we came to a ladder that led up into the thick green of a pine tree. One after another the officers went up, and at length the gunner beckoned me to climb. Hidden away like a bird’s nest among the fragrant pine-needles, I found a tiny platform, where the officer handed me his binoculars and pointed to a four-inch hole in the leafy screen. There right below us were two inconspicuous lines of trenches, zigzagging across a quiet field, bounded by leafless pollard willows. It was incredible to think that hundreds of men stood in those ditches, ever on the alert. At a first glance the countryside looked strangely peaceful and unhampered — farm-houses here and there, neatly hedged fields, and, farther back, a village with a white church. Look closer, though, and you see that the houses are mere shells, with crumbling walls and shattered windows; the fields are scarred and pitted with shell-holes, the village is ruined and lifeless, and the belfry of the church has collapsed. Above all, there is not an animal, not a sign of life in the fields or on the roads. Not a sound, except the distant hornet buzzing of an aeroplane.
On clear days there is a good deal of aeroplane activity in our section, and one never tires of watching them. The German machines do not bomb us in this district, for some reason unknown to me, but they try to reconnoitre and observe for artillery fire. It is perfectly obvious, however, that the French have the mastery of the air, by virtue of their skillful and courageous pilots and superb fighting machines, and their superior skill in anti-aircraft fire. To watch a plane at an altitude of, say, nine thousand feet under shrapnel fire, one would think the pilot was playing with death; but in reality his occupation is not so tremendously risky.
Consider these factors: he is a mile and a half to two miles from the battery shooting at him, he presents a tiny mark, and his speed is from eighty to one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. Above all, he can twist and turn or change his altitude at will. The gunner must calculate his altitude and rate of speed, and after the lanyard is pulled, considerable time elapses before the shell reaches its mark. Meanwhile, the aviator has probably come down or risen or changed his course. It is like trying to shoot a twisting snipe with very slow-burning powder — the odds are all in favor of the snipe.
All the same, the spectacle never quite loses its thrill. High and remote against the sky you see the big reconnaissance machine going steadily on its way, its motor sending a faint drone to your ears. Keeping it company, darting around it like a pilot-fish around a shark, is the tiny, formidable appareil de chasse, a mere dot against the blue.
Crack! Whang! Boom! goes a battery near by, and three white puffs spring out suddenly around the distant machines, above, behind, below. Another battery speaks out, another and another, till the sky is filled with downy balls of smoke. Suddenly the firing ceases, and the big German aero slants down swiftly toward its base. A sharper droning hits your ears. There, directly above us, a French fighting machine is rushing at two hundred kilometres an hour to give battle to the little Fokker. Close together, wheeling and looping the loop to the rattle of their mitrailleuses, they disappear into a cloud, and we can only guess the result.
(One day later.) I finished the paragraph above just as a wave of rifle and machine-gun fire rolled along the lines. Running out of the abri to see what the excitement was about, I saw two French aeros skimming low over the German trenches — where every one with any kind of a fire-arm was blazing away at them. Fortunately, neither one was hit, and after a couple of retaliatory belts, they rose and flew off to the south. The Germans began to waste shrapnel on the air, and indiscreetly revealed the location of a battery, which the French promptly bombarded with heavy guns. Pretty soon all hands were at it — a two-hour Fourth of July.
I was on the road all day yesterday, afternoon and evening, getting back to the post at 10 P.M. One of the darkest nights I remember — absolutely impossible to move without an occasional clandestine flash of my torch. Far off to the right (twenty or thirty miles) a heavy bombardment was in progress, the guns making a steady rumble and mutter. I could see a continuous flicker on the horizon. The French batteries are so craftily hidden that I pass within a few yards of them without a suspicion. The other day I was rounding a familiar turn when suddenly, with a tremendous roar and concussion, a ‘381’ went off close by. The little ambulance shied across the road and I nearly fell off the seat. Talk about ‘death pops’ — these big guns give forth a sound that must be heard to be appreciated.
Another break here, as since writing the above we have had a bit of excitement, in the shape of a raid, or coup de main. In sectors like ours, during the periods of tranquillity between more important attacks, an occasional coup de main is necessary in order to get a few prisoners for information about the enemy. We are warned beforehand to be ready for it, but do not know exactly when or where. I will tell you the story of the last one, as related by a slightly wounded but very happy poilu I brought in beside me.
‘After coffee in the morning,’ he said, ‘our battalion commander called for one platoon of volunteers to make the attack — each volunteer to have eight days’ special leave afterwards. It was hard to choose, as every one wanted to go — for the permission, and to have a little fun with the Boches. At noon we were ordered to the first line. Our rifles and equipment were left behind, each man carrying only a little food, a canteen of wine, a long knife, and a sack of grenades. Our orders were to advance the moment the bombardment ceased, take as many prisoners as possible, and return before the enemy had recovered from his surprise. At the point of attack the German trench is only twenty yards from ours — several nights before, they had rolled out a line of portable wire-entanglements. At 4.30 in the afternoon our 75’s began to plow up the Boche trench and rip their wire to shreds. It was wonderful — along the line in front of us hundreds of our shells, bursting only twenty metres off, sent earth and wire and timbers high into the air — while not one of us, watching so close by, was hurt.
