Little by little the "inner history" of the Great War is coming to light. This remarkable story shows how the presence of mind of a humble woodman's widow, in the early days of hostilities, led to the preservation of the Western Railway of France, on which at that time Paris depended for its supplies and the transport of troops. Told in the Wide World.
I—IN NORMANDY—STORY OF OCTAVIE DELACOURT
In a clearing of the Forêt de Lyons, near Martagny, in Normandy, and by the side of a barely distinguishable road, stands the rustic half-timbered cottage of Octavie Delacourt. A solitary habitation indeed, but one well fitted to the mental outlook of a lonely woman—no fair young heroine of romance, as some readers may hastily conclude, but a widow of over fifty with hair turning a silvery grey. Her husband—a forester, and the builder of the little home—had died from a fever a year before the war. Childless, she had elected to live on there alone, partly through necessity, partly because of the memories which the surroundings stirred in her mind whenever she went forth to collect sticks for her fire, or when, lying in bed at night, she heard the wind in the trees. Twenty years with "her man," twenty years of labour in common, had made her a fervent lover of the forest. It had become, as it were, her domain. Certainly no one knew better its confusing tangle of roads and pathways.
The outbreak of the war naturally had an effect on the mind and habits of Octavie Delacourt, but, alone in the world as she was, it affected her much less than it had done her friends and acquaintances in the neighbouring villages. In her case the war fever took the form of restlessness—an eager, insatiable desire to learn the truth about the danger which was threatening her dear France.
As the cloud darkened over the country her anxiety for news grew keener and keener. It seemed as though her sub-conscious self was aware that the tide of invasion was drawing nearer and nearer to the fair fields and orchards of Normandy, and that one morning she would wake up to find Martagny, Gournay, and Les Andelys in the hands of the Boches. So every day, in those early weeks of the war, she was up betimes and, having carefully done up her grey tresses and put on a newly-ironed blue apron, set forth to one or other of the neighbouring villages, where she would be able to read the latest "communiqué" and pick up any stray item of news that might filter through from Paris.
About eight o'clock on the morning of September 16th, 1914, Octavie Delacourt set out in this way, her destination on this occasion being Gournay and the house of an old friend of her husband, a small landowner named Rismude. It is a good distance by road from Martagny to Gournay, so she decided to take a short cut through the Forêt de Lyons. Setting her best foot foremost, she struck off through the trees with the swinging stride of a hardy countrywoman, and soon picked up a little pathway amidst the undergrowth which she knew would lead her in the right direction. After walking for some ten minutes at full speed, she came to a part of the forest known as "La Molière," the site of a disused chalk quarry, the gasping white mouth of which is partly hidden by dense foliage. It was here that her eye—long experienced in woodcraft—noticed something unusual near the path she was following: a number of green branches, freshly cut from the trees, which someone—apparently in vain—had been trying to make into a fire. Stopping in front of the charred remains, she could not suppress the utterance of the reflection which sprang to her mind:—
"How stupid to cut green branches for a fire!"
Hardly had the words passed her lips than Octavie felt a heavy hand descended on her shoulder. With thumping heart and suddenly blanched face she spun half round and beheld her aggressor—a heavy-featured man in a strange dress who, with a cynical smile on his thick lips and a hard look in his little grey eyes, had noiselessly appeared from behind a tree.
"How you frightened me!" exclaimed Octavie, retaining her self-possession, in spite of her fright, and endeavouring to shake off the leaden fingers which weighed on her slender frame.
But not a word in reply came from the mysterious man, who might have been made of cast-iron, so motionless did he stand. Gradually, as Octavie Delacourt fell to examining him, the hideous truth began to dawn upon her, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had never set eyes before on a German soldier; she had never even seen a picture of one. But she had heard tell of their uniform, in a vague sort of way, and suddenly, one might say instinctively, she recognized the ash-grey dress and the round cap of the same colour. How came the wearer of these tell-tale clothes to be in her forest, not fifteen miles from Les Andelys, and within rifle-shot of her native village of Martagny?
II—WAS HE GOING TO BAYONET HER?
The mystery terrified her. However, no trace of fear or the tumult in her breast appeared on her face. Her simple peasant logic told her that would have been fatal. In the presence of the hidden and perhaps imminent danger into which she divined she had stumbled, she told herself, with feminine shrewdness, that at all costs she must preserve a brave countenance and combat the enemy by craft.
"What do you want with me? Can I be of any service to you? If you have lost your way I can set you right. No one knows the forest better than I."
She paused and smiled.
The German soldier's only reply was a sort of grunt and a slightly relaxed hold on her shoulder. At the same time he led her in the direction of a deep excavation, formerly used as a wolf-trap. What was he going to do to her? She now noticed that he carried in his right hand a bayonet, with which he swished, as they walked along, at the tall grass and weeds. Was he going to kill her? She would have turned and fled like a hare but for the grip in which she was held. Perhaps, after all, she thought, there was greater safety in non-resistance than in attempted flight. So she allowed herself to be led to the very edge of the excavation before saying to her captor, in a pleading voice:—
"You are not going to do me any harm, are you? I'm only a poor, inoffensive woman."
Whilst making this appeal, standing on the edge of what she imagined might be her grave, she noticed that the greater part of the hole was skilfully hidden by a roof of branches. The next moment she heard the man with the bayonet whistle, whereupon the head of a blond, blue-eyed giant, also dressed in grey, but with the rank marks of an officer, suddenly appeared through the aperture. Words in a gutteral tongue passed between the two soldiers. Then the fair-complexioned Boche, eyeing her critically, shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, uttered an order, and disappeared.
The leaden hand immediately fell from Octavie Delacourt's shoulder and she was once more free. Now, however, all her strength seemed to have gone from her. The feeling that she had just escaped a very real danger robbed her of her desire to flee. Slowly, timidly, like a frightened animal, she moved away, with her head slightly turned towards her captor, who stood watching her, as a cat will a mouse, his bayonet still in his hand and a look of mingled cruelty and regret on his coarse, heavy features. A few steps more and he called to her to halt.
"Has he changed his mind?" thought Octavie, seeing him walk towards her. No; he intended to do her no harm; all he wanted to do was to take her by the hand and lead her in an entirely opposite direction to the one she was heading in. This done, he released her.
Once through the trees, and hidden from view, Octavie Delacourt made a détour and ran as fast as her legs would carry her to Neuf-Marché. At first she thought of returning to Martagny, but the fear of being recaptured restrained her. Moreover, she felt that she had now an urgent duty to perform—to inform the nearest authorities of her discovery. That it foreboded something extremely serious for the country she could now no longer doubt for a moment. In her flight she had caught sight through an opening in the trees, of a third grey-clad soldier, lying flat on his stomach at the edge of the forest and, with his rifle close to hand, watching the movements of a peasant guiding his plough.
Dupont, the aubergiste of Neuf-Marché, listened to her story with a puzzled face. But, though his scepticism was great, he did not allow it to get the better of his judgment. "Nothing would astonish him in these times," he declared; so off he went in search of the garde champêtre, one of the keepers of the forest. He was lucky in catching him before he went for his leisurely morning round, and brought him to the inn, ready to explode with hilarity.
"My poor woman, you must be suffering from illusions," he exclaimed, bursting into a roar of laughter. "Prussians in the Forêt de Lyons? No more than there are cockchafers on a switch!"
Whilst he hastened to turn to his wine and touch glasses with the innkeeper, Octavie, seeing that it would be useless to discuss the matter, slipped out without a word and hurried off to the gendarmerie. Here Quartermaster Crosnier was almost as difficult to convince as the garde champêtre.
"Prussians at Martagny?" he said, with wrinkled brow and a look of doubt in his eyes, as he twisted his moustache. "Are you quite sure? You astonish me."
"Yes, I'm quite sure," affirmed Octavie, in an almost supplicating voice. "Quite, quite sure. And if you go after them, take care you go in force, otherwise they will kill you. There is one Boche, as I've told you, at the edge of the wood, ready to fire, and I've no doubt there are others also lying in waiting."
"Certainly we shall go and see if there's anything in what you say, my good woman," replied the Quartermaster, in a condescending tone, which proved to her that he was still undecided whether to accept her story for gospel.
However, there was no knowing. So he promised he would see to the matter at once. Fraets and Lebas, his gendarmes, should accompany him into the wood. They would look into the mystery as a matter of duty.
III—"BUT FOR A CURSED COUNTRY WOMAN!"
