 Chapter 13 and 14 of A Surgeon in Arms by Robert James Mannion. Practically all men and most women are brave when the occasion requires it. Out there, one sees many types of brave men. There are few cases of cowardice in the face of the enemy, though in all the armies in this great conflict, men have been shot for this crime. Conscience may make cowards of us all, but war makes brave men of most of us. In this war, the pampered few, as well as those who earned their bread by the sweat of their brow, have shown a courage unsurpassed in the so-called chivalrous ages that are gone. Death-dealing instruments have been multiplied and refined by the inventive resources of our times till they have reached a stage of perfection never even approached in the past. Aeroplanes, zeppelins, artillery, various types of trench mortars, mining, machine guns, poisonous gases, liquid fire, and the many other means of killing and disabling our enemies have rendered this war the most horrible and terrifying in history. Yet it is rare at the front to see officers or men exhibit cowardice, with few exceptions all face death in its many forms, with a smile on their lips, bearing at the same time indescribable hardships of mud, dirt, lice, work, and weather, with unbeatable stoicism. They are always ready to go forward with their faces to the foe, an irresistible army of citizen soldiers. The hardships are often more trying than the dangers, yet it is always an inspiration to hear gay peals of laughter at the discomforts and hardships borne by men accustomed to all the luxuries of comfortable homes and beloved families. Just at dark on a zero-cold winter's day, our battalion arrived at some new frame huts on the edge of a wood. The huts had just been built, they knew not the meaning of bunks, stoves, or other comforts. The gray sky could be seen through many chinks in the war-contract lumber and the frozen earth through cracks in the floor. After a cold supper of bully beef, bread, and jam, they're laid down on the bare floor of the headquarters hut to sleep as best they could, the colonel, a criminal lawyer of Vancouver, the second-in-command, a lumber dealer of Ottawa, an attached major, a lawyer of the same place, the adjutant, a broker of Montreal, the paymaster, a banker of Kingston, the signal officer, a bank clerk of Edmonton, the scout officer, son of a well-known High Court Judge of Quebec, and myself. Not a complaint was heard, but jokes were bandied to and fro, and shortly the regular breathing of some and the snoring of others testified that man may quickly become accustomed to strange surroundings. In the morning the boots of awe were frozen to the floor. Men are brave because of many motives, when they are standing shoulder to shoulder facing an enemy, few of them flinch, no matter how dark the outlook is at the moment. Their pride in themselves, their loyalty to their native land, their love of their comrades, and their hatred for the enemy combine to prevent them from allowing fear to conquer them. Fear per se is another matter. Practically all men experience fear under fire at times, but they grit their teeth and press on. The quality that makes them do this is what we call courage. Any man who could look into a hole in the ground into which you could drop a small house, and knowing this hole was made by a large caliber shell, yet feel no fear on going through a barrage of such shells, is not a brave man, he's an imbecile. As Kelly said, a man at not a fear to dim shells has more courage than sense. But even outside of that natural fear of shells, there is no doubt that at certain moments during the multitudinous dangers of war, all men really feel afraid. It cannot be avoided if a man sets any value whatever upon his life. 999 out of a thousand conquer that impulse to fly and carry on, the thousandth allows the impulse to conquer him. He is thereafter branded coward unless he retrieves himself later. Instinctively the brave man is recognized by his fellow men. In a dangerous advance there are usually a few who drop behind, hide in a shell hole, or dug out, till the danger passes or lessens, and then rejoin their unit claiming to have been lost or stunned by a shell. In this way they escape being accused of, and perhaps shot for, desertion. It may be that these men are more to be pitied than blamed. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but it is a physical law, and the moral law that man must not be a coward overrules it. A few hours after the advance over Vimy Ridge, my corporal and I, while dressing wounded in the field, met a number of stragglers, all going toward the front lines. They gave various excuses for being behind their companies, and some no doubt told the truth, but it is also certain that a few had shirked. There is a legitimate nervousness named shell shock. The real cases of this condition, when they are extreme, are sad to see. An officer or Tommy, who has previously been an excellent soldier, suddenly develops nerves to such an extent as to be uncontrollable. He trembles violently, his heart may be disorderly in rhythm, he has a terrified air, the slightest noise makes him jump, and even occasionally run at top speed to a supposed place of safety. He is the personification of terror, at times crying out or weeping like a child. He is unfit for duty, and will require rest for an extended time. Some cases are not so extreme as this, and may simply display sufficient nervousness to prevent their going on. Shell shock is brought about by the effects of severe shelling, by being buried by an explosion of shell or mine, or by the killing beside the sufferer of a companion. In short, these cases are due to the subjection of the nervous system to a strain which it is unable to withstand, making it collapse instead of resiliently rebounding. The extreme cases are pitiable to observe, and are just as ill as if they were suffering from insanity or delirium tremors. It is doubtful if the man who has suffered from a severe attack of this malady is ever again fit to serve in the firing line. Only time can tell whether or not any permanent weakness will be left in the nervous system as its result. These are not cases of cowardice, though to a superficial observer they might appear so. Some of them, six months later after that full period of rest and care, still show marked tremor, a fast or irregular heart, are jumpy on the slightest sharp sound, and are generally unfit for service. It is interesting to study the psychology of the coward, but it is more interesting and infinitely more inspiring to study that of the brave man. Brave men and courageous women are so common, as this war has amply proven, that we may find plenty of material for this study. The women, God bless them and sustain them, have to show more courage than the men, for they have to endure in patience the life-sapping tedium of staying at home, while their loved ones go into danger, and perhaps to death. They have not, as their men have, the variety of change, the interest of novelty, or the excitement of battle to sustain them and occupy their minds. Their duty is to wait, wait, wait, praying and hoping that a good and merciful God will spare their loved ones. O you wives and mothers and sweethearts who wait, the world owes to you much more of honor and thanks than it owes to the men at the front. You and your sublime unselfishness prefer to see your beloved men folks get the honors and praise, while you are content and happy to accept the reflected glory. Every country in the world believes that it has the fairest women and the bravest men, and to make an Irishman, each is right in believing it. It is only natural that each country should have a national pride in the deeds of its heroes, and this war will give to most countries enough acts of bravery and of chivalry to inspire their youth for a few generations. Captain Gamal was a handsome dashing chap whose love of fine clothes, bright colors, silk pajamas, which he wore even in the lines, while the rest of us slept in our uniforms, according to orders, and immaculate cleanliness gained for him the sobriquet Bobrummel. His farcical gaiety was continuous, and rarely did he appear serious, even though a serious mean would have been more appropriate. His extremes of style made him a daily cause of humorous remarks on the part of his comrades, and yet his courage was unquestioned. I have seen him coolly walking along, daintily smoking his special brand of cigarette, apparently as much at ease as if he were in his own smoking-room, with the shells at the same time bursting all around him. Good stories were told of his careless fearlessness at the psalm and elsewhere, as he carried out his duties in tight corners with the Saint-Foy of a veteran. Here was a fellow one would take to be the lightest of the light, a poser, a farcer, a dandy of the ladies who could be as gay and the light in danger as in London. He is the type of chap who was, no doubt, a sissy in the opinion of his fellow schoolboys, but is, in reality, of the stuff that men are made. Major Bilbauer, an English bank clerk who had lived some years in Canada, was rather the reverse of the above. He took life more seriously, and hardly a day went by that he did not put into the orderly room a complaint, great or small, until he got the name the Grouser. Usually, his complaints were on behalf of his men whom he seemed to think were always getting discriminated against by someone. Because he was of the rather extreme unmixable aristocratic type, his men respected him rather than loved him, though he was a very likable chap to those who really knew him. But they would unhesitatingly follow him through Hellfire, for in danger his handsomely chiseled features wore a scornful smile as he strode along gaily swinging his cane with the same air that he had worn in more peaceable days in Hyde Park. He had been decorated for conspicuous bravery and well deserved it. On one occasion a large caliber dud shell struck in the doorway of a superficial dugout in which he was riding and rolled to his feet. Without more than a glance at it he coolly pushed it to one side with his foot and continued riding. Corporal Pair, a red-headed Irish boy, was for a long time my sanitary corporal in the lines and out. He had been serving in the lines for sixteen months at the time of which I ride, and was tired of it. He frankly said he was afraid to do certain things, but when ordered to do them he carried them out cheerfully and smilingly. At the psalm he won great praise as a runner for carrying messages through heavy barrages, always appearing terrified at the prospect but always getting through. Many a time inspecting the trenches with me he would say, respectfully, those pineapples are dropping in just ahead of us, sir, and we better turn back. Perhaps to tease him I would go on telling him to come along. Oh, very good, sir, he would say with a cheerful smile on his red face, and he would dredge along like a faithful dog. He was homely in looks, red-headed, not clever, and said he was afraid, but no more faithful or more dependable soldier ever went to the front than Corporal Pair. Sergeant Gasgrain was a small, shriveled, sharp-tongued, five-foot high French Canadian who assisted me for some time. He was cynical as to the illness of the men, and treated