A Visit to Three Fronts by Arthur Conan Doyle
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A VISIT TO THREE FRONTS
June 1916
BY
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
AUTHOR OF
'THE GREAT BOER WAR'
PREFACE
In the course of May 1916, the Italian authorities expressed a desire
that some independent observer from Great Britain should visit their
lines and report his impressions. It was at the time when our brave and
capable allies had sustained a set-back in the Trentino owing to a
sudden concentration of the Austrians, supported by very heavy
artillery. I was asked to undertake this mission. In order to carry it
out properly, I stipulated that I should be allowed to visit the
British lines first, so that I might have some standard of comparison.
The War Office kindly assented to my request. Later I obtained
permission to pay a visit to the French front as well. Thus it was my
great good fortune, at the very crisis of the war, to visit the battle
line of each of the three great Western allies. I only wish that it had
been within my power to complete my experiences in this seat of war by
seeing the gallant little Belgian army which has done so remarkably
well upon the extreme left wing of the hosts of freedom.
My experiences and impressions are here set down, and may have some
small effect in counteracting those mischievous misunderstandings and
mutual belittlements which are eagerly fomented by our cunning enemy.
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Crowborough,
July 1916.
CONTENTS
A GLIMPSE OF THE BRITISH ARMY.
A GLIMPSE OF THE ITALIAN ARMY.
A GLIMPSE OF THE FRENCH LINE.
A GLIMPSE OF THE BRITISH ARMY
I
It is not an easy matter to write from the front. You know that there
are several courteous but inexorable gentlemen who may have a word in
the matter, and their presence 'imparts but small ease to the style.'
But above all you have the twin censors of your own conscience and
common sense, which assure you that, if all other readers fail you, you
will certainly find a most attentive one in the neighbourhood of the
Haupt-Quartier. An instructive story is still told of how a certain
well-meaning traveller recorded his satisfaction with the appearance of
the big guns at the retiring and peaceful village of Jamais, and how
three days later, by an interesting coincidence, the village of Jamais
passed suddenly off the map and dematerialised into brickdust and
splinters.
I have been with soldiers on the warpath before, but never have I had a
day so crammed with experiences and impressions as yesterday. Some of
them at least I can faintly convey to the reader, and if they ever
reach the eye of that gentleman at the Haupt-Quartier they will give
him little joy. For the crowning impression of all is the enormous
imperturbable confidence of the Army and its extraordinary efficiency
in organisation, administration, material, and personnel. I met in one
day a sample of many types, an Army commander, a corps commander, two
divisional commanders, staff officers of many grades, and, above all, I
met repeatedly the two very great men whom Britain has produced, the
private soldier and the regimental officer. Everywhere and on every
face one read the same spirit of cheerful bravery. Even the half-mad
cranks whose absurd consciences prevent them from barring the way to
the devil seemed to me to be turning into men under the prevailing
influence. I saw a batch of them, neurotic and largely be-spectacled,
but working with a will by the roadside. They will volunteer for the
trenches yet.
* * * * *
If there are pessimists among us they are not to be found among the men
who are doing the work. There is no foolish bravado, no under-rating of
a dour opponent, but there is a quick, alert, confident attention to
the job in hand which is an inspiration to the observer. These brave
lads are guarding Britain in the present. See to it that Britain guards
them in the future! We have a bad record in this matter. It must be
changed. They are the wards of the nation, both officers and men.
Socialism has never had an attraction for me, but I should be a
Socialist to-morrow if I thought that to ease a tax on wealth these men
should ever suffer for the time or health that they gave to the public
cause.
'Get out of the car. Don't let it stay here. It may be hit.' These
words from a staff officer give you the first idea that things are
going to happen. Up to then you might have been driving through the
black country in the Walsall district with the population of Aldershot
let loose upon its dingy roads. 'Put on this shrapnel helmet. That hat
of yours would infuriate the Boche'--this was an unkind allusion to the
only uniform which I have a right to wear. 'Take this gas helmet. You
won't need it, but it is a standing order. Now come on!'
