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To the young Americans with French sympathies who, at the beginning of the war, were eager to get into the real fighting as quickly as possible, the Foreign Legion offered the readiest means. Every able-bodied man who was willing to fight for France was welcomed as a brother to its ranks, whatever his nationality and without regard to his record. For scores of years the Legion had been famous, even notorious, as the refuge of soldiers of fortune, criminals, scapegraces and adventurers of all types---of all the outcasts of, society in fact. This unenviable reputation was no obstacle, however, in the way of the young Americans who were anxious to get into the fighting-lines by the easiest and quickest means possible. They were willing to take their chances.
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General Pershing has declared "Mr. Herrick was our first volunteer." Among the noble company of young Americans who followed his example many were killed in battle, and the memory of them all is honored in France as we honor that of Lafayette and Rochambeau. A beautiful monument commemorating their deeds stands in the Place des États-Unis, and every Fourth of July officials from all the departments of the French government assemble there and pay them grateful homage. These first volunteers came mostly from students and other American residents who, when they saw their comrades going off to the front, were stirred by a desire to enlist in the army and strike a blow for France and civilization. But they first wanted to know whether they had a right to go and a group of them decided to consult their ambassador. Mr. Herrick could never speak of this visit without a flash of emotion.
"I forget the exact date," he said, "when the first of those boys came to ask me about enlisting, but it must have been very soon after war was declared. Some of their names I remember, probably because later on they were among the first to be killed in the Lafayette Escadrille. Such were Kiffin Rockwell, Raoul Lufbery, and Norman Prince.
"They filed into my office with that timidity which frequently characterizes very courageous men, more afraid of seeming to show off than of any physical danger. They came to get my advice. They wanted to enlist in the French army. There were no protestations, no speeches; they merely wanted to fight, and they asked me if they had a right to do so, if it was legal. That moment remains impressed in my memory as though it had happened yesterday; it was one of the most trying in my whole official experience. I wanted to take those boys to my heart and cry, 'God bless you! Go!' But I was held back from doing so by the fact that I was an ambassador. But I loved them, every one, as though they were my own.
"I got out the law on the duties of neutrals; I read it to them and explained its passages. I really tried not to do more, but it was no use. Those young eyes were searching mine, seeking, I am sure, the encouragement they had come in the hope of getting. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, and catching fire myself from their eagerness, I brought my fist down on the table saying, 'That is the law, boys; but if I was young and stood in your shoes, by God I know mighty well what I would do.'
"At this they set up a regular shout, each gripped me by the hand, and then they went rushing down the stairs as though every minute was now too precious to be lost. They all proceeded straight to the Rue de Grenelle and took service in the Foreign Legion. These were the first of our volunteers in the French army. They were followed by others, and in a short time a large group of them had enlisted.
"I think the people of the United States owe a very special debt to these boys and to those who afterward created the Lafayette Escadrille. During three terrible, long years, when the sting of criticism cut into every American soul, they were showing the world how their countrymen could fight if only they were allowed the opportunity. To many of us they seemed the saviors of our national honor, giving the lie to current sneers upon the courage of our nation. Their influence upon sentiment at home was also tremendous. Amidst the haggling of notes and the noise of empty protestations, here were Americans shedding their blood for a cause in which America's heart was already enlisted and to which later she pledged the lives of four million of her sons. I suppose that without them we doubtless would have entered the war, but the shout they sent up as they left my office was answered by millions of passionate voices urging the authorities of their government to act.
C. Bentley Mott, "The First American Volunteers" in Myron T. Herrick, Friend of France, New York: Doubleday, 1929
November 10, 1914.
Fifth day of our second period in the trenches. Five days and nights of pure misery. We came up here Thursday evening, a foggy, moonlit night, bright enough to show the fields through which we ascended, spattered with shell-holes as thick as molehills, and the pine woods full of shattered trunks and broken branches. The Germans had been trying to destroy the Château des Blancs Sablons, below which our kitchens are situated, but by some miracle it has escaped. It is here that the état-major is lodged. Our position this time has been a claypit on a high summit above the château. Owing to its exposed and dangerous character very formidable bombproofs have been built at this point of the line. To these we have been confined for five days from morning to night. A big hole here in the pit, a few yards from our door, marks the place where three men of Bataillon D were killed by a shell only a few days before our arrival. We expected a heavy bombardment, but five days of continuous fog have made the firing very infrequent, though we have heard heavy cannonading at other points of the line. A brancardier was killed a few days ago and there have been a few wounded. It is a miserable life to be condemned to, shivering in these wretched holes, in the cold and the dirt and semidarkness. It is impossible to cross the open spaces in daylight, so that we can only get food by going to the kitchens before dawn and after sundown.