On leaving the constabulary Octavie Delacourt, not wholly satisfied that she had set the administrative machinery sufficiently in motion, asked herself what more she could do. All at once she thought of the post-mistress she knew at Mainneville, a village some three miles off. Excellent idea! A post-mistress had both the telegraph and telephone at her disposal, and she knew that this official, at any rate, would not laugh at her. Pulling herself together once more, she set off at a brisk walk—almost a run—in the direction of Mainneville.
There, as she had foreseen, she met with the most sympathetic of receptions. Mme. B——, the post-mistress, lost not a moment in telephoning to M. Armand Bernard, the Prefect of the Eure, who immediately passed on the news to his colleagues of the adjoining departments. Within half an hour not a prefect, not a commissary of police, not a gendarme with a radius of a hundred miles was uninformed. The Germans in the Forêt de Lyons and their accomplices were entrapped, as it were, within the meshes of a net.
Octavie Delacourt went to sleep that night content indeed. But she little knew what a service she had rendered to France—nothing less, in fact, than the saving of the Western Railway line, on which Paris depended at that time for its supplies and the transport of troops.
The facts relating to the capture of the Huns in the Forêt de Lyons, and those working in conjunction with them, were briefly recorded at the time, but, overshadowed by the greater events of those early days of the war, their true significance was lost sight of. A Prussian captain, a non-commissioned officer, and eleven engineers were arrested at Oissel, thanks to the good marksmanship of Sergeant Leroy, of the G.V.C. Service, who punctured with rifle-bullets the tyres of the motor-cars in which they were fleeing. One of the cars bore the plate and number of the prefect of police of Aix-la-Chapelle. In a motor-lorry which formed part of the convoy was half a ton of explosives.
In the course of his examination the German officer declared that he had crossed the departments of the Somme and the Oise without being troubled, and that he had come into the Eure with the intention of blowing up the Oissel bridge, or, failing this, that of Manoir. He added that "but for a cursed countrywoman" whom one of his men had caught in the forest, and whom he ought to have "suppressed," he would certainly have succeeded.
This happened about three o'clock in the afternoon. Less than an hour later it was discovered that the capture had not been made without bloodshed. Between the "Molière" quarry and the excavation where the blond Hun had appeared to Octavie Delacourt three bodies were found stretched on the ground—those of the luckless Quartermaster Crosnier and his gendarmes, who had been shot almost point-blank when calling on the automobilists to surrender.
Octavie Delacourt's presence of mind, bravery, and persistence were recognized by the French Government. But the service she rendered was infinitely greater than either the praise or the monetary reward—one hundred francs!—which she received for having been instrumental in preventing the perpetration of an act which might have resulted in grave disaster to the capital of France.
I—"MY LIFE SPARED IN MIRACULOUS WAY"
As you know, I was on the cruiser Cressy on September 22, 1914, when in company with the cruisers Aboukir and Hogue she was torpedoed by a German submarine. My life has been spared in a most miraculous way.
About 6:15 a.m. I was awakened by some marines waking their comrades. "Get up quick, the Aboukir is sinking."
I tumbled out of my bunk, put on my shoes and slipping my big coat over my pajamas I hastened up to the sheltered deck. I should tell you that we were proceeding in line formation, the Hogue leading, our ship, the Cressy, bringing up the rear. We were steaming between six to nine knots, and at a distance of about a mile or so apart. When I got on deck the Hogue had fallen back on the starboard side of the Aboukir, while we stood by on the port side, both of us a good distance off.
The Aboukir had signalled asking for boats, which, of course, were sent off to them. Their ship gradually began to turn turtle, and it was an inspiring sight to see the ship's company lined up on the side of the ship awaiting the order, "Every man for himself." After a while I went down to the quarter deck and began with the others to throw planks of wood, etc., overboard.
While doing this the Hogue was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine and very quickly settled down. Indeed, no sooner was she hit than her quarter deck was below water. She then listed, turned turtle, and in about ten minutes had disappeared.
Our captain sent me word to take photographs, and I had taken five when I saw the white line of a torpedo approaching us in the starboard side, in line with the aft-bridge.
A few shouts heralded her approach, but nothing could be done, as our engines were not going, and she bored her hole in our side.
The impact was not so great or so terrible as I should have thought, indeed it was a dull thud, and did not even throw me off my feet. Previous to this the order to close watertight doors had been given, an order which prevented this torpedo doing so much serious damage.
We listed to starboard about 40 degrees, and after a time the ship righted herself to about 30 degrees. Everyone was on the look-out for submarines, and guns were fired at every suspicious-looking object that looked like like a periscope. I am not going to make any assertions, as I am much too inexperienced. I was standing by when three guns were fired.
The first was fired at what I thought to be a man's head. At any rate the shell hit something, for it exploded.
Unfortunately, I was called down from the boat deck then, so did not see what ensued, but the gunner says he saw two men pop up from the spot after he fired a second shot, and the torpedo lieutenant supports his assertion of having hit the submarine.
The second shot I saw (of course, other guns were fired) was at what I feel sure was a submarine. She came up, and it was a plucky thing to do, amid a mass of struggling men. I do not know if she was hit, but I admit I felt a spasm of horror at the damage to our own men in the water.
The third shot went right home, and did its work, and I cheered heartily with the rest. The Germans evidently attacked us under cover of a sailing trawler carrying the Dutch flag. This trawler, after we had all been hit, made no attempt at rescue work, a heartless act that roused our anger, and the captain of the after 9.2 gun trained his gun on her and fired. The shell hit her in the stern and she at once took fire.
II—"I SAW THE TORPEDO APPROACH"
While this was going on the Germans had fired another torpedo at us, but it missed and went astern. Meanwhile several men had swum alongside, and we helped them aboard, rubbed them down, pumped water out of them, and wrapping them in blankets gave them hot tea. One of those rescued was a midshipman. He was taken to the sick bay and after drinking his tea, he turned to his commander and said:
"Why shouldn't we get into these cots, sir?"
"Quite right, sonny, jump in." He hadn't been there long when we were struck again. The plucky boy jumped out and said, "Look here, sir, I'm off," and away he went and jumped over the ship's side, and was picked up by a boat some half-an-hour later.
It was this torpedo that settled our fate.
I saw her approaching about 400 yards distant, and she entered the ship's side just abaft of the fore-bridge and entered No. 5 boiler room. No doubt many poor fellows were killed outright. The ship seemed to rise out of the water, settled back and at once listed badly and began to turn turtle.
There was no panic whatever. The officers supervised the collecting of all woodwork, etc., and the order was then given, "Every man for himself."
Our middies were awfully brave and busily set to work to construct a small raft with chairs and a boxing dummy. Staff-Surgeon Sawdy came up to me, after Dr. Martin had procured me a lifebuoy, and said, "Shall I come with you, Padre?" He is a west-country man and you may guess how readily I said "Yes."
After a time we had to kneel on the deck and hang on to the side. It was just before this that I slipped off my coat and shoes. When the ship was at an angle of 75 to 80 degrees, we stepped over the port side on to a ledge, and hung on to the chains. A wave caught us and knocked us against the side a bit, but not enough to injure us, but with the next the ship turned over.
I retained my hold of the chain and the lifebuoy, and when I felt the ship steady I let go the chain, and after what seemed a very long time came to the surface. Dr. Sawdy had also retained his hold of the lifebuoy and we appeared together in the water.
You may not realize how we could do it, but we actually laughed. He complained of the length of time below water (I had been keeping him down), and to suddenly pop up together, was really funny. We at once struck out with our feet (as I can't swim) and succeeded in getting away from the ship.
We were soon joined by others, and six of us stuck to our lifebuoys and a plank of wood which came floating by. After about ten minutes I began to shake badly and my teeth were chattering.
It was a horrible feeling, and I told the doctor I couldn't hang on much longer, but he told me—good fellow that he is—to hang on, and after a while the shivering passed off, but a sort of numbness set in and occasionally we had cramps. To keep the circulation going we rubbed each other's legs, or kicked about a bit.
III—THE WAY MEN MEET DEATH
The scenes in the water were not so terrible as you may think. Here and there men were singing, "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary," "We All Go the Same Way Home," indeed, one man who joined us actually began joking.
The way men met their death was wonderful. They would give a smile to their comrades, wish them luck, and slide away quite peacefully without a struggle.
Floating spars, etc., occasionally put us in difficulties and several of us were badly bruised. It was a strange sight to see one's comrades, some fully dressed, even to their caps, others naked, while others like myself were clothed only in their pajamas.
Before going into the water I happened to look at my watch and it was 7:50. It speaks well for an English watch, doesn't it? when I tell you it didn't stop till 9:15. This watch and my crucifix I still have.
Well, there we were floating about until 9:45, when we sighted some trawlers approaching. It seemed as if they would never come to the doctor, a marine, and myself—for we were but three then.
At 10:20 I turned and saw a steam trawler near us and I suppose the relief was too much for me, as I became unconscious, so from then till 1 p.m. I must give information supplied me by the doctor. Becoming unconscious, he tells me I released my hold of the plank, but still kept my arm around the lifebuoy.
The steam trawler did not see us and headed away in another direction, but from behind her came a small cutter. The doctor shouted "If you come now you can save the Padre," and come they did, and, thank God, saved our lives. They hauled me into the boat and pumped away at me. I just remember being conscious for a moment and hearing voices.
We were then put on the Lowestoft trawler, S. S. Coriandar, and put in the stokehold. It was not until 1 p.m. that I became conscious, a most painful awakening and I was very sick. The fishermen had put an under flannel over me and given me hot tea. They were indeed good to us.
Our commander was picked up by the same boat and was superintending the boats which were in company with the Lowestoft trawler and others transferring us to H. M. S. Lennox. (They had their reward off the Dutch coast, eh?)
We buried one poor fellow there and then, but brought home another. After being massaged, I was put to bed, where I remained till 5 p.m. until the worst of the soreness had passed off. We were landed at Harwich at 8:30. The passage home, I'm told, was not without interest!
An order was given to "clear for action." Those who could, rushed on deck to see what was happening, and in the far distance saw an aeroplane and a waterplane approaching, but as they put it, "There was nothing doing," as they turned out to be British.
On landing we were received at the Great Eastern Hotel, equipped as a hospital, by the matron and her staff of Red Cross nurses. After being examined by the doctor, and found to have no bones broken, I had my first meal since 7 p.m. the previous day, and it was good!
I—"I MET HIM IN THE TRENCHES ON THE SOMME"
This is the story of Léon Barbèsse, a volunteer of France. I met him first in the trenches on the Somme. He stood in a first line post, where we were halted because the Germans had begun a fierce rain of shells on the French lines. They were nervous that day, the Germans. All the day and night before there had been a succession of sallies from the French trenches. They were really only reconnoitering expeditions, but the Germans had come to think each the precursor of an attack in force, and every time there was the least sign of activity in the French lines the German artillery burst into furious action, shelling the French trenches to prevent a sortie. We arrive as one of these rafales began, and we were halted to seek shelter.
The best trench is not proof against a real bombardment of heavy shells. Parapets crumble in like walls of sand. There is nothing reassuring about coming suddenly upon a great gaping hole in what has been considered a moment before a solid rampart, a hole still steaming from the impact of a white hot shell weighing half a ton. It does not add to one's confidence to find that instead of walking quietly along a well ordered corridor with a decent, dry plank floor one is crossing a miniature mountain chain, sinking suddenly into narrow valleys, waist deep in water, rising as suddenly to heights that leave half one's body exposed to the full view of the enemy. And to know that those valleys and those heights have been caused by the explosion in the trench of the shells that are constantly screaming overhead—that is the most disconcerting of all.
Such was the position we were in when I first saw Léon Barbèsse. We had come to a comparatively quiet spot. The shells whined above us or exploded in the barbed wire in front, but they had not found the trench. We stopped to take stock, to look about us, to get our breath, to straighten our backs and get a new thought in our minds, something except where the next shell would land. And standing in front of us in the trench, some ten feet away, I saw a bearded soldier with the stripes of a sergeant and the ribbon of the Medaille Militaire—the highest honor any French soldier, from ranking general down, can win—and the Croix de Guerre with two palms, meaning that he had been mentioned twice for conspicuous bravery in the general orders of the army. Despite his beard he was a young man, well under thirty, and he stood with a quiet air of confidence and looked at us with a certain amusement.
Five minutes later we were all distributed at the bottoms of various deep shelters. The shells had begun to fall on the section of trench where we were, and we had been ordered underground. I had descended eighteen steep steps, a matter of twenty feet, and found myself in a little, low celled, earth walled, square chamber, with six bunks in double tiers taking up three sides and the narrow door in the fourth side. The bearded soldier was in our party. He had preceded me and lent me a helping hand down the ladder-like stairs. When we were safe in the cave he lighted a candle and pulled up an empty shell box for me to sit on.