We cross a meadow and enter a trench. Here and there it comes to the
surface again where there is dead ground. At one such point an old
church stands, with an unexploded shell sticking out of the wall. A
century hence folk will journey to see that shell. Then on again
through an endless cutting. It is slippery clay below. I have no nails
in my boots, an iron pot on my head, and the sun above me. I will
remember that walk. Ten telephone wires run down the side. Here and
there large thistles and other plants grow from the clay walls, so
immobile have been our lines. Occasionally there are patches of
untidiness. 'Shells,' says the officer laconically. There is a racket
of guns before us and behind, especially behind, but danger seems
remote with all these Bairnfather groups of cheerful Tommies at work
around us. I pass one group of grimy, tattered boys. A glance at their
shoulders shows me that they are of a public school battalion. 'I
thought you fellows were all officers now,' I remarked. 'No, sir, we
like it better so.' 'Well, it will be a great memory for you. We are
all in your debt.'
They salute, and we squeeze past them. They had the fresh, brown faces
of boy cricketers. But their comrades were men of a different type,
with hard, strong, rugged features, and the eyes of men who have seen
strange sights. These are veterans, men of Mons, and their young pals
of the public schools have something to live up to.
* * * * *
Up to this we have only had two clay walls to look at. But now our
interminable and tropical walk is lightened by the sight of a British
aeroplane sailing overhead. Numerous shrapnel bursts are all round it,
but she floats on serenely, a thing of delicate beauty against the blue
background. Now another passes--and yet another. All morning we saw
them circling and swooping, and never a sign of a Boche. They tell me
it is nearly always so--that we hold the air, and that the Boche
intruder, save at early morning, is a rare bird. A visit to the line
would reassure Mr. Pemberton-Billing. 'We have never met a British
aeroplane which was not ready to fight,' said a captured German aviator
the other day. There is a fine stern courtesy between the airmen on
either side, each dropping notes into the other's aerodromes to tell
the fate of missing officers. Had the whole war been fought by the
Germans as their airmen have conducted it (I do not speak of course of
the Zeppelin murderers), a peace would eventually have been more easily
arranged. As it is, if every frontier could be settled, it would be a
hard thing to stop until all that is associated with the words Cavell,
Zeppelin, Wittenberg, Lusitania, and Louvain has been brought to the
bar of the world's Justice.
And now we are there--in what is surely the most wonderful spot in the
world, the front firing trench, the outer breakwater which holds back
the German tide. How strange that this monstrous oscillation of giant
forces, setting in from east to west, should find their equilibrium
here across this particular meadow of Flanders. 'How far?' I ask. '180
yards,' says my guide. 'Pop!' remarks a third person just in front. 'A
sniper,' says my guide; 'take a look through the periscope.' I do so.
There is some rusty wire before me, then a field sloping slightly
upwards with knee-deep grass, then rusty wire again, and a red line of
broken earth. There is not a sign of movement, but sharp eyes are
always watching us, even as these crouching soldiers around me are
watching them. There are dead Germans in the grass before us. You need
not see them to know that they are there. A wounded soldier sits in a
corner nursing his leg. Here and there men pop out like rabbits from
dug-outs and mine-shafts. Others sit on the fire-step or lean smoking
against the clay wall. Who would dream to look at their bold, careless
faces that this is a front line, and that at any moment it is possible
that a grey wave may submerge them? With all their careless bearing I
notice that every man has his gas helmet and his rifle within easy
reach.
A mile of front trenches and then we are on our way back down that
weary walk. Then I am whisked off upon a ten mile drive. There is a
pause for lunch at Corps Headquarters, and after it we are taken to a
medal presentation in a market square. Generals Munro, Haking and
Landon, famous fighting soldiers all three, are the British
representatives. Munro with a ruddy face, and brain above all bulldog
below; Haking, pale, distinguished, intellectual; Landon a pleasant,
genial country squire. An elderly French General stands beside them.
British infantry keep the ground. In front are about fifty Frenchmen in
civil dress of every grade of life, workmen and gentlemen, in a double
rank. They are all so wounded that they are back in civil life, but
to-day they are to have some solace for their wounds. They lean heavily
on sticks, their bodies are twisted and maimed, but their faces are
shining with pride and joy. The French General draws his sword and
addresses them. One catches words like 'honneur' and 'patrie.' They
lean forward on their crutches, hanging on every syllable which comes
hissing and rasping from under that heavy white moustache. Then the
medals are pinned on. One poor lad is terribly wounded and needs two
sticks. A little girl runs out with some flowers. He leans forward and
tries to kiss her, but the crutches slip and he nearly falls upon her.
