With Joffre at Verdun: A Story of the Western Front

The old and somewhat delicate-looking gentleman seated beside him turned upon the big man an expansive smile, a mischievous smile, and, pushing his goggles up on his forehead, burst into such a ripple of laughter that his drooping moustache, which seemed so natural, fell from its place, instantly transforming him. It was the jovial, yet cautious, Henri enjoying this amazing adventure to the utmost.

"My boy," he said, as he reached for the moustache and carefully adjusted it, "one moment while I take a glance at myself in the glass over the seat. That's better, ain't it? Quite straight, and makes me look the part to perfection. But what did that signalman shout, you ask? Well, rather an important message, and these are the words as I remember them: 'You'll stop at the station just beyond', he called to the driver; 'there are police there waiting for you, for there's information that there are three escaping prisoners from Ruhleben amongst the passengers, in disguise of course. Understand? Well, pull out and run through the tunnel.'"

It was little to be wondered at that the wits of the fugitives were at once set to work in lightning-like manner. If they were to escape, indeed, and were to avoid the police officials waiting for them at the station so near at hand, they must act instantly, must find some loophole, must alter their plans completely. Already the train was again in motion, for it had only pulled up for a few seconds, and, even while they were debating the matter, were looking at one another enquiringly, and were feeling already as if the case were hopeless, it ran into the tunnel. It was then that Henri gripped his two companions and spoke eagerly to them.

"Quick, to the end of the carriage," he said; "then hop out. It's dark, so that no one can see us. On no account must we be seen on the train when it has passed through the tunnel."

It was a fortunate thing for the trio that the train had been unable to get up any great speed since it got into motion again after leaving the signal station. It did little better than crawl into the tunnel, and, seeing that the station at which it was destined to halt, and where the police were waiting the fugitives, was only a short distance beyond, the driver made no effort to hurry. Thus it followed that the drop from the train was a matter of no great difficulty, particularly for such active individuals as Henri, Jules, and Stuart. Crouching between the wall of the tunnel and the passing train, they listened to it as it rumbled away in the distance towards a mere dot of light which disclosed the far end of the tunnel. Then that dot was of a sudden blotted out of sight, and the rumbling became louder.

"What's that?" demanded Stuart. "Not gone off the rails, I hope, for that will bring a pack of people into the place, and they'll find us."

"Another train has entered the tunnel, I think," came from Jules. "Listen, now, and look! You can see sparks coming from the funnel."

"Then, why not?" demanded Henri, in a voice which trembled with excitement. "Why not transfer ourselves to it? What matter if it is going in the opposite direction, so long as it throws our pursuers off the scent. Eh – what's the verdict?"

"That we snatch the goods the gods send us, and pile on to the new train."

That, too, was a matter of extreme simplicity to the three. Only, had the train been lighted, and had there been railway officials on it, they would have been staggered, no doubt, and vastly moved at witnessing the agility of these three unbidden passengers who now joined it. Indeed, the extraordinary and unexpected, if not masculine, agility of the lady would have simply and metaphorically floored any German official. But there was none to see, in the first place, because darkness flooded the scene; and, secondly, because no gaping official was on this special. Reaching a carriage and ensconcing themselves in a corner, Henri and his friends were presently whirled from the tunnel and swept on over the ground they had so recently covered, and in due course they ran through the station where the inspector, the station-master, and the unfortunate manager of the sugar factory were standing. Henri gave vent to an exclamation of astonishment, and then to a loud chuckle, while of a sudden he gripped his two friends by the arms and bade them lower their heads.

"It's all as clear as daylight now," he said. "I have been wondering how on earth these Germans discovered our whereabouts and our disguises; but that makes the whole matter perfectly transparent. The manager of the factory spotted the fact that his office had been entered, and that certain garments had been purloined. The police were called in, and then the station-master gave information of our arrival, and of our boarding the train. It's as clear as a pikestaff. Hurrah! How we've nonplussed them!"

