Chapter VI: Back at Main Headquarters

It is twelve o’clock and in the yard stands a covered car with chauffeur and N.C.O., fat and jolly looking. It comes from Cologne and has been to take out _Liebesgaben_ to the soldiers at the front. In token hereof it carries on its dash-board the green and white flag of the Rhine Province and the red and white flag of the City of Cologne. I take leave of the château personnel and drive away from Stenay just as two German airmen ascend in humming spirals into the brilliant bright blue sky to reconnoitre the French positions. The little city gate with its arched tunnel disappears behind us and once more we are spinning along the road, which has now recovered from the rain to such an extent that we actually leave a trail of dust behind us.

Now begin the old familiar scenes, these incredible masses of marching troops, supply columns--here made up chiefly of requisitioned vehicles on the way to the intermediate base or the fighting line--and motor-driven ambulance trains with the badly wounded, travelling in our direction soon to return to fetch fresh patients for the hospitals on the lines of communication. Presently we catch up to and pass a convoy of several hundred French prisoners marching three abreast with a German soldier for every twentieth or thirtieth man. The prisoners include a captain, who marches dejectedly with bent head after the heavy blow which fate has dealt him and his men.

Here is the village of Chauvency, and we pass under the arch of its railway bridge, where the sentry orders us to halt. A supply column of tremendous length is just on the point of crossing by the temporary bridge over La Chiers, resting on the almost dry river-bed close to the permanent bridge which had been blown up by the French. Between the trees on the other bank we catch sight now and again of fresh strings of wagons with their hooped canvas awnings, the white and yellow showing up vividly against the verdant background. Presently they come out on to the bridge, swing up under the archway and pursue their creaking progress westward. On one of the vehicles I catch sight of the lettering “_V. A. C. Etappe Fuhrp. Col. 4 Wagen 48_” (5th Army Corps, 4th Transport column, Wagon No. 48)--but this was by no means the last wagon of the column. It took them a long while to get across, the more so as the notice _Ganz langsam fahren_ (Proceed very slowly) was posted in large letters at each end of the bridge. At length the bridge was clear, but we had to look sharp so as to get well on to it before the next column, the creaking of which was already audible from among the trees, had time to arrive. Once we were out on the bridge we could safely obey the notice to drive very slowly, for whilst we were on it no one else had the right to use it.

Soon after we pass a column which has decided to bivouac in a meadow, and presently we see a railway train loaded with Guards troops. At a curve in the line a body of railway engineers are at work. We pause a moment whilst my friend the N.C.O. distributes two boxes of cigars and fifty tins of preserves, the last that he had left of his “love gifts” from Cologne. As we moved away, blue rings were already rising in the air from the happy smokers. Nearly all the houses in the little town of Montmédy have been turned into hospitals, but on a naked piece of wall, all that is left of a wrecked house, some waggish soldier has chalked up the words “first-class waiting-room.” Another house had had the misfortune to stand in the way of the new railway built by the Germans, who had adopted the simple expedient of passing right through it. A train-load of Bavarian troops has just passed by and is followed by another full of Saxon Landwehr and engineers belonging to different regiments. It is not enough for the roads to convey gigantic columns to the front--the railways, too, are continually pouring fresh floods of human beings into the fighting zone.

In the market-place of Montmédy we pause a while to fill our petrol tanks. Here we find long strings of cars, most of them Red Cross ambulance wagons, loaded to the roof with medical stores and dressing requisites. Some Catholic sisters are seen to cross the square, attired in dark brown with girdles round their waists, black and white head-dress and wearing crosses suspended by chains round their necks. I take them to belong to the Franciscan Order. The wind sighs sadly in the tops of the leafy chestnut trees. Now and again a police patrol comes riding by.

Once more we drive through Marville, the pretty village with its curious amphitheatrical aspect and red-tiled houses, and its church which rears its tower above them. The fields round about are peopled with bivouacking troops and transport trains. The harvesting machines stand abandoned in the fields, where the German soldiers have brought in the autumn crops. Here and there, however, the corn has been left out to dry after the recent rains.

Although Longuyon has suffered far more from the war, there seem to be more inhabitants left than at Stenay, where only a couple of houses have been damaged by fire. I stood for a moment in the main street to sketch the devastation, the naked walls with their crazy chimneys, the crumpled gutters and broken telephone wires, and the piles of wrecked masonry.

By the roadside are a few soldiers’ graves with crosses of untrimmed branches cut from the nearest tree. Next we come to Tellancourt, a terribly battered village in which only a few inhabitants remain, most of them women and children--and cats. Yet a priest comes walking along in his round hat and long black cassock, and behind him some twenty boys--possibly a reorganised school.

