Stories and Letters from the Trenches

Letters received from soldiers in the field describe many features of the various campaigns of the war, the descriptions coming from representatives of widely differing classes of society. Unlike the rigid censorship imposed on the allied troopers by their official censors; the letters of Germans in the field show that wide liberty of expression is allowed, with only the names of places, troop divisions, and commanders, and occasionally dates, deleted.

At the front are many men of prominence in many walks of life. Some of the greatest present-day poets and novelists are in the field, and that, too, serving in humble capacities, taking their risks side by side with the men in the ranks or as non-commissioned officers and sharing the daily routine of the common soldier's life. Undemocratic as officialdom is in times of peace, and harsh as its discipline has been pictured in time of war, letters from notables at the front show a surprising spirit of democracy in the relations of high and low on the battlefield, in the trenches, and on the march.

The letters from the front include missives penned or scribbled by nobles and members of the royal families, high military officials, authors, Socialists, tradesmen, skilled workmen, and writers who, in peace times, have been more expert with the farmhand's scythe or manure fork, or with the street cleaner's broom than with the pen that is supposedly mightier, and certainly to them more unwieldy, than the sword.

Nevertheless, even among the privates, it is extremely rare that a letter shows illiteracy to any marked degree. In the letters written by high and low alike, there is to be noted a certain theatrical consciousness of the stage on which they are now engaged in battle before the world.

WAR STORIES.

THREE MONTHS IN THE TRENCHES.

AMERICAN WHO SERVED WITH THE FRENCH FOREIGN LEGION, NOW AN AIRMAN, GIVES VIVID ACCOUNT OF "DITCH" LIFE.

Bert Hall, who wrote the article printed herewith, is an American, and has had experience both as a racing automobile driver and an airman. At the beginning of the war he joined the French Foreign Legion, but was afterward transferred to the French Aviation Corps.

BY BERT HALL.

There was no hands-across-the-sea Lafayette stuff about us Americans who joined the Foreign Legion in Paris when the war broke out. We just wanted to get right close and see some of the fun, and we didn't mind taking a few risks, as most of us had led a pretty rough sort of life as long as we could remember.

For my part, auto racing--including one peach of a smash-up in a famous race--followed by three years of flying, had taken the edge off my capacity for thrills, but I thought I'd get a new line of excitement with the legion in a big war, and I reckon most of the other boys had much the same idea.

We got a little excitement, though not much, but as for fun--well, if I had to go through it again I'd sooner attend my own funeral. As a sporting proposition, this war game is overrated. Altogether, I spent nearly three months in the trenches near Craonne, and, believe me, I was mighty glad when they transferred me (with Thaw and Bach, two other Americans who've done some flying) to the Aviation Corps, for all they wouldn't take us when we volunteered at the start because we weren't Frenchmen, and have only done so now because they've lost such a lot of their own men, which isn't a very encouraging reason.

But anyway if the Germans do wing us, it's a decent, quick finish, and I for one prefer it to slow starvation or being frozen stiff in a stinking, muddy trench. Why, I tell you, when I got wounded and had to leave, most of the boys were so sick of life in the trenches that they used to walk about outside in the daytime almost hoping the Germans would hit them--anything to break the monotony of the ceaseless rain and cold and hunger and dirt!

It wasn't so bad when we first got there, about the beginning of October, as the weather was warmer (though it had already begun to rain and has never stopped since), but we were almost suffocated by the stench from the thousands of corpses lying between the lines--the German trenches were about four hundred yards away--where it wasn't safe for either side to go out and bury them. They were French mostly, result of the first big offensive after the Marne victory, and, believe me, that word just expresses it--they were the offensivest proposition in all my experience.

Well, as I was saying, we reached the firing line on October 4, after marching up from Toulouse, where they'd moved us from Rouen to finish our training. We went down there in a cattle truck at the end of August in a hurry, as they expected the Germans any minute; the journey took sixty hours instead of ten, and was frightfully hot. That was our first experience of what service in the Foreign Legion really meant--just the sordidest, uncomfortablest road to glory ever trodden by American adventurers.

After we'd been at Toulouse about a month, they incorporated about two hundred of us recruits--thirty Americans and the rest mostly Britishers, all of whom had seen some sort of service before--in the Second Regiment Etranger which had just come over from Africa on its way to the front. They put us all together in one company, which was something to be thankful for, as I'd hate to leave a cur dog among some of the old-timers--you never saw such a lot of scoundrels. I'll bet a hundred dollars they have specimens of every sort of criminal in Europe, and, what's more, lots of them spoke German, though they claimed to have left seventeen hundred of the real Dutchies behind in Africa. Can you beat it? Going out to fight for France against the Kaiser among a lot of guys that looked and talked like a turn verein at St. Louis!