It was a pitiful but beautiful little scene.
Now the British candidates march up one by one for their medals, hale,
hearty men, brown and fit. There is a smart young officer of Scottish
Rifles; and then a selection of Worcesters, Welsh Fusiliers and Scots
Fusiliers, with one funny little Highlander, a tiny figure with a
soup-bowl helmet, a grinning boy's face beneath it, and a bedraggled
uniform. 'Many acts of great bravery'--such was the record for which he
was decorated. Even the French wounded smiled at his quaint appearance,
as they did at another Briton who had acquired the chewing-gum habit,
and came up for his medal as if he had been called suddenly in the
middle of his dinner, which he was still endeavouring to bolt. Then
came the end, with the National Anthem. The British regiment formed
fours and went past. To me that was the most impressive sight of any.
They were the Queen's West Surreys, a veteran regiment of the great
Ypres battle. What grand fellows! As the order came 'Eyes right,' and
all those fierce, dark faces flashed round about us, I felt the might
of the British infantry, the intense individuality which is not
incompatible with the highest discipline. Much they had endured, but a
great spirit shone from their faces. I confess that as I looked at
those brave English lads, and thought of what we owe to them and to
their like who have passed on, I felt more emotional than befits a
Briton in foreign parts.
* * * * *
Now the ceremony was ended, and once again we set out for the front. It
was to an artillery observation post that we were bound, and once again
my description must be bounded by discretion. Suffice it, that in an
hour I found myself, together with a razor-keen young artillery
observer and an excellent old sportsman of a Russian prince, jammed
into a very small space, and staring through a slit at the German
lines. In front of us lay a vast plain, scarred and slashed, with bare
places at intervals, such as you see where gravel pits break a green
common. Not a sign of life or movement, save some wheeling crows. And
yet down there, within a mile or so, is the population of a city. Far
away a single train is puffing at the back of the German lines. We are
here on a definite errand. Away to the right, nearly three miles off,
is a small red house, dim to the eye but clear in the glasses, which is
suspected as a German post. It is to go up this afternoon. The gun is
some distance away, but I hear the telephone directions. '"Mother" will
soon do her in,' remarks the gunner boy cheerfully. 'Mother' is the
name of the gun. 'Give her five six three four,' he cries through the
'phone. 'Mother' utters a horrible bellow from somewhere on our right.
An enormous spout of smoke rises ten seconds later from near the house.
'A little short,' says our gunner. 'Two and a half minutes left,' adds
a little small voice, which represents another observer at a different
angle. 'Raise her seven five,' says our boy encouragingly. 'Mother'
roars more angrily than ever. 'How will that do?' she seems to say.
'One and a half right,' says our invisible gossip. I wonder how the
folk in the house are feeling as the shells creep ever nearer. 'Gun
laid, sir,' says the telephone. 'Fire!' I am looking through my glass.
A flash of fire on the house, a huge pillar of dust and smoke--then it
settles, and an unbroken field is there. The German post has gone up.
'It's a dear little gun,' says the officer boy. 'And her shells are
reliable,' remarked a senior behind us. 'They vary with different
calibres, but "Mother" never goes wrong.' The German line was very
quiet. 'Pourquoi ils ne repondent pas?' asked the Russian prince. 'Yes,
they are quiet to-day,' answered the senior. 'But we get it in the neck
sometimes.' We are all led off to be introduced to 'Mother,' who sits,
squat and black, amid twenty of her grimy children who wait upon and
feed her. She is an important person is 'Mother,' and her importance
grows. It gets clearer with every month that it is she, and only she,
who can lead us to the Rhine. She can and she will if the factories of
Britain can beat those of the Hun. See to it, you working men and women
of Britain. Work now if you rest for ever after, for the fate of Europe
and of all that is dear to us is in your hands. For 'Mother' is a
dainty eater, and needs good food and plenty. She is fond of strange
lodgings, too, in which she prefers safety to dignity. But that is a
dangerous subject.
