Frederic Coleman

“ You German fathers, lead your children up to the high hills of our homeland, at the feet of our dear country bathed in sunshine. Your women and children shall starve: bestial, devilish conception. England wills it! Surely all that is in you rises against such infamy!
Listen to the ceaseless song of the German forest, behold the fruitful fields like rolling seas, then will your love for this wondrous land find the right words, "Hate, unquenchable Hate! Germany, Germany above all!" ”

“ The place was no less a graveyard of brave men than of [34] strenuous human effort, none the less to be admired because it proved abortive. Over all brooded the horror of war and the more specific and tangible horror of gun-fire. "Low trajectory and high explosive are twin demons, and this is their devil's work," the shattered town seemed to say.
Knots of French soldiers or visiting British officers walked about sombrely and spoke in low tones, as if in the actual presence of the dead, in spite of the weeks that had flown by since Vermelles had echoed to the crash of a bursting shell. ”

“ It was my good fortune to discover a French soldier who had seen the actual final bayonet attack which won the position. His story was graphic, but told in few words. The creeping up to the forward French trenches, the fierce bombardment, the wild charge, the discovery that in spite of the fact that the place had been literally blown to bits, and German dead strewn everywhere, some defenders still held on and manned the murderous machine-guns, [32] until they felt the cold steel—it all seemed so matter-of-fact, and such a matter-of-course sort of story in such surroundings. ”

“ These officers were from the class of man one would choose to put in charge of a dry dock, a line of railway, a huge business or a gigantic manufactory. They impressed me as good "business men." More than a few British Staff officers I met, particularly in the Cavalry arm of the Service, were equally clever, and every whit as keen on their work, but no one who wished to be impartial could fail to note the inclusion now and then, on the Staff, of men to whom one would never dream of entrusting the management of a large commercial organisation or the conduct of an important factory plant. ”

“ A failure to arrange support, a badly planned attack, bad Staff work here and there, were quoted in more than one instance.
"It is the soldier who suffers," said one of the most brilliant Frenchmen with whom I met. "He suffers in silence. Perhaps he what you call 'grouses,' but he stands it. The French soldier would not do so in anything like the same spirit. The waste of men and the bad handling of them that once or twice I have seen on the British front, would ruin a French commander for ever." ”

“ Grabbing rifles and ammunition pouches, with no time for company or battalion formation, officers and men rushed toward the advancing lines of Huns, and seeking such cover as could be found, opened a fierce fire at short range. The natural, inborn individual fighting spirit of men raised in the open—men to whose hands a rifle was no stranger—met the situation with such instinctive cohesion of action that the Huns were driven back and the line saved. ”

“ Speaking of the gallant Grenfell twin brothers, both of whom were sacrificed on the altar of German ambition, he uses words which should find a responsive echo in many a sorely-stricken French and English home. "Fine men of noble character, the Grenfells. Surely the monarch responsible for a war that mows down the flower of the world's manhood in the fulness of its youth must one day answer for his crime, in this world or the next."
Mr. Coleman was not, as is usually the case with civilians who are attached to an army in the field, constrained to keep out of the fighting line. ”

“ Not many days before, General de Lisle had called at Estaires, and we had been hospitably given lunch by General Davies, when we had learned something of the general topography of the line on the 8th Division front. The ground in that sector was so water-logged and soft that it did not admit of the construction of a trench line such as we had held in the Ypres Salient. Each small point of vantage to the east of Laventie—a house here, or a rise of ground there—had been made into miniature forts by the British or the Germans. ”

“ Across the street they darted, under the wheels of cars and lorries, missing the hoofs of the passing horses by inches. One bright-eyed little girl, out of breath from dodging a fast-drawn artillery limber, took momentary refuge in a ragged gap in a shell-shattered dwelling. As we approached the Grand Place more children were to be seen, then a number of adult townsfolk. Round the gaping ruins of the once beautiful Cloth Hall, in the main square, the number of people in evidence might [55] well have led one to believe that the bombardment of Ypres was past and done with. ”

