Further down the road we had left two of the cars in charge of Lady Dorothie Feilding and her two nurses. They were to wait there until we brought back some of the wounded. Two ambulances came on with our light car, commanded by Lieut. Broqueville and Dr. Munro. Mr. Gleeson asked me to help him as stretcher-bearer. Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett was to work with one of the other stretcher-bearers.
I was in one of the ambulances, and Mr. Gleeson sat behind me in the narrow space between the stretchers. Over his shoulder he talked in a quiet voice of the job that lay before us. I was glad of that quiet voice, so placid in its courage. We went forward at what seemed to me a crawl, though I think it was a fair pace, shells bursting around us now on all sides, while shrapnel bullets sprayed the earth about us. It appeared to me an odd thing that we were still alive. Then we came into Dixmude.
When I saw it for the first and last time it was a place of death and horror. The streets through which we passed were utterly deserted and wrecked from end to end, as though by an earthquake. Incessant explosions of shell fire crashed down upon the walls which still stood.
Great gashes opened in the walls, which then toppled and fell. A roof came tumbling down with an appalling clatter. Like a house of cards blown by a puff of wind, a little shop suddenly collapsed into a mass of ruins. Here and there, further into the town, we saw living figures.
They ran swiftly for a moment and then disappeared into dark caverns under toppling porticos. They were Belgian soldiers.
We were now in a side street leading into the Town Hall square. It seemed impossible to pass, owing to the wreckage strewn across the road.
"Try to take it," said Dr. Munro, who was sitting beside the chauffeur.
We took it, bumping over heaps of debris, and then swept around into the square. It was a spacious place, with the Town Hall at one side of it--or what was left of the Town Hall; there was only the splendid shell of it left, sufficient for us to see the skeleton of a noble building which had once been the pride of Flemish craftsmen. Even as we turned toward it parts of it were falling upon the ruins already on the ground.
I saw a great pillar lean forward and then topple down. A mass of masonry crashed from the portico. Some stiff, dark forms lay among the fallen stones; they were dead soldiers. I hardly glanced at them, for we were in search of the living.
Our cars were brought to a halt outside the building, and we all climbed down. I lighted a cigarette, and I noticed two of the other men fumble for matches for the same purpose. We wanted something to steady our nerves. There was never a moment when shell fire was not bursting in that square. Shrapnel bullets whipped the stones. The Germans were making a target of the Town Hall and dropping their shells with dreadful exactitude on either side of it.
I glanced toward the flaming furnace to the right of the building. There was a wonderful glow at the heart of it, yet it did not give me any warmth. At that moment Dr. Munro and Lieut. de Broqueville mounted the steps of the Town Hall, followed by Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett and myself. Mr.
Gleeson was already taking down a stretcher; he had a little smile about his lips.
A French officer and two men stood under the broken archway of the entrance, between the fallen pillars and masonry. A yard away from them lay a dead soldier, a handsome young man with clear-cut features turned upward to the gaping roof. A stream of blood was coagulating around his head, but did not touch the beauty of his face. Another dead man lay huddled up quite close, and his face was hidden.
"Are there any wounded here, Sir?" asked our young Lieutenant. The other officer spoke excitedly. He was a brave man, but he could not hide the terror in his soul, because he had been standing so long waiting for death, which stood beside him, but did not touch him. It appeared from his words that there were several wounded men among the dead down in the cellar, and that he would be obliged to us if we could rescue them.
We stood on some steps, looking down into that cellar. It was a dark hole, illumined dimly by a lantern, I think. I caught sight of a little heap of huddled bodies. Two soldiers, still unwounded, dragged three of them out and handed them up to us. The work of getting those three men into the first ambulance seemed to us interminable; it was really no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. During that time Dr. Munro, perfectly calm and quiet, was moving about the square, directing the work. Lieut. de Broqueville was making inquiries about other wounded in other houses. I lent a hand to one of the stretcher-bearers. What the others were doing I do not know, except that Mr. Gleeson's calm face made a clear-cut image on my brain.
I had lost consciousness of myself. Something outside myself, as it seemed, was saying that there was no way of escape; that it was monstrous to suppose that all these bursting shells would not smash the ambulance to bits and finish the agony of the wounded, and that death was very hideous. I remember thinking, also, how ridiculous it was for men to kill one another like this and to make such hells on earth.