"And if the hue and cry is all up the line, what happens to us?" asked Stuart, with a grim smile, some little time later, when the train had whirled them perhaps a couple of dozen miles onward. "We can't go on like this indefinitely. This train is bound to stop somewhere, and when it stops we are up against the same old difficulty again. Moreover, knowing our disguises, realizing that we have baffled them in some way, the police will be telegraphing all over the country, and may even guess that we are on this train. Common sense tells a fellow that the whole scheme must be pitched overboard and a new plan entered upon."

It was indeed a serious difficulty, for at any moment the train which carried them on so swiftly, so luxuriously one may say, might stop, and twenty or more gaping officials might investigate it. For all Henri and his chums knew, telegrams were already passing over the wires which flashed beside them as they ran through the country – telegrams warning officials, hungry for their capture, to be on the look-out, to be on the qui vive for three individuals – an oldish man in delicate health, his daughter, perhaps, and another, a big fellow, ostensibly an attendant. Yet, whatever plans they may have thought out, whatever intentions they may have had, were suspended for a while, seeing that the train did not halt but ran on for quite a considerable time, indeed until dusk had fallen. Nor was it until darkness had fallen and the evening had passed that it finally ran into the outskirts of a large town, where presently the brakes gripped the wheels, setting them skidding over the metals, and soon bringing the carriages to a standstill. Then the train began to back, and presently was brought to rest in a siding.

"Out we go," said Henri. "No one has seen us up to date, and therefore all we can say is that we have still plenty of chances of escaping; we are no worse off than we were certainly, and perhaps we're better off. At any rate, speaking personally, I've still every intention of clearing out of Germany."

CHAPTER VII

A Friend in Need

"Half a mo'! What's that? Looks like a regular haystack," grunted Stuart, as he dropped from the train and stood in the fairway, one hand held out in front of him, and a ponderous finger pointing into the darkness.

"What's what? Oh, that! – that! Yes, it looks like a haystack," admitted Jules, following the direction of his indicating finger.

"On wheels! A hay-load on a truck," suggested Henri, peering into the gloom, and seeing the ghostly outline of twenty or more trucks which stood upon the rails in a siding quite close to them. "A truck of hay, Stuart – hay!"

"Or straw," growled the huge Englishman. "Well, what of it? What's it matter to us if it's straw or hay, or any sort of thing? What's anything matter, so long as it don't help us?"

He was in quite an irritable mood, and his voice sounded as though he were ready to quarrel with anyone on the smallest pretext. It was therefore with an exclamation of impatience that he realized that Henri, with quick impulsiveness, had gripped him by the arm and was shaking him eagerly.

"What's – what's up then?" he demanded peevishly; and then, looking in the direction in which the Frenchman was now pointing, grumbled loudly: "Still on about that hay or straw? You're wasting time, Henri."

"Idiot!" the impulsive Frenchman told him. "Haven't you heard of Germans hiding up in a hayrick – hiding as spies? It's a chance; let's take it. Get your knife ready."

When they had crossed the tracks and reached the line of trucks it was indeed to find that an opportunity for further escape was right before them. For here were half a dozen trucks stacked high with hay, and each covered with a tarpaulin. To cast off one end of the tarpaulin, to burrow a hole in the hay, to tread their way into the stacks, and to hack a space sufficient to accommodate their bodies was no great difficulty, and though, in the midst of their work, the train started, it made the job all the easier; for then, throwing discretion to the wind, they tossed what hay was superabundant overboard, and, having by that means obtained a cosy little nook in one of the stacks, put the tarpaulin back into position, and, sleepy now after their labours, and content that they were securely hidden, fell fast asleep, careless of the direction in which they might be travelling. And two days later, having in the meanwhile been lucky enough to obtain some food and water at a siding into which the trucks were shunted, they heard the brakes grind, and felt the train come to a gradual standstill.

"We shall have to get clear of this," said Henri. "Lucky it's night-time again. I wonder where we are?"

"Still in Germany, I suppose," said Stuart, as he peered from underneath the tarpaulin.

"No; Belgium," declared Jules of a sudden. "Look over there – it's – it's Louvain."

There, painted above the station building near which the trucks were halted, was the word, in large letters – Louvain.

