Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 281, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1914 — DAY ON THE BAHLEFRONT AS SEEN THROUGH EYES OF FRENCH SOLDIER [ARTICLE]

DAY ON THE BAHLEFRONT AS SEEN THROUGH EYES OF FRENCH SOLDIER

Being a Composite Account, Compiled From Many Sources and Founded on Incidents That Are Authentic, of a Battle as the Private Sees It—All in the Day’s Work of the Modem Warrior.*

(The private soldier—what does he do? What does he think? How does he feel? These are the questions that hundreds of persons Msk themselves every day. These are the questions which the censor rarely sees fit to answer. It Is only from the private's letters to his wife or his sweetheart that we can get an insight into the heart of the man whose sole duty It Is to Obey orders. The following article is an . attempt to reconstruct, out of the material furnished by hundreds of letters printed In the English and French newspapers, the battle as the private sees it. Manifestly the picture Is a composite one. but the incidents are authentic, every one!) London. Yesterday morning I inarched with my regiment from the Tillage of Roye in a northeasterly direction, not being exactly aware of my destination. We knew, however, that we were going to the front to relieve a regiment which for a week had been facing the shrapnel Are from the German howitzers. The march was not a long one, which pleased us mightily, for when there is fighting to be done we like to get it over with as quickly as possible. All the way we could hear the booming of great guns, and the lesser but no less ominous rattle of what they used to call musketry. This roaring and rattling grew in volume so steadily and at last became so terrific (though it was little more than dawn! that we realized we were approaching the big muss. Furnished With Day's Ration. I should say, of course, that we were in reality a part of a great detachment of whose numbers I have no definite knowledge. At a guess, there mlist have been 60,000 of us marching forward on this morning. We were furnished, each of us, with a day’s ration in addition to the emergency ration, with which we were each provided on leaving Paris, and upon which we have had as yet no occasion to make demand. All the ground over which we inarched had been fought over in the past week and there were many burned and ruined houses. Great trees had been cut down by shells and now and then in the open fields we could see immense caverns made by exploding ehells, some of which were wide enough and deep enough to hold a horse and wagon. In other places we saw the beginnings of trenches which had probably been evacuated before they were half completed. Now and then ®e would pass a scared peasant, but whether woman or man, they showed little animation. The horror of the Germans was too fresh in their minds. It was funny now and then to see a tiny little house surrounded by trees with autumn flowers blooming in the garden all about it, and no sign of war about the place, except the utter absence of life. The fields were bare of cattle. No dog rushed out to bark at the passing troops and defy their invasion; only now and then a cat sunned herself in the embrasure of the desolate window. Wounded Men Gay. We passed for a while heavily laden ammunition trains and chugging mo-tor-drawn field guns, big ones, even if they are not the 16-inchers they say the Germans are using. They looked quite big enough to us as we passed them. | Then we passed ambulance trains going in the other direction with poor wounded fellows, and some dead ones, too, probably, stretched out inside. We were ordered to halt while passing one of these trains, and the fellow stationed next to me and myself peeked under the cover. A youfig ffellow lying Inside raised his hand to us. “Go, get ’em, boys, biff, biff,” he said. "Biff, biff,*' by the way, is as much of a slogan as we have yet conceived. It doesn’t sound like-much, in telling, but it means a whole lot when a wounded soldier says it. Funny enough, the sight of that fellow did not frighten me or my pal in the slightest degree. We just wanted to go out there and “biff, biff,” as he said. It wasn’t long after this that we felt we were very nearly in the midst, of the engagement. Dusty fellows who had been in the trenches all night passed us going toward the rear. Bleary-eyed some of them were, but others were so cocky and jubilant you would have thought them drunk. All this time, remember, that same rattle and roar was in progress, and now fltaally we could smell the powder, and once a shell that must have contained ■shrapnel burst in a little clump of trees to our right and the .shot kicked tup a dust in the road not far ahead of us. Hill Torn by Exploding Shells. “Damn poor shooting, that!” said any pal, but he was wrong, because, without knowing It, we were almost at tthe battle front. A fellow dashed by tas on a horse, an adjutant he must lhave been, for almost immediately thereafter we were ordered to deploy. We left the road, and our company lacattered over a front probably fifty yards wide. There was a hill right in front of us —not a steep hill, but a gentle rise. Its whole surface was torn pip with trenches and great caverns that must have been made by exploding shells in the fighting of the day before. At this moment it began to rain. We had been expecting it all the morning, but had hoped that the storm would blow over, but there was no