Then Lieut. de Broqueville spoke a word of command; the first ambulance must now get back. I was with the first ambulance, in Mr. Gleeson's company. We had a full load of wounded men, and we were loitering. I put my head outside the cover and gave the word to the chauffeur. As I did so a shrapnel bullet came past my head, and, striking a piece of ironwork, flattened out and fell at my feet. I picked it up and put it in my pocket, though God alone knows why, for I was not in search of souvenirs.
So we started with the first ambulance through those frightful streets again and out into the road to the country. "Very hot!" said one of the men--I think it was the chauffeur. Somebody else asked if we should get through with luck. Nobody answered the question. The wounded men with us were very quiet; I thought they were dead. There was only an incessant cannonade and the crashing of buildings. The mitrailleuses were at work now, spitting out bullets. It was a worse sound than that of the shells; it seemed more deadly in its rattle. I started back behind the car and saw the other ambulance in our wake. I did not see the motor car.
Along the country roads the fields were still being plowed by shells which burst over our heads. We came to a halt again in a place where soldiers were crouched under cottage walls. There were few walls now, and inside some of the remaining cottages were many wounded men. Their comrades were giving them first aid and wiping the blood out of their eyes. We managed to take some of these on board. They were less quiet than the others we had, and groaned in a heartrending way.
A little later we made a painful discovery--Lieut. de Broqueville, our gallant young leader, was missing. By some horrible mischance he had not taken his place in either of the ambulances or the motor cars. None of us had the least idea what had happened to him; we had all imagined that he had scrambled up like the rest of us, after giving the order to get away.
There was only one thing to do--to get back in search of him. Even in the half hour since we had left the town Dixmude had burst into flames and was a great blazing torch. If de Broqueville were left in that hell he would not have a chance of life.
It was Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett who, with great gallantry, volunteered to go back and search for our leader. They took the light car and sped back toward the burning town. The ambulances went on with their cargo of wounded, and Lady Dorothie Feilding and I were left alone for a little time in one of the cars. We drove back along the road toward Dixmude, and rescued another wounded man left in a wayside cottage.
By this time there were five towns blazing in the darkness, and in spite of the awful suspense which we were now suffering we could not help staring at the fiendish splendor of that sight.
Dr. Munro joined us again, and after consultation we decided to get as near to Dixmude as we could, in case our friends had to come out without their car or had been wounded.
The German bombardment was now terrific. All the guns were concentrated upon Dixmude and the surrounding trenches. In the darkness under a stable wall I stood listening to the great crashes for an hour, when I had not expected such a lease of life. Inside the stable soldiers were sleeping in the straw, careless that at any moment a shell might burst through upon them. The hour seemed a night; then we saw the gleam of headlights, and an English voice called out.
Ashmead-Bartlett and Gleeson had come back. They had gone to the entrance to Dixmude, but could get no further, owing to the flames and shells. They, too, had waited for an hour, but had not found de Broqueville. It seemed certain that he was dead; and, very sorrowfully, as there was nothing to be done, we drove back to Furnes.
At the gate of the convent were some Belgian ambulances which had come from another part of the front with their wounded. I helped to carry one of them in, and strained my shoulders with the weight of the stretcher. Another wounded man put his arm around my neck, and then, with a dreadful cry, collapsed, so that I had to hold him in a strong grip. A third man, horribly smashed about the head, walked almost unaided into the operating room. Mr. Gleeson and I led him with just a touch on his arm. This morning he lies dead on a little pile of straw in a quiet corner of the courtyard.
I sat down to a supper, which I had not expected to eat. There was a strange excitement in my body, which trembled a little after the day's adventures. It seemed very strange to be sitting down to table with cheerful faces about me, but some of the faces were not cheerful. Those of us who knew of the disappearance of de Broqueville sat silently over our soup.
Then suddenly Lady Dorothie Feilding gave a little cry of joy, and Lieut. de Broqueville came walking briskly forward. It seemed a miracle; it was hardly less than that. For several hours after our departure from Dixmude he had remained in that inferno. He had missed us when he went down into the cellar to haul out another wounded man, forgetting that he had given us the order to start. There he had remained, with buildings crashing all around him until the German fire had died down a little. He succeeded in rescuing his wounded man, for whom he found room in a Belgian ambulance outside the town and walked back along the road to Furnes.