them usually like so many cattle, believing them all to be malingerers. Till one day I reminded him that a man may often malinger, but that did not prevent him from occasionally getting sick. He apparently did not believe it, though he often cursed the rheumatism that afflicted his own joints. He said they all had a frigidity of the feet with a big F. He was at times addicted to alcohol, and every few months he lost his stripes because of intoxication. Then he would labor incessantly till, by his good work, he won them back again. And when he did regain them, he was as proud as if he had won his Marshal's baton, until the next occasion, when the great God Bacchus put him back to the ranks with one's fell swoop. With all his faults he had an absolute disregard of danger. I sincerely believe that he thought that if a shell should strike him, well, so much the worse for the shell. At the psalm, his cool, courageous work under heavy shell fire won for him at the recommendation of a British colonel who had observed it, the military medal. But one deed he performed, which I think deserved more praise than any other. While working on the field, a Lieutenant Colonel was brought to him on a stretcher. The Lieutenant Colonel's wound was so slight as to cause a sneer to hover about the sergeant's lips as he dressed it. A stretcher squad carried the colonel to the rear, and another squad, under the sergeant's direction, carried a badly wounded Tommy. An ambulance came for them. The sergeant had the soldier put in first, and then the colonel. But the colonel angrily protested against the Tommy being allowed to go in the same ambulance with him. Très bien, monsieur, replied the sergeant in his quick, sharp tones, and, turning to a stretcher squad, said, remove the officer. It was quickly done, the colonel staring in angry astonishment, the sergeant coolly continuing his work, while the officer awaited the coming of another ambulance. In my opinion, this act of an NCO was worthy of a VC. Major Peters. This officer somehow impressed me as being without any semblance of nervousness under any conditions. He was always an interesting study. If a shell burst in our neighborhood, close enough to make most of us duck, Pete would go on serenely as if on church parade. Rather slow thinking, he was sure in judgment. He never made haste to give his thoughts tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. He had a quiet, dry humor and generous kindly nature. He was invariably late on parade, and probably improperly dressed. I have met him on one occasion, wandering aimlessly across an area, looking for his company, which he had somehow mislaid. If the orderly room gave out an order for some return to be made by company commanders by 8 a.m., his was never in before 10, and then only after he had been reminded of the order. After the battle of Arras, he forgot altogether to put in his recommendations for bravery on the part of any of his men, though by a rush movement he succeeded in getting them in on time. But with all these faults he had the respect, trust and confidence of everyone. He had won the M.C. twice for coolness and bravery in action. If the holding of the front line was a particularly risky proposition at any time, he would probably be the man in charge of the task. He was never found wanting when cool, courageous action was needed, and all knew it. Many of the good tales told of him in his early front line days. By night he would quietly wander off over the parapet by himself, and an hour or so later would come strolling back after having had a good look into the German lines and perhaps into some of their dugouts. In his slow voice he would give any valuable information, not wasting any words in doing it. On one of these trips, as he stepped back over the parapet, he was met by a senior officer who, knowing his junior's characteristics, said, Well, Pete, what have you found out this time? Pete sat himself down on the firing step of the trench and gave him all the information that he had. Suddenly the senior noticed that a pool of blood was collecting where Major Peter sat. Are you wounded? he cried. Well, yes, Peter's answers slowly, guess they got me that time. And he rose and strolled carelessly along to the RAP, where his wounds were found to be serious enough to put him out of action for a few weeks. The Germans had thrown a bomb at him. The Major loved dearly going into dangerous zones, just wandering off to see what he could see. After we had taken Vimy Ridge, but not yet progressed beyond it, we had outposts on the German side of it, looking down on Vimy and other German positions, four or five hundred yards away. A good deal of sniping was going on against us, as our men were so often exposed on the side of the hill, where they had very little protection except an odd shell hole or a few feet of shallow trench here and there. Our battalion was holding this line, and I, on the day Vimy Village was taken, April 13th, had occasion to make a hurried trip along this whole front. At one spot where a trench two feet deep was the only protection from possible sniping or shell fire, Major Peter's stood, leaning back against the Parados, two-thirds of his body exposed, hands and pockets gazing pensively across at the Vimy ruins. What are you trying to do? Get your belly head blown off? I demanded. Without looking around or otherwise changing his position, he replied in his slow voice, I don't think there's anyone there to blow my head off. This shows his judgment, for he was right, as it proved a little later when our scout officer, followed by a single platoon, entered it. But it showed also his carelessness as to danger, for at the moment he was only guessing or surmising that there was no one in Vimy, and at any moment he might have found it out to his sorrow. A few minutes after this the accidental explosion of a mills-bomb killed one man, wounded two officers severely, and six men almost as severely, and I was kept busy for some time attending to them. Having finished, I found Major Peter's near me, looking longingly toward Vimy, into the ruins of which our scout officer, Lieutenant A, our OC battalion, Major E, and a platoon in charge of ever-smiling Lieutenant G, had all disappeared. Major Peter's was apparently impatient to go across, though he had no right to do so without orders. Leaving the wounded to be evacuated by my always trustworthy and fearless assistants, Corporal H and Private B, M. M., and their stretcher-bearers, I joined him. Though I had even less right to go across than he, we dared each other to go, and off we went. An odd shell was falling about, and it was quite characteristic for Peter to remark slowly and seriously. I don't mind dodging shells, but I do hate dodging that damned orderly room of ours. But he was as joyously gay as if he were a schoolboy going on some forbidden picnic. Without encountering a Bosch, we leisurely strolled through the ruined and deserted streets, passing here and there a dead German, and one Canadian who must have been lost, and being killed while looking for his own lines. On the main road was a wagon of heavy shells, with its wheels interlocked with those of another wagon, both apparently deserted in a hurry by the fleeing Germans, for an officer's complete kit lay beside them. We passed the station and went on out five hundred yards to where our platoon was digging in. We joined them and then wandered on for one hundred yards into what was to be the new No Man's Land without ever having encountered a German. They had deserted the village by dark, and had not left even the proverbial corporal's guard behind. Guided by the major through the streets, which were now in the shadows of evening, we unerringly found our way back once we had come, for he had the pathfinding instincts of the North American Indian. On arrival we found that while my absence had been unnoticed, poor Pete had been, and for some minutes in the orderly room he was in hot water explaining matters. His explanations ended, as they usually did, by being unsatisfactory, and our strict disciplinarian adjutant, Major P., turned aside to hide a smile and murmur, poor Pete always in trouble. No matter what breach he ever made in the rules, Peter's was always forgiven, for his sterling worth was too well known to allow anyone in authority to hold anger against him. One of the best stories told of him is so droll, and yet so typical, that it is worth repeating. He was attending a course of instruction with a number of other officers on measures to be taken during a gas attack. The gas expert had shown carefully how the gas masks should be put on quickly and correctly, and the officers were applying them. They were instructed to take off the masks, and to see which of them could have his on in the shortest time. To the surprise of all present, the slow-moving Major had his mask on before any of the others. On inquiring of him how it happened, he admitted with that humorous dry smile of his, that he had not bothered taking his mask off after the first trial. Captain J. A. Cullum, C. A. M. C. Some twelve years ago, when I was studying in Edinburgh at Scotland's famous university, I occupied rooms at the apartment house of a Bonnie Little Scotch woman on Marchmont Road. Miss Anderson was a mother to us all. How well I remember her smiling, sweet face, above which her white hair made an appropriate halo as she came in to do for us some kindly thoughtful act. May she still be in the land of the living and happy. In the next suite of rooms lived Jack Cullum of Regina, Canada, and for the last month before examinations, the regular lessees of his rooms having returned, he and I occupied the same suite. He was a square jawed, firm mouthed, good-looking chap, with a strong arm and leg, made strong by breaking broncos on the western Canadian ranch where he grew to manhood and prosperity. He was blunt, almost to a fault, but his word was good, his mind fair, and his manner sociable. Other Canadians who were post-graduating there at the same time will remember many a gay evening we passed in the old R. B. on Princess Street, that most magnificent thoroughfare in Scotland with the old castle which saw many of the happy and unhappy hours of poor Mary Queen of Scots as a background, Colton Hill and its unfinished Grecian architecture at one end, and that fine gothic monument to Sir Walter Scott in the centre. In all these jolly evenings, dear old Cullum was foremost in paytimes and gay times. In serious moments and in times of leisure, however, his mind often carried him back in happy reminiscence to his homeland where a pretty Canadian girl whose photo he carried and often showed was anticipating his return. When the war came, Jack was among the first to come forward. He went across to France with a western Canadian battalion. In the next year, Cullum was decorated for conspicuous gallantry three times, twice by the King and once by the French government with the Quategaire. His first act of bravery was performed when the Huns blew up a mine in no man's land, injuring many of his battalion. He, heedless of danger and orders, rushed over the top and attended his men in plain view of the enemy. For this he was given the military cross by King George, and a bar to the MC and the French decoration came later for acts