‘At 5.15 the guns ceased firing and the next instant we were over the parapet, armed with knives, grenades, and a few automatic pistols. After the racking noise of the bombardment, a strange quiet, a breathless tranquillity, seemed to oppress us as we ran through the torn wire and jumped into the smoking ruins of the enemy trench. In front of me there was no one, — only a couple of bodies, — but to the right and left I could hear grenades going, so it was evident that a few Germans had not retreated to the dugouts. Straight ahead I saw a boyau leading to their second lines, and as I ran into this with my squad, we came on a German at the turn. His hands were up and he was yelling, “Kamerad, Kamerad!” as fast as he knew how. Next minute, down went his hand and he tossed a grenade into our midst. By luck it struck mud, and the time-fuse gave us a moment’s start. The corporal was killed and my pal, Frétard, who lies on the stretcher behind, got an éclat through the leg. We did not make a prisoner of the Boche.
‘The abris of the second line were full of Germans, but all but one were barricaded. A few grenades persuaded the survivors to come out of this, with no fight left in them; but how to get into the others? In vain we invited them to come out for a little visit — till some one shouted, “The stove-pipes!” Our barrage fire was now making such a fuss that the Boches farther back could not use their machine-guns, so we jumped on top of the dugouts and popped a half-dozen citrons into each chimney. That made them squeal, mon vieux — oh, là là! But it was time to go back— our sergeant was shouting to us; so, herding our prisoners ahead, we made a sprint back to our friends.'
One of the prisoners was wounded, and he was hauled to the hospital by the chap with whom I share my quarters. I went to have a look at the German— always an object of curiosity out here. Had to shoulder my way through a crowd to get there. He lay on a stretcher, poor devil, hollow-eyed, thin, with a ragged beard — an object of pity, suffering and afraid for his life. His gray overcoat lay beside him and near it stood his clumsy hobnailed boots. German or no German, he was a human being in a bad situation — a peasant obviously, and deadly afraid.
Suddenly, a half-baked civilian — always the most belligerent class — reached up and plucked contemptuously at his leg, with an unpleasant epithet. Then a fine thing happened. A French soldier, lying near-by on a stretcher, severely wounded, raised up his head and looked sternly at the crowd. ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘he is a Boche, I grant you; but first of all remember that he is a soldier, wounded and in your power!’
We were at lunch yesterday when a friend rushed in to say that an aeroplane fight was starting, almost directly overhead. A big French reconnaissance ’plane was diving for safety, with a Fokker close behind and German shrapnel bursting all around, when a tiny French fighting machine appeared far above, plunging down like a falcon on its quarry. The Fokker turned too late: the Nieuport, rushing downward at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, looped the loop around the German. Two bursts of machine-gun fire came down faintly to our ears, and the next moment it was evident that the German was hit. Slowly at first, the Fokker began to fall — this way and that, like a leaf falling in a still air, growing larger each moment before our eyes, until it disappeared behind a hill. High over the lines, scorning burst after burst of German shrapnel, the tiny Nieuport sailed proudly back and forth, as if daring any Boche pilot to rise and try his luck. In the thrill of the superb spectacle, one forgot that the poor chap (a good sportsman, if he was a German!) had lost his life.

April 23, 1917.
I am sitting again in the little post I told you about in my last letter. The old lady is tidying up the café, the early morning sun is shining in gayly through the many-paned windows, and outside, along the picket-line, the mules are squealing and kicking while they have their morning bath. Pretty soon I shall go out foraging for a brace of eggs, and with these, a piece of cheese, and some coffee shall make my déjeuner.
The local barrack is the only one I have found where one simply cannot eat, as the cook and his kitchen are unspeakable. Unless he has been caught out in a shower, he has certainly gone without a bath since the war started. After a glance at him and at his kitchen even the most callous poilu rebels.
We have now, attached to our section as mechanic, a French private who is rather an unusual type — a rich manufacturer in civil life, who, through some kink of character, has not risen in the army. He put in a year in the trenches and then, being middle-aged, was put behind the lines. He speaks English, is splendidly educated, and has traveled everywhere, but is too indifferent to public opinion ever to make an officer, or even a non-com. In his factory he had a packer, earning seven francs a day, who was also mobilized, and who has now risen to the rank of lieutenant. Think of the gulf between a poilu and a French officer, with his authority, his galons, and superb red-and-gold hat, and then consider that this lieutenant’s idea of a permission is to go home, put on his oldest clothes, and spend the seven days working at his old job of packing and heading barrels. It takes France to produce this sort of thing.