Why, one day Thaw and I captured a Dutchie in a wood where we were hunting squirrel--as a necessary addition to our diet--and, believe me, when we brought him into camp he must have thought he was at home, for they all began jabbering German to him as friendly as possible, and every one was quite sad when he went off in a train with a lot of other prisoners bound for some fortress in the West of France.

But that was only a detail, and now I'm telling you about our arrival in the trenches. The last hundred miles we did in five days, which is some of a hurry; but none of the Americans fell out, though we were all mighty tired at the end of the last day's march. Worse still, that country had all been fought over, and there were no inhabitants left to give us food and drinks as we had had before at every resting place, which helped us greatly. Along the roadside lots of trees had been smashed by shell fire, and there were hundreds of graves with rough crosses or little flags to mark them, and every now and then we passed a broken auto or a dead horse lying in the gutter.

At the end of the fifth day we got our first sample of war--quite suddenly, without any warning, as we didn't know we were near the firing line. We had just entered a devastated village when there came a shrill whistling noise like when white hot iron is plunged into cold water, then a terrific bang as a shell burst about thirty yards in front of our columns, making a hole in the road about five feet deep and ten in diameter, and sending a hail of shrapnel in all directions. One big splinter hit a man in the second rank and took his head off--I think he was a Norwegian; anyway, that was our first casualty. No one else was injured.

Our boys took their baptism of fire pretty coolly, though most of us jumped at the bang and ducked involuntarily to dodge the shrapnel, which, by the way, isn't very dangerous at more than thirty yards, though it does a lot of harm at shorter range. Personally, I wasn't as scared as I expected, and most of the others said the same. At first, one is too interested to be frightened, and by the time the novelty has worn off one has gotten fairly used to it all--at least that seemed to be our general opinion.

There were no more shells after that one, and we continued our march till nightfall, when we camped in an abandoned village. Next morning there were 100 big auto trucks ready to take us to a point about forty miles along the lines, and we clambered aboard them and set off at a good speed--all but twenty unlucky lads, who were left to pad the hoof as a guard for our mules and baggage. My pal, William Thaw, was among the number; he marched for thirteen hours practically without a stop, and when he reached our camp he lay right down in the mud by the roadside and went straight off to sleep, though it was raining like sixty and he was drenched to the skin. But he was all right again in the morning, though it was a man's job to wake him up.

Next day we set off before dawn, having received orders to take our place in the trenches about eight miles away. It soon got light, and after marching about half an hour we were unlucky enough to be seen by a German aeroplane which signaled us to their batteries. The first shell burst near, the second nearer, the third right among us, killing nearly a dozen old-timers; and we were forced to break ranks and take cover until nightfall, as they'd got the range and it would have been suicide to try and go on. Pretty good shooting that at five or six miles' distance!

The French talk a lot about their artillery, but, believe me, the Dutchies are mighty fine gunners, especially with their cannon--even the very biggest.

No Chance to Rest.

Why, one day when my company was having its usual weekly rest from the trenches, there were a couple of hundred of us bunking in a big barn fully eight miles behind our lines. About three in the afternoon along came a German aeroplane, and half an hour later they dropped a couple of shells between the barn and a church some thirty yards farther back, just by way of showing what they could do. We thought that was all, and settled down comfortably for the night; but not a bit of it! At ten o'clock sharp a shell dropped plump onto the barn itself and killed five or six and wounded a dozen more, none of them Americans. We got out on the jump, though of course it was raining; and we were wise, for in the next half hour they hit the barn eleven times without a single miss, and at ten-thirty there weren't any big enough bits of it left to make matches of. The barn was perhaps thirty yards long by fifteen wide, but remember they were firing at a range of ten miles or so and in pitch darkness. Of course, they had got their guns trained right in the afternoon and just waited till night to give us a pleasant surprise. I did hear those were Austrian mortars, not German; anyway, they were good enough for us, I can tell you.

But to go back to my story: We broke ranks and fled to cover, and remained in hiding all that day near a ruined farm with shells falling all about, though they didn't do much damage. But our old-timers didn't like it one little bit. They had not been used to that kind of thing in Africa, and then the Germans and Austrians didn't at all fancy the idea of being fired upon by their own people. In our company all of the Sergeants and most of the other non-coms were Austrian--not that they turned out later to be any the worse fighters for that. There was one Sergeant named Wiedmann who fought like a lion; he was the bravest man in the regiment. Poor chap, I've just heard he was killed the other day by a hand grenade, and I'm sorry. He was a real white man if ever I knew one. Our Lieutenant was a German named Bloch, and only the Captain was a Frenchman. But all this mixture of races led to some rather curious results, as the following story will show: