THE FUNERAL OF LORD ROBERTS—NIEUPORT-VILLE—IN THE TRENCHES—YPRES AND THE NEIGHBOURING SECTORS—I TRANSFER TO THE LINE

A memorable ceremony in which with others of the regiment I took part, was on the occasion of the ceremony at Saint-Omer in honour of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, who had died on the 15th November while on a visit to the allied armies.

At half-past six the regiment was formed up on the road and the twelve best specimens of manhood were picked out from each troop. We were soaked by rain on the way, but the sun came out when the ceremony began.

We were formed up in battle array before the town hall. All round the square, on the edge of the pavement, a single rank of Highlanders, carefully sized, stood like statues. We waited the coffin, which appeared at last from a side street, preceded by a troop of English cavalry who marched slowly—their black horses were admirable creatures. Then came a section of infantry, fine, big, taking fellows, who marched with their heads down and their eyes fixed on the ground; next came superb Indian troops, who wore turbans, amongst whom were great native princes; then a contingent of Canadians, just disembarked; lastly some Highland pipers playing a lament whose refrain was eternally alike. We had heard this shrill lament for a long time, now it became stronger and more penetrating the nearer the cortÈge approached, and gave a strange exotic note to this old-fashioned setting of a little French town.

When the coffin appeared the Highlanders who formed the guard of honour executed a strange movement. They slowly described an arc of a circle with their rifles, their outstretched right arms forming an uninterrupted line all round the square, then each man finished the movement by crossing his arms on the butt-plate of his rifle, the muzzle of which was now resting on the ground.

With their heads bowed, these mourners resembled some old bas-relief. The coffin, enveloped in the Union Jack, was borne on a gun-carriage. It was all very simple and very moving.

To the wild notes of the Scottish bagpipes, now silent, the clear trumpets of our dragoons replied, and their sound was in itself like sparkling metal. They continued to sound until the remains of the Field-Marshal had been placed in the town hall.

After the ceremony, which we did not see, twenty-one guns thundered out, fired by batteries posted behind the square. An immense rainbow, as sharply defined as if drawn with a stroke of the brush, cut the sky with a perfect and uninterrupted semicircle. Symbol of peace, it came to earth directly behind the batteries, and the flash of the guns showed up against its iridescent screen.

An English officer came to tell the Colonel that the ceremony was over, and we returned to Clarques under a beating rain, which had begun to fall again.

Our next active work was at Nieuport. Motor buses brought us to Coxyde, where, amongst the slightly built villas of this watering-place, Belgian and French uniforms swarmed. Sand-dunes, on which the sand encroached on the scanty covering of grass, bordered the horizon on all sides.

Captain Vigoureux had sent me to lay out the camp with a corporal and one man. ClÈre, HÉnon and I went on ahead at a sharp pace. From Coxyde to Ostdinkerque there was no trace of bombardment. On the road we met several lots of horses at exercise, some waggons, many soldiers and a few civilians. At Ostdinkerque a mill, two houses and a part of the church had been gutted yesterday. Some vehicles contained civilians, who were prudently clearing out.

From this place onwards (Nieuport-Ville was six kilomÈtres off) the road became more and more deserted and the noise of the guns became louder. At first we only heard the noise of our own batteries and the shell burst a long way off. Two kilomÈtres from Nieuport I heard the whistle of the first German shell, a shrapnel which burst some hundreds of mÈtres off. Several people on the road were peppered with the fragments of shell; the telegraph wires were broken and the rails of a tramway were torn up. The country was a desert, and the eye saw nothing but sand-dunes without end, and here our underground life began.

At the entrance to the town a prudent man on duty showed his profile at the door of a cellar. I asked him, “Where is Captain Mahot?” and he answered in an irritated voice: “Don’t stand there in the middle of the road, don’t you see that the shells are falling just where you are?” I had not noticed it, but I did not take long to find out. The man on duty led me five mÈtres underground to Lieutenant Deporte. “Sir, where is Captain Mahot? The town commandant of the 16th Dragoons? I see no one about.” “Everyone has gone to earth,” he replied, placidly filling his pipe, “and I advise you to hurry up and do likewise, for it comes down like hail just about now.” It did indeed. I heard the most disquieting sounds, the bursting of big shells, the splash of bullets, which flattened themselves against the houses. Some streets were enfiladed, and thousands of shrapnel bullets flew back and forward between the German trenches and ours.

