Geoffrey H. Malins

“ Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting shrapnel, each shell scattering its four hundred odd leaden bullets far and wide, killing or wounding any unfortunate man who happened to be in the way. ”

“ They're awful. It's more than flesh and blood can stand! To put your head up means certain death and—well, you see what your camera did here. You can imagine what it would be like over there, can't you?"
"Yes, I see, but of course if I had known any men were about I wouldn't have put my machine up. I know there is always the possibility of drawing fire. It has happened quite a number of times to me!"
"If you respect your life don't go any further. The shell-fire is impossible, and the sight over there is too ghastly for words." ”

“ Only that morning he had hooked me out to film the sunken road scenes as full of life and hope as anyone could conceive. Now he was on his back, a broken wreck. In the trenches there were hundreds of cases as bad, or even worse, but they did not affect me. There were far too many for the mind to fully grasp their meaning. But down here in this dark dug-out, twenty feet below the earth, the sombre surroundings only illuminated by a guttering candle in a bottle, I was far more affected. It was natural though, for one always feels things more when some one one knows is concerned. ”

“ It seems as if some strange telepathic influence was at work, commanding all the guns in the vicinity to open fire with redoubled fury. And high in the air, our steel "birds" were hovering over the enemy lines, directing the fire, and flecked all round them, like flakes of snow, was the smoke from the shrapnel shells fired on them by the Germans.
"Peace on earth, good will to men," came the strains of music from the little church. Crash! went the guns again and again, throwing their shrieking mass of metal far overhead. ”

“ It was as if the very heavens and the earth had crashed together, crushing everything between them out of all semblance to what it had been.
The ground was literally pock-marked with enemy shell-holes. The stench of decaying bodies followed me everywhere. At times the horror of it all seemed to freeze the understanding, and it was difficult to realise that one was part and parcel of this world of ours. Literally, horror was piled upon horror. And [82] this was the twentieth century of which men boasted; this was civilisation! Built by men's hands, the result of centuries of work. ”

“ This was the beginning of an adventure which I shall always remember. I had been up at the bridge some two minutes, when the armoured car glided up. "Up, monsieur," came a voice, and up I got. Placing my camera by the side of the mitrailleuse, I sat by my chauffeur, and we started off for the French lines.
Dashing along roads covered with shell-holes, I marvelled again and again at the man's wonderful driving. Heaps of times we escaped a smash-up by a hair's-breadth.
On we went over the dunes; the night was continuously lighted up by flashes from the big guns, both French and German. ”

“ It is marvellous these men do not more frequently meet death by accident, for what with the back wheel sliding [32] and skidding like an unbroken mule, and dodging round shell-holes as if we were playing musical chairs, and hanging round the driver's waist like a limpet to keep our balance, it was anything but a comfortable experience. In the end one back wheel slipped into a shell-hole and pitched me into a lovely pool of water and mud. Then after remounting, we were edged off the road into the mud again by a heavy transport lorry, and enjoyed a second mud-bath. ”

“ It was now close on twelve; our intense bombardment would shortly begin, and I worked feverishly at the repair to the camera, perspiring at every pore.
Suddenly, like the terrific crack of a thousand thunders, our fire on the German position began. Bursting from the mouths of hundreds of British guns it came, the most astonishing, astounding, brain-splitting roar that I had ever heard. In a few moments it reached a crescendo; everyone near by [240] was transfixed with awe. Hundreds of shells went shrieking overhead. The air was literally alive with blazing metal. ”

“ Every man seemed animated by the one idea—to [46] take the hill. There was a swing, an air of irresistibility about them that was magnificent. But even in the midst of enthusiasm my trained sense told me that my position must have been visible to some of them, and that it was time for me to move.
I edged my way along the broken stumps of wall to the shelter of a wood, and there, with bullets from snipers occasionally sending twigs, leaves, and even branches pattering down around me, with shells bursting all round, I continued to film the general attack until the spool in the camera ran out. ”

“ Each time it breathed it belched out flame and smoke with the most unearthly crash that could possibly be produced, and with each breath there flew with it a mass of metal and high explosive weighing fourteen hundred pounds, scattering death and destruction for hundreds of yards round the point of impact in the German defences, so that our boys might find it easier to force their way through. ”

“ To lie there was almost certain death; to stand up was worse; to go back was as bad as going forward. What happened afterwards I don't know. I could hear the bullets whizzing by my head with an ugly hiss. The next moment, with a jump and a spring, I landed head first in the trench on the opposite side. For the moment I did not know whether I was hit or not. I unstrapped my camera, to see if it had caught any bullets, but, thank Heaven, they had cleared it. Some of our men were standing looking aghast at me, and wondering what the devil it was that had made such a sudden dive into their midst. ”

“ I recalled my arrival in Belgium; the wonderful rearguard actions of the Belgian troops; the holding up of the then most perfect (and devilish) fighting machine the world had ever known, by a handful of volunteers. The frightful scenes in the great retreat through [253] Belgium lived again; the final stand along the banks of the Ypres canal; the opening of the dykes, which saved the northern corner of France; the countless incidents of fighting I had filmed. ”

“ Just how far they are going back one cannot decide. The fact remains that the enemy is falling back, not for strategical reasons, as he is so anxious for his people and neutrals to believe, but because he is forced to by the superiority of our troops and our dominating gun-power. The beginning of the end is at hand, the eve of great events is here; the results of this year's fighting will decide the future peace of the world, the triumph of Christianity over barbarity, of God over the devil. ”