A little further on I make a hasty sketch of the remains of a piece of ordnance from St. Étienne, which has been shot to pieces. Several unused shells are still lying in the ammunition box by the side of the gun, and a cross shows that one of the gunners has fallen at his post. Wreckage of the war is everywhere to be seen. Broken rifles, torn knapsacks, scraps of uniforms and helmets--a whole open-air museum. Near by, some French peasants are ploughing their field with two ploughs and four horses.

On the way out I had not had time to visit Longwy, the upper portion of which, within the Vauban fort, has suffered dreadfully through the war, whilst the manufacturing portion of the town down in the valley of the La Chiers has remained undamaged. This time we drove over the two moats up to the picturesquely ornamented gate with its Vauban memorial, over which the German flag was flying. I showed my pass to the sentry at the gate. The galleries are also guarded by sentries. The guard has settled down in a casemate in the counterscarp. Large placards still remained posted on the walls here and there, such as: _Armée de Terre et Armée de Mer_. Or again under two crossed tricolors: _Ordre de Mobilisation Générale_, with all particulars, and finally a notice that Sunday, the 2nd August, 1914, was the first day of mobilisation. It is really horrible to read this order, which was destined to cause rivers of France’s noblest blood to flow, to ruin all her northern provinces, and reduce the little town inside the fortifications to a mass of wreckage.

From the gates the main street runs through the town of Longwy. In the part we first come to, a number of French workmen are busy emptying the powder out of French hand grenades to render them harmless. No earthquake could have destroyed this street throughout its length more completely than the shells have done. There is not a single house left standing. When the attacking artillery began to bombard Longwy, the inhabitants were ordered to leave the place, and most of them went away. Some, however, preferred to remain, and of them some sixty were buried under the ruins, among them several women. I stopped at the church and walked in. The scene there is one of indescribable devastation. The arches over the aisles had fallen in completely, and elsewhere the shells had made tremendous gaps, the hail of splinters having struck the pillars and cut great scars into them. The force of the explosions had broken practically all the stained-glass windows. All that remained here and there was the lead setting. The pulpit, from which the truths of Christianity had so often been expounded, had curiously enough been spared, and had the priest stood there and read the Mass during the bombardment--as did the Greek patriarch when the Turks stormed into the Hagia Sofia--not a hair of his head would have been touched, and a miracle would doubtless have been proclaimed. The sanctity of the altar, however, had not been proof against the shells, for the floor of the choir was strewn with fragments and débris, covered in turn with a thick layer of limestone dust. The centre aisle was impassable, for the organ with its flattened pipes and the galleries with their benches and rails had been shot down and formed an incredible confusion of débris and rubbish. Heaps of plaster and fragments of ornaments, _prie-dieux_ and other church furniture were piled on the floor, all mutilated beyond recognition.

The lower part of the massive temple walls had more or less been spared, together with their oblong panels, in high-relief, illustrating the passion of our Lord. I stood in front of one which is quite undamaged, and under which I read the words: _Jésus tombe pour la deuxième fois_. The face of the Redeemer expresses infinite anguish as He totters under the weight of the cross and the sins of man.

Oh, vanity of vanities! Everything seems vain and futile. On a stone tablet I read the following well-preserved inscription: _Hanc ecclesiam Ludovici XIV jussu et pecunia procurante_ Vauban _erectam primar. benedixit lapidem 22 martii 1683_ ... etc. Now the organ notes are silenced and no words of spiritual comfort fall from the pulpit. The wind sighs through the bared arches and seems plaintively to echo the frailty of human purpose.

Outside the church the scene is one of equal desolation. There lies the skeleton of what was once a motor-car and the remnants of a bicycle amid the wreckage of accoutrements and uniforms, buckled soup-plates of tin, sword sheaths, rifle stocks and barrels, children’s toys, colour boxes and Noah’s Arks, water pipes, balcony rails and grilles, chairs and tables all entangled in an inextricable confusion of stone, brick and dust. Pompeii could not have been so utterly destroyed as this town, and my old Lou-lan in the heart of the desert, where the angel of destruction has reaped his harvest for so many centuries, looked less forlorn and desolate than the fortified town of Longwy after a few days’ bombardment.

I walk along through the alleys and look round. The silence is ghostlike, except for occasional creaking in walls and joints and the sound of chips of stone falling to the ground. The wind is moaning among the roofless houses, and the gutter pipes, detached from their fastenings, hang nodding into space. Here and there the name of the street is still discernible at the corner, such as Rue des Écoles, or Rue Stanislas. Postcards, frayed and worn away by sun and rain, are lying about amongst the rubbish. I take one up and read the address: _Monsieur Crombez, Subsistant au 164 de Ligne,[16] Longwy-haut_. The text is as follows: “Le Mans, 22nd August. Dear Comrade, I have arrived safely at Mans, and have sent my certificate direct to the chief. I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of seeing you again. H....” Has this Crombez, I wonder, ever received the greeting of his comrade and been able to enjoy the pretty picture of the landscape where the tranquil waters of the Huisne and Sarthe flow together? Or has his name gone to make up the list of dead or of those who are missing, never to be found?