“ Whatever Peace may bring us, it can never replace the ones War has taken.
But they have left behind them their example, and the memory of the clean, young manhood that England gave, without stint, to fight for the right. With that memory enshrined in the hearts of those they have left behind, victory lies not with the grave, for such lives are deathless.
At an early hour on the 26th of May, General de Lisle was apprised of his appointment to the command of the 29th Division, which had won splendid laurels under General Hunter Weston in the Dardanelles. ”

“ A French Infantry Brigade in reserve had built hundreds of mud huts and dug-outs with charming ingenuity. Dozens of veteran architects, past masters of rude shelter construction, vied with each other in improving on previous [77] designs. As I took a snapshot in the dull light under the trees, the French soldiers crowded forward in twos and threes, and smilingly invited me to photograph their maisons de luxe.
Cavan's House, our landmark, we left well on our right, edging from it the more as we saw it a very storm centre of fours and eights of shrapnel that morning. ”

“ A peculiar love of the soil which they have tilled, and from which they have sprung, seemed to take the place in many Flemish peasants of the more definite and definable Anglo-Saxon or Gallic spirit of intense patriotism. Many poor folk seemed possessed of a blind instinct that "home" was safest, and once "home" was lost, nothing worthy of preservation remained. Their attitude toward death bordered on indifference.
Motor-buses were bringing the 28th Division to the Ypres Salient as I passed on my homeward journey.
Rumours of an attack on the German line flew from lip to lip. ”

“ The French "75's," with some aid from the British howitzers, reduced Vermelles to ruins in the most literal and complete sense. [30] Every edifice, from the piles of brick around the few tottering walls that was once a proud château to the humblest barn or outbuilding, was in itself a study. The evidence left by such shell-fire of its power for evil is of fascinating interest owing to its infinite variety. One wall had withstood half-a-dozen punctures of varying diameter, holes four or five feet in width, some of them, while its fellow beside it had crumbled into a formless mass of débris. ”

“ France, with her faith pinned to low trajectory and high muzzle velocity as exemplified in her wonderful "75's," and Germany's gun-religion, centring on weight of shell, made a formidable contrast.
The making of a field-piece was ever a compromise between those two schools—a gun firing a light shell straight and fast, or a gun in which speed and direct line were sacrificed to gain weight of projectile. ”

“ Wheeler volunteered. "If we push down the Menin Road to a point near Hooge, and then turn off, we can't get far wrong."
"Lot of French were hit in Hooge yesterday," I reminded him. "The Huns shell it two or three times every day, so best not go too close to it."
We tramped down to the foot of the hill that led up to the ruins of what was once Hooge, then passed through a demolished farm. For a hundred yards, at every step, we sank knee-deep in the foul, slimy mud. ”

“ I had a look at Ypres one morning. It was again peopled with a sufficient number of civilians to give me a sense of forgetfulness as to its proximity to the German gun positions.
Of all the attributes of the Belgian people, their persistence in making back to their homes in a shelled area, as soon as the shells ceased falling, was the most prominent.
Many of the peasants pursued their daily round of labour under shell-fire. Many others left the bombarded fields or villages, albeit reluctantly, only to return as soon as the shell splinters had ceased to spatter about. ”

“ He was inclined to a preference for the open air until a great howitzer-shell lit fifty feet away, pieces from it knocking over some of the wall of the ruined house behind which the dug-out had been made. As he joined me in the cramped space below ground another Black Maria burst across the road from us, making the earth [227] tremble and showering splinters on the roof of our shelter.
Fortunately for those whose work took them over the roads that morning the sky was leaden and rain fell at intervals, rendering German aeroplane observation impossible. ”

“ In Vermelles, on January 15th, I took a dozen photographs showing the devastation that can be worked by French high explosive shells.
Vermelles was an object lesson. Held by the Germans as strongly as any town was held in front of the French position south of the La Bassée canal, trenched and barricaded with wonderful skill, and well supported by a mass of guns, its capture was only effected after weeks of sapping and an artillery bombardment that had up to that time been without parallel. Its ruins held texts for innumerable sermons on the newer strategy of present-day warfare. ”