of almost reckless courage. He was the first Canadian to win three decorations, and now he was thought to bear a charmed life by his comrades. Shortly after the last bit of ribbon came to him, he applied for transfer to the fighting forces, resigning his commission in the Medical Corps to accept a lower rank in the infantry. And just following this noble act, while sitting in a mess hut, two miles behind the lines at Neulet Wood, a stray shell came through the roof, slightly injuring two other officers and mortally wounding Cullum. His generous soul displayed itself to the last, for he absolutely refused to have his wounds dressed until after the others had been attended to, maintaining that his injuries were slight, and the gallant Cullum died in the ambulance on his way to the hospital. But of course they are not all the fine types. You occasionally meet what the English call a rotter, but his kind is exceedingly scarce. After all the finest type is the ordinary common soldier without any special qualifications, who, day in and day out, night in and night out, performs the dirty, rough, hard monotonous, and often very dangerous tasks of the tommy, who does his duty, grumbling perhaps, swearing often, but does it without cowardice, without hope of honour or emolument, except the honour of doing his duty and doing it like a man. When his work is done he comes back, if still alive and well, to sleep in wet clothes on a mud-floor under a leaky roof, or no roof, often hungry, or his appetite satisfied by bully-beath and biscuit. Yes, with all his swearing, and despite any lead-swinging, the finest type of all the real hero of the war, is the ordinary common soldier. Up to the present the greatest aid given by the air force to any of the armies in this war is that of acting as scouts, or in other words the air service supplies the eyes of the army and navy. Much is said of the time when thousands of planes will be used as offensive weapons on a large scale. It is quite possible that in the future this will come to pass, but up to the present spasmodic bombardments of fortified positions by a few planes and the useless murder of non-combatants by German zeppelins has been the limit of the attacking power of air fleets. There are spectacular fights in the air between airmen of the opposing sides, and when one considers the limited perspective of a man living in a seven-foot ditch, the monotony of such a life and man's natural love of competition, one can easily understand the deep interest taken in these air duels by the men in the trenches. One sometimes sees six or seven battles in the heavens in one afternoon, and another dozen machines driven back by shells from our anti-aircraft guns. Tennyson's prophetic words, written long ago in Loxley Hall, are indeed fulfilled. For I dipped into the future far as human eye could see, saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be, saw the heavens fill with commerce, arguses of magic sales, pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales, heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there reigned a ghastly dew from the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue. Let us hope that after this war for liberty and freedom has ended in this abjugation of militarism, his further prophecy in regard to the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World, may also come true. When airmen fly over their opponent's lines, they are first met by shells from anti-aircraft guns and bullets from machine guns, and between the two they are often forced to return to their own side of the lines. It is a beautiful picture, on a clear day, to see these machines swerving this way and that, diving, ascending out of the path of this rain of shot and shell that greets them, though it rarely brings them down. The swaying machine, cutting its way through the hundreds of white and black puffy balls caused by the bursting shells, is a sight for gods and men, the men at least never tire of watching it. A very amusing incident in this connection is told by the officers of a certain Canadian battalion of infantry. Their original Lieutenant Colonel, now a general, came of a well-known and able, although rather egotistical and bombastic, Canadian family. When in the trenches this Lieutenant Colonel always insisted on being accompanied by his Batman, or a special runner, whose duty it was to carry a Ross rifle ready loaded. When he saw a German plane soaring over no man's land toward him, anywhere from ten thousand to fifteen thousand feet in the air, he would cry, quick give me that rifle, and putting it to his shoulder he would pump shot after shot in the direction of the distant airman. If the latter chance to go back from whence he came, the Lieutenant Colonel would turn to those about him with a satisfied and triumphant smile of self-approbation. Ah, I've turned him back, he would say. When he learned, as he occasionally did, that he had been filling the sky with lead in a mistaken effort to hit one of our own machines, it worried him not at all, for the knowledge he had that he had turned back hundreds of hunt planes prevented an occasional slight mistake from damping the order of a spirit such as is. When the war is over he may rest assured, as he no doubt will, that no Canadian, no Britisher, yes it might even be written, no man, had done more in this great war to accomplish the defeat of the Hun than he. Very often, while you are looking up at a shelled aeroplane, the bits of shrapnel and shell are heard thudding into the earth all about. On one occasion my commanding officer and I lay on the ground in a shower of this kind, while a short distance away a soldier of another battalion was severely wounded by a piece of shell casing. It is strange that more men are not hit in this manner, and the same remark may be made of the few who are wounded in proportion to the number of shells poured over in an ordinary bombardment. A young airman described his work to me as much monotony and a few damned bad frights, and this may be taken as a description of almost any branch of the surface at the front. The phrase, a young airman, is very appropriate in speaking of most of our heroes of the air, for they are often only boys of nineteen or twenty years of age who, with the recklessness of youth but the courage of veterans, risk their valuable young lives in dangerous reconnaissance, or in battling with the enemy a mile or two in the air. Strange that buoyant, happy young fellows like these, with all their lives before them, should value the future less than those who have lived more than half of theirs. But this is the case, and it is stated truly that the steadiness of nerve of these heroic youngsters surpasses that of older men. One day we relieved the blank battalion in the lines, and as the trenches were veritable mud holes, Major P. and I took to the fields and crossed Overland to our rear lines, passing through our long lines of houses and field guns on the way. As our batteries were just about to open a heavy strafe on the enemy to find out the strength of their artillery on this front, we sat on the edge of a shell-hole to smoke a cigarette and watch the effect of the bombardment. The batteries near us had eight or ten men to each gun, using a small derrick to carry into the dark breach of the gun the heavy shell. This was pushed home and behind it was shoved in the charge of gun-gotten. Then the metal door, for all the world, like the door of a small safe, was closed and bolted. The range having been given from a row of figures called across by an artillery lieutenant with field-glasses, the gun was brought to the proper level by one man turning a wheel, while another, gazing through a clinometer, told when the proper range was attained. Another man pulled a string, the gun belched forth its death-dealing load, and we watched the shell bursting a mile or two away over the German lines, with a flash, a great upheaval of earth, and a cloud of smoke high in the air. Presently, to our right, we heard a machine gun playing its ratatata. Looking up, we saw one of our own planes spitting at stream of fire at a large red German flier that had been doing much damage to our machines on this front for some weeks. The Hun plane was above, thus having the advantage. Suddenly, his machine made a nosedive downward like a hawk swooping down on its prey, and as the German had speed very much in his favor, he quickly arrived at the position he desired. His machine gun poured forth bullets, and to our horror we saw that the tail of our aeroplane was cut cleanly off by them as though by a huge sword. The machine, having no guiding rudder, immediately turned nosed downward, and we sighed sadly and felt sick at heart, as we thought of the gallant young chaps falling rapidly to their death. It is always with a sinking feeling that you watch one of your own machines brought down. You can't be entirely without pity, even for the enemy, under the same conditions. For when a man dies in a charge, or even when he is mortally hit by a sniper's bullet, or by a shell, he is either killed instantly, or he is brought back on a stretcher with hopes of recovery. But when an aviator is ten thousand feet in the air, carrying on a duel with a foe, it is often only his machine that is disabled, and while it noses down the long ten thousand feet, though it is only a matter of moments, he has time to realize that death is about to conquer him, and not in a pleasant manner. Just before our unfortunate machine in this fight crashed into the earth, one of the occupants fell or jumped from it. The other remained in his seat, facing his quickly coming death, with the same courage that made him take the chance. The tail of the machine, being the lighter, came down more slowly, and struck the earth not far behind the body, to which it had been attached. In the meantime, the German soared triumphantly above, but now he circled down, sailing close to the earth over his fallen opponents, apparently to see the result of his work. Then he sort aloft again, as all about him, are fleecy white clouds, or puffs of smoke, from the explosions of shells from our anti-aircraft guns in the neighborhood. They burst everywhere, except in his quickly changing path, and he sailed back over his own lines in safety. Stretcher-bearers hurried forward from a nearby field-ambulance dressing station to find that the man who had fallen from the machine was still alive, though probably fatally injured. He was hurried off to receive attention. The other was beneath the machine and beyond human aid. As the smashed machine was in plain view of the Germans, it might at any moment become the target of their artillery, and the stretcher-bearers here, as in all their work, showed an absolute disregard of personal danger. All honor to them. One half hour later, being nearby with my corporal, we crossed over to the ruined aeroplane. Already the Royal Flying Corps had a guard on it to save it from souvenir hunters, and we were warned away, but were later allowed to go around it and had a good view at close hand of its tangled mass of wires, machinery, and armament. There, with his youthful face looking up toward his maker, lay the other occupant of the plane. Shortly his loved ones at home would receive the sad intelligence of the untimely