We clasped hands and were thankful for his escape. This morning he has gone again to what is left of Dixmude with a flying column. Dr. Munro and Mr. Gleeson, with Lady Dorothie Feilding and her friends, are in the party, although in Dixmude German infantry have taken possession of the outer ruins.
The courage of this English field ambulance under the Belgian Red Cross is one of those splendid things which shine through this devil's work of war.
*At the Kaiser's Headquarters*
By Cyril Brown of The New York Times.
GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Oct. 20.--The most vulnerable, vital spot of the whole German Empire is, paradoxically, in France--the small city on the Meuse where the Grosses Hauptquartier, the brains of the whole German fighting organism, has been located for the last few weeks. After a lucky dash through the forbidden zone of France held by the Germans I managed to pay a surprise visit to the Great Headquarters, where, among other interesting sights, I have already seen the Kaiser, the King of Saxony, the Crown Prince, Major Langhorne, the American Military Attache; Field Marshal von Moltke, and shoals of lesser celebrities with which the town is overrun. My stay is of indeterminate length, and only until the polite but insistent pressure which the Kaiser's secret police and the General Staff are bringing to bear on their unbidden guest to leave becomes irresistible.
It was a sometime TIMES reader, a German brakeman, who had worked in New York and was proud of being able to speak "American," who helped me to slip aboard the military postzug (post train) that left the important military centre of L---- at 1:30 A.M. and started to crawl toward the front with a mixed cargo of snoring field chaplains, soldiers rejoining their units, officers with iron crosses pinned to their breasts, ambulance men who talked gruesome shop, fresh meat, surgical supplies, mail bags, &c. Sometimes the train would spurt up to twelve miles an hour. There were long stops at every station, while unshaven Landsturm men on guard scanned the car windows in search of spies by the light of their electric flash lamps. After many hours somebody said we were now in Belgium.
There are no longer any bothersome customs formalities at the Belgian border, but the ghost of a house that had been knocked into a cocked hat by a shell indicated that we were in the land of the enemy. Houses that looked as if they had been struck by a Western cyclone now became more numerous. A village church steeple had a jagged hole clean through it.
After more hours somebody else said we were in France. Every bridge, culvert, and crossroad was guarded by heavily bearded Landsturm men, who all looked alike in their funny, antiquated, high black leather helmets--usually in twos--the countryside dotted with cheery little watch fires.
In the little French villages all lights were out in the houses. The streets were barred like railroad crossings except that the poles were painted in red-white-black stripes, a lantern hanging from the middle of the barrier to keep the many army automobiles that passed in the night from running amuck.
Sedan, a beehive of activity, was reached at daybreak. Here most of the military, plus the Field Chaplains, got out. From here on daylight showed the picturesque ruin the French themselves had wrought--the frequent tangled wreckage of dynamited steel railway bridges sticking out of the waters of the river, piles of shattered masonry damming the current, here and there half an arch still standing of a once beautiful stone footbridge. I was told that over two hundred bridges had been blown up by the retreating French in their hopeless attempt to delay the German advance in this part of France alone.
Several hours more of creeping over improvised wooden bridges and restored roadbeds brought the post train to the French city that had 20,000 inhabitants before the war which the Kaiser and the Great Headquarters now occupy.
Wooden signs printed in black letters, "Verboten," (forbidden,) now ornament the pretty little park, with its fountain still playing, outside the railroad station. The paths are guarded by picked grenadiers, not Landsturm men this time, while an officer of the guard makes his ceaseless rounds. Opposite the railroad station, on the other side of the little park, is an unpretentious villa of red brick and terra cotta trimmings, but two guard houses painted with red-white-black stripes flank the front door and give it a look of importance. The street at either end is barred by red, white and black striped poles and strapping grenadiers on guard are clustered thick about it. You don't need to ask who lives there. The red brick house (it would not rent for more than $100 a month in any New York suburb) is the present temporary residence of the Over War Lord. Its great attraction for the Kaiser, I am told, is the large, secluded garden in the rear where this other "man of destiny" loves to walk and meditate or, more usually, talk--though the few remaining French inhabitants could have a frequent opportunity of seeing him walk in the little closed public park if they were interested, but the natives seem outwardly utterly apathetic.