[16] A battalion of the 164th regiment of infantry was garrisoned at Longwy in peace time.

The little square in front of the church is planted with trees. Many of them have been cut down and lie piled into logs for fuel, and the leaves are yellow and shrivelled. In a line with the church and looking on to this open space, stands the riddled and shapeless frontage of a house over whose portals I fancy I can read the words _Hôtel de Ville_, and the year 1731. Its entrance hall, leading to the _Bureau de Police_, is one big rubbish heap of rags, broken furniture and paper. The archives of the police station lie scattered about. Here we find the whole edition of a little pamphlet: _Traité pour l’Éclairage au Gaz de la Ville de Longwy du 9 Janvier 1912 au 23 Décembre 1961_, that is to say, covering a period of fifty years. They little thought in printing it that the gas would go out in 1914. I hear a rustling sound among the scraps of paper as the wind passes through the bleak ruins.

The lower part of the town, at the other end, reveals no other signs of war than the none too numerous German uniforms. The German soldiers wander calmly through the streets of the conquered town, in the central parts of which the civil population is quite well represented.

A moment later we are driving over the frontier into Luxemburg, and as the sun sets gorgeously we reach the little Grand-Ducal capital, where once more I take up my quarters at the _Hotel Staar_. That very evening I had the good fortune to meet Prince Waldemar of Prussia, Admiral von Müller and Major Nicolai of the General Staff. The Chief of the General Staff, von Moltke, was absent from the town.

As regards my immediate plans, I decided to proceed on the following morning, the 26th September, at 9 a.m. by a Landsturm train to Sedan, partly in order to see what sort of accommodation the troops had on the railways. The rest of the day was taken up by various tasks. My purse needed replenishing and accordingly I withdrew a thousand marks on the strength of my Swedish letter of credit. The payment was made less ½ per cent, which after all was not to be wondered at in war time. I was glad enough to get any money at all. The great hall of the Banque Internationale looked empty and deserted.

I had not brought a camera from Stockholm, as I had assumed that I should never be allowed to use it. But at the 5th Army I was told that it was not so very serious a matter--provided I kept within certain bounds and tolerated a certain amount of supervision. I was now fortunate enough to obtain at Luxemburg from a German photographer a perfectly new and excellent Eastman Kodak, thanks to which I have been able to adorn this book with pictures of my own selection.

Through Chamberlain Baron von Reischach I was once more honoured with an invitation to dine at the Emperor’s table at one o’clock. Those present, apart from the Chamberlain, included Herren von Plessen, von Gontard and von Busch, the latter being the German Minister at Luxemburg, also the Emperor’s Field Chaplain and a couple of adjutants. In the forenoon news had been received of the illness of Prince Oskar. He had contracted some sort of heart complaint through over-exertion. I expected therefore to find the Emperor a bit depressed, but there was no sign of it. He walked in with youthful and military bearing, honoured me once more with a hearty handshake and bade me welcome back from the 5th Army. Thereupon he took a letter out of his pocket and asked me to read it through carefully. Whilst His Majesty was talking to his suite, I read the letter. It was addressed to the Emperor personally and was written by a sergeant who had been at Prince Joachim’s side when he was wounded. Now the sergeant wanted to tell his august master how gallantly the Prince had borne himself and what an example he had been to the soldiers. The letter was simply and ingenuously written and showed how deep and strong is the loyalty which binds the German Army to its supreme Chief and Emperor. The loyalty and unity between Emperor and people, between Commander and Army, form the firm and immovable rock on which the German Empire has been built up. When the Emperor turned to me again and asked what I thought of the letter, I merely answered: “It must be a pleasure to your Majesty to receive such messages from the rank and file.”

“Yes,” he replied. “There is nothing that gives me so much pleasure as these proofs of the faithful loyalty of my people and the close bonds which bind me to my entire army. Such a letter as this I treasure amongst my most valued possessions.”

Then we talked about Prince Oskar’s illness, and whilst on this topic the Emperor said: “So you see, now Hohenzollern blood, too, has flowed. I have six sons and a nephew with me in the war and among the many German Princes who are fighting at the front several have already given their lives for Germany’s sake.”

The rest of the conversation was about my experiences with the 5th Army and the wonderful incidents of war.

In the afternoon the great flag of the Red Cross tempted me to visit the Convent of St. Zita, where the sisters are Carmelite nuns of the second and third degrees. Amongst them are some of the very strictest order.

The day was brought to an end with supper at the quarters of the Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann Hollweg, to which several charming and eminent gentlemen of his entourage had also been invited.