The Lieutenant gave me a man to take me to the Captain’s cellar, which was at the other end of the town. He and I (I had left the others in a cellar) skirted the walls, and at every step what a sight! All that remained of the church resembled a sort of historic ruin—some pillars, some arches, very fine ones, and some sculptures lying on the ground. Everywhere the craters of the big shells had the dimensions of dried-up ponds. In the principal place there were two such, in which one could have put two houses.

Speaking of houses, some had been destroyed with an art and a refinement which made them look like builder’s models. One was standing, of which the only thing wanting was the outside wall facing the street, and one could see the section of the gaping interior. The pictures were hanging on the walls, and on the piano were photographs and nick-nacks. The drawing-room, the dining-room and the bedroom were intact; but the flooring of the attics had given way and everything had fallen through to the floor below. Another house was almost comical in appearance, for, against a wall on the lowest story, stood a fine bamboo rack, on which two statuettes of sham Saxe ware smiled an eternal and idiotic smile and seemed to jeer at the bombardment. Other houses, and these were the most numerous, were lamentable rubbish heaps, fallen in, blackened, broken up in every sense, blocking the streets and forming a hideous lamentable chaos. Even when no shell fell—and there were long moments of calm—the houses dropped to pieces of themselves. This one might lose the remainder of its tiles, which fell into the street with a din; the next one might drop, let us say, a stove, or a small billiard-table, from one floor to another.

I arrived at last at the end of my journey, having asked myself a thousand times whether I should not be pulverised on the way there. The worst bit was when I reached the last cross-roads. For the second time I asked an orderly whether this was the house—pardon, the cellar—of Captain Mahot, and for the second time I heard an irritated voice reply, “Don’t stay there in the middle of the street”; but this time I lost the end of the phrase, being blinded and deafened. The heavens seemed to fall on me. I heard, “Get under cover,” and I felt my tympanum shattered. A house twenty mÈtres from me, a large two-storied house, seemed to be transformed into a volcano. A shell had entered its middle, through the roof, and the whole house collapsed into the street, accompanied by a formidable fall of rafters, bricks and furniture. “You see that,” said the orderly in a severe tone; “get into the cellar.” I felt just like a little boy.

Five marines had been buried under the ruins. A little later I saw their bodies on stretchers. What a lamentable death for a sailor or soldier!

Captain Mahot said to me, “The billeting area of the 22nd Dragoons? Very good, there it is,” and he showed me the butt-end of “the shepstraat.” I looked at it in astonishment, saying to myself, “That?” Messina after the earthquake would have offered more comfort. Nevertheless I inspected the cellars and apportioned them amongst the troops, and, by myself this time, I returned through the town to my point of departure, to meet and conduct Captain Vigoureux, whom I found three hundred mÈtres beyond the gates.

This made the fourth time that I had made this disquieting journey. I began to feel that I had had enough of it, the more so as I had walked twelve kilomÈtres, and, not being accustomed to carrying a pack, my back hurt me. ClÈre was quite knocked up, and had looked at once so sad and so comic that I did not know whether to laugh at him or to pity him.

The regiment settled in more or less (rather less) in the sector reserved for it. The cellars were crowded. My orderly, who was a treasure of devotion and very inventive, arranged my kit, found me a candle and spread a mattress. I was kept on the run, everyone called me at once: “A man wanted for the guard-room, a liaison officer to see the Captain, a man wanted for water fatigue, the quartermaster-sergeant wants to know how things are here, the 3rd troop have no billets and so on.” ... I tried to reply to everyone, and my head was like a whirlpool. It was impossible to keep the men in, though there were strict orders that they were not to leave the cellars. They broke out in every direction, and, in spite of the shells, they amused themselves like children, entering the houses at the peril of their lives. One of them brought me a stuffed stork; another a cornet and a draught screen; my orderly came last with a woman’s mantlet, trimmed with lace!

Towards six o’clock the rain of shells ceased.

After dinner not a sound was heard. The cold was cruel. I wrapped myself in my greatcoat and turned up the collar above my ears. I stuck my head well into my fatigue-cap and, to amuse myself, I started off on “reconnaissance,” armed with an electric lamp. I visited twenty gutted houses, and this diversion was becoming monotonous when, from a particularly damaged court, I heard a somewhat uncertain hand playing the piano. The air was one of those old waltzes which dragoons dote on and which suggest Viennese softness combined with the popular taste of the Boulevards. There was no light in the yawning house. One might have called it the house of Usher, at least I thought of that spontaneously, for there was something weird about those black holes from whence came this sad and popular jingle, though the eye was conscious of nothing but darkness.