"You are safe here," he said.
"That is all right," I replied. "I want to know why you smiled at us when we came up. We had come across pretty dangerous ground."
"I know you had," he said. "That was why I smiled. You know now something more of what it means to be a soldier. You don't know very much. You can go back and tell of the narrow escape you had, and you need never come again. But for a few minutes, when you were under that rain of shells, you knew the glory of war. You prayed. That was why I smiled."
II—THE CONFESSION OF A SLACKER
It was not exactly what one expects from a man wearing the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre with two palms. There was a certain implication in it. It sounded as though he meant that any man not in military uniform was a curiosity seeker or a sensation monger. I said something to that effect.
"No," he said hastily. "Not at all. Not at all. I only meant you could understand now, perhaps what it is that moves men in this, what makes them take part in it."
"Most of the men are conscripts," I said. "You are, I suppose."
"No," he answered. "I am a volunteer. I might be at the rear; I might even be writing for some paper."
It was a fine answer to my brutality.
"I beg your pardon," I said. "You are a volunteer. Tell me why you are here."
"I will tell you my name first," he said. "It is Léon Barbèsse. I was a schoolteacher in the centre of France, married, and with a boy four years old. The war came and I was called to the colors, as every one was called. But I was sent home. My lungs, you know. They are all right now, though. A few months of this life and your lungs kill you or they get all right. Mine are all right."
He struck himself a heavy blow on the chest and grinned.
"I could not have done that in 1914," he said. "I would have coughed for half an hour."
"So I was sent back," he continued, "and I was glad of it. I can't tell you how glad. I did not want to go to war. I was afraid. That is the truth. I was afraid. And when the doctor said I would not do, I could have cheered. The doctor was sorry for me, and I pretended to be sorry, also, but not too sorry, for he might have passed me.
"I went home. I was safe. I did not have to fight. I did not have to be killed. I did not have to be ashamed, for the doctors had turned me back. Well, I was ashamed. My country was in danger. The Germans were in France. And I was at home. But I was afraid. There you have it, I was ashamed because I would not fight for my country, my country that needed me, and I was afraid to fight. I was afraid to be hurt. I was afraid to die.
"Do you remember when they called the 1917 class a year ahead of time? I went then. I volunteered. God, what a struggle that was! I walked the road to the caserne with the sweat running off me. For a year I had dreamed nightly of the shells. I had heard them. They had fallen around me. I had been wounded. I had felt the impact of the steel on my yielding flesh. For a year I had spent my days trying to hide my terror from my wife, my friends and my neighbors. And all the time my country had called. Fear and shame! Fear and shame! My country called and I was afraid to go!
"For a man who loves his country, there is nothing harder than to be a coward and know it. I went at last because I could not stand the torture of failing to do my duty. No one else knew. I had been sent back by the doctors. I was blameless before the community. But I knew it was because I was afraid to be hurt, afraid to die. So when they called the class 1917 I went.
"They sent me to Verdun. Can you imagine what that meant to me? It was in the very midst of the German attack on the left bank of the Meuse. I had been drafted into a veteran regiment with a lot of others to help fill up the gaps, and I joined just in time to go into the front line.
"You know how the papers were filled at that time with the terrors of the Verdun fighting. It was not of the bravery of our troops that I read, but of the terrors. I don't know how I ever got into line on the day we marched from the rear to go to the front. Everything I did was mechanical. We were called before daylight; we had a cup of coffee; we were marching along the road.
"I had managed it up to then without giving myself away. True, I talked little to my comrades, and probably that saved me. But the morning we marched to the front, what saved me then I don't know, except possibly because I said nothing. I was unable to speak. I was numb with fear. I was sick. My stomach turned. I walked with my head down and my feet dragged like great weights.
"You know, at that time you could always hear at Verdun the pounding of the big guns. I had heard it for days, while my regiment was in repose. I used to go out in the woods by myself and listen to it and terrify myself by thinking what it would be like to be under that rain of shells. A foolish thing to do, but for more than a year, nearly two years, I had been under the obsession of my fear. I could no longer control it."