“ I casually enquired of an officer the cause of it. "Dead bodies," said he; "the ground here is literally choked with them; we dare not touch it with a spade; the condition is awful. There are thousands of them for yards down, and when a shell tears away any section of our parapets the sight is too ghastly for words."
At that moment a man yelled out "cover," and, looking up, I saw several Bosche rifle grenades falling. Shouting to my orderly to take cover with the camera, he disappeared into what I thought was a dug-out but which I afterwards discovered was an incline shaft to a mine. ”

“ It is only a very mild touch of what is happening day after day, week after week, on the bloody plains of France and Belgium. Bloody? Yes, inevitably so. There never was such dearly bought land since creation. The earth in the Somme district has been soaked with the blood of men. Sit out on a field a mile or two from our front line any morning early, when the mist is just rising. Sit out there on the ground which our boys have fought for and won. The place reeks with the horrible stench of countless decaying bodies, and every minute adds to their number. ”

“ The place was alive with men; it was a veritable hive of industry; new lines were being laid to replace the torn and twisted rails left by the Germans; bridges were being strengthened, roads on both sides were widened, and, to make it possible to continue the work throughout the night, a searchlight was being mounted upon a platform.
Crossing the bridges of Brie we mounted the hill and were once again upon the ridge. Great gaps had been made by our men in the huge line of barbed wire entanglements which the Huns had spent months of laborious work to construct. ”

“ More bullets flew by, but with the exception of one which struck the metal revolving top and sliced out a piece as evenly as if it had been done by machine, no harm was caused.
I bade one of the men shoulder my tripod. We rushed up the trench as fast as possible, and I thanked Heaven for my escape. When I reached the section where I judged it best to fit up my camera, I gently peeped over the parapet. What a sight. Never in my life had I seen such a hurricane of fire. It was inconceivable that any living thing could exist anywhere near it. ”

“ Then, for all the world [163] like a gigantic sponge, the earth rose in the air to the height of hundreds of feet. Higher and higher it rose, and with a horrible, grinding roar the earth fell back upon itself, leaving in its place a mountain of smoke. From the moment the mine went up my feelings changed. The crisis was over, and from that second I was cold, cool, and calculating. I looked upon all that followed from the purely pictorial point of view, and even felt annoyed if a shell burst outside the range of my camera. Why couldn't Bosche put that shell a little nearer? ”

“ No words of mine can fitly describe this wonderful scene. And all the time more men, and still more men, were pouring into the trenches, and munitions of all descriptions were being served out.
The bursting German shells, and the shrieks overhead of the missiles from our own guns, were for the moment forgotten in the immensity of the sights around me. I turned and groped the way back to my shelter and, as I did so, our fire increased in intensity. ”

“ By now I was the most abject-looking specimen of humanity imaginable. My camera in its case was securely fastened on my shoulders as a knapsack, and so, with the exception of a slight derangement, which I soon readjusted, no damage was done. But the motor-cycle suffered considerably, and leaving it alongside the road to await a breakdown lorry to repair it—or a shell to finish it—I proceeded on foot to Ramscapelle.
Within a hundred yards of the ruined town, from the shelter of a wrecked barn came the voice of a Belgian soldier peremptorily ordering me to take cover. ”

“ We were at least two kilometres in front of our infantry, in fact we had, of our own accord—keen on obtaining live scenes for the people at home—constituted ourselves an advance patrol, armed, not with machine-guns, swords, or lances, but with cameras. There was every possibility of our being taken for Germans ourselves by our men from a distance; the real advance guard coming up would undoubtedly open fire and enquire into credentials afterwards. The ruins across the bridge might hide enemy rifles; they might open fire any moment. ”

“ Nobody in their right senses would have done such a thing as to rush headlong into country which might have been thick with enemy snipers and machine-guns. But the quietness of the grave reigned—not a rifle-shot disturbed the silence.
Evidence of the German retreat met our gaze as we ran down the road. On either side were discarded material and, in a quarry on the left, a German Red Cross sign was stuck up on a post, and several dug-outs were burning—smoke was pouring up from below, showing that the Hun was destroying everything. ”

“ Agricultural implements were smashed. Mons en Chaussée was the first village we entered; every house was a blackened smoking ruin, and where the fiends had not done their work with fire they had brought dynamite to their aid; whole blocks of buildings had been blown into the air; there was not sufficient cover for a dog.
The car suddenly came to a standstill; my driver jammed on his brake and I hurried forward. There, at the middle of the village cross-roads was another enormous mine-crater—one hundred feet across by about sixty feet deep. ”

“ The village had been turned by the Bosche into a veritable fortress; trenches and strong points, bristling with machine-guns, commanded every point which gave vantage to the enemy. But, after much bloody fighting, our troops stormed and captured the place and the German losses must have been appalling. Many had been buried, but the work of consolidating the ground won and pressing on the attack does not permit our men thoroughly to cleanse the square miles of ground and bury the bodies and fragments that cover it. ”

“ Rifle-fire was continuous; shells from our 60-pounders and 4·2's were thundering past overhead, and on either side "Minnies" (German bombs) were falling and exploding with terrific force, smashing our parapets and dug-outs as if they had been the thinnest of matchwood.
Fortunately for us these interesting novelties could be seen coming. Men are always on the look-out for "Minnies," and when one has been fired from the Bosche it rises to a height of about five hundred feet, and then with a sudden curve descends. ”