Armine

“ In dust and blood bear up against the foe.
They fill no hostile trench, nor in their hands
Shall battering engine or machine of war
Dash down the rampart; and whate'er avails
To stop their arrows, battles like a wall. (13)
Wide sweep their horsemen, fleeting in attack
And light in onset, and their troops shall yield
A camp, not take it: poisoned are their shafts;
Nor do they dare a combat hand to hand;
But as the winds may suffer, from afar
They draw their bows at venture. Brave men love
The sword which, wielded by a stalwart arm,
Drives home the blow and makes the battle sure. ”

“ Our wounded, that is to say, those men who have come back from that hell, "whose horrors," they say themselves, "are indescribable;" those who have marched beneath "that terrible, moving curtain of iron," to which an officer compared the mass of balls and shells in battle, a mass so compact that it obscured the very daylight on the firing line. Our wounded! Those, in a word, who have brought back in their very flesh the frightful scars of the enemy's iron, those who have cemented with their own blood the human wall that is now our frontier. ”

“ And so at daybreak, when the enemy were now in sight, the moment that they were discovered by their glittering helmets and bristling armour, our men sprang up vigorously to the conflict, and dashed at them with great courage; and although the enemy wielded their huge bows with great strength, and the glistening of their weapons increased the alarm of our soldiers, yet their rage, and the compactness of their ranks, kept alive and added fuel to their courage. ”

“ Oh, wonderful optimism! In that Black Country of France, scattered with mining villages in which every house was a machine-gun fort, with slag heaps and pit-heads which were formidable redoubts, with trenches and barbed wire and brick-stacks, and quarries, organized for defense in siege-warfare, cavalry might as well have ridden through hell with hope of “exploiting” success... ”

“ We stood by trench and steel and gun,
For now the indignant flight was done.
We ploughed their shaken ranks with fire.
We trod their masses into mire.
Our sabres drove through their retreat,
As drives the whirlwind through young wheat.
At last, at last we flung them back
Along their drenched and smoking track.
We hurled them back, in blood and flame,
The reeking ways by which they came. ”

“ Darts, spears, and javelins never ceased; arrows pointed with iron were shot; while at the same time, in hand-to-hand conflict, sword struck sword, breastplates were cloven, and even the wounded, if not quite exhausted with loss of blood, rose up still to deeds of greater daring.
47. In some sense it may be said that the combatants were equal. The Allemanni were the stronger and the taller men; our soldiers by great practice were the more skilful. The one were fierce and savage, the others composed and wary; the one trusted to their courage, the others to their physical strength. ”

“ Now a human skull with matted ginger hair, but with the top bashed in, now a hand or arm sticking up from some badly-buried body or shell-smashed grave, and everywhere the appalling waste of war—spades, shovels, German clothes, armor, ammunition scattered in a chaos beyond words. ”

“ Therefore, while the battle raged with vast slaughter, each individual soldier rushing fiercely on the dense ranks of the enemy, the arrows and javelins flew like hail; the blows of swords were equally rapid; while the cavalry, too, pressed on, cutting down all who fled with terrible and mighty wounds on their backs; as also on both sides did the infantry, slaughtering and hamstringing those who had fallen down, and through fear were unable to fly. ”

“ Armor protected no part of the body; whatever the barbarians thought firm was weak; whatever the Franks touched shattered. The field was covered with innumerable corpses, and the thick pile of dead men disturbed the evenness of the grassy field. Everywhere the earth, sprinkled with the hateful blood of Gentiles, grew dark. Those who survived the carnage we inflicted saved their lives by their speed afoot, and were pleased to unburden themselves of their spoils, not out of generosity towards us, but to increase their speed. ”

“ This is war; here are we approaching the place of horror. We have left behind the French villages where peace was still sleeping. Now there is nothing but tumult. And here are direct victims of the war.
The soldiers: blood, mud and dirt. The wounded. Those whom we pass at first are the least suffering—wounds in arms, in hands. In most of them can clearly be seen, in the midst of their fatigue and distress, great relief at having been let off comparatively easily. ”

“ Finally, with my regiment I was marched off to the Front in France, where I still linger in daily expectation of death. Dreadful things have I seen, men blown into nothingness by shells, men pierced through and through by the steel, women murdered and worse than murdered, and children crushed under fallen walls—sights I cannot bear to think of, though they force themselves upon me and murder sleep. ”

“ Show me the man, and come he cased in steel, In complete panoply and pride of war, Ay, guarded by a thousand men-at-arms, Yet I shall reach him through their spears, and feel The last black drop of blood from his black heart Crawl down my blade. Show me the man, I say, And I will kill him. ”

“ The whole west, from right to left, blazes up with a fierce light, and next instant the earth reels and quivers with the awful shock of ten thousand batteries of artillery. It is the signal for the Fury to spring—for a thousand demons to scream and shriek—for innumerable serpents of fire to writhe and light up the blackness. ”

“ The shouts of command, the thunder of artillery, the continual flashing of powder, the clashing of steel, mingled with the roar of Niagara and the groans of the dying, made it seem as though the demons of hell had been let loose to ravage the earth. ”

“ And when they had gone armed to the battle, and were already at the point of fighting, the king of the Alemanni said: “Why are all the people involved in war? Let our people, I pray, not kill one another in battle, but let two of our warriors go to the field in arms and fight with one another. ”

“ The lyddite blows them up in smoke and dust, the sun grills, the dead bodies reek, our infantry creep on them day and night; foul food, putrid water, death above and around, they grin and bear it day after day to gain the precious hours. And all the time we on our side know perfectly well that no relief they could possibly bring up would serve our army for rations for a day. ”

