Chapter 5 No.5

Meanwhile, on the western side of the battle line, the French army was holding a crescent from Abbeville, round the south of Amiens, and the situation was not a happy one in view of the rapid advance of the enemy under General Von Kluck, before whom the British troops were already in continual battle.

I shall not soon forget a dreadful night near Amiens, when I saw beaten and broken men coming back from the firing lines, and the death-carts passing down the roads. The whole day had been exciting and unnerving. The roads along which I had passed were filled with soldiers marching towards an enemy which was rapidly drawing close upon them, for whom they seemed but ill-prepared- and by civilians stampeding with wild rumours that the Uhlans were close upon them.

They were not very far wrong. At Picquigny, they were less than four miles distant-a small patrol of outposts belonging to the squadrons which were sweeping out in a fan through the northern towns and villages of France.

As I passed, French Territorials were hastily digging trenches close to the railway line. Reports came from stations further along that the line might be cut at any moment. A train crowded with French and Belgian fugitives had come to a dead halt. The children were playing on the banks-with that divine carelessness and innocence which made one's heart ache for them in this beastly business of war-and their fathers and mothers, whose worldly goods had been packed into baskets and brown paper parcels-the poor relics of all that had been theirs-wondered whether after all their sufferings and struggles they would reach the town of Amiens and find safety there.

It was obvious to me that there was a thrill of uneasiness in the military machine operating in the district. Troops were being hurried up in a north-westerly direction. A regiment of Algerians came swinging along the road. The sight of the Turcos put some heart into the fugitives. Those brown faces were laughing like children at the prospect of a fight. They waved their hands with the curious Arab gesture of salute, and shuffled along merrily with their rifles slung behind their backs. Military motor-cars carrying little parties of French officers swept down the roads, and then there were no more battalions but only stragglers, and hurrying fugitives driving along in farmers' carts, packed with household goods, in two-wheeled gigs, overburdened with women and children, riding on bicycles, with parcels tied to the saddles, or trudging wearily and anxiously along, away from the fear where the blood-red sun was setting over France. It was pitiful to see the children clinging to the women's skirts along that road of panic, and pitiful but fine, to see the courage of those women. Then night fell and darkness came across the fields of France, and through the darkness many grim shadows of war, looming up against one's soul.

There was une affaire des patrouilles-what the British soldier calls a "scrap"-along the road at Albert, between Amiens and Cambrai. A party of German Uhlans, spreading out from a strong force at Cambrai itself, had been engaged by the French Territorials, and after some sharp fighting had retired, leaving several dead horses in the dust and a few huddled forms from which the French soldiers had taken burnished helmets and trophies to their women folk.

That was on Friday night of August 28. The real fighting was taking place fifteen kilometres further along the road, at a place called Bapeaume. All day on Friday there was very heavy fighting here on the left centre, and a victory was announced by the French Ministry of War.

I did not see the victory. I saw only the retreat of some of the French forces engaged in the battle.

It was a few minutes before midnight on that Friday, when they came back along the road to Amiens, crawling back slowly in a long, dismal trail, with ambulance wagons laden with dead and dying, with hay- carts piled high with saddles and accoutrements upon which there lay, immobile, like men already dead, spent and exhausted soldiers. They passed through crowds of silent people-the citizens of Amiens- who only whispered as they stared at this procession in the darkness. A cuirassier with his head bent upon his chest stumbled forward, leading a horse too weak and tired to bear him. There were many other men leading their poor beasts in this way; and infantry soldiers, some of them with bandaged heads, clung on to the backs of the carts and wagons, and seemed to be asleep as they shuffled by. The light from the roadside lamps gleamed upon blanched faces and glazed eyes-flashed now and then into the caverns of canvas- covered carts where twisted, bandaged men lay huddled on the straw. Not a groan came from those carts. There was no shout of "Vive la France!" from the crowd of citizens who are not silent as a rule when their soldiers pass.