III—"WE WERE MARCHING TO INFERNO"
"And then we were on the road, marching toward that inferno. By imperceptible degrees the pounding grew louder. I moved mechanically because I was in the ranks, with a man on each side of me and one in front and one behind. I had to go on. My will could not control my movements. I was part of a machine. The machine went toward the pounding and I went with it. That was all, except that once I vomited.
"Mind you, I had never really heard a shell, only the distant sound of the explosions. We had been marching nearly two hours, when I heard my first shell. There was a long, thin whine some place in the air. It was a new sound, and it was so strange to me that I raised my head for the first time since we started on the march. The man next to me laughed.
"'A shell,' he said.
"I looked all around me. I tried to stop to see the path of that queer whine, but the man behind me prodded me on. Several of them laughed.
"'You will hear plenty more,' they said.
"They thought I was eager for them.
"The shells began to come at regular intervals, all following the same path with the same peculiar whine. I tried every time to see them.
"'The Boches are hunting for a battery over on our left,' the veterans said. There was no change in the pace. I was saying to myself, 'I have really heard a shell, and I did not run.'
"It was very queer to me; I tried to think it out. I was afraid. I knew I was afraid. But I had not run. I began to wonder just how afraid I was, and I wanted to know. I had heard the shell and my curiosity was aroused. I wanted to go on and see how far I would go before my fear overcame me. With every one of their long whines I studied myself to see if I would run, then when I continued marching with the regiment I would say:
"'Not yet; perhaps the next time. Certainly, there is a limit beyond which I will not go.'
"It was as though I were studying some other man. There was the me who was afraid and knew it, and the me who watched to see how afraid I was.
"Eleven o'clock came and we stopped for luncheon. We stacked our arms beside the road and eased off our equipment. I felt wonderfully relieved that I had got that far. I was not really hungry, because I was afraid, but I was enough master of myself to know that I must eat, and to force myself to do so.
"While we waited there shells began to fall close to us—close enough so that we could hear the explosion after the whine. Before we had only heard the whine. The first one made me jump. The whine was loud and strong and the explosion came quick and sharp. With the second I was strong enough to turn and look at the cloud of earth, smoke and rocks. I was doing pretty well. A shell fell short of us. Some of the men looked up and saw an aeroplane sailing around over our heads.
"'Better get out of here,' they said. 'That is a Boche. He is giving our range to his battery.' A shell dropped up near the head of the line, almost in the road. I heard no orders, but we all gathered up our rifles and equipment and marched off at quick step.
"I had looked straight in the face of the shell that fell in the field beside us. It was another triumph for me. I had looked at it, shivering, to be sure, wondering if I would run. But I had not run. There was still a little further to go to pursue my investigation and find out how much I could stand before I ran."
My curiosity got the better of me.
"Have you found out yet?" I asked.
"I am coming to that," he replied. "We went on up that road at the quick step until we came to the entrance of a boyau leading to the supporting trenches. Shells fell around us all the time. The Boche aeroplane was still trying to regulate the fire of its battery, and there was a maddening wait at the mouth of the boyau until it came time for us to go in. We had been marching in the road four abreast, but we had to go into the boyau single file. My platoon was well toward the rear, and that made us wait. We had nothing to do but stand in the road and watch the shells and wait our turn."
IV—"HOW I CONQUERED MY FEAR"
"I tried to follow the course of every shell. My head was continually twisting. I jumped at every explosion. I could not control the muscles of my back and shoulders. But I stepped out of the line and walked a little way into the field, toward the shells. I wanted to see if I could do it. I got close enough so that I could hear a piece of shell whiz past my ear. Then I waited for another piece. It was a hard job, but I waited, leaning on my rifle and looking at the ground a little way in front of me, where the last shell had exploded. If I had moved my eyes from that spot I could not have stayed. Not until the third one came did I hear another piece of shell. The others had struck too far to one side.
"'Now I can go back,' I said to myself. But I walked very fast going back.
"In the boyau it was not so bad. A French avion had come up and chased away the Boche.
"I thought of the things I had done and hoped that having done them once I could do them again. But I was not sure. I was afraid. I knew that. I have always been afraid, and there has always been the question in my mind if my fear would conquer or if I would conquer my fear.