such luck. As we climbed the hill the downpour grew in violence until our shoes were wet through and we sank up to our ankles in the soft red earth. They Sensed the Charge. Some of our fellows were coming down the nill as we came up. Others, stretched at full length at its brow, were firing from behind miserable little mounds of earth that they had cast up before we arrived. We knew what was expected of us, and if there were any orders given I didn’t hear them. We just went up quietly, kicked those other fellows out and lay down in the red earth that bore the Imprint of tbelr bodies. And then something hit the ground in front qf me with a noise like a slap on a pillow with the palm of one’s hand and “Lay down, you fool,” said my pal. "Can’t you see they’ve got the range?” That shot roused my ire. My rifle was loaded. I slipped it over the top of my little parapet and took a shot at the first puff of haze that I saw rise from the hill across the way. I hadn’t been ordered to shoot, but I felt I had to get back at that fellow who took a shot at me. How he saw me I don't know, for I hadn’t seen a sign of a man over there yet. Like a Great Wave. Somehow we got the idea there was something doing. “Hold ’em, boys!” said the lieutenant, who was kneeling just a few feet behind me, and sure enough down thg hide of the other hill, almost an instant, there rushed a whole troop of 'cavalry—uhlans, maybe, but more probably just regular horsemen. As far down the little valley as I could see they broke over the edge of that opposite hill like a great wave and swept down into the little valley where the brook flowed. I shot wildly two or three times, and then I realized I must make good, so I took careful aim at & fellow who had almost reached the brook, and so was about a quarter of a mile away, and fired. I put two more into him before he stopped, and then his horse — no, he didn’t rear up as I hoped he would, but just crumpled and threw him headlong.

His Pal Also Claimed Credit. “I got that one,” I said toTmy pal. He turned the funniest looking face I have ever seen toward me. “The devil you did. I got him myself,” he said. As a matter of fact, I think we both got him. I believe I got him twice. But they came on all the same, but there weren’t so many of them as there had been. The machine guns and our little Lebels were doing the work, and coming'up that hill through the bushes wasn’t an easy task for their horses, though we could see that by this time they were urging them on with might and main. Funny men, those Germans! They seemed to like to get killed. I wondered if they would get up the hill, and I turned over to load my rifle again. When I looked out they were almost there, a pitiful few of them, and those few were only a half dozen when they reached our lines. None came near me, but I saw some other fellows driving their bayonets, held in their hands, into the bellies of the horses. Day's Fighting to Be Done. And then there weren’t any of them. Only a few horses galloped madly about. Some of these horses were killed, I am sure, by their own shrapnel fire, for I had just become conscious that little iron balls were raining all about us, and then, as soon as I dared, I looked around and saw that there weren’t as many of us as there had been. I thought they would give qs a rest; but it was still morning, and there was a day’s fighting to be done, so we lay down in our trenches and began to take pot shots at the trenches on the other side. To the north and the sputh of us they were getting guns in position, and I saw that it wfcs soon going to be up tons to try to do just what they had done. They wanted our hill and we wanted theirs, but our methods were not quite so reckless. I was getting a little hungry; Funny I should think of such a thing at such a time, but I was hungry, and my pal was, too; so we took down our haversacks and gnawed a’little food. That made us thirsty, but the fellows in the rear were prepared, so we slipped back and took great swigs of water from a pail* they had there, and smoked a cigarette before going back to our positions. This sounds a little unlikely to you, maybe, and a little irregular; but, as a matter of fact, we all came about the same time. There was water for all of us, and we all went back to our places in unison. You don’t need orders for such things as that. The instinct seenft to hit everybody about the same time. . J Ordered .to Take Other Hill. / ' They weren’t doing much across the way. Our gunners had gotten their range apparently, and they were kept pretty busy preparing cover for themselves; so for an hour or two we just lay there and smoked and talked, chiefly smoked, and waited for something to happen. ' It wasn’t long 1 before something did happen. That little lieutenant got his orders from somewhere, and he told us we were to take that other hllL It was