* * * * *
One more experience of this wonderful day--the most crowded with
impressions of my whole life. At night we take a car and drive north,
and ever north, until at a late hour we halt and climb a hill in the
darkness. Below is a wonderful sight. Down on the flats, in a huge
semi-circle, lights are rising and falling. They are very brilliant,
going up for a few seconds and then dying down. Sometimes a dozen are
in the air at one time. There are the dull thuds of explosions and an
occasional rat-tat-tat. I have seen nothing like it, but the nearest
comparison would be an enormous ten-mile railway station in full swing
at night, with signals winking, lamps waving, engines hissing and
carriages bumping. It is a terrible place down yonder, a place which
will live as long as military history is written, for it is the Ypres
Salient. What a salient it is, too! A huge curve, as outlined by the
lights, needing only a little more to be an encirclement. Something
caught the rope as it closed, and that something was the British
soldier. But it is a perilous place still by day and by night. Never
shall I forget the impression of ceaseless, malignant activity which
was borne in upon me by the white, winking lights, the red sudden
glares, and the horrible thudding noises in that place of death beneath
me.
II
In old days we had a great name as organisers. Then came a long period
when we deliberately adopted a policy of individuality and 'go as you
please.' Now once again in our sore need we have called on all our
power of administration and direction. But it has not deserted us. We
still have it in a supreme degree. Even in peace time we have shown it
in that vast, well-oiled, swift-running, noiseless machine called the
British Navy. But now our powers have risen with the need of them. The
expansion of the Navy has been a miracle, the management of the
transport a greater one, the formation of the new Army the greatest of
all time. To get the men was the least of the difficulties. To put them
here, with everything down to the lid of the last field saucepan in its
place, that is the marvel. The tools of the gunners, and of the
sappers, to say nothing of the knowledge of how to use them, are in
themselves a huge problem. But it has all been met and mastered, and
will be to the end. But don't let us talk any more about the muddling
of the War Office. It has become just a little ridiculous.
* * * * *
I have told of my first day, when I visited the front trenches, saw the
work of 'Mother,' and finally that marvellous spectacle, the Ypres
Salient at night. I have passed the night at the headquarters of a
divisional-general, Capper, who might truly be called one of the two
fathers of the British flying force, for it was he, with Templer, who
laid the first foundations from which so great an organisation has
arisen. My morning was spent in visiting two fighting brigadiers,
cheery weather-beaten soldiers, respectful, as all our soldiers are, of
the prowess of the Hun, but serenely confident that we can beat him. In
company with one of them I ascended a hill, the reverse slope of which
was swarming with cheerful infantry in every stage of dishabille, for
they were cleaning up after the trenches. Once over the slope we
advanced with some care, and finally reached a certain spot from which
we looked down upon the German line. It was the advanced observation
post, about a thousand yards from the German trenches, with our own
trenches between us. We could see the two lines, sometimes only a few
yards, as it seemed, apart, extending for miles on either side. The
sinister silence and solitude were strangely dramatic. Such vast crowds
of men, such intensity of feeling, and yet only that open rolling
countryside, with never a movement in its whole expanse.
The afternoon saw us in the Square at Ypres. It is the city of a dream,
this modern Pompeii, destroyed, deserted and desecrated, but with a
sad, proud dignity which made you involuntarily lower your voice as you
passed through the ruined streets. It is a more considerable place than
I had imagined, with many traces of ancient grandeur. No words can
describe the absolute splintered wreck that the Huns have made of it.
The effect of some of the shells has been grotesque. One boiler-plated
water-tower, a thing forty or fifty feet high, was actually standing on
its head like a great metal top. There is not a living soul in the
place save a few pickets of soldiers, and a number of cats which become
fierce and dangerous. Now and then a shell still falls, but the Huns
probably know that the devastation is already complete.
We stood in the lonely grass-grown Square, once the busy centre of the
town, and we marvelled at the beauty of the smashed cathedral and the
tottering Cloth Hall beside it. Surely at their best they could not
have looked more wonderful than now. If they were preserved even so,
and if a heaven-inspired artist were to model a statue of Belgium in
front, Belgium with one hand pointing to the treaty by which Prussia
guaranteed her safety and the other to the sacrilege behind her, it
would make the most impressive group in the world. It was an evil day
for Belgium when her frontier was violated, but it was a worse one for
Germany. I venture to prophesy that it will be regarded by history as
the greatest military as well as political error that has ever been
made. Had the great guns that destroyed Liege made their first breach
at Verdun, what chance was there for Paris? Those few weeks of warning
and preparation saved France, and left Germany as she now is, like a
weary and furious bull, tethered fast in the place of trespass and
waiting for the inevitable pole-axe.