but honorable and courageous death of this boy, who gave up the life he was to live, the sons he was to father, his immortality, to use the words of Rupert Brooke, in order to do his share in holding aloft the lamp of liberty and freedom. Sometimes it is difficult to say who has command of the air at a certain section of the line. This big red plane and a few others of its type seem to be speedier than any of ours on this front, but just as we have gradually surpassed the German in artillery, in the morale of our men, in control of no man's land, and in general offensive power, it was only a matter of a short time till we again took control of the air on this front, as we have on others. The control of the air depends in great part not on the courage of the adiators, but on the efficiency of their machines. Two days later I saw this red plane, or one of its type, daringly fly over our lines and only about three hundred feet above them, an exceedingly low flight over enemy lines. A scouting plane of ours, much inferior in speed and fighting power, but manned by some brave boy who cared not for his life so long as he did his duty, flew straight at the red machine. We watched in strained silence while they circled about each other, their machine guns spitting fire, and once they nearly collided head on. The Hun decided to retreat and flew back over his own lines, and our man, or boy, sailed away in another direction to continue the observation work he had been doing when the Hun came. Had our boy lost, his would have been just another name, added to the long list of heroes of the Royal Flying Corps, for his act in risking his life in attacking a much speedier and more dangerous machine than his own, was the act of a noble, courageous, fearless boy, well worthy of all praise and of the finest decoration. Had he succeeded in downing his enemy, luck would have been on his side, for success in fighting in the air, as in ordinary life, often depends on chance. Besides the courage displayed by the youthful members of the Air Service, they and their German enemy rivals usually display toward each other a chivalry perhaps not equaled in any other branch of the army. It is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that the men who go into the Air Service, outside of their courage, aren't naturally lovers of the picturesque and spectacular. It is also due to the unconscious admiration one brave man has for another, the pity which he must feel for a fellow man whom he may shoot to his death ten thousand feet in the air, and finally the knowledge that it is only a matter of time, if he remains in the service, till he meets a superior machine, if not a braver man, who may give him the same fate. This feeling does not prevent them fighting most fiercely, for each knows that while to the winner may come rewards and decorations, to the loser comes almost certain death. But if by chance they both escape through poor firing, exhaustion of ammunition, or that great element chance, there is little or no personal hatred, but rather admiration for a brave foe. The greatest of British airmen, the late Captain Ball, V.C. D.S.O., told of a contest in which he and a German both exhausted their machine gun ammunition without serious injury to either, and then, after having done their best to kill each other, they sailed along side by side, laughing one at the other till they parted company with a friendly wave of the hand to return to their own lines. It was not uncommon in the early part of the war when one of our men was brought down behind the German lines for the Germans on the following day to fly over our lines and to drop a note telling us that Lieutenant Blank had been killed in a fight on the previous day and had been buried behind their trenches with all military honors. Needless to say, our airmen displayed the same courtesy toward their opponents. The knowledge thus given often saved that depressing uncertainty on the part of the missing heroes' relations and friends, which is more disheartening than the knowledge of his death. Personal bravery is not the monopoly of any one nation. The airmen of our brave French, Belgian, Italian, or Russian allies require no praise from my feeble pen, and those of us who have been out there have seen too many incidents of the courage of our enemies to belittle them, and we have no desire to do so. They have often been barbarous in their uncalled-for cruelties and outrageous in their acts, but they have been sometimes brave, careless of death, and chivalrous. On one occasion I saw a German fly so low over our lines from the front to the rear that we could see him leaning out over the side and looking down at us in the trenches. Some companies of infantry in the front lines raised their rifles and peppered away at him, but he carelessly flew on toward the rear where a company of pioneers were digging trenches, and so struck were they at this reckless trick that they pulled off their helmets and swinging them in the air they cheered him. Another instance of British, Canadian, in this case, love of any brave act. The annals of our British air service are so crowded with tales of heroic deeds that they seem almost to dwarf the heroism shown in the infantry, artillery, or naval branches of our forces. Many stories worthy of the classic heroes are yet untold of boys twenty-one or twenty-two years old who grappled with their enemies in the clouds with the same undaunted fearlessness displayed by Horatius at the bridge in the brave days of old. End of chapter 14. Chapter 15 and 16 of A Surgeon in Arms by Robert James Mannion this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 15. Staff Officers Now the ordinary combatant officer who perhaps will read these lines may expect a diatribe against what the boys call the brass hats, but if so he will be grievously disappointed. Outside the fact that staff officers, like medical officers, are a necessary evil, the writer has the vivid recollection of one occasion on which he might have been court-martialed and perhaps shot for laissez-mâché or something akin to it, but for the good humor of a well-known brigadier general. So there will be no scathing denunciation of staff officers here. At noon I was sitting in a dugout in the lines when I received an order to immediately relieve Captain Blank of the Blankteenth Canadian Battalion. The order gave no information as to the whereabouts of this battalion, and as it turned out the order had been wrongly transmitted and I had been directed to go to a battalion which was not on our front. However, I did not know this at the time, and so I quickly got my things together, hung my steel hat, my cap, haversack, pack, overcoat, stick, and other odds and ends on various parts of my person, for an officer, like a private, seems to be made to hang things upon. To get out of the lines to where I was to be met by an ambulance was a long hard drudge. The ambulance was over one hour late and hours followed in which we searched everywhere to find a trace of the battalion. Night came on and we were still searching, and as no food had accompanied us and a mixture of snow and rain was falling, I was cold, wet, hungry, and pugnacious, when I entered a headquarters in order to try to get some information. Forgetting I was only a captain and stalking angrily in, I demanded, where the hell is the blank-teenth battalion? An officer rose, came forward, and smilingly asked me what the trouble was. I had been hunting for hours, I replied haughtily, not even looking for his rank, searching for this ballet battalion, and I'm fed up to the neck with being pushed around like a basket of fruit, for I had had many moves recently. And a pretty healthy looking basket of fruit you are too, he returned with a good natured laugh, while he proceeded to put me on the right track, and at last I noted his rank, he was the general of my brigade. So now you have the reason that I will say nothing against staff officers. A story akin to this, of an incident that happened in one of our trenches, may be worth relating, though it has nothing to do with staff officers. My Colonel, who always, even in his busiest times, had a vivid sense of humor, was sitting in his dugout when a Tommy's voice yelled out, hey, Bob, how do we get to the Vistula Railhead from here? The Colonel's voice floated up giving directions, but the Tommy, thinking he was talking to another private, said, as say, Bob, don't be so damned lazy, come up and show us the way. And the consternation of the Tommy, as the Colonel, good-naturedly, came up and showed him the way, was good to look at. On a drizzling rainy day, when our battalion occupied the front lines on part of the Vimy Ridge, I was standing in front of a so-called dugout, which consisted of a room about twelve feet by twelve, in which, through lack of space, two medical officers and, therefore, assistants, and two battmen, eight slept and attended the wounded and sick. We were sheltered from shells by a tin roof, on which someone had piled two layers of sandbags. The trenches were of sand, with no revetments of any kind, so that the rain, which had been pouring for days, washed the earth down and formed mud to the knees. Sometimes the mud was rich and creamy, and, except for the fact that whoever happened to be in front of you splattered it in your face, it was easy to get through. The other variety of mud was musilaginous and tenacious, and in getting through it one was very likely to lose his boots, particularly if they were the long rubber kind, and socks, or to get stuck fast. There were many cases where men had to be dug or pulled out, and not one, but many men, and on one occasion an officer, came into this dugout of mine during the night in their bare feet. They had come for hundreds of yards in some cases in this manner. On the day of which I speak I was standing in the creamy mud, halfway up to my knees, listening to the sharp crack made by bullets whizzing overhead, and to the singing of shells by way of a change from the rather poisonous atmosphere in the dugout, made offensive by the carbon monoxide from a charcoal fire, when I heard someone splashing around through the mud. Looking up I saw three staff officers with the distinguishing red bands on their caps, for they were not wearing helmets. Two of them wore raincoats so that their rank could not be seen. The third wore no overcoat, but an ordinary officer's uniform with ankle boots and patees. He strode doggedly behind the others, apparently carrying nothing for mud or rain, and to my surprise he had upon his breast, though he looked no more than twenty years of age, the ribbons of a number of decorations. They stopped just before they came to where I was. Taking out a map of these trenches, they in their guide, or runner, began studying it, while I stood wondering how a boy of twenty could have won these coveted decorations, finally deciding that he must be in the air service. While I was still wondering, he turned to me, and though he was of my own rank, he saluted, and with a pleasant smile, asked me if I could give them any information as to this front. I joined them, and for some time I answered their questions, which rather strangely were in regard to a cemetery to which we won't trench, the one in which we stood, led on its way to the firing line five hundred yards away. After we go there, asked one of the older officers, what is the easiest way out? I explained that the easiest way was overland to Neuville-Savast, and then down the road, but as we still heard the bullets passing a few feet above the parapet, it might not be the safest. He smiled whimsically, and said he would personally rather take the risk than plow through this dreadful mud, but perhaps they'd better stick to the trenches. We chatted a few moments more, and they put their feet once again to the task of getting them through the trenches, the rather thin legs of the young officer, pushing him determinedly along behind the others. That evening the Colonel informed me that he had learned at Brigade that my questioner of the afternoon was the Prince of Wales, who is honorary chairman of a commission in charge of British cemeteries in France, and this removes for me at least the idea which many of us had that while the Prince is in France he has kept well out of the danger zone, for on this day he was well up toward the front lines and under filthy trench conditions at that. A Prince with as much red blood in his veins as he displayed in making that journey should not have enough blue blood to prevent his being some day a strong and righteous monarch. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 The Battle of Vimy Ridge On Easter Monday, April 9, 1917 occurred on the western front the great push which has been named by the press the Battle of Arras. For some days previously our bombardment of the enemy lines had been almost continuous the so-called drumfire which sounded like rolls of thunder. At times during the night the rumble would become a roar, and one of my tent mates would half awaken and say, well, they're given poor heiny hell tonight, and the tone would almost imply pity. A grant from the rest of us, and then we'd roll over on our steel-hard cots to try unsuccessfully, to find a soft spot, and shortly the snores from one of the officers who was notorious for snoring would drown even the roll of the guns. Since the Psalm advances in 1916, no great pushback of the Germans had occurred. After all, the many end great preparations had been completed, and attack was now to be made on a ten-mile front north and south of the ruined city of Arras by British and Canadian troops. To the Canadians felt the lot of taking the famous Vimy Ridge, which they, with the absolutely necessary assistance of almost unlimited artillery, successfully took, consolidated, and held on Easter Monday, April 9. The argument, which sometimes occurs as to whether the artillery or infantry did the greater work in the taking of the ridge, is beside the question. One was as necessary as the other. The artillery could have hammered the ridge until it became absolutely uninhabitable by the enemy, but the artillery could not consolidate and hold the ridge, which could be done only by foot soldiers. Without the proper aid being given by artillery, no foot soldiers in the world, be they ever so valorous, could have taken this strongly fortified hill. The taking of this ridge was considered a most difficult achievement, for the reason that the French in 1915 nearly captured it, but with losses estimated unofficially at from 150,000 to 200,000 men. Anyone who has been in this neighborhood and has seen the areas dotted with equipment and bones of killed French soldiers and the trenches marked at almost every turn by little white wooden crosses erected to an unknown French soldier by their British allies, could hardly doubt these figures. Then the Allies, after holding the conquered part of the ridge for some months, were pushed off it by the Germans, who successfully held it till the Battle of Arras. Before this battle it was said that French and British were betting odds that the Canadians would not succeed in this project of taking the ridge. These facts are not given in any spirit of rivalry or criticism, but only as points of interest and to give honour where honour is due. The Canadians certainly can never complain that they were denied their proper mead of praise by the British press and public for their work at Bhimi, but neither can it be gained said that they deserve the praise accorded. The advance was to have taken place much sooner, but preparations were not complete. Easter Sunday, then Easter Monday, became the day decided upon, and five thirty a.m. of that day was to be the zero hour or hour of attack. Prompted at that hour the wonderfully heavy artillery barrage multiplied one hundred fold. Three minutes later the soldiers began going over the top and following the barrage. So complete were the arrangements and so successful every move that the objectives were taken almost to the minute as planned, and returns coming into brigade headquarters on the immediate front on which our battalion attacked were as optimistic as could be hoped for by the most critical. A little over one hour after the first wave of Canadians started across No Man's Land our OC, Lieutenant Colonel Jay, with an orderly room staff, signalers, and scouts started for the German lines to open a battalion headquarters at Omerhaus dug out about six hundred yards behind the trenches, which two hours before this had been the enemy front line. I accompanied the party, for I was to establish a regimental aid post somewhere near the HQ. When we stepped out of the tunnel, which led from Zivi Cave to the center of No Man's Land, we had the misfortune to arrive in a sap, a trench leading toward the Hun lines, which sap at the moment of our arrival was being very heavily shelled by German artillery. As the sides of the sap were no more than two or three feet in height, and as the shells were dropping so close that we were continually in showers of mud from them, our party became broken up, leaving the Colonel and five of us together. Some two hundred yards on our way we stopped to rest. The Colonel and I were sitting behind a small parapet, our bodies touching, when a shell dropped beside him, pieces of it wounding him in five or six places. He pluckily insisted on going on toward our goal, but soon fell from exhaustion. The problem then was to get him back in safety, for there had been no cessation in the shelling. Fortunately, this was accomplished with no other casualties, with great plock on the Colonel's part and some slight assistance on the part of his companions. Major P. M. C. then took charge, and with most of the original party set out for Ulmer House, our route this time was slightly altered by dodging the unlucky sap and going directly over land. Stepping around shell holes and keeping well away from a tank stuck in a mud hole to our right in order to avoid the numerous shells that the Germans were pouring about it, we proceeded on our trip through the German barrage, which was somewhat scattered now. In passing it may be said that on this immediate front, because of the depth of the mud, the only assistance given by the five or six tanks to the troops was that of drawing and localizing the enemy fire to a certain extent, and so marking out areas of danger that it were well to avoid. None of them got even as far as our first objective, but remained stuck in the thick mud till they were dug out by hand. On hard ground they are no doubt dangerous weapons of war, but in this deep mud their only danger was to their occupants and to those about them. Our trip across this time was not particularly eventful, veering this way and that to avoid the most heavily shelled bits of ground, stepping over corpses of Germans, or what was more trying, of our own Canadian boys, saying a word of comfort to some poor wounded chaps in shell holes, we gradually and successfully made our way across the shell devastated and conquered territory to Ulmer House. We suffered only two slight casualties, a wounded hand to the assistant agitant Lieutenant C, and a bruised chest to the signaling officer Captain G. A couple of hours later the shelling had ceased so completely that it was comparatively safe for anyone to wander about the field which had so recently been the scene of one of the greatest battles in history. Here and there, in shell holes marked by a bit of rag tied to a stick, we found many of our own boys and the boys of other Canadian battalions who needed attention. Stretcher parties were made up, generally of German prisoners, and the wounded were cleared with all possible speed. One poor young chap we discovered late in the afternoon in an advanced shell hole with his leg badly wounded and broken, he having lain there from 6.15 in the morning. Yet he smiled good humbly and thanked us gratefully for what we did, asking only for a cigarette after we fixed him up. Field ambulance stretcher bearers and German prisoners under Captain K. M. C., of a number blank Canadian field ambulance, worked tremendously to clear the field. Other working parties were encountered at different points, all with the same object. In our rounds we visited all that remained of Theles and saw some of the mini-captured guns. One of the most interesting visits we made was to a cave at Le Tidiers near Theles, which was being used as headquarters for another battalion as well as headquarters for C. Company of our own. Here Lieutenant J. greeted us warmly, but failed to tell us the details of his own exploit, which has acquired a fame it well deserves, and for which he received the military cross. Here is the story. Lieutenant J. was second in command of C. Company, the C.O. being old pop, who was killed early in the fight, the command of the company devolving upon his subordinate. He is a boy of 22, a bank clerk in civil life, as mild, gentle, and good nature to lad as one could find in a day's march. He had led his men on till they obtained their objective, and then he in a corporal who were scouting about came to this cave with its long winding staircase. They threw down a couple of mills bombs, drew their revolvers, and went down to be confronted in flickering candlelight by 105 German officers and men, all armed. Bluffing that they had a large force upstairs, they covered and disarmed the 105 Germans, took them prisoners, and hunting up an escort for them, sent them to the rear. Those are the cold, bare, undecorated facts, and then to complete as pretty a bit of work as was done at Beamie Ridge, Lieutenant J. took a German carrier pigeon that he found in the cave, tied to its leg a message giving the necessary essentials, and finishing with the words everything bright and cheery, he freed it. It found its way to our battalion headquarters at Omer House, where we had the pleasure of reading the note. To stand at the mouth of this cave and look about on all sides, as far as the eye could see, and to know that all that shell-wracked ground was won in a few hours by the Citizen Army of Canada, made one feel a legitimate pride in being a native of that land, and the stories which kept dribbling in for days, as we held the line, of the gallantry of this man, or the nobly inspiring death of that one, were of deep interest to us all. Of our own battalion, we lost on the ninth, 217 men, out of a total of 657 and ten officers, not counting two who were slightly wounded, out of 22 of us. Three of our officers were killed outright. Old Pop, Lieutenant Beechcraft, an American lawyer from Michigan, who often said to me with a confident smile, the Germans have not yet made a shell to get me. And he was right, poor Tom, for I saw him lying dead that day on the field with a German rifle bullet wound in his head. The third of our officers killed was Major Hutchins, a man well past 50, who had recently joined us, and who had taken a Lieutenant's position, a platoon commander, in order to serve at the front. This was his first fight, and he was killed by a shell, while leading his platoon across no man's land. All honour to his gray hairs, and may they ever be an inspiration to younger men. One of the best stories of this battle concerned a Canadian Brigade on our left, under the command of Brigadier General H. This brigade on April 9 took all its objectives, except one very difficult hill, number 140, nicknamed, because of its shape, the Pimple. The general of the division sent word to Brigadier General H that he was going to send in some British troops to aid him in capturing this hill. Brigadier General H is a Bonny fighter, an Anglo-Indian, who has been living some years in British Columbia, and he has a temper, much resembling an Irish Terriers. He currently sent back word that his Canadians needed no assistance. Knowing him well, the general of division, good-naturedly, replied that if General H succeeded in taking this difficult hill, they would give him the title Lord Pimple. The next day the division received the following message. Have taken, am consolidating, and will hold hill 140, signed Lord Pimple. The main facts of this story can be verified in the official records of this division. I have a vivid recollection of General H. when he was Lieutenant Colonel in command of the Nth Canadian Battalion. I had been sent there to relieve the regular medical officer who was away on leave in England. Lieutenant Colonel H was also away on leave during my first few day service with his battalion. On a certain day, when we were being relieved from the front line opposite Bully-Grenet, I had not yet seen General H. On going out with my orderlies, we were to pass along Damoisette trench, which was one of the front support trenches, and was an out-trench that day. We found it blocked by some other officers of our battalion and a couple of platoons, for this trench was being heavily shelled just ahead of the block. We joined the others and waited some time, while an officer said, By God, I take enough chances without waiting here for the Huns to drop those shells on our heads. I am going out caron day, which was an in-trench that day for this relief. But the relief was to have been completed at 10 a.m., and it was then 10.15, so we would hardly cause any obstruction. This fact, combined with the fact that probably everyone, as is often the case, was waiting for someone else to propose going back, made us all turn about and retrace our steps. We were going along caron day trench, when I heard an angry voice behind me demanding, Doctor, what are you doing in this trench? Don't you know that this is an in-trench? I turned and saw a thin-lipped, square-jawed Lieutenant Colonel, who, I guessed at once, was our returned OC. I explained that Damoisette was being shelled heavily, that relief was complete, and that only three of the men ahead were mine. His face was quite dark and frowning, and I could see that he was debating as to whether he should give me a strafing or pass it over. Finally, he said sharply, all right, carry on. That night, at a bully, I did not look forward with any great pleasure to my dinner, for I had heard of his reputation as to temper, and I expected he would say a few things to me, though, as Kelly well put it, it's none of an officer's business to put his nose against an advance in German shell. But I plucked up my courage and entered the HQ mess room to be greeted in a kindly and friendly manner by Lieutenant Colonel H. How are you, doctor? I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before, shaking my hand. Pardon me, sir, but you met me in a trench today where I had no right to be. No, you were quite right to be there. I made inquiries and found you were right, and, anyway, I had no damned right to be there myself. In the time that I remained with this battalion I found him always to be a courteous gentleman, but with an irascible temper. One would not be surprised if, since his becoming a brigadier general, his temper is less touchy, and the incident of the pimple shows that he is an efficient officer, well worthy of the land of his forefathers, and a credit to the country of his adoption and of his men. END OF CHAPTER XVI CHAPTERS XVII AND XVIII OF A SURGENT IN ARMS by Robert James Mannion. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. CHAPTER XVII A TRIP TO ARAS One day toward the end of March 1917 our battalion was in reserve in Hudson Tents at Bois des Allures, a mile or so back of Montseiloy, so I took advantage of a fine afternoon to ride about the country. Making a detour through fields to avoid being stopped by some officious transport control, I came to the Route Nacional running from Bethune to Arras. To my surprise it looked like the Strand on a busy day, for it was full of marching troops, transport wagons, hurrying motorcars with staff officers, and double-decked motorbuses painted gray, full of Tommy's, gay and happy, going to a railhead to enjoy a well-earned leave. One could not but wonder in what part of London these motorbuses used to carry their passengers, and think how strange it was to see them now hurrying along a French road within shellfire of the Germans. As I rode along the well-paved route our trench lines could be seen in the nearby fields, and the picturesque towers of Montseiloy were on my left, seen through the nets stretched from tree to tree to hide the traffic from the watchful eyes of the German observers. Riding toward Arras, eight kilometers away, I came up with an English officer riding in the same direction. When I joined him he was at first, as all English officers are, a little loath to be joined by a stranger, though the latter wears the same uniform, but gradually he thought and became the likeable courteous chap that the English officer nearly always becomes on closer acquaintance. He informed me that one required a pass to enter Arras, but as he had one, and was going in to see his commanding officer, he offered to take me in as the medical officer of his battalion. Availing myself of this brotherly offer, I rode with him along the net-guarded road till we came to the outskirts of Arras, where a sentry allowed me to enter with him. We put up our horses at the old French capillary barracks, now occupied by British, not Canadian, troops, and then we started out to search for his CO. We came first to what was once the attractive Boulevard Carnot, now a barbed wire square, as it was nearly filled with this material, to keep the soldiers out of it, to prevent them from being hit by the German shells which landed there daily, either from the enemy lines only a hundred yards away, or from hostile airplanes. The Huns had the range of this street to a nice city. As we walked along the street, shells bursting a couple of blocks away, through pieces of rocks so near our heads, that we were glad when we reached the end of it. We wandered about the streets, deserted by nearly all civilians, except an old man here and there, walking about with bowed head, or an old woman long past the days of her beauty being spoiled by the splinters of a shell. Except in a shop where I coaxed a young woman to sell me a souvenir spoon, in two hours I saw only one young woman in the streets. She was hurrying along with a parcel under her arm, paying no heed to the sharp cutting explosions of our 18 pounders nearby, or to the explosions of the German shells a few blocks away. She looked for all the world like a young housewife returning home after a morning shopping. The houses that lined the streets were nearly all closed. All of them showed marks of shell fire, some being completely demolished, others having only the rear wall standing, with parts of the sides pointing outward, like arms stretching forth for their loved ones. The immense station of the Shimadafe du Noir was a mass of ruins. The stone cathedral was represented by the lower part of the tower, and a brass bell lying on the pavement, the bell that had, in times of peace, so often called the faithful to prayer. The Aben-New Path de France is a country that recognizes its scientists, showed a few complete buildings, and ironically one noted the ruin that German shells had made of the Aben-New Strasbourg. Here and there a stone barricade had been built, loopholes being left for machine guns to prevent a possible German advance. Notices told all to keep near the walls and away from the open streets to avoid shell fire. Estimanez, cafes, epictheries, and restaurants were all damaged and closed. Joyful nights and gay days were things of the past in this shadow of a prosperous city. Alamo de Parisienne, the sign over a lady's suit store, was all that remained of the center of fashion of the women of Aris. Altogether Aris, which had been a well-built and modern city of 25,000 people, had become a deserted village. What shudders remained were closed and riddled with shrapnel, and the place had a sad, forbidding air as if the inhabitants had flown because of some horrible plague. It reminded one of the ruins of Pompeii. In one square stood the pedestal only of a monument erected, it is said, in 1910 in honor of the sons of Aris who had died for their native land. When the monument is rebuilt, the dead heroes in whose honor it was erected will have been joined by many comrades. I passed out of the walls, depressed by the unhappy wreck of a once prosperous city destroyed by the highly refined methods of warfare developed by 20th century German Kultur. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Ragu Alamo de Guerre, Trench Stew Usually hunting partridge or grouse is the pleasure only of those who remain at home, but one day while sitting in a dugout I enjoyed a wonderful meal. Our dugout was in a communication trench some 500 yards from the front line and probably 600 from the German. The dugout was one of those steel-roofed affairs, the roof forming a graceful semi-circle of one eighth-inch metal covered with sand a foot thick, carelessly shoveled on. My orderlies were Corporal Roy, a Canadian boy of 20, Private Jacques, whose well-developed sense of dry Scotch humor showed itself by his irritating the men about him by any method of teasing which came easiest, but whose personal good nature and loyal love of doing his duty, be it the most arduous and dangerous, made everyone forgive him any of his annoying tricks. And my Batman, Private John, a decent clean and brave Canadian boy, who by the way was one of the best men I ever had to look after my comforts or lessen my discomforts, whichever way you choose to put it. This fine, cool winter day we had been standing at the door of our dugout peeping over a comparatively safe bit of parapet, watching some of our 60-pound trench mortars hurtle through the air and burst in the German lines. At last, tiring of the performance, I went inside and sat down to read one of Geoffrey Farnold's latest books. A few minutes later, Roy came hurrying in, grabbed his rifle, and went racing out again, wondering what was the cause of this strange behavior and hearing a shot. I went out. Turning into the main communication trench, I was just in time to see Corporal Roy climbing back over the parapet with a plump dead partridge in his hand. Only those of you who have been living for some months on army rations can appreciate the glorious anticipations which a fat plump partridge can conjure up in one's imagination. His rifle was leaning against the parados, and Roy explained to us that he had seen two partridges, but had only succeeded in getting one. His impatience, getting the better of his judgment, he did not wait till dark to go out and get his prize, but went over the parapet in plain view of German snipers only six hundred yards away, and brought in his bag of game. The partridge was cleaned by John and Jacques, and with the addition of a little mutton and carrots from last night's rations, I made a stew of it. All agreed, perhaps my boys didn't care to disagree, that it was delicious. This is the recipe for ragout à la mode de guerre. Shoot a partridge over the parapet on a bright day, take your life in your hands to go out and get the victim, clean it, but not too clean, mix with it a little mutton and carrots, stew it in a canteen, or dixie, over a charcoal brazier, with plenty of the penetrating charcoal fumes entering your lungs, and perform all these rites in a dugout with enemy shells popping about in the neighborhood. If you have carefully carried out all these directions, then being sufficiently hungry, add a goodly portion of that most savory of sauces appetite to the dish. I promise you that though your tastes are blasé to the last degree, you will admit that a ragout à la mode de guerre makes a meal fit for the discriminating palette of a king. I don't dare mention battalion headquarters. May use all of the leave some of the time, and some of the leave all of the time, but they cannot go on using all of the leave all of the time to paraphrase Mr. P. T. Barnum in regard to fooling the people. So all you must do is to possess your soul in patience, avoid getting directly in front of a shell or bullet, and someday in the dim and distant future, leave will come for you to expose yourself once again to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil in London. That is, if any of them remain when the Bishop of London, the food controller, the anti-treating laws, and the provost marshal have done their work. One day a fellow officer, in this connection I nearly said sufferer, informed you that his batman was told by the OC's batman that he had heard that the Brigadier General was taking leave the end of the month. After that you go on hearing by devious roots that the brigade majors, captains, and lieutenants are going soon, and suddenly you realize that shortly your own battalion headquarters will find leave filtering through on them. Amber Chance, toward the end of the list, you know that you come somewhere. It is then you look up your bank account, if you happen to have any, and you take no extra chances, either with shells or superstitions, for soldiers are almost as superstitious as sailors. You could barely find in the British armies ten men who would light three cigarettes with one match, and that, despite the fact that the match ration is sometimes as absent as the rum ration. We, none of us, are superstitious, but we adhere to the same platform as did a very charming Canterbury lady. Her two sons, as fine chaps as England produces, were at the front, and as she and I, walking down St. George's Place, came to a ladder leaning against the wall of a building, she carefully walked around the other side of it, saying, you know, Doctor, I am not the faintest bit superstitious, but I am not taking any chances these days, and that is the position of the army in the field. They are not taking any chances. Your leave comes one day, after many months, beyond the three required of you. You start to a railhead, where you are put up for a night at an officer's club, and mingle with the other happy beings who are leaving for the same purpose on the nine mile per hour French train in the morning. As you sit about after a dinner that makes your ration meals for the past six months look literally like 30 cents, you light a cigarette, cock up your heels, and look at the world through a beaming face made ruddy by an extra portion of the grape juice of France, and wearing a smile that won't come off. You are going on leave too? You ask genially of your neighbor, a young officer of that suicide club, the Royal Flying Corps. He is about 21, and you feel old enough to almost patronize him. But before you do it, you glance carefully at his left press to see if it is or is not covered with DSO, MC, and perhaps VC ribbons. To your relief, you find it is not. However, on second thought, you decide you will keep your patronizing for the Army Service Corps and not for these smiling, gay, life-risking, daredevil boys about you. Yes, in a way, the young chap answered with a charming boyish smile. Sick leave! My old bubba-bus hit the earth so suddenly, and I'm guggulowing for a rest. I didn't always talk-la like this, and in an engaging way he stammers out an invitation for you to take a climb to month with him. Of course, courtesy compels you, against your desire to accept. He has with him two others of the RFC, all young like himself, and for a couple of hours you listen to their modest tales of their really wonderful exploits, undreamed of except by the far-seeing few 25 years ago. One of the others has a scraped nose, blackened eye, and swollen lip, which he says he received when his wagon in the landing struck a rough bit of ground, which he tried to plow up, and he must have hit the belly gravel underneath. Well, were you to-to-to-tight, asked the first with that boyish smile? Certainly not, indignantly replied the other, and he laughed. Of course, I had had a couple in the morning, but I had a sleep afterwards, and anyway the OC smelt my breath, and he wouldn't have allowed me to go up if he had smelt anything. And you listen with fascination to their comparisons of their machines and their methods of diving, and stalling in which they drive up against the wind in such a way that they can keep stationary in relation to a certain bit of earth, and corkscrewing or nose-diving towards the earth with a circular turning of the whole aeroplane out of the midst of enemies, and riding the machine thousands of feet lower down out of danger. You become quite an expert as you listen. They tell you that earlier in the war the German aviators were very chivalrous foes, returning courtesy for courtesy, never shooting a fallen enemy, and dropping notes as to the fate of some of our missing airmen. On one occasion the great German aviator, Imelmann, who remained chivalrous till his death, dropped a box of cigars on the aerodrome of a great British pilot with the compliments of the German air service. The following night the Britain returned the compliment in the same manner, but now the Germans in the air, as on the sea and on land, are much less sportsmen-like and take mean advantages of a fallen foe. You listen to stories of the great exploits of a Baron Richtolven circus, and still greater of the circus of our own Captain Ball, unhappily since killed, who at times went up in his pajamas. He had a trick of shooting straight up through the roof of his plane at an enemy overhead, and fearing that the enemy might someday try the same trick on him, he had a machine gun so placed that he could also shoot through the floor directly downwards. Oh, what entrancing, picturesque stories beyond the wildest dreams of imagination two generations ago. I always take up with me a goodly supply of cigarettes in case I have to land where I can't get any. Do you, asked one? No, no, no, no, I don't. That's looking for trouble. I order breakfast of forage and cream and bacon and eggs, smiles our young stammering friend, and then it's all ready when I come in. You listen for hours to these gallant boys who have all the fine natural courtesy and modesty of the well-bred English and the gaiety of a Charles O'Malley. Unconsciously they make you feel that you really have seen such a prosaic side of the war in comparison with them. Then like all good Britons they for some time curse the government and you aid and abet them. The night wears on, the liqueur bottle runs low, and at last you must say good night to these rollicking boys who insist that you must not fail when you come back to visit their mess. For you Canadians, you know, are such damned fine chaps and we love to meet you. The little sin of flattery is so easily forgiven when it is accompanied by that frank, fascinating smile and when you have all been tasting a drop of good French liqueur. You wind your way up creaky old stairs to number thirteen or is it thirty-one and the luxury of luxuries you find a tub of hot water or it was hot at the hour for which you ordered it, awaiting you, divesting yourself of your clothes, you double your body this way and that in a vain endeavor to dip more than half of yourself at once. At last you feel clean and you struggle into pajamas and crawl into bed between real white clean linen sheets for the first time in six months and you sleep as no emperor can sleep on the most silken of devans while you dream of the morrow when you really begin your leave. Leave? Ah, we were speaking of leave. Well, let us, you and I, take it together. Let us enjoy to the full the flesh-pots of London for our leave lasts only ten days and the war must go on till we have shown the Hun that he cannot autocratically put his prescient militaristic crown of thorns on the fair brow of civilization. End of chapter nineteen Chapter twenty Paris during the war Paris, that queen of cities, has been an interesting study to all who have paid her a visit at any time but particularly interesting is that study since the war began. Previous to the war I had the good fortune to visit this city on a number of occasions my last visit having been but a few months before the beginning of this great militaristic conflagration which is still sweeping over the civilized world. At that time I had just returned from a grand tour taking in Italy, Austria and Southern Germany where no signs were discernible on the horizon of the stupendous attempt at world domination which the Prussian Junkers were to engineer within four months time. Paris at that time was enjoying bright and balmy spring weather. The boulevards were crowded with visiting tourists the Champs-Élysées with gay and merry crowds and a bois de balloon with riders and motorists in its wooded avenues and rowers and paddlers on its lakes. It remained in my memory a picture of beauty, peace, gaiety and prosperity. My return to it came within the year at the beginning of 1915 when the war cloud that hung over the whole of Europe particularly dimmed the sun of Paris. I came into it in the afternoon from the north and my first view of it showed that beautiful edifice the church of the Sacre-Cœur on the hill of Montmartre standing out en silhouette just as if cut from paper as a travelling companion remark. Since the war began on one's arrival at his hotel in Paris he has to give many particulars of himself not required in peacetimes. The following morning he must call at the nearest police station and obtain after many more questions as to nationality, occupation and reasons for being there a permis de séjour permit to remain good for a certain length of time at the expiration of which the permit must be renewed. On stepping out of my hotel the following morning to go to the police station the first thing that struck my attention was the large number of women in mourning though it was then only a matter of months since the beginning of hostilities. The thought that flitted sadly through my mind was that one half of the women of Paris are in mourning now and ere long the other half will be. It must not be forgotten that the French wear mourning for relations much more distant than those for whom we wear it but even at that the war must not have gone on many months before a very large percentage of the French homes had been touched by the deaths of those near and dear to them. For the soil of France was under the heel of the foreign invader and there are no people in the world who love their mother country with a deeper devotion than the French. A very old woman living away up in the north of France in a town that was shelled by the Germans almost daily showed me her love for La Belle France and her hatred of its enemies in one expressive sentence. I had asked her if she did not tire of the continuous pounding of the guns. No, I loved him, I loved him, she answered passionately for when they see it means that the accursed bosses is being left alone. But when they roar, roar, roar it means that we are driving him out of our beautiful France. Her face showed, as an old woman's wrinkled face can show so well, her hatred of the Germans. The soldiers of France by their traditional gallantry their superb courage and their patience have not only shown their love for their country but have been an example of noble heroism to us all. One of the next notable changes on the streets of Paris was the fact that one saw no young men in civilian clothes. All were serving their country in some capacity in the armies. The little hotel in the Rue Bergère at which I was a guest a hotel of not many more than 100 rooms had given 30 men, waiters, porters, clerks to the armies of France for it was one of those small select hotels that one find scattered throughout Europe. The only male help that remained of its original staff was a concierge and he was a Dutchman from Amsterdam. The manager, accountant, and all the other help were women. No meals were served except French des gennées so hateful to hungry Anglo-Saxons of bread and tea, coffee, or cocoa. And the same condition was noticeable all over the city. Anyone who has visited this fair metropolis of France in peacetime will remember the delicious snow white bread that is served with the meals that French bread with the crackly brown crust as delicious as pastry. The first day of my stay I noticed that this bread was served no longer in its place we were given some of a much inferior quality and not nearly so white. When this had occurred in many different restaurants and cafes I asked the reason. Mes messieurs was the reply accompanied by that gallic gesture of helplessness the turning upward of the palms the good bakers are all serving with the armies. Of course this reason was enhanced by the conservation of the wheat which prevented the mixing or blending of the superior qualities of grains to produce the high grain flowers used by the good bakers. The streets by day were the same crowded thoroughfares as of old except for the black of those in mourning the blue gray of the military uniforms and the military cars and red cross ambulances. The touts who in peacetimes had tried to envigle the tourists into moving picture houses in which the films had not been passed by the censor or who offered to take him around the forbidden night sights for a small honorarium or who endeavored to sell him postcards so indecent that the ordinary man would not accept a fortune and have them found on his corpse. All these fellows still plied their trade. They were not quite so obtrusive or so numerous as usual but it was difficult to cross the Place de l'Opera without having one of them step up behind you and whisper his enterprise whatever it was. The girls of the Boulevard were perhaps even more in evidence than at other times for in those early months of the war few chose to cross the submarine infested channel and still fewer to cross the Atlantic through the areas laid out by the Huns as danger zones unless good cause made them do so. Paris usually the mecca of tourists from all the countries of the world had become instead the business and military headquarters of France and to Paris came instead of the gay youth bent on pleasure the gray youth bent on business whose eyes were so busy studying his engagement book or reading the market reports that they had not time to meet the roaming glances of the girls of the Boulevard. New friends were hard to find for les riches américains came no more except on business and the old friends and the persons of gay Pierre or Gala Paul were serving in the trenches perhaps dead for news of them came but seldom. So the girls had plenty of time to promenade and one found it necessary to keep his eyes fixed steadily on some imaginary object straight in front as he walked down the Boulevard des Italiens or the Boulevard des Capucines to avoid receiving too many inquiring glances from the Boulevard des. Generally speaking the annoyances were limited to glances as the rules of the city are strict. One noticeable thing about these women was the fact that many of them wore black probably for two reasons. On the one hand wore economy and on the other to attract sympathy for real or supposed losses at the front. Those who were not in black went with the prevailing styles which seemed to be governed also by war economy for less and less materials were being used in the dresses. The wastes were getting lower and the skirts higher. One would imagine that if this kept on till they met some kind of catastrophe would likely be to happen even though it were Paris. At that famous corner of the Café de la Paix the chairs on the street were well patronized though the weather was chilly and I found myself wondering if it were the same crowd who had occupied them a few months before on my last visit. No one ever passes here without taking a seat unless he is pressed for time. Someone has said that if you sit here long enough you will see everybody in the world who is anybody in the world pass by. I took a seat and a cup of coffee and glanced about me. It was the usual mixed crowd with perhaps fewer of those who chase Bacchus and Venus and more of those who pursue Mammon. But after all men and women are much the same the world over and this was much the same group of coffee-siffing liqueur-tasting people that one finds in the Cafés from four to six p.m. in any of the continental cities from Paris to Vienna from Naples to Berlin. There were a few more men in uniform a little less gaiety than usual a trifle more business talked in one's hearing otherwise it was the same group. A couple of tables from me was a handsome officer in a French uniform but plainly from his cast of features and his mannerisms not a Frenchman. He wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor on his tunic and he was perhaps for this reason saluted by many of the officers who passed on the boulevard. Many glances of admiration were thrown in his direction by civilians. Some of the officers stopped for a moment and chatted with him. I watched him for some time my curiosity increasing. He was sitting alone at the moment when I got up to leave and I made the excuse of asking him something about British hospitals. Apparently glad to hear his own tongue spoken he welcomed me and we exchanged confidences for a few minutes as strangers sometimes will when there is something in common between them. He was an Australian who had been in France when the war broke out and he had not agreed with England's hesitation on entering the war by the side of Belgium and France so he joined the French army. Oh yes that is the Legion of Honor. He returned smilingly to my remark as to his decoration a very ordinary bit of work at the front brought it to me. He continued modestly apparently not caring to give details. Though I was in Paris some time I did not come across him again nor have I ever met since this Australian lover of freedom. At that time the women of France were already doing much of the work usually performed by men. This was long before London had reached the stage that she has attained today with women filling such a wide variety of occupations so that it was very noticeable in France at that time. At the border my goods had been looked over by women customs inspectors women guards at the train had examined my ticket and in Paris women were everywhere handling the motor buses conducting on the tramways collecting fares on the metropolitan or underground and filling the hundreds and one other positions that since the war woman has proved herself so capable of filling all the women of the world have proved themselves heroines in this war but none more than the women of France at the early stage of the war of which I am writing they showed those characteristics of patience loyalty and nobility of mind which have distinguished them in the straining times that have come and gone since then they seemed to have become resigned to all things if one spoke to them pedulently of the raw cold weather oh well they return smiling it is the season and one must expect bad weather or you may per chance have known some woman whose son or brother was serving in the lines at that time the French government gave out but little information as to any of the happenings at the front and unless the government knew positively that a man was killed no word of news was sent to the anxious friends often many weary months of waiting passed without knowledge on the part of the soldiers nearest again as to his fate and if during this time of waiting you asked this woman whom you knew for tidings of her loved one her reply invariably was oh no no I have had no news of Montchère Jacques for a long time now but I do not fear she would continue with a patient smile or the good God will protect mine sure and if it is necessary we must give all for our beloved France and it may have been many more long long months and it may have been never that she learned the real fate of her Cher Jacques one morning during this visit as I entered a car on the subway a living picture of sorrow passed in ahead of me the picture was made up of a beautiful young widow leading tenderly by the hands her two lovely children now fatherless her deep brown eyes looking sadly out from her pale face saw no one those eyes were looking into the far off distance of the blank and lonely years to come those years without hope for the touch of a vanished hand or the sound of a voice that is still all that saved her from black despair was the knowledge that she had to bear up because of the helpless children at her side but God the pity of the thousands of these lonely widows what a contribution France and her allies are making to the cause of liberty end of chapter 20