Every one knew it was a retreat, and the knowledge was colder than the mist of night. The carts, carrying the quick and the dead, rumbled by in a long convoy, the drooping heads of the soldiers turned neither to the right nor to the left for any greeting with old friends; there was a hugger-mugger of uniforms on provision carts and ambulances. It was a part of the wreckage and wastage of the war, and to the onlooker, exaggerating unconsciously the importance of the things close at hand and visible, it seemed terrible in its significance, and an ominous reminder of 1870, when through Amiens there came the dismal tramp of beaten men. Really this was the inevitable part of a serious battle, and not necessarily the retreat from a great disaster.

I turned away from it, rather sick at heart. It is not a pleasant thing to see men walking like living corpses, or as though drugged with fatigue. It is heartrending to see poor beasts stumbling forward at every step at the very last gasp of their strength until they fall never to rise again.

But more pitiful even than this drift back from Bapeaume were the scenes which followed immediately as I turned back into the town. Thousands of boys had been called out to the colours, and had been brought up from the country to be sent forward to the second lines of defence. They were the reservists of the 1914 class, and many of them were shouting and singing, though here and there a white-faced boy tried to hide his tears as women from the crowd ran to embrace him. The Marseillaise, the hymn of faith, rang out a little raggedly, but bravely all the same. The lads-"poor children" they were called by a white-haired man who watched them-were keeping up the valour of their hearts by noisy demonstrations; but having seen the death-carts pass through the darkness between lines of silent and dejected onlookers, I could not bear to look into the faces of those little ones of France who were following their fathers to the guns. Once again I had to turn away to blot out the pictures of war in the velvety darkness of the night.

Early next morning there was a thrill of anxiety in Amiens itself. Reports had come through that the railway line had been cut between Boulogne and Abbeville. There had been mysterious movements of regiments from the town barracks. They had moved out of Amiens, and there was a strange quietude in the streets, hardly a man in uniform to be seen in places which had been filled with soldiers the day before. I think only a few people realized the actual significance of all this. Only a few-the friends of officers or the friends of officers' friends-had heard that Amiens itself was to be evacuated.

To these people it seemed incredible and horrible-an admission that France was being beaten to her knees. How could they believe the theory of an optimist among them that it was a part of a great plan to secure the safety of France? How could they realize that the town itself would be saved from possible bombardment by this withdrawal of the troops to positions which would draw the Germans into the open? They only knew that they were undefended, and presently they found that the civilian trains were being suspended, and that there would be no way of escape. It was in the last train that by a stroke of luck I escaped from Amiens. Shortly afterwards the tunnel leading to the junction was blown up by the French engineers, and the beautiful city of Amiens was cut off from all communication with the outer world.

It was on the last train that I realized to the full of its bitterness the brutality of war as it bludgeons the heart of the non-combatant. In the carriage with me were French ladies and children who had been hunted about the country in the endeavour to escape the zone of military operations. Their husbands were fighting for France, and they could not tell whether they were alive or dead. They had been without any solid food for several days, and the nerves of those poor women were tried to the uttermost, not by any fear for their own sakes, but for the sake of the little ones who were all they could save from the wreckage of their lives, all yet enough if they could save them to the end. One lady whose house had been burnt by the Germans had walked over twenty miles with a small boy and girl.

For a little while, when she told me her story she wept passionately, yet only for a few minutes. For the sake of her handsome boy, who had a hero's courage, and for the tiny girl who clung to her, she resisted this breakdown and conquered herself.

"That is the real meaning of war, almost the worst tragedy of it" (so I wrote at the time). "The soldier suffers less than the women and the non-combatants. His agony perhaps is sharper, but the wound of the spirit is hardest to bear."

So it seemed to me then, before I had seen greater ghastliness. I was surprised also by the cheerfulness of some of our wounded soldiers. They were the "light cases," and had the pluck to laugh at their pain. Yet even they had had a dreadful time. It is almost true to say that the only rest they had was when they were carried into the ambulance cart or the field-hospital. The incessant marching, forwards and backwards, to new positions in the blazing sun was more awful to bear than the actual fighting under the hideous fire of the German guns. They were kept on the move constantly, except for the briefest lulls-when officers and men dropped, like brown leaves from autumn trees, on each side of the road, so utterly exhausted that they were almost senseless, and had to be dragged up out of their short sleep when once again they tramped on to a new line, to scratch up a few earthworks, to fire a few rounds before the bugle sounded the cease fire and another strategical retirement.