The siege warfare to which, owing to strategic reasons, we are reduced in our part of the lines, with both sides playing the part of besieged and besiegers, gives rise to a curious unwritten understanding between ourselves and the enemy. Take the hospital corps, their first-aid posts and ambulances. The Germans must know perfectly well where the posts are, but they scarcely ever shell them — not from any humanitarian reason, but because if they did, the French would promptly blow theirs to pieces. It is a curious sensation to live in such a place, with the knowledge that this is the only reason you enjoy your comparative safety. Likewise our ambulances. I often go over a road in perfectly plain view of the Boche, only a few hundred yards distant, and though shells and shrapnel often come my way, I am confident none of them are aimed at me. The proof of it is that no one has ever taken a pot-shot at me with rifle or machinegun, either one of which would be a sure thing at the range. The other day an officer invited me down to see his newly completed observatory—a cunningly built, almost invisible stronghold on the crest of a hill, which commanded a superb view of the trenches and German territory behind them. It chanced to be an afternoon of unusual interest. The trenches, about eight hundred yards distant, were spread like a map beneath us, — a labyrinth of zigzag ditches and boyaux, — all cunningly laid out on principles which I have been studying. With the powerful glasses lent me, I could make out the thickets of wire before the first lines. A heavy bombardment was in progress, and all along the lines, as far as the eye could see, clouds of smoke and earth were springing up and settling slowly down. Not a living being was in sight. Far off to the south, a flock of observation balloons floated motionless, high in air, like fat, hovering birds. Suddenly the man beside me, who had been staring through his glasses at a twentyacre patch of woods a couple of miles away, gave an excited exclamation. ‘I have spotted it — the new battery of heavy guns that has been annoying us; they were too bold, for once.’
Sure enough, I thought I made out a thin wisp of smoke trailing among the tree-tops at the south end of the wood.
The officer muttered a string of cabalistic instructions into his telephone receiver and motioned me to watch. A minute later, a battery of French heavy guns behind us began their deep, coughing thumps, sending enormous shells hurtling overhead with the pulsing rush of an express train, crescendo and diminuendo. The first shell fell short, showering the trees with earth and débris — the salvos that followed obscured the whole wood in clouds of smoke, broken branches, and dust. Twenty minutes of this before the battery went silent again. A final tremendous explosion, eclipsing all that had gone before, seemed to shake the trees to their roots.
‘That will hold them for a while,’ said my friend exultantly, as he telephoned the news back to his battery; ‘we must have hit their magazine of propelling charges.’
Next day I was sitting at lunch in our mess, distant about three hundred yards from the observatory, when a series of heavy, racking explosions made the windows rattle. There is a distinct difference between the sound of a gun and that of a bursting shell. The first is a cracking bang, or boum, as the French say. The latter is a racking, dwelling roar — drawn out, if such a thing can be said of an explosion. Shells were bursting somewhere close to us — many of them. When I went outside I could hear, clear and waspish above the din, the pinging of splinters whizzing overhead, and the occasional crackle of a lopped-off branch. After half an hour of this, a man came panting up with the bad news that the new observatory was completely demolished. There you have the inner workings of siege-war; the Boches, with uncanny craft, knew of the observatory, let the French complete it, and might have let it alone, had it not been instrumental in destroying their battery. That led them into their indiscreet action, for the French, in retaliation, promptly wiped off the map the most important German observatory — an elaborate affair whose exact location they had long known. This time the Boche did not dare retaliate. And so it goes.
There is a crack French gun-pointer near here who has brought down seven enemy planes in the past two months — a remarkable record in this quiet district. The last one fell close to one of our posts — its two passengers, German lieutenants, were dead, but scarcely marked by their drop into a snowdrift. One of them, a handsome young chap, with a little blond moustache, wore a gold bracelet, and in his pocket was a letter from his mother, accusing him of being an ungrateful son, who had only written twice in six months. Rather pathetic. There is a sort of chivalry in the air service which is a relief in the sordid monotony of this war. A German ’plane was crippled a while ago, and had to volplane down smack into a parade-ground wrhere a French regiment was at drill. The soldiers rushed out to make prisoners of the two German officers, who were not a hundred yards up; but the latter, with indomitable courage, loosed their machine on the crowd, and were promptly riddled with bullets by the reluctant French. They received a funeral in accordance with their splendid death.
The code of the Prussian officer is, never to surrender; but of course all cannot live up to this. In a recent raid, a sergeant I know made a prisoner of a German captain, who, as they walked to the rear, cursed his luck in fluent French, saying that he was caught unaware — that an officer never surrendered, but fought to the end.
‘Stop here, my captain, and let us consider this,’ said the sergeant seriously; ‘there are several articles of your equipment to which my fancy runs — that watch, for example, those leather puttees, and that fat purse I saw you change to your hip-pocket. Perhaps I can at once oblige you and gratify my whim. Suppose you were suddenly to run — a quick shot would save your honor, and me the trouble of escorting you back to the rear. And I am an excellent shot, je vous assure.’ But the German was not interested.

(To be continued)