“ To the north the encampments of the enemy are spread out below, and from hundreds of campfires the blue smoke rises to float away as gently as though all were peaceful. Beneath this silver cloud that hangs around the mountain, there is an angry brow; the demons of war are there. ”

“ So, day after day, week after week, month after month they endured still; swept by rifle and machine-gun fire, blown up by mines, buried alive by mortar bombs, their very trenches smitten flat by high explosives—yet they endured and held on. They died all day and every day, but their places were filled by men just as fiercely determined. ”

“ Passing on, with the roar of the guns getting more and more distinct, we come to a place that leaves no manner of doubt that there is a war on. There are graves by the roadside, and shell-holes. Lines of trenches and coils of barbed wire arrest your attention. Now there comes into view the battered remnant of what was once a busy mining village. The great slag-heap towers up on our right hand, its sides scarred and smashed by shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only shattered walls and heaps of bricks. ”

“ For no certain cause that our side could guess, fire would concentrate itself on some half-obliterated feature of the landscape—a bank, the poor stumpage of a wood, a remnant of a village or the angle of a road, that went out in smoke, dust, and flying clods, as though devils were flinging it up with invisible spades. ”

“ This siege warfare is a war of force against force, the force of machinery dealing ponderous, mighty blows against a wall of steel, smashing, smashing, smashing, always in the same place, until the line is bent, then broken, then the force of man coming into play in a wild onrush of storming infantry, with their primitive passions aflame, surging forward amid clouds of green and yellow and red smoke, bombing and slashing their way through the breach their machines have made. ”

“ A din compounded of many separate noises filled the narrow space—the crash of stones, the creak of riven wood, the clash of steel upon steel or stone, the crack of pistols, the cries of men in various tongues—cries of pain, of triumph, of encouragement, of revenge. Desperately fought the little garrison, every man loyal, resolute, undismayed. ”

“ How many thousands of soldiers are surging down upon us then? The moist earth quivers beneath the tramp of their heavy feet. Most surely must we be smashed to pieces, trampled down, broken. For there are not more than sixty of us all told, and how may sixty men extended in single file hope to resist the tremendous pressure of these ranks upon ranks of men rushing down upon us like a herd of maddened buffaloes?
"Rapid fire! Nom de Dieu! Fire!"
The crackling of the rifles rends the air; spurts of flame shatter the darkness. The rifles of my platoon have spoken simultaneously! ”

“ War has rolled away for ever over that northern horizon, and all the relics of war in the land are swept together into the fire. For all the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, and for fuel of fire. ”

“ I looked about me, and there on the left of us was a farm shelled into a heap of ruins, with one round chimney standing, shaped like the 'Flemish' chimneys in Pembrokeshire. And then the men in armour marched by, just as I had seen them—French regiments. The things like battle-maces were bomb-throwers, and the metal balls round the men's waists were the bombs. ”

“ But as he spoke, down he went, felled to the earth as if crushed by a falling mountain; and the foremost peasant, flinging off his coarse frock, appeared in full armour. A tall man beside him, doing the same, uttered a cry like the howl of a wolf, which was instantly answered by the bursting of a throng of armed men from their ambush in the thickets below. ”

“ What the public already knows of armies, guns, trenches, etc., has little to do with the suffering that the people of an invaded country endures, when the white-hot flame of the enemy invasion sweeps over the land scorching every flower and leaving in its wake only desolation and pain and despair. ”

“ Over fallen steeds and writhing men—through flashing sabre strokes and whistling rifle shots—through smoke and dust—through blood and fire—the guerrillas dashed, striking here and there—striking everywhere where the blue coat of a Union soldier could be seen in the chaos. ”

“ He had seen hundreds of men go through the agonies of death from terrible wounds and gas torture; he had seen human forms blown to pieces, and the men falling in hundreds from machine-gun fire as they charged the German trenches. ”

“ Week by week, and day by day, the Germans were closing in round the doomed city, making ready to destroy by fire, or sword, or famine,—all sent by man’s hand, not God’s,—hundreds, thousands of innocent enemies. ”

“ The distant roar of the artillery, the march of the troops through the streets, the galloping of messengers and couriers, the military parade, even the processions of the clergy, as they proceeded from shrine to shrine, petitioning for the aid of God to support them in rebellion, and encourage them in assassination, all agitated and alarmed her, till at length, her mind fell into that state in which terror has so much the predominance, that every fresh tidings are anticipated as tidings of sorrow. ”

“ It was difficult for men in robust health to breathe, and they picked out the coolest places and gave themselves up to the languor of the hour. It required an earnest effort to do anything. Yet through this blazing day men crouched in the trenches from morning till night, or lay in their shallow rifle-pits, watching the enemy,—parched, broiled, burned, not daring to raise their heads or lift their hands. ”

“ And the men streamed down the road which uncoils its lengths past the grim regiments of blackened stumps of the fire-swept country, past the sanguinary scars of the open-pit mines, and wherever they went others joined them. ”

“ The smoke, drawn backward to the horizon of distant hills, shows that the artillery preparation for the attack is over, while, at the bottom of the descent, yonder grim rows of tenements are the forlorn hope of the escalade. ”

“ The surging masses of human beings intent on each others destruction with the death dealing artillery with its terrific roar and the more destructive missiles of small armies with their hateful hissing sounds, together with the deafening cheers of the moving armies, and the heartrending screams and moans of the wounded and dying make the scene agonizing to the extreme. ”

“ From this time neither their courage nor their ingenuity failed; for as the ram was old, and it had been taken to pieces for the facility of transporting it, so while it was being put together again, it was attacked with great exertions and vigour by the garrison, and defended with equal valour and firmness by the besiegers; and engines hurling showers of stones, and slings, and missiles of all sorts, slew numbers on each side. Meantime, high mounds rose up with speedy growth; and the siege grew fiercer and sterner daily ”