Chapter III: A Visit to Verdun

Paris, May 17, 1917.

In my last letter I told you that we might get a chance to go to Verdun. Now that we have been there, I can hardly believe it, it all happened so quickly and was over so soon. Yet while it lasted it seemed a thousand years, and does now.

Mrs. Lee, Katherine, and I got our papers to go Monday at noon and started off at once in Maggie. We used the ordinary road maps of France, and were told we could take any route we wanted, so we went from Paris to Meaux, to Château-Thierry, to Epernay, to Chalons-sur-Marne, to St. Menehould, and by Clermont-en-Argonne to Verdun.

I have seldom seen anything as beautiful as the spring in France. We went for miles on straight roads between rows of feathery trees, with fields of brilliant green on either side. No wonder the Germans thought it worth fighting for. There didn’t seem to be a single dead blade of grass or twig of tree, or a stone where it shouldn’t be. The sky was the most heavenly blue, and the fields and woods were filled with hyacinths and violets and primroses and lilies of the valley and with the songs of birds. Sometimes, instead of going through green trees we went through valleys of pink apple blossoms that almost overpowered you with their sweet smell of spring. Everything seemed jubilantly full of life.

Then, all of a sudden, perhaps an hour from Paris, we came on a grave by the roadside, a rustic cross, with a little red white and blue cockade on it, and “Patrie” on the little fence that surrounded it. After that, we came on another and another, then on a little group, and finally to mounds with large crosses on them, all the same. Some had the number of the regiment on them and a very few the names of the soldiers. All the time we were driving along the perfect quiet roads under the blue shadows of the trees, with great splotches of sunlight filtering through them.

When we got to Epernay we stopped the motor to see if there was a flat tire, and heard the guns for the first time. I suppose we could have heard them before that, but the Ford was going so we didn’t. They sounded like giant fire-crackers on the Fourth of July, only they went off very close together.

But before that, we saw our first devastated village. It was a little place. Some of the houses had no roofs, and showed signs of fire, a few trees were twisted about and dead. The gateposts of one house were intact and the steps gone. Two huge lilac bushes were in bloom on either side of them and the wistaria vines in full flower over the doorway,--that led into nothing. Other houses were occupied and we saw a few women and children and many soldiers lodged there. Red Cross flags stuck out of some doorways.

In the fields they were replanting the grapevines, and in some places they looked like forests of little sticks. In other places men were ploughing. In those fields we saw little red and white flags for no apparent reason. They were, however, to mark unexploded shells and the plows gave them a wide berth.

After that we began to pass convoys of wagons and soldiers marching.

About half-past seven we arrived at Chalons-sur-Marne, where we spent the night in a large hotel with beautiful beds, and we had an excellent supper. When I went up to bed I neglected to pull the heavy curtains quite close and a ray of light penetrated into the courtyard below. Before I knew it the landlady had come flying upstairs and asked me to close the curtains tight as “Taubes” came nearly every night and dropped bombs. Some had come the night before and had dropped three bombs, but no one was hurt. None came that night, however, and we were all so sleepy that unless they had dropped on us I don’t suppose we should have known it, though the landlady swore we would. She told us that the German officers had stayed in her hotel and were “assez gentils”; they were there for ten days, had brought their own cook, and requisitioned everything, but paid for it.

The next day was the longest I have ever lived. We started out at eight o’clock and went to the “Mairie” to see whether we could get some “Affiches” that are posted on the houses there. They read “Cave de refuge en cas de bombardement” and are stuck on all houses with cellars. Those houses are never allowed to lock their doors. We couldn’t get any to take home, but hope they can send us some.

When we were in the street a man came along with a drum and banged on it and every one collected around him. We thought some thrilling war news was about to be announced, instead of which he read some regulations about muzzling dogs, which was a disappointment.

After that thrill we started. The road was infested with wagons and trucks and gun carriages. The soldiers all looked at us as a fearful curiosity and got out of our way as fast as possible. Some yelled after us, “C’est bien ça!” You know Maggie has “Comité Américain pour les Blessés Français” on her side. Others didn’t say anything but gazed open-mouthed, and others cheered and threw their caps in the air or waved their casques. They were all very healthy looking and clean and very picturesque in their horizon-blue uniforms, especially those on horseback, for nearly every one had stuck a spray of white or purple lilac in his helmet or his coat, and all the horses’ bridles and harnesses were trimmed with either lilacs, lilies of the valley, or primroses. Even the gray automobile trucks had huge bunches of lilacs on them, and the men marching on foot looked like the forest in Macbeth coming to meet you, only instead of trees there were flowers.

Just as we entered the town a gendarme hopped out of a little box by the side of the road, and waved a red flag at us. He asked for our papers, which we gave him to look at, and he evaporated into a little house to copy them down, while we asked a haggard old woman for some water for Maggie’s radiator. Coming down the street, what should we see but the familiar and immaculate uniform of an American Ambulance boy! He stopped, grinned, took off his hat, said, “How do you do” and went down the road at double quick time. In half a second, back he came with another boy. They both stopped and blushingly asked if they could do anything for us. Our oil was getting low, so I asked if we could have some. They said they’d give us everything they had, oil, gasoline, themselves as guides. The gendarme having finished with our papers, we therefore drove around the corner to where they were. There were the neat little Ford ambulances all in a row. The section leader nearly fell out of an upstairs window when we drove in and all the boys came running out to see us. I told them the oil leaked below and immediately four pairs of gallant feet were seen waving from beneath the car. They all wanted to be detailed to “show us ’round” and finally one man got it, a Professor from Cornell.

We wanted to see a Poste de Secours so we went off on a most atrocious road of mud and horrid little railroad tracks. All around us were barbed wire entanglements, some high and some low. The kind they dread the most is about knee high, because the artillery can’t cut it easily. There were also barricades of it to pull across the road and stake down. Suddenly we came to the top of a hill, and on one side of the road was a kind of fish-net filled with moss, but so thin that you could see through it. It was a screen, and without it we would have been in full sight of the enemy. Mr. Stanley said to go quickly, so I did. All was perfect silence but for the buzzing and rattling of Maggie, and we could see on the blue hill opposite streaks of white, which were the German trenches.

I forgot to say that the country there is quite hilly and looks like that around Brattleboro, only there are fewer trees and more cultivated land.

Every now and then we passed shell holes in the fields, and once we went over one in the road that had come that night and hadn’t yet been mended. We then went through a village that had once been. Mr. Stanley said it was a hot corner, and it was screened on all sides and consisted of one twisted tree, a lilac bush in bloom, and grass growing up among innumerable stones,--nothing else.

We then went into the woods again, beautiful woods on the side of a hill. There were holes in the hillside all along at intervals and out of them came numerous blue-clad soldiers, all grinning and excited at seeing women there. Mr. Stanley said that these were palatial abris (dugouts). Of course the soldiers all wanted to show us around and asked us to drink some coffee with them. We did go into one dugout. It was quite nice, with a table, mirror, and beds in tiers like a sleeping car. Behind it was another room with more beds, and behind that still another, where they retired when the bombardment was particularly hot. We gave them cigarettes and took their photographs, which was quite a piece of work as there were hundreds of them by that time, and all of them wanted to be in the picture. We could think of nothing but the “Country of the Dwarfs,” as all the way along men would keep popping out of the holes in the side of the hills.

Finally we went up over the top of a hill--after having photographed a man being shaved with about fifty companions around him,--then along another screened road to a town. There was nothing there but one big tree and three sides of a little church. The rest was trenches and stones, so razed to the ground that you would never have known that it had been a town in the past. Mr. Stanley had gone to sleep under that tree the day before and had been awakened by a shell landing in its upper branches. Another had landed that morning. In a little recess we found a Ford Ambulance and in it a boy writing a letter. He grinned broadly and hopped down from the seat to meet us.

They then asked us if we wished to see No Man’s Land. We said “Yes,” of course, and we climbed up a little hill and looked over the top. Mr. Stanley told us not to bunch together too much, as “they” could see us and we were within mitrailleuse and rifle range. There was No Man’s Land. Only a quarter of a mile away were the German trenches. No Man’s Land was green and filled with sunlight and the birds were singing in it,--but there was in it also a wide stretch of barbed wire and some gray dead trees with every twig standing out against the blue hills beyond. On the ground a few feet away was a large shell. They told us to leave it alone as it might explode. It was a “silent Austrian” which is much dreaded as it doesn’t make any noise until it explodes. It had evidently landed there during the night.

After we’d walked around there a little, we went along another _fearfully_ muddy road. We saw some new shell holes and jumped out and got some pieces of shell, though Mr. Stanley told us to keep the motor going. Then we got into the woods again, on a perfect road, and drove along until we came to a little log cabin with a Red Cross flag on it and a doctor standing out to greet us. He let us come in and showed us his dressing station, rough but clean, with bandages and bottles all around the walls. Outside he had a mother dog and some darling, fat, wobbly puppies, and two little wild boars that he had tamed, whose photograph we took with him. He called them by grunting like a pig, and crying, “Viens,--ti-ti--viens!” They wouldn’t stay still, so he grabbed one and held it. You never heard such squeals. I should think every Boche for miles around would have heard it. Then he gave us some gas masks as he said we ought to have them. He seemed to have quite a collection of things, extra helmets, etc. A man was having his eye dressed, but otherwise there were no wounded.

By that time it was one o’clock and we went back and left Mr. Stanley. Then we went on, along the silent, beautiful road, every now and then passing groups of soldiers decorated with lilacs, and sitting by the roadside eating bread and drinking wine out of their canteens.

When we got to the next place I never imagined there could be such desolation. Not a house was left standing, all were knocked to bits by the shells; the church was in ruins and the altar knocked crooked, with a huge hole in it. There was no roof to it nor to any house in the whole town. Yet on walls were still left the names of the streets and the signs to the next town, “Verdun 29 Kilometers, Metz--K.” The curtains were still hanging on some windows, with the glass still in them, and pieces of kitchen stoves, shoes, beds, and some furniture were strewn over and among the stones. In one place a cupboard had had the sides ripped down and a pile of bottles were still intact on some shelves. Yet birds were singing and bits of garden were still in bloom as if nothing had happened. A long flight of steps at the end of a street, worn by ages of feet going up and down, led to nothing and one couldn’t imagine what had been there in the past. There was only a wall with wistaria in full bloom on it and an immense lilac bush growing up by the side, around which swarms of bees were buzzing.

Mrs. Lee had brought some bread and jelly and sardines, so we sat among the ruins and ate them, listening to the birds singing and hearing now and then a boom of distant cannon.

Then we went on, and before we knew it, had come to a gate and realized it must be Verdun because the last kilometer post had said, “Verdun 1 K.”

We went through, passed a sentry and the high walls of the citadel, all scarred with shell shots. We asked a soldier for the Bureau de la Place and found we had gone too far and were calmly on our way to Douaumont, so we went back and drew up in front of a narrow door, popping a tire as we did so. However, we got out and jacked it up, and then went to see the Commandant. We arrived in a large room where the Captain was. He told us to sit down. We hauled out our papers, and he disappeared to look us up. There were several telephones in there, and all of them had this placard on them: “Attention! The German Listening Post can hear you.” We hadn’t been announced from Paris yet, so we had to wait some time. While we waited the Captain showed us official photographs of the battles around there and pieces of shell. The Germans had just sent in nine 380’s--their biggest--two days before, and the captain had pieces of them, some of which he gave to us.

Then he showed us some of the citadel. As it is “sacred ground” so to speak, I won’t describe it.

After a while the Colonel appeared and offered to show us about in his machine, so we made the tour of the town. It was a repetition of what we had already seen on a larger scale. The fashionable residence section especially was razed to the ground. One saw portions of houses such as are on the sunny side of Commonwealth Avenue, and more beautiful by far, literally pulverized. The theater looked as if some Viking god had had an orgy there. The Cathedral was open to every wind that blew. The Colonel, a perfect dear with white hair, told us how he was trying to save some old paintings on a ceiling in the town that dated almost from Roman times. Also he had had beautiful doorways propped up with beams.