We were glad to get out of the place, for the gloom of it lay as heavy
upon our hearts as the shrapnel helmets did upon our heads. Both were
lightened as we sped back past empty and shattered villas to where,
just behind the danger line, the normal life of rural Flanders was
carrying on as usual. A merry sight helped to cheer us, for scudding
down wind above our heads came a Boche aeroplane, with two British at
her tail barking away with their machine guns, like two swift terriers
after a cat. They shot rat-tat-tatting across the sky until we lost
sight of them in the heat haze over the German line.
* * * * *
The afternoon saw us on the Sharpenburg, from which many a million will
gaze in days to come, for from no other point can so much be seen. It
is a spot forbid, but a special permit took us up, and the sentry on
duty, having satisfied himself of our bona fides, proceeded to tell us
tales of the war in a pure Hull dialect which might have been Chinese
for all that I could understand. That he was a 'terrier' and had nine
children were the only facts I could lay hold of. But I wished to be
silent and to think--even, perhaps, to pray. Here, just below my feet,
were the spots which our dear lads, three of them my own kith, have
sanctified with their blood. Here, fighting for the freedom of the
world, they cheerily gave their all. On that sloping meadow to the left
of the row of houses on the opposite ridge the London Scottish fought
to the death on that grim November morning when the Bavarians reeled
back from their shot-torn line. That plain away on the other side of
Ypres was the place where the three grand Canadian brigades, first of
all men, stood up to the damnable cowardly gases of the Hun. Down
yonder is Hill 60, that blood-soaked kopje. The ridge over the fields
was held by the cavalry against two army corps, and there where the sun
strikes the red roof among the trees I can just see Gheluveld, a name
for ever to be associated with Haig and the most vital battle of the
war. As I turn away I am faced by my Hull Territorial, who still says
incomprehensible things. I look at him with other eyes. He has fought
on yonder plain. He has slain Huns, and he has nine children. Could any
one better epitomise the duties of a good citizen? I could have found
it in my heart to salute him had I not known that it would have shocked
him and made him unhappy.
It has been a full day, and the next is even fuller, for it is my
privilege to lunch at Headquarters, and to make the acquaintance of the
Commander-in-chief and of his staff. It would be an invasion of private
hospitality if I were to give the public the impressions which I
carried from that charming chateau. I am the more sorry, since they
were very vivid and strong. This much I will say--and any man who is a
face reader will not need to have it said--that if the Army stands
still it is not by the will of its commander. There will, I swear, be
no happier man in Europe when the day has come and the hour. It is
human to err, but never possibly can some types err by being backward.
We have a superb army in France. It needs the right leader to handle
it. I came away happier and more confident than ever as to the future.
Extraordinary are the contrasts of war. Within three hours of leaving
the quiet atmosphere of the Headquarters Chateau I was present at what
in any other war would have been looked upon as a brisk engagement. As
it was it would certainly figure in one of our desiccated reports as an
activity of the artillery. The noise as we struck the line at this new
point showed that the matter was serious, and, indeed, we had chosen
the spot because it had been the storm centre of the last week. The
method of approach chosen by our experienced guide was in itself a
tribute to the gravity of the affair. As one comes from the settled
order of Flanders into the actual scene of war, the first sign of it is
one of the stationary, sausage-shaped balloons, a chain of which marks
the ring in which the great wrestlers are locked. We pass under this,
ascend a hill, and find ourselves in a garden where for a year no feet
save those of wanderers like ourselves have stood. There is a wild,
confused luxuriance of growth more beautiful to my eye than anything
which the care of man can produce. One old shell-hole of vast diameter
has filled itself with forget-me-nots, and appears as a graceful basin
of light blue flowers, held up as an atonement to heaven for the
brutalities of man. Through the tangled bushes we creep, then across a
yard--'Please stoop and run as you pass this point'--and finally to a
small opening in a wall, whence the battle lies not so much before as
beside us. For a moment we have a front seat at the great world-drama,
God's own problem play, working surely to its magnificent end. One
feels a sort of shame to crouch here in comfort, a useless spectator,
while brave men down yonder are facing that pelting shower of iron.