  WAR IN THE BLACK COUNTRY. Trains follow each other every quarter of an hour—endless trains, 60 truck-loads and more, all bearing the mark of five big French companies. Some of these convoys seemed to have been borrowed from a museum of obsolete railways. The couplings A Minister has actually dared to bring about a real mobilisation of transport. He has ordered the seizure of all trucks in good condition, and the captured have gone to the front. All of them are overflowing with every species of coal. Coal! When one thinks of the shortage in Paris and the provinces of France, one can appreciate the sight of these millions of tons being rushed back from the front. Coal is the black bread of war. At the level crossings the British regiments going up into the line naturally give way to the greater urgency of these supply trains. We have just come back from visiting, under the guidance of a Staff-Major, the land of shafts and mines. Certainly, war is being waged there, but in a curious way, as if it were added on to ordinary existence. B——, N——, les M——, V—— are so many stages in our sooty pilgrimage! In front of V——, after having wandered in these endless streets with houses of miners' dwellings, all exactly alike, we come upon a huge slag heap, 800 yards high, like some black pyramid. The neighbouring pits, with their sheds, lifts and air-shafts, are working as usual. We pass a party of miners, solemn and resolute-looking people, their ages varying from 16 to 40, who are going to relieve the workers in the galleries 200 yards below soil. These civilian workers have just decided to do another hour a day. They, too, have behaved like heroes. The smoking pits are not a stone's throw from the smoking cannons. The howitzers concealed in the Black Country alternate their "boom!" with the sharper "crack!" of trench mortars. Here, owing to the nature of the soil, the trenches cannot be dug down. Thousands of pumps would be wanted to dry this sector alone. The Royal Engineers have overcome the difficulty by having recourse to the old system of breastworks. Here redoubts, facing all ways, strong points with sloping parapets, buttresses, bastions, half-moons, etc., are made with sandbags—the triumph of improvisation like the inventions of a Pacciotto or a de Vauban. But more numerous than the Tommies are the groups of women carrying baskets of provisions for their menfolk. Under the guidance of the General Commanding the Artillery of the Army, we visited some batteries of 9.2 howitzers, those magnificent weapons of destruction. What ruses! What profligate conceits are used to hide these monstrous treasures from the enemy aircraft! After the war we must consecrate a whole chapter to those obscure painters, designers of "take-in's," who, working in the open country, succeed in faking the skyline and every aspect of the earth—nay, all Nature herself. A forward observing officer hidden somewhere on the ridge, which used to be called the Hohenzollern Redoubt, has just rung up to say that he has spotted some enemy transport moving in the mist behind their lines. The map reference is immediately verified and the range ascertained. A junior subaltern blows his whistle. In a second N.C.O.'s and men are in position. Then they open fire, disturbing the peaceful landscape. Just beside the battery was a beautiful pond with two swans—the most unwarlike thing in the world. Five minutes later we hear that the shooting was good and the transport was scuppered. In these miners' dwellings and allotments, where war Such is the life in the coal country. The Tommies in the trenches, the artillery in the fields and gardens and the workmen in the mines. Endless strife above ground, endless labour below, each night, each day, the same. France should honour these miners of Artois and Flanders just as much as her soldiers. |
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