“ Until now in the present campaign, the British Army has, by its pluck and determination, gained victories against an enemy greatly superior both in men and guns. Reinforcements have made us stronger than the enemy in our front. Our guns are now both more numerous than the enemy's are and also larger than any hitherto used by any army in the field. Our Flying Corps has driven the Germans from the air. ”

“ As a hospital train of twelve coaches, every available corner containing a wounded Tommy, steamed west, scores of motor omnibuses hurried eastward toward the sound of the guns, every khaki-coloured 'bus with its complement of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Terriers of the North Midland Division. Refugees laden with cardboard boxes, pushing loaded bicycles or pulling-carts groaning under tall piles of household effects, added to the road's congestion. ”

“ I thought. "I must get a picture of the piles of débris."
I circled the smashed houses, took my picture, replaced my camera in its case, and turned to look sunward, as the clouds had cast a dull shadow all about me. An open bit of blue was racing toward the spot where the sun was hidden. Should I wait for it and essay a further snapshot?
As my eyes sought the sun, a bright flash in front of me, in my very line of sight, almost blinded me. A deafening explosion and the whirr of scores of shrapnel bullets was followed by another flash. Crash! The second shell seemed nearer than the first. ”

“ After luncheon, I drove General de Lisle, Colonel Bridges and Hardress Lloyd to Nieuport-les-Bains, once a sea-coast summer resort at the mouth of the Yser. The Allied trench line was roughly the line of the canal. On the coast in the sandy dunes, the Allies' trenches had been pushed a bit to the Ostend side, but Dixmude was still in German hands.
Not a single inhabitant of Nieuport-les-Bains was in the town—not a man, woman or child. ”

“ The opposing trenches were separated by a highway, across which, one morning, a German soldier shouted, "Let's have a truce for to-day. We don't want to kill you fellows. Why should we kill each other? We are to be relieved by the Prussians to-morrow night. You can kill them if you like. We don't care. We are Saxons."
The extraordinary proposal was taken in good part, and the truce kept for thirty-six hours. No men of either army left their trenches, but not a shot was fired from German or English trench at that point. ”

“ Then, beyond the conflagration, we saw that a house at the western approach to the Menin bridge had been knocked over by a shell, and so fallen that it completely blocked the road. Half a hundred men must work for hours before the Menin bridge would once more be open for traffic, though fortunately the bridge itself was undamaged.
Reversing the car and regaining the Grande Place, I threaded my way past deep holes in the pavé, and cautiously clambered over piles of débris as we sought another route eastward. ”

“ They fight stiff, that lot—they fight damn stiff!"
When the day of peace returns, and we again relapse into the state when possibly "God will be forgotten and the soldier slighted," let us endeavour to remember that, if the world is not dominated by the mail-fisted Kaiser, who has converted the half of Europe into a shambles, the delivery is due to the French poilus, to the British "Tommies," and to their officers, whose countless graves studded over the bloodstained fields of Flanders bear ample testimony to their heroism. ”

“ In a field by the road a man was ploughing stolidly. A woman was hanging her washing on the line, singing as she worked. A 13-pounder anti-aircraft shell buried itself a few [165] yards away, but she evinced no interest in it, and did not even allow its coming to interrupt her song.
Artillery work in modern warfare is carefully organised. It was difficult to realise in the midst of such an inferno of shell-fire that every gunner, who was so hard at work in those April days, had some definite objective when launching shells enemy-ward. ”

“ The first line commanded an open front of slightly rising ground, clear of all obstacles and capable of being swept for 800 to 1,000 yards. Military science in trench construction had been aided by ingenuity of a high order, and hours of wandering over and through the rabbit warrens made for men, as cleverly as ever rodent designed his burrow, found one discovering new wonders at every step. ”