"There was the time when it became necessary to take a message from our support trenches to our advanced lines in the Bois des Corbeaux. There was a tir de barrage to be crossed and volunteers were called for. I was chosen.
"By that time I had formed the theory that a man can do anything if his duty demands it of him and he will keep that in his mind. It was a part of the thought that came to me that first day in the boyau and I developed it later in the long nights. The first day I had no really coherent thoughts, only a great fear of my own fear. Afterward I found that I could control it, if there was a reason. And then I found that the reason was France.
"Of course, you may say that it was France that made me volunteer, but I do not think so. I think it was shame—shame that I feared to go when others went. With all the good reasons that I had for not going, with the doctor's word, I knew, nevertheless, it was fear that kept me back. It was because I could not tell the truth to my wife and friends and neighbours that I went.
"Only afterward did I find out that a great duty will take a man any place with a calm mind. I stood against German attacks. I was in counter attacks. I lay out in shell holes, helping to hold a line where there were no trenches. I never forgot my fear, but I thought of France, my country, my duty; and though I shivered and the cold sweat rolled off me, I held steady.
"Have you ever seen a tir de barrage? You can walk up to it and draw a line with a surveyor's chain on the ground, marking exactly the limit where the shells fall, and all beyond that line will be a mass of boiling earth, like waves in a storm dashing on a rocky coast. There is no interval between the explosions. They are constant, unremitting, one following so closely on another that their detonations mingle in a steady roar."
V—"I DASHED FORWARD INTO EXPLODING SHELLS"
"I came within fifty yards of the tir de barrage and stopped to watch it and try to mark out a path. But no path was possible. No sooner was one chosen than it was wiped out, all the little landmarks gone, the whole face of the ground changed by a new rain of shells. My heart sank. My stomach went suddenly empty. I knew that I had reached the limit beyond which I could not go. I had found the point where my fear was greater than my duty. I lay flat down on the earth. I do not know how long I lay. I thought of nothing. There was only a horrible blank fear.
"And then I found that unconsciously, not knowing it, I was digging my fingers into the ground, clutching the roots of grass and dragging myself into the tir de barrage. I might as well have been dragging myself the other way, but I had lain down with my face toward my duty.
"When I made that discovery I got to my feet and stood upright for a second, not more, only time to say, 'I must not give myself time to think,' and dashed forward into the exploding shells. Such a race as that is like the last steps of a dying horse, one that has broken a blood vessel, straining for the wire, and plunges on his face in the midst of his stride. I floundered blindly into the raw earth and fell again on my face. But this time my mind was working. There was only one thing for me to do, and I knew it. That was to go on. I crawled forward on my hands and knees. I could not stand. It would be certain death. Twenty times I was knocked flat, my wind gone, by the explosion of a shell almost beside me. But I crawled on. I did not know if I had been hit. I thought I had. Two hundred yards I crawled through the tir de barrage and then I got to our lines. They gave me the Medaille Militaire for that.
"You asked me why I smiled when you came up to us in the trench. I was wondering what you had to take you through the shells. I thought of my own struggles. I wondered if you had any of the thoughts that have crowded in on me under fire. And I smiled."
The next time I saw him was in a hospital back of the Somme, one of the hospitals where wounded soldiers stay only a few hours, unless they are too badly hurt to be moved on. He was one of those who could not be moved. He lay with closed eyes, asleep or exhausted—more likely exhausted—propped up a little with pillows behind his head and shoulders. His tunic hung beside his cot, and on it there was a new ribbon, the Legion d'Honneur. I stopped before him.
"There is little chance for him," the doctor said.
"What did he do?" I asked.
"Led his company into the Park of Deniécourt, when all the officers were gone," replied the doctor. "They got a footing in the park and stuck there for two days, because he would not give up, until we made a new attack and got the park, the château and the village. He had been wounded the first day, but he would not give up. He has received the Legion d'Honneur and been made a sous-lieutenant, but he will probably never know it."
I saw him once more. This time was on the boulevards of Paris. His left sleeve was pinned across his breast and above it were his three medals, from left to right the Croix de Guerre, now with three palms; the Medaille Militaire and the Legion d'Honneur. He was having a look at Paris, he told me, while he waited for the train to take him home to the centre of France, to his wife and boy.
"I can tell them now that I was afraid," he said. (Told in the New York Tribune.)