only half a mile away, but we knew that unless our gunners could keep the Germans pretty busy we’d never do it. While we were collecting our gear a funny thing happened. An aeroplane rose over the brow of the enemy’s hill full a mile high and soared almost directly over my head. If he had wanted to, he could have dropped a bomb, I guess, and blown me to bits; but he was a scout, not a fighter. I took a shot at him for luck. Maybe I pat a hole in one of his wings, but the chances are I fell short And then the little lieutenant said, "Go, get ’em, boys, biff, biff,” just as I knew he would, and we scrambled over our little redoubt, me and my pal and the whole line of us, and a whole lot more fellows who had gathering in the rear, and rushed, lickerty-split, down to those bushes. It must have surprised them that we were ready to come back at them so quickly, because I think that almost every one of us made the shelter of the bushes in safety; but it was hot enough there, heaven knows., It seemed to be raining shot, and now and then a shell would burst and I would imagine it had me, so we were glad enough when they told us to go on again. Anything was better than crouching there in those bushes, hardly able to see a thing. No Charge—Just Getting On. We forded the stream —it wasn’t more than six feet wide —and started to climb the hill just as their cavalry had done. Only our gunners had the range, and there wasn’t anything like the reception for us that they had got My pal and I and the little lieutenant seemed to make a little group. We just went on; sometimes he would take the lead and sometimes we would give him a lift. We puffed, and maybe staggered, because it was vary exhausting, not only the climb, tat the jag that, our nerves were on. Somehow we got there. 4 The lieutenant had his revolver in his hand, and he finished a round-head-ed German who aimed at me with his rifle clubbed. I reckon that German must have been the only live one in the vicinity, for I didn’t see any more. The main body seemed to have been driven out before we got there, so we just squatted down in the trenches they had made to catch our breath, and the funny part of it was that as far as we could see there were hundreds of us fellows squatting in those trenches, panting. The lieutenant was the first to collect himself. “We are a lot of fools,” he said, "sitting here without a cover. Don’t you fellows realize that they can pick us off as easy as not?” It was time we realized it, because they were picking us off —not me and my pal, you understand, or the lieutenant —but a dozen |>ther fellows all along the line.

Used Basins for Shovels. “Get to work there and dig,” he. said. And we dug as we had never dug before. We' knew we couldn’t go any further that day, and we wanted to make cover for ourselves that would last the night out, so with basins we shoveled the earth they had up until it gave us protection from their rifle fire. It would make a nice story right here if I could tell you that our little lieutenant had been killed or badly wounded in trying to save one of our lives, but he was no fool. He got behind the first pile of earth we raised and told us what to do next, and that, you will admit, was a much wiser thing for him to do than any tomfool bravery would have been. We had our position clinched. They were bringing guns down into the little valley by roads I hadn’t noticed before and hauling them up to the top of the hill near our position. When I saw that I knew that as far as we were concerned .we had done our work. All tills, and It was only two o’clock in the afternoon. The rest of the day we spent, digging. They brought up shovels from the supply wagons and we made a real breastworks, a whole lot better than any we had had since we left the Aisne. It was funny to see engineers, with levels and transits, working where only an hour before there had been more dead men than* livihg, but these poor* fellows were gone now, and from brave soldiers we became mere diggers in the soil. Speed was necessary, for the German doesn’t know when he is licked, and his fire upon our position was getting warmer all the. time. Trench Digging Is Drudgery. Digging trenches sounds like a simple thing; and so it is for the first hour, but after you have been working for two hours or more without any hot grub and nothing to smoke it becomes more like drudgery. I would rather charge with only half a chance of coming out alive than dig trenches for two hours. If you could think of the danger, if you could keep the noble part of it in the front of your mind, it wouldn’t be so bad; but just to dig like an ordinary drainman with a little lieutenant yapping about is a frightful bore. He is a good fellow, that lieutenant, and he shot my German friend, but he knew no more about getting work out of a lot of Paris clerks than he does about farming; and that is precious little, I wager. » But when the sun dropped into the hills behind us we had dug regular standing trenches four feet deep, with a breastwork high enough to cover anybody, and we Were mighty glad, I can tell you, when they told us to £ve it up and go back-and get some od. Other fellows came forward to take our places as we went back. They were clean and spick and span, and when I looked at my pal and he looked at me we burst Into a hearty laugh, for if there ever was a couple of disreputable looking citizens of the republic It was ourselves.