Several of the Kaiser's household, in green Jager uniforms, were lounging around the door for an early morning airing, while secret service men completed the picture by hovering in the immediate neighborhood. You can tell that they are German secret service agents because they all wear felt alpine hats, norfolk jackets, waterproof cloth capes and a bored expression. They have been away from Berlin for nearly three months now. About fifty of them constitute the "Secret Field Police" and their station house is half a block away from the Kaiser's residence.
Just around the corner from the Kaiser, within a stone's throw of his back door, is another red-brick house with terra-cotta trimmings, rather larger and more imposing. The names of its new residents, "Hahnke,"
"Caprivi," and "Graf von Moltke," are scrawled in white chalk on the stone post of the gateway. Further up the same street another chalk scrawl on a quite imposing mansion informed me that "The Imperial Chancellor" and "The Foreign Office" had set up shop there. Near by were Grand Admiral von Tirpitz's field quarters. A bank building on another principal street bore the sign, "War Cabinet."
The Great General Staff occupies the quaint old Hotel de Ville. An unmolested ramble showed that all the best residences and business buildings in the heart of the town were required to house the members of the Great Headquarters, who number, in addition to the Kaiser and his personal entourage, thirty-six chiefs or department heads, including the Imperial Chancellor, the War Minister, the Chief of the Great General Staff, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, the Chief of the Ammunition Supply, the Chief of the Field Railways, the Chief of the Field Telephone and Telegraph Service, the Chief of the Sanitary Service, the Chief of the Volunteer Automobile Corps, &c., making, with secretaries, clerks, ordonnances, and necessary garrison, a community of 1,200 souls.
I could not help wondering why the Allies' aviators weren't "on the job." A dozen, backed up by an intelligent Intelligence Department, could so obviously settle the fortunes of the war by blowing out the brains of their enemy. Perhaps that is why the whereabouts of the Great Headquarters is guarded as a jealous secret. The soldiers at the front don't know where it is, nor the man on the street at home, and, of course, its location is not breathed in the German press. Theoretically, only those immediately concerned are "in the know." Visitors are not allowed, neutral foreign correspondents are told by the authorities in Berlin that "it is impossible" to go to the Grosser Hauptquartier.
Two aeroplane guns are mounted on the hills across the river at a point immediately opposite the Kaiser's residence, while near them a picked squad of sharpshooters is on the watch night and day for hostile fliers.
To further safeguard not only the person of the Kaiser but the brains of the fighting machine the spy hunt is kept up here with unrelenting pertinacity.
"We went over the town with a fine-tooth comb and cleaned out all the suspicious characters the very first day we arrived," said a friendly detective.
"There are no cranks or anarchists left here. Today the order is going out to arrest all men of military age--between 18 and 45--but there are few, if any, left. We also made a house-to-house search for arms and collected three wagonloads, mostly old.
"Our Kaiser is as safe here now as he would be anywhere in Germany. We know every one who arrives and leaves town. It seems impossible for a spy to slip in and still more to slip out again through the lines--but we are always on the watch for the impossible. The fear of spies is not a delusion or a form of madness, as you suggest. Here is one case of my personal knowledge: A German Boy Scout of 16, who had learned to speak French and English perfectly at school, volunteered his services and was attached to the staff of an army corps. This young chap succeeded in slipping into Rheims, where he was able to locate the positions of the French batteries and machine guns, and make his way back to our lines with this invaluable information. For this feat the boy received the Iron Cross. After being in the field for six weeks he got home-sick, however, and has been allowed to go home for a visit."
From a spectacular point of view the Great Headquarters is rather disappointing. A few mixed patrols of Uhlans, dragoons, and hussars occasionally ride through the principal streets to exercise their horses. Occasionally, too, you see a small squad of strapping grenadiers, who break into the goose step on the slightest provocation as when they pass a General or other officer of the Great General Staff, whom you recognize by the broad red stripes on their "field gray"
trousers.