Letters And Diary Of Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781782893325
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

"I HAVE a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair"
The above unfortunately prophetic lines were written by the famed war poet Alan Seeger months before his death at the hands of German fire during the infamous slaughter of the battle of the Somme whilst serving in the French Foreign Legion. He saw a great deal of fighting in his two years with the French, indeed some of the worst of it as the Legion was posted many times to the most exposed parts of the lines. His diary entries are a strange mixture of his service under heavy fire with his common fellow poilus, which he faced so stoically despite having a heavy premonition of his own death, and his poetic insights into daily life.
Well-known and well-liked by his colleagues they set about collecting his notes and poems into this memorial volume to commemorate his achievements in the French army and his literary attainments.

V — FEBRUARY 17—MARCH 24, 1915

The deadlock. A narrow escape. Varying types of légionnaires. A promenade. Manoeuvres. The "Marseillaise."

TO HIS MOTHER — February 17, 1915.

You are quite wrong about my not realizing what I was going into when I enlisted. I had not been living for two years in Europe without coming to understand the situation very well and I was under no illusion that the conflict which was to decide the fate of empires and remake the map of Europe would be a matter of a few months. I knew that it would be a fight to the finish, just as our Civil War was. The conflagration, far from diminishing, seems to be spreading. The lull during the winter has allowed each side on this front to fortify itself so strongly that, in my opinion, the deadlock here is permanent. On the Eastern front the Russians under French direction may be able to accomplish something, but so far the Germans seem to have had all the best of it. The easiest solution to see is the entrance of Italy into the hostilities, which might have the same effect as Roumania's action in the Balkan War. But personally I can see no end at present. It will probably come about through influences other than military and such as are quite unforeseen now. At all events I do not expect to be liberated this year. . . .

Our Jan. 20 rumor of going to Orléans evaporated into thin air. Now it is Feb. 27 to Vincennes. Someone has suggested that they really meant Feb. 29th. But I do hope we shall have a little change of air soon. Will stop now for it is hard writing amid a Babel of conversation.

TO HIS FATHER — February 26, 1915.

We have been here for six days in the trenches, out beyond the ruined village of C— and half way up the hill to the enemy's lines. It is quite the most advanced post we have held so far. We are not in fear of an attack here but the danger from patrols out looking for trouble has kept us on the alert these last nights. Guard all night, sleep all day,—that has been the programme. The moon has made the strain much less than it would have been had the nights been dark. These advanced posts are really the least dangerous, for one is not exposed to the artillery fire, can sleep all day in peace, or, standing at the door of the dugout, watch the shells raising the mischief with the lines in the rear.

I was shot a few days ago coming in from sentinel duty. I exposed myself for about two seconds at a point where the communication ditch is not deep enough. One of the snipers who keep cracking away with their Mausers at any one who shows his head came within an ace of getting me. The ball just grazed my arm, tore the sleeve of my capote and raised a lump on the biceps which is still sore, but the skin was not broken and the wound was not serious enough to make me leave the ranks.

The Germans are marvellous. You hear their rifles only a few hundred metres off, you feel them about you all the time, and yet you can never see them. Only last night when the moon set behind the crest, it silhouetted the heads of two sentinels in their big trench on top.

Rumors continue to circulate about our going to be relieved and sent to a third line position for a while for a rest. It is four months now that we have been on the firing line,—four months with the noise of the cannon continually in our ears. The latest is that the whole 18th Army Corps, of which we are a unit, is to be replaced by a division of the new English troops. I shall like a little change, but I am becoming resigned to this life and accept with equanimity anything that comes along. I see no end to the thing; it may go on for years. . . .

(On back of picture postcard showing French infantry crossing C—)

March 3, 1915.

Here is the way we look marching, 1'arme à la bretelle. After six days repos we are going back again to the trenches tonight. In the course of a few weeks we expect to be reviewed by General Joffre, after which we shall probably go back to a second-line position for a rest. There is no chance of serious work before this time. We are just night watchmen at present, which does not please me, but which ought to comfort Mother.

TO HIS MOTHER — March 12, 1915.

From today on, no more letters nor correspondence of any kind goes out until further notice. As this rule seems to apply to all regiments, it is probably motivated by military reasons. But if it were caused by nothing except a disgraceful article like that of —--'s that you sent me it would not be too severe. I should not think that I would need to tell you that that article is simply the low joke of a mind that thinks it funny to tell lies. If his lies did nothing worse than belittle his comrades who are here for motives that he is unable to conceive, it would be only dishonorable. But when it comes to throwing discredit on the French government that in all its treatment of us has been generous beyond anything that one would think possible, it is too shameful for any words to characterize. This man like many others of his type was long ago eliminated from our ranks, for a person buoyed up by no noble purpose is the first to succumb to the hardships of the winter that we have been through. A miserable weakling, incapable of feeling any generous emotion or conceiving any noble ideal, among the first to surrender in the face of suffering, he gives full rein to his perverted American sense of humor now that he can warm his feet amid the comforts of civilization again and it is his comrades who remain in the face of danger and suffering that must bear the odium that an act like that will throw on the name "American" as soon as it is brought to the notice of the authorities.