"Louvain!" said Stuart, a bitter note in his voice; "where those brutes butchered the Belgians; where they burned the town and the library, and murdered women and children. Louvain! Just fancy! Still, it's Belgium, and that's nearer to England."

"And to France!" whispered Henri, a note of excitement in his voice – "and to France, Stuart! Let's get out and see what will happen."

Dropping from the truck, they presently found themselves in the streets of Louvain, with ruined and broken remnants of houses on either side of them, with a cowed population stepping sadly through the deserted streets, and with packs of arrogant German soldiers patrolling the town. In happier days both Jules and Henri had been at this place, had admired this Belgian city of learning, had known some of its professors – now dead or scattered, many of them having found a home in England – and had never imagined in those days that such a dreadful change could have been brought about in this once famous city of learning. Yet what changes had been wrought by the war which the Kaiser and his people had sought, and which had now deluged Europe!

What a tale of treachery and suffering; what a tale of furious fighting, of gallant deeds, of death, of victory, of wounds, had been wrought by those months of war which had elapsed since that eventful day when Henri and Jules discovered themselves in Berlin, the centre of a hissing, furious crowd, and were hurried to that camp of misery at Ruhleben! He who ventures to give a full narrative of the deeds done during those months, of the varying fortunes of the combatants, of the warfare waged by land and sea and in the air, would needs have a task far, far beyond him, seeing that every day has been so full of incidents of surpassing importance to the world that a mere summary of them would be an undertaking. Yet to realize the situation, as it was at the moment when Henri and his two friends clambered from the truck in which they had escaped from the heart of Germany, and dropped to the ground in the heart of Louvain; to understand the changes which had occurred during those weary months of waiting at Ruhleben, it becomes a matter of necessity at this stage to glance, if only briefly, at the major events which had happened.

We have said already that, at the moment when Germany had thrown down the gauntlet to France and Russia, Belgium was at peace with the world, and Britain also. And the tale does not need to be repeated of how Germany, one of the Powers which had sworn to preserve the sanctity of Belgium, which had, indeed, signed a declaration to that effect and sealed it in the sight of others, now tore up that sacred treaty, and hurled her legions into Belgium. No need even to do more than remind the reader of how Belgian troops held up the advance of these treacherous foes, smote them severely, caused them terrible losses, and then, overwhelmed by numbers, were swept back, leaving the citizens in the hands of ruthless men, who murdered and butchered them, who perpetrated unmentionable horrors in the fair cities of King Albert, and burned thousands of houses and public buildings to the ground. Everyone must know, too, how that vile act of the Kaiser brought Great Britain into the conflict; how a British Expeditionary Force sailed promptly for France, and arrived in the neighbourhood of Mons only just in time to take its place beside the French armies then at death's grips with the main forces of the Kaiser's armies, who, having burst their way through Belgium, now invaded France. That historic retreat towards Paris, and the swaggering triumphal march of the Germans, were followed by a striking blow against the Teutons, who were driven back across the Marne, hurled out of central and northern France, till but a strip of the country remained to them.

Meanwhile thousands of British soldiers were flocking in, shoulder to shoulder, ready for the fray; while French forces were being mobilized. A line – thin enough in all conscience, desperately thin – was stretched from the eastern frontier of France across its northern provinces, to the very tip of Belgium at Ypres, and so across it to the sea. This line of men who burrowed their way in trenches – a force of less than one man to the yard – was yet a force of heroes. Unprepared though they were, unsupported, without a doubt because there were as yet no new armies to support them, without reliefs for the very same reason, and therefore dependent entirely upon themselves, they stemmed the German tide. Hopelessly outnumbered, they yet held their ground, and, though deluged by shells and faced by an enemy superbly equipped and prepared with the latest machinery of war, held him back, causing enormous losses in his ranks, and barring his way onward. The tale of the First Battle of Ypres is a tale of splendour, of heroic British action – the tale of how those few divisions – war-worn, hardened divisions by now – barred the road to Calais, and smashed the power of the Prussian Guards, troops hitherto considered invincible.

There is no need to recall those other battles, the almost daily exchange of shots along the trench-line, though for the information of our readers it may be just as well to enumerate some of the more important. From the sea, in the neighbourhood of Nieuport, the line of trenches ran in a southerly direction across the flats of Belgium and Flanders in front of Ypres, and down towards Arras. Thence, curling towards the east, and skirting the River Aisne and the famous city of Reims – where the vandals who had destroyed Louvain and many another city had long since wrecked the Cathedral, famous throughout the world – their line swept on over hill and dale, and hollow and furrow, across chalky plains and wooded heights and forest country to Verdun – that famous city which for centuries has been a stronghold. An ancient city, girdled at the outbreak of this gigantic war by a ring of fortresses of modern construction, in which a complete battery of guns was mounted; forts, let it be added, strategically placed, which could sweep the country in all directions. Then, turning sharply round Verdun, the line cut its way through muddy plains, through heights once more, through miles of country, till it reached the Swiss frontier. All along that line, fighting continued, here bursting out into a violent conflict, simmering down elsewhere, and at times subsiding altogether. Yet never were the trenches without a sinister line of crouching men, whether British, Belgian, or French, and ever was there another sinister, remorseless gang holding the German trenches opposite.

Round about the city of Reims there had raged at times most furious fighting. In the Vosges, French riflemen and Germans contended for the mastery without cessation; while in the Woevre, before St. Mihiel, at Arras, in a thousand places, were desperate conflicts, in which the line swayed, trenches were captured and recaptured, men died, and the Kaiser's troops frantically struggled to break their way through the cordon stretched before them. Along the British line the battle of Neuve Chapelle gave opportunity to many a young soldier, and proved to the Germans that British and Indians could fight heroically together. Then the Second Battle of Ypres took place, a conflict more furious than any that had gone before it, in which, making their preparations secretly, throwing to the winds all thoughts of humanity, acting in that ruthless, treacherous manner which one now associates as a natural course with the Germans, the Kaiser and his staff deluged the French and British lines – where they joined – with asphyxiating gas, which choked hundreds. And yet, in spite of this diabolical manoeuvre, in spite of the unpreparedness of the French and British, and though the Algerian troops of the French, scared by the gas as by the mutterings of a wizard, gave way and fell back, leaving a gap in the line, yet the enemy failed to gain their object. For the 1st Canadian Division flung itself across the gap and held on like heroes, fought with desperate bravery indeed, and wrought for the people of the British Empire, and for their brothers and sisters in Canada, a tale which, so long as the British nation exists, will never be forgotten – never beaten.

There is little to add to this tale of warfare on the Western Front. Failing in her shock tactics, and in spite of the treacherous use of gas, and occupied for the moment in strenuous and successful efforts to drive back the Russian hosts which had marched across Poland into Galicia, and even into eastern Prussia, Germany abstained from further efforts on the Western Front, hoping, no doubt, to carry out, even at the eleventh hour, the plan so carefully formulated before the war commenced, upon which her future greatness was to be established. It has ever been the maxim of a great commander to divide his enemies, to split them into two parts, and drive them asunder; and, having placed them in that position, to hold the one firmly with as small a garrison as possible, and then, taking every man he could spare, to fling himself upon the other force and annihilate it. It is a common-sense procedure, for then there is opportunity to gather one's force together again, to take a second breath, and to repeat with the other half of the enemy force the same manoeuvre. The Germans are no wiser, no swifter, no better, indeed, than are our own or the French peoples. If they are superior in any sort of way it is certainly only in their craft and cunning, in their methodical and painstaking attention to detail, and in their ruthless disregard of all laws and customs when considering their own future. Thus, seeing that Russia and France are so widely separated, there was nothing extraordinarily deep in the plans of the Kaiser's Staff when it was proposed to crush France in the first few weeks of the war, to trample out her spirit, and then, having secured her in their toils, to race back to Russia, and, counting on the fact that she would still be in a state of hopeless confusion, to deal her such blows as would stun her. Yet, with all their cunning, with all their preparation, the Germans' plans had miscarried from the moment of their invasion of Belgium – which had seemed to promise such rewards that it was worth even the risk it foreshadowed of bringing Britain into the conflict. For the Belgians had thrown out the Kaiser's plans, had delayed the onrush of the Germans, had given France time to get her men together, and had allowed Britain to send a force to aid them. The blow failed; France, reeling under it, struggling beneath it, indeed, held her ground, recovered her strength, even advanced, and now, with Britain to aid her, formed a barrier to further progress. Not the heaviest blows, no amount of asphyxiating gas availed, even the hordes flung upon that line dashed themselves to pieces. It stood strong as ever, while Russia was rising in her strength and threatening Austria.

