Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
—Thomas Gray
To the Memory of
MAJOR ROBERT COBB
(Cobb's Kentucky Battery, C. S. A.)
What is enclosed between these covers was written as a series offirst-hand impressions during the fall and early winter of 1914 while thewriter was on staff service for The Saturday Evening Post in the westerntheatre of the European War. I tried to write of war as I saw it at thetime that I saw it, or immediately afterward, when the memory of what Ihad seen was fresh and vivid in my mind.
In this volume, as here presented, no attempt has been made to followeither logically or chronologically the progress of events in thecampaigning operations of which I was a witness. The chapters areinterrelated insofar as they purport to be a sequence of picturesdescribing some of my experiences and setting forth a few of myobservations in Belgium, in Germany, in France and in England during thefirst three months of hostilities.
At the outset I had no intention of undertaking to write a book on thewar. If in the kindly judgment of the reader what I have writtenconstitutes a book I shall be gratified.
January, 1915.
I. A Little Village Called Montignies St. Christophe.
II. To War in a Taxicab.
III. Sherman Said It.
IV. "Marsch, Marsch, Marsch, So Geh'n Wir Weiter".
V. Being a Guest of the Kaiser.
VI. With the German Wrecking Crew
VII. The Grapes of Wrath..
VIII. Three Generals and a Cook
IX. Viewing a Battle prom a Balloon
X. In the Trenches Before Rheims..
XI. War de Luxe…
XII. The Rut of Big Guns in France..
XIII. Those Yellow Pine Boxes..
XIV. The Red Glutton..
XV. Belgium—The Rag Doll of Europe .
XVI. Louvain the Forsaken.
A Little Village Called Montignies St. Christophe
We passed through it late in the afternoon—this little Belgian towncalled Montignies St. Christophe—just twenty-four hours behind a dust-colored German column. I am going to try now to tell how it looked tous.
I am inclined to think I passed this way a year before, or a littleless, though I cannot be quite certain as to that. Traveling 'crosscountry, the country is likely to look different from the way it lookedwhen you viewed it from the window of a railroad carriage.
Of this much, though, I am sure: If I did not pass, through this littletown of Montignies St. Christophe then, at least I passed through fiftylike it—each a single line of gray houses strung, like beads on a cord,along a white, straight road, with fields behind and elms in front; eachwith its small, ugly church, its wine shop, its drinking trough, itspriest in black, and its one lone gendarme in his preposterous housingsof saber and belt and shoulder straps.
I rather imagine I tried to think up something funny to say about theshabby grandeur of the gendarme or the acid flavor of the cookingvinegar sold at the drinking place under the name of wine; for that timeI was supposed to be writing humorous articles on European travel.
But now somethi