The increasing cold will make this kind of existence almost insupportable, with its accompaniments of vermin and dysentery. Could we only attack or be attacked ! I would hear the order with delight. The real courage of the soldier is not in facing the balls, but the fatigue and discomfort and misery. Tonight we are to be relieved, but whether we are going back to Cuiry or just to the last line of trenches down by the château I don't know. What a winter's prospect if our campaigning is only going to be to alternate between these two phases of inaction and discomfort!
December 8, 1914.
Rather than imitate my comrades, who are filling the chamber with all the various noises of profound slumber, I shall try to while away some of its tedium by giving you a description of the life of a volunteer in the French army at one of the least exciting points of the present front---that is the mid-centre.
After the brilliant French victory in the battle of the Marne, the Germans, defeated in their attack on Paris, fell back to a line about midway between the capital and the frontier and intrenched themselves strongly along the crests well to the north of the River Aisne. The French, following close on their heels, took up whatever positions, they could find or win immediately behind and sat down no less strongly fortified along a line separated from that of the enemy by distances of usually only a few hundred meters. A deadlock ensued here, and the theatre of critical activity shifted to the north, where the issue is still at stake in the tremendous battle for the possession of the seaboard and the base for an enveloping movement which may be decisive. Toward the east the operations have become pretty much confined to the artillery, pending the result of the fighting in the north, which must be decided before an advance can be undertaken by either side on other points of the line.
True, occasionally a violent fusillade to the right or left of us shows that attacks are being made and at any moment are likely to be made, but these are only local struggles for position, and in general the infantry on the centre are being utilized only to support the long line of batteries that all along this immense front are harrying each other at short distances across field and forest and vineyard.
This style of warfare is extremely modern and for the artillerymen is doubtless very interesting, but for the poor common soldier it is anything but romantic. His rôle is simply to dig himself a hole in the ground and to keep hidden in it as tightly as possible. Continually under the fire of the opposing batteries, he is yet never allowed to get a glimpse of the enemy. Exposed to all the dangers of war, but with none of its enthusiasms or splendid élan, he is condemned to sit like an animal in its burrow and hear the shells whistle over his head and take their little daily toll from his comrades.
The winter morning dawns with gray skies and the hoar frost on the fields. His feet are numb, his canteen frozen, but he is not allowed to make a fire. The winter night falls, with its prospect of sentry duty and the continual apprehension of the hurried call to arms; he is not even permitted to light a candle, but must fold himself in his blanket and lie down cramped in the dirty straw to sleep as best he may. How different from the popular notion of the evening campfire, the songs and good cheer.
Cramped quarters breed ill temper and disputes. The impossibility of the simplest kind of personal cleanliness makes vermin a universal ill, against which there is no remedy. Cold, dirt, discomfort, are the ever present conditions, and the soldier's life comes to mean to him simply the test of the most misery that the human organism can support. He longs for an attack, to face the barbed wire and the mitrailleuse, anything for a little freedom and function for body and soul.
December 14, 1914.
Guerre des tranchées! What is it that this word "trench" conveys to those who read it continually in the war bulletins---those who are disinterested, with curiosity; those whose hearts are at the front, with anguish? Probably much of what it would have conveyed to me before the war---a kind of open irrigation ditch where the soldiers had to fight up to their knees in water, how they slept and how they ate being questions I did not ask myself. Certainly the condition of the combatants is not anything like this, yet on the other hand the comfort and elaborate construction of some of these works of defence, such as I have seen them described by soldiers in their letters home, are of examples which I at least have never had the good fortune to inhabit.
The typical trench dugout resembles catacombs more than anything else. A long gallery is cut in the ground with pick and shovel. Its dimensions are about those of the cages which Louis XI. devised for those of his prisoners whom he wished especially to torture, that is, the height is not great enough to permit a man to stand up and the breadth does not allow him to stretch out. Down the length of one curving wall the soldiers sit huddled, pressed close, elbow to elbow. They are smoking, eating morsels of dry bread or staring blankly at the wall in front of them. Their legs are wrapped in blankets, their heads in mufflers.