My ideas wandered for a moment, but, noticing a ray of light at my feet, I found the key of the enigma: some lascars had brought the piano down to the cellar to be more at their ease. At the foot of some ten steps, or rather of a steep slope—I learnt afterwards that, in coming down stairs, the piano had done the work of a “105”—I had only to pull a canvas curtain aside slightly to see what was going on inside. It was an affecting scene.

Some ten men lay on mattresses listening to the musician, who was seated on a small cask, playing the same waltz over and over again, probably the only thing he knew, with his great clumsy fingers. There was something in the look of each of these men analogous to that of intoxication from opium, or to the fascination on his subject of a mesmerist. Above, the shells began to fall again; below, they had forgotten the war, because they listened to a tune they loved, and, music is all-powerful over simple hearts.

I remember this episode as one of the most picturesque souvenirs of the war. I stayed in that cellar playing to them for more than an hour. They were drunk with pleasure and with dreams of home. That night I could have led them to the assault, even to the cannon’s mouth.

Next day, the 24th of January, rÉveillÉ was sounded at three o’clock.

At four o’clock we fell in. We were going into the second line trenches.

Our “dug-out” was a little rectangular room five mÈtres long by two mÈtres wide, cut in the stiff soil, stayed up with planks, covered with beams and roofed with earth.[3] It was dark as an oven. It was entered by an opening so narrow that my pack could not pass, and to get to this door, if one could call it a door, one had to perform prodigies from the roadside onwards to avoid being bogged up to the knees. There was a little straw on the floor, and the furniture consisted of a chair.

There we were going to take up our residence, my seven men and I—Dhuic, Laroche, Ponnery, Bobet, ThiÉrard, Emmanuel and that terrible-looking fellow Hurel, with his vulture’s face and insane alcoholic eye. I can see him now at the bottom of the trench, his face emerging from a sheep-skin coat which made him look more than ever like a wild beast. “If the Bosches catch sight of you,” an unindulgent comrade said to him, “they will certainly clear out in double-quick time.”

We got here from Nieuport at four o’clock in the morning. The regiment was closed up and the men stumbled at each step over the dÉbris of houses, which littered the road. Dead silence reigned, and the cold north wind of early morning made our eyes water. No shells or bullets were flying, but we heard from time to time the noise of tiles falling from some roof or the din of a falling skirt of wall. Star shell were being used, and each time they lit up the country they made us jumpy, for we presumed that they would be followed by a shell only too well placed.

Day dawned, and I came cautiously out of my hole to have a look at the country. The human imagination never, I imagine, has conceived, nor ever can picture, anything sadder or more desolate than what I saw. I found myself on the road leading from Nieuport to Saint-Georges at a point almost equally distant from both of these remains of towns. The banked-up road meandered over an immense muddy plain, necked with pools of grey water, now frozen. Nieuport was on my right. From here I could not see a single house which was, I won’t say intact, but only damaged by the bombardment. It was a heap of gutted buildings, crumbling walls and twisted and broken trees. On my left was Saint-Georges, in if anything worse state. Nothing remained but a pile of stones, and one would never have supposed that a village had once existed there.

By the side of my trench there was a freshly made grave, that is to say a square of mud surmounted by a white cross. The cap of a marine lay by its side. I picked it up; it was full of brains. The poor fellow must have been killed on this very spot, and yesterday probably, mown down perhaps by that same shell which had pierced two neighbouring trees with its murderous fragments.

As I re-entered my trench the sharp clatter of our batteries disturbed the air. They were placed quite near us, and well hidden, for I could see nothing of them. I supposed that this was the opening of the ball and that the enemy’s reply would not be long in coming. Some of my men had come out. I made them get back again quickly, and treated Hurel to a kick from behind. The men become as quiet as sheep when there is danger about. One of them warmed me some coffee on a solid fuel spirit-lamp, and another let me make a pillow of his abdomen.

25th January, 1915.—We were relieved at 5 o’clock and returned safe and sound to Nieuport. I found the cellar transformed, thanks to ClÈre and HÉnon; there was a light, a table covered with a cloth and some crockery. They had looted these things from the town, and I did not find fault with them for doing so, for these articles were safer where they were than in the ruins exposed at any moment to squalls of shell.

The bombardment had kept on increasing until past midday. It was dangerous to go outside. Every half-hour I made a round to make the men get back into their cellars. We made some tea, but the water came from the Yser, which was carrying down dead bodies, and the tea smelt of death. We could not drink it.

The ration cart arrived to an accompaniment of shells. We did not take long to unload it.

26th January, 1915.—At midday a French aËroplane flew over the dunes. It was bombarded at times, and it let fall some silver trails which sparkled in the sky like the scales of fish.[4]