August 16th.
Up and up into the mountains. We started early, taking our way along
a narrow interminable valley that sloped up gradually toward the
east. The road was encumbered with a stream of hooded supply vans
drawn by mules, for we were on the way to one of the main positions
in the Vosges, and this train of provisions is kept up day and
night. Finally we reached a mountain village under fir-clad slopes,
with a cold stream rushing down from the hills. On one side of the
road was a rustic inn, on the other, among the firs, a chalet
occupied by the brigade Head-quarters. Everywhere about us swarmed
the little "chasseurs Alpins" in blue Tam o'Shanters and leather
gaiters. For a year we had been reading of these heroes of the
hills, and here we were among them, looking into their thin
weather-beaten faces and meeting the twinkle of their friendly eyes.
Very friendly they all were, and yet, for Frenchmen, inarticulate
and shy. All over the world, no doubt, the mountain silences breed
this kind of reserve, this shrinking from the glibness of the
valleys. Yet one had fancied that French fluency must soar as high
as Mont Blanc.
Mules were brought, and we started on a long ride up the mountain.
The way led first over open ledges, with deep views into valleys
blue with distance, then through miles of forest, first of beech and
fir, and finally all of fir. Above the road the wooded slopes rose
interminably and here and there we came on tiers of mules, three or
four hundred together, stabled under the trees, in stalls dug out of
different levels of the slope. Near by were shelters for the men,
and perhaps at the next bend a village of "trappers' huts," as the
officers call the log-cabins they build in this region. These
colonies are always bustling with life: men busy cleaning their
arms, hauling material for new cabins, washing or mending their
clothes, or carrying down the mountain from the camp-kitchen the
two-handled pails full of steaming soup. The kitchen is always in
the most protected quarter of the camp, and generally at some
distance in the rear. Other soldiers, their job over, are lolling
about in groups, smoking, gossiping or writing home, the "Soldiers'
Letter-pad" propped on a patched blue knee, a scarred fist
laboriously driving the fountain pen received in hospital. Some are
leaning over the shoulder of a pal who has just received a Paris
paper, others chuckling together at the jokes of their own French
journal--the "Echo du Ravin," the "Journal des Poilus," or the
"Diable Bleu": little papers ground out in purplish script on
foolscap, and adorned with comic-sketches and a wealth of local
humour.
Higher up, under a fir-belt, at the edge of a meadow, the officer
who rode ahead signed to us to dismount and scramble after him. We
plunged under the trees, into what seemed a thicker thicket, and
found it to be a thatch of branches woven to screen the muzzles of a
battery. The big guns were all about us, crouched in these sylvan
lairs like wild beasts waiting to spring; and near each gun hovered
its attendant gunner, proud, possessive, important as a bridegroom
with his bride.
We climbed and climbed again, reaching at last a sun-and-wind-burnt
common which forms the top of one of the highest mountains in the
region. The forest was left below us and only a belt of dwarf firs
ran along the edge of the great grassy shoulder. We dismounted, the
mules were tethered among the trees, and our guide led us to an
insignificant looking stone in the grass. On one face of the stone
was cut the letter F., on the other was a D.; we stood on what, till
a year ago, was the boundary line between Republic and Empire. Since
then, in certain places, the line has been bent back a long way; but
where we stood we were still under German guns, and we had to creep
along in the shelter of the squat firs to reach the outlook on the
edge of the plateau. From there, under a sky of racing clouds, we
saw outstretched below us the Promised Land of Alsace. On one
horizon, far off in the plain, gleamed the roofs and spires of
Colmar, on the other rose the purplish heights beyond the Rhine.
Near by stood a ring of bare hills, those closest to us scarred by
ridges of upheaved earth, as if giant moles had been zigzagging over
them; and just under us, in a little green valley, lay the roofs of
a peaceful village. The earth-ridges and the peaceful village were
still German; but the French positions went down the mountain,
almost to the valley's edge; and one dark peak on the right was
already French.
We stopped at a gap in the firs and walked to the brink of the
plateau. Just under us lay a rock-rimmed lake. More zig-zag
earthworks surmounted it on all sides, and on the nearest shore was
the branched roofing of another great mule-shelter. We were looking
down at the spot to which the night-caravans of the Chasseurs Alpins
descend to distribute supplies to the fighting line.
"Who goes there? Attention! You're in sight of the lines!" a voice
called out from the firs, and our companion signed to us to move
back. We had been rather too conspicuously facing the German
batteries on the opposite slope, and our presence might have drawn
their fire on an artillery observation post installed near by. We
retreated hurriedly and unpacked our luncheon-basket on the more
sheltered side of the ridge. As we sat there in the grass, swept by
a great mountain breeze full of the scent of thyme and myrtle, while
the flutter of birds, the hum of insects, the still and busy life of
the hills went on all about us in the sunshine, the pressure of the
encircling line of death grew more intolerably real. It is not in
the mud and jokes and every-day activities of the trenches that one
most feels the damnable insanity of war; it is where it lurks like a
mythical monster in scenes to which the mind has always turned for
rest.
We had not yet made the whole tour of the mountain-top; and after
luncheon we rode over to a point where a long narrow yoke connects
it with a spur projecting directly above the German lines. We left
our mules in hiding and walked along the yoke, a mere knife-edge of
rock rimmed with dwarf vegetation. Suddenly we heard an explosion
behind us: one of the batteries we had passed on the way up was
giving tongue. The German lines roared back and for twenty minutes
the exchange of invective thundered on. The firing was almost
incessant; it seemed as if a great arch of steel were being built up
above us in the crystal air. And we could follow each curve of sound
from its incipience to its final crash in the trenches. There were
four distinct phases: the sharp bang from the cannon, the long
furious howl overhead, the dispersed and spreading noise of the
shell's explosion, and then the roll of its reverberation from cliff
to cliff. This is what we heard as we crouched in the lee of the
firs: what we saw when we looked out between them was only an
occasional burst of white smoke and red flame from one hillside, and
on the opposite one, a minute later, a brown geyser of dust.
Presently a deluge of rain descended on us, driving us back to our
mules, and down the nearest mountain-trail through rivers of mud. It
rained all the way: rained in such floods and cataracts that the
very rocks of the mountain seemed to dissolve and turn into mud. As
we slid down through it we met strings of Chasseurs Alpins coming
up, splashed to the waist with wet red clay, and leading pack-mules
so coated with it that they looked like studio models from which the
sculptor has just pulled off the dripping sheet. Lower down we came
on more "trapper" settlements, so saturated and reeking with wet
that they gave us a glimpse of what the winter months on the front
must be. No more cheerful polishing of fire-arms, hauling of
faggots, chatting and smoking in sociable groups: everybody had
crept under the doubtful shelter of branches and tarpaulins; the
whole army was back in its burrows.