Slung or piled about them, filling every inch of extra space, are rifles, sacks, cartridge belts and other equipment. A villainous draught sweeps by. Tobacco smoke and steaming breath show how swiftly it drives through. The floors are covered with straw, in which vermin breed. The straw is always caked with mud left by boots which come in loaded down and go out clean. To get new straw we sometimes make a patrol in the night to the outskirts of a ruined village in front of our lines and take what we need from a deserted stable. It is our most exciting diversion just now.
The roof of the dugout is built by laying long logs across the top of the excavation; felling trees for these coverings occupies a large part of our rest intervals. On the completeness with which these beams are covered with earth depends the comfort and safety of the trench. Wicker screens are often made and laid across the logs, sods are fitted over the screens so as to make a tight covering and then loose earth is thrown back on top. This is an effective protection against all but the heaviest shells. If the roof is badly made, out of branches, for instance, the rain drips through and makes life even more miserable inside.
Where the lines run close together the soldiers sleep in the simple trenches and fire through small holes in the wall of the combined trench and dugout. Generally there is room to build the trenches out in front of the dugout or alongside. There is a section of a company of infantry for each trench, and between the trenches there are deep communication ditches.
A squad has stayed behind in the woods to bring us the day's provisions. Before daylight it arrives and the distribution takes place. Great loaves of bread are handed down the line; each man takes his ration of half a loaf. There is one box of sardines for each two men. A cup of coffee, a small piece of cheese, a bar of chocolate must last us all day, until darkness permits another squad to leave the trench to go down after the evening soup. After food comes mail. Too much praise cannot be given the Government for handling the soldiers' mail so well. There are daily distributions on the firing line.
The short winter day has dawned. Its feeble light falls through the narrow doorways and all is now clear in the crowded dugout. The sound of voices grows less and less as the men fold themselves into their blankets, and one by one, tired out by the night watch, go off to sleep. I never could do this and have always fought against sleepiness in the morning. For with our life of darkness and chill I find a little sunlight, even if all I can get is through a narrow dugout door, is indispensable for the brightening of one's hours of reflection. I usually wait until the first cheee-pann-pann-pann! of the shrapnel bursting overhead marks the opening of the artilleryman's working day before I tumble off to sleep.
The smell of the wicker screens and the branches in the dirt on top of the trench reminds me of Christmas odors in American houses decorated with green things for the holidays. Then the smell of powder from the shrapnel kills the holiday reminder. I dare say Christmas will pass here without any change in our style of life. The insolent crest across the valley will still stand up, inviting steel to come and take it, and we shall go on waiting as patiently as we can for the day when we shall be ordered to advance against the shell and steel of the invisible enemy.
It will be a happy day for all of us, for uncomfortable inaction has more terrors than shell and steel.
June 15, 1915.
Here then is a fitting place to close this first chapter of my experiences. That we have been eight months on the front without having once attacked or been attacked need not cause any surprise, for a great part of the troops now in the trenches are in the same position. It seems to have been pure hazard that an easy sector fell to us, just as it was good luck that our battalion and Bataillon D had the low sector at Craonnelle, whereas F and G, who were on the crest of Ouldres, suffered almost daily losses during the winter from bombardment. The winter in the trenches was certainly hard, but it is already far enough away for the miseries to fade out of the picture, and for the rest to become tinged with the iridescence of romance. What is Virgil's line about the pleasure it will be sometime to recall having once done these things? I have known that all along, through no matter what fatigue and monotony. Never have I regretted doing what I am doing nor would I at this moment be anywhere else than where I am. I pity the poor civilians who shall never have seen or known the things that we have seen and known. Great as are the pleasures that they are continuing to enjoy and that we have renounced, the sense of being the instrument of Destiny is to me a source of greater satisfaction.
Nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he plays his part well. Come out of the ordeal safe and sound, he has had an experience in the light of which all life thereafter will be three times richer and more beautiful; wounded, he will have the esteem and admiration of all men and the approbation of his own conscience; killed, more than any other man, he can face the unknown without misgiving---that is, so long as Death comes upon him in a moment of courage and enthusiasm, not of faltering or of fear; and that this may, if necessary, be the case, I shall strain all my will the day that it comes round to our turn to go into the furnace. I have a feeling that that day is near at hand.
Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger. New York: Scribner's. 1917.
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Edwin W. Morse. The Vanguard of American Volunteers. New York: Scribners, 1919.
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