But the Tsar's forces were known to be short of arms and ammunition – facts reported by the German spies in Russia. Here was another chance. Why not reverse the proceeding, take advantage of Russia's shortage of ammunition, and smash her before she grew stronger, thus ridding Germany of a powerful enemy? Then, having in the meanwhile held the Western line with as thin a garrison as possible, and planted machine-guns at short intervals along it, the Teuton hosts could be gathered together, even the maimed put in amongst them, and a mighty force thrown again upon the Western line which should certainly crush it. That manoeuvre, so diligently thought out by the German Staff, was put into execution promptly; and, with massed guns, with a host of men, the Russian armies were assailed, and, thanks to their shortage of guns and ammunition, were driven backward, were forced to cross Poland, until they reached a line stretching from the Gulf of Riga to the Pinsk marshes, and so southward.

It was indeed an amazing advance on the part of Germany and Austria, and a great success; yet, at the same time, a great failure, seeing that it failed of achieving its one and only object, which was the crushing of the Tsar's forces. Not once had the Russian line been broken, not once had it been demoralized even; it was there, still in front of the Germans and Austrians, undismayed, gathering strength daily, gathering guns and munitions, and all that it had suffered was loss of territory, and of numbers easily made good from the heart of Russia.

And still the Western line became stronger as the months went by, as Britain called her sons from every corner of the Globe, and as Kitchener's Army grew and grew in numbers. A foretaste of what might be expected was given to Germany when, in September, 1915, the French attacked in the Champagne area, and the British burst their way across the lines at Loos and Hulluch. Harassed by the knowledge that Russia was arming rapidly, and had millions of men to fill the gaps in her ranks, bewildered by the amazing and growing strength of the British, hemmed in by sea on almost every side, and seeing her own strength diminishing, Germany found herself in a situation little short of desperate. She must do something, and that quickly – something to smash these enemies. Already she had brought Turkey into the conflict on her side, and now she burst her way through Serbia with the aid of the treacherous Bulgarians. Yet it profited her nothing. For the real conflict and the real issue lay on the Western Front, where that line stretched through France and Belgium. It was there, and nowhere else, that the coup de grâce would be given to either of the combatants; and, clinging to the old idea as a drowning man clings to a straw – the idea of defeating their enemies in detail – the Kaiser and his Staff once more set to work to prepare a blow which should crush the French offensive and defensive, and break for themselves a way to Paris. Their eyes were fastened on Verdun, that point from which the long French line had pivoted during the great retreat at the commencement of the war, where grizzly cement forts circled the old town, a place famous for its strength, upon which the eyes of the world were likely to be attracted.

We have no space at this moment to tell of the many reasons for choosing Verdun for an attack – for doubtless there were many – yet the mention of one alone will be sufficient. The place was considered impregnable; its forts and guns had given to it a sinister reputation. Let German armies burst their way over the French lines at Verdun, and capture the ancient city and the fortresses, and the world would be impressed. Neutrals, although irritated by German frightfulness and overbearing action, on hearing of Verdun would shiver and cease to obstruct the Teuton. Let Roumania, tottering on the brink of war, but get the tidings, and she would no longer think of joining Britain and her allies. Add to these considerations the strategical value of a break of the French line at any point, with prisoners captured, and a huge wedge thrown into the gap, which would widen out so that the road to the sea would be barred no longer, and one sees sufficient reason for this new German plan which aimed at Verdun.