Chapter I: Front Matter

VIVE LA FRANCE!

_From a photograph copyright by M. Rol._

“High-explosive!”

“A geyser of earth and smoke shot high into the air. Then an explosion
which was brother to an earthquake.”
]

VIVE LA FRANCE!

BY

E. ALEXANDER POWELL

WAR CORRESPONDENT OF _THE NEW YORK WORLD_, _THE LONDON DAILY MAIL_, AND
_SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE_, WITH THE ALLIED ARMIES

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1915

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Published December, 1915

]

TO
FRANCE

WHOSE COURAGE, SERENITY, AND
SACRIFICES, IN A CONFLICT WHICH SHE
DID NOTHING TO PROVOKE, HAVE WON HER
THE SYMPATHY, RESPECT AND ADMIRATION
OF THE WORLD

AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For the assistance they have given me, and for the innumerable kindnesses they have shown me, I welcome this opportunity of expressing my thanks and appreciation to his Excellency Jean Adrien Antoine Jules Jusserand, French ambassador to the United States; to Lord Northcliffe, owner of _The Times_ and _The Daily Mail_; to Ralph Pulitzer, Esq., president, and C. M. Lincoln, Esq., managing editor, of _The New York World_; to Major-General Ryerson, of the Canadian Overseas Contingent; to Captain Count Gérard de Ganay, who was my companion from end to end of the western battle-line; to Messrs. Ponsot, Alexis Leger, and Henri Hoppenot, of the Bureau de la Presse; to Lieutenant-Colonel Spencer Cosby, military attaché of the American embassy in Paris; to Captain John W. Barker, of the American Military Mission in France; to Honorable Walter V. R. Berry; to Charles Prince, Esq., Herbert Corey, Esq., Lincoln Eyre, Esq., and William Philip Simms, Esq., who on a score of occasions have proved themselves my friends; and finally to James Hazen Hyde, Esq., whose kindness I can never fully repay. To each of these gentlemen I owe a debt of gratitude which I shall not forget.

E. ALEXANDER POWELL.

HÔTEL DE CRILLON, PARIS,
November, 1915.

CONTENTS

PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT vii
CHAPTER
I. IN THE FIELD WITH THE FRENCH 1
II. ON THE BRITISH BATTLE-LINE 56
III. CAMPAIGNING IN THE VOSGES 97
IV. THE RETAKING OF ALSACE 120
V. THE FIGHTING IN CHAMPAGNE 154
VI. THE CONFLICT IN THE CLOUDS 190
VII. THE RED BADGE OF MERCY 215

ILLUSTRATIONS

“High-explosive!” │ _Frontispiece_

│ FACING PAGE

French trenches in the sand-dunes of the Belgian littoral 4

The watch on the Aisne 5

The taking of Neuville St. Vaast 12

French infantry going into action 13

Dragoons going into action 14

The effect of shrapnel from a French “seventy-five” on a German
battery 15

French 155-millimetre gun shelling the German trenches on the Aisne 18

French artillery officers, in an observatory on the Aisne, watching
the effect of shell-fire on the German trenches 19

In an underground first-aid station 30

Zouaves carrying a German position in the Belgian sand-dunes by
storm 31

In the Argonne 38

An observing officer directing the fire of a French battery three
miles behind him 39

The mass before the battle 54

What a 38-centimetre shell, fired from a gun twenty-three miles
away, did in Dunkirk 55

London buses at the front 64

British field-kitchens on the march in Flanders 65

Machine-gun squad wearing masks as a protection against the
asphyxiating gas with which the Germans precede their attacks 84

A British battery in action 85

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────── “Bodies, long months dead, rotting amid the wire │_Group_ entanglements” │ 86 “Imagine what it must be like to sleep in a hole in the│ earth, into which you have to crawl on all fours, │ „ like an animal into its lair” │ „ ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────────── French high-explosive shells bursting on the German trenches 87 In a bomb-proof gun-pit 98 French trenches on the Somme 99 In the French trenches on the Yser 100 Campaigning in the Vosges 101 What the Germans did to the church at Ribécourt 106 On the summit of the Vosges 107 On the Lac Noir 114 The penalty for treason 115 Troglodyte dwellings in Alsace 124 The straggling columns of unkempt, unshaven men were in striking contrast to the helmeted giants on gigantic horses who guarded them 125 In the trenches in Alsace 136 Convoy of German prisoners guarded by Moroccan Spahis 137 A French smoke bomb 140 With hand-grenades in the trenches 141 Chevaux-de-frise and movable entanglements 150 Taking precautions against a gas attack 151 The battle-field of Champagne 154 Bringing in the wounded during the battle of Champagne 155 The battle of Champagne 166 The battle-field of Champagne, showing the French high-explosive shells bursting on the German trenches 167 Fighting in a quarrel that is not his own 172 The first-line German trenches captured by the French in Champagne 173 This crater, seventy feet deep and twice that in diameter, was caused by the explosion of a mine. In the terrific blast five hundred Germans perished 174 German officers captured during the battle of Champagne 175 The price of victory 176 Instruction against gas attacks 177 “Men were at work rolling up the barbed wire in the captured German entanglements” 180 The thousands upon thousands of empty brass shell-cases with which the battle-fields are strewn are collected and sent back to the factory for reloading 181 Mounted on the German trench walls were revolving steel turrets containing quick-firing guns 182 “Brown-skinned men from North Africa in turbans and burnooses” 183 Motor-buses with wire-netting tops filled with carrier pigeons 184 German prisoners came by, carrying on their shoulders stretchers on which lay the stiff, stark forms of dead men 185 Lunéville from an aeroplane 200 French antiaircraft gun in action against a German aeroplane 201 When the chickens come home to roost 206 Antiaircraft guns, posted outside the towns, are ready to give a warm reception to an aerial intruder 207 “Two soldiers lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him between interminable walls of brown earth to the dressing-station” 236 Unloading wounded at a hospital in northern France 237 Red Cross men getting wounded out of a bombarded town in Flanders 244 Bringing in the harvest of the guns 245 “Every house and farmyard for miles around was filled with wounded and still they came streaming in” 250 “The paths of glory lead——” 251

_All illustrations but those specifically acknowledged were taken by the Photographic Service of the French Armies and are here reproduced by special permission._

VIVE LA FRANCE!