They showed us the “Place” where the German Emperor had boasted he’d review his troops. The saddest place of all was a huge building in the top of which grain had been stored. It had caught on fire and three hundred French soldiers were roasted alive in it, because the windows in the rooms downstairs were barred. There was nothing there but one wall when we saw it. In one place was a huge sign, telling that Singer Sewing Machines were for sale. In another house, torn open, we saw pictures and mottoes still hanging on the wall. In another house a bed was left with the bedclothes thrown over the foot-board.

We went into a garden on the ramparts and there saw all the surrounding countryside. It was green, but the trees in some places stood up like broken dead reeds against the blue sky. We heard the cannon booming away as the Colonel pointed out the direction of Douaumont, of Vaux, etc. Then we looked down on the town. There wasn’t a single whole house in it. The Colonel said it would have to be either razed completely or built again in another place. While we were standing there an aëroplane flew overhead and the Colonel looked calmly up and said, “Un Français.”

We went to a hospital in the cellar of a large building. Everything is in cellars there and the cellar windows are filled with sandbags, too. There we left the supplies we had in the automobile. It was clean, but all underground. There was no one in it. Unless they were very badly wounded and couldn’t possibly go any further, they were not sent to that hospital, which is known as “Les Chambres des Morts.” There were four American Ambulance boys sitting waiting in their ambulances outside.

Another hospital we saw had rows of helmets which had been pierced by shells. All the men had been trepanned, a piece of rib taken out and put in their skulls where the bone was broken,--and all had lived.

They asked us to dinner, so we dined with the Captain and the Colonel and the Commandant, also the officer who has command of the mitrailleuses of the forts of Vaux, and two others. They gave us all kinds of souvenirs and were very kind and tired looking. The one from Vaux gave us some flowers he had gathered at the fort there that morning. I inclose some with a piece of lilac from a ruined garden in Verdun that the Colonel gave me. The captain presented us each with a little medal.

I forgot to say that the Colonel showed us the shell holes of the 380’s. They are as big around as our Boston house is long, and about 6½ feet deep. One hit on the side of a house where about forty soldiers were, and burst into the room. No one was even scratched, though the wall had an immense hole in it and the stones were scarred with a kind of petrified splash mark.

We couldn’t spend the night in Verdun so we started after dinner. It got dark at once and of course we got lost and didn’t dare light our lights. Finally we landed halfway up a hill, on a road simply pock-marked with shell holes and there we stayed till morning light. Naturally we didn’t sleep a wink, but I never knew a night to go so fast. It was warm, though drizzling a little, and we sat and watched the guns hating each other on three sides of us. They boomed steadily all night long and the sky was lit up with flashes of light from them, and with star shells. We heard an aëroplane and saw it like a huge, warm star over our heads, dipping and gliding. Then it disappeared, and came again, and we saw another rise to meet it. Then they both seemed to fall and all of a sudden one went out. Through it all we could hear the crickets chirping. Towards dawn, the guns got more hateful and there was a steady roar in the distance. At the same time the birds began waking up around us, first with sleepy chirps, and then they sang. Where they were, I don’t know, as the hill we were on was as barren as could be.

When it got quite light, towards 3.30, I tightened up the brakes and we started off down the hill again. We went through woods on a fearful road and finally came to a kind of cavalry camp. There we asked the way to Bar-le-Duc, and found that we had lost our way and were almost in the front-fine trenches. We therefore retraced our steps, and went on to Bar-le-Duc where we had breakfast and went to bed till noon.

In all, we came across five sections of the American Ambulance on our way out. They were all surprised to see us, and greeted us with cheers and grins and hat waving. I saw an awfully nice boy in one of them, a friend of Winthrop’s. I wish you knew him, he is about six feet three with brown eyes and a charming smile.

We spent that night in Vitry-le-François, where the Germans had been for ten days, taking everything, and had left in payment a “bon de réquisition” for 50 francs.