I should long ago have pulled strings to get into another regiment were it not, as I say and as I expected, that the winter's trials have pretty well weeded out the objectionable specimens and that the dépôts have sent us up to replace them men that are men and an honor to fight beside. . . . We have many Belgians with us here. Some French boys came up with the last reinforcement who were to commence their service this year or next and who were caught in conquered provinces when the Prussians came in. One was a prisoner in Lunéville three weeks until the French came back and drove out the invaders. Another was the youngest of six sons in a little town near Valenciennes. His five brothers were mobilized at the beginning of the war. When the Germans entered his village he was taken prisoner with all the other young men of military age and made to dig trenches for his captors. He managed to escape one night in the fog and cross the lines. There was nothing left for him but to engage in the Legion, for all his papers were lost. His mother and father remain behind in the village which is still in the hands of the Germans. If you can figure to yourself that mother, whose six sons are in the French army, not one of whom she has had any news from since August, you will have some idea of what is being gone through with over here. . . .

TO THE "NEW YORK SUN" — ON THE AISNE March 24,1915.

Among so many hours in the soldier's life that modern warfare makes monotonous and unromantic there come those too when the heart expands with accesses of enthusiasm that more than compensate for all his hardships and suffering. Such was the afternoon of the review we passed the other day before the General of our army corps.

All the morning in the hayloft of our cantonment we labored cleaning from rifle and equipment, clothes and person, their evidence of the week in the trenches from which we had just returned. At noon under the most beautiful of spring skies we marched out of the village two battalions strong.

It was pleasant this little promenade, to escape for a while from the narrow circumscription to which we are so strictly confined and get a glimpse of the outer world again from which we have been so long and so completely isolated. Here the littlest things were novel and charming—to pass through new landscapes and villages, to look on women and children again, to see automobiles and get a whiff of gasolene that has the strongest power of evoking associations and bringing back the life that we have left so far, far behind. In contrast with the sinister lifelessness and suspense that reigns along the front, here, as soon as one is out of the zone of artillery fire, all is bustle and busy operations. Along the roads were the camps of the engineers and dépôts filled with material for defence and military works-piles of lumber, pontoon bridges in sections, infinite rolls of barbed wire, thousands of new picks and shovels neatly laid out, that raised groans from the men as they passed, for Cæsar's remark about the spade having won him more than the sword holds curiously true in the Gallic wars of today, at least so far as our experience has gone.

The roads were teeming with life, lumbering wagons and mule trains mingling with thundering motor lorries and Paris auto buses in the immense work of ravitaillement, motor cyclists whizzing back and forth with despatches, chic officers lounging back in the depths of luxurious limousines that were once the pride of the boulevards. Whereas on the firing line each unit has a sense of terrible detachment, here we could feel reassuringly the nation working behind us, the tightened sinews of that great, complex system of which we are but the ultimate points of pressure in the mighty effort it is making.

For fifteen kilometers or so we marched back over hill and vale, singing the chansons de route of the French soldier—along poplar lined canals where the big péniches are stalled, through picturesque villages where the civilians, returned to their reconquered territory, came to their doors and greeted us as we passed. Once we passed a group of German prisoners working on the roads. They looked neat and well cared for and took good-naturedly enough the stream of banter as we marched by.

On the sunny plateau we were joined by the two relief battalions of the regiment that holds the sector to our left, and all were drawn up on the plain in columns of sections by four, a fine spectacle. We had not waited long when the General appeared down the road. He was superbly mounted, was followed by a dragoon bearing the tricolor on his lance and an escort of about a dozen horsemen. Four thousand bayonets flashed in the air as he rode by. Then the band struck up the march of the Second Chasseurs and under the mounted figure, silhouetted on a little knoll, we paraded by to its stirring strains. At the same time, with a great fracas, a big, armed monoplane rose from the fields nearby and commenced circling overhead to protect us from the attack of any hostile aircraft to which our serried ranks offered so tempting a mark.

Again we manoeuvred in position and while the états-majors were conversing we stacked rifles, laid down our sacks and broke ranks. I took the occasion to seek out a soldier of the —--ème and learn something of the kind of life they are leading on the plateau to our left. It is much more thrilling than ours apparently. The position is one of considerable strategic importance, so that the lines run within a stone's throw of each other, Sapping and mining go on incessantly. The noise of rifle firing never stops up there on the crest, and the nights are lit up continually with the glare of magnesium rockets. As if the menace of having the trench blown up at any moment under their feet was not trial enough, the proximity of the lines at this point subject the French soldiers to the fire of the "minenwerfer," or bomb thrower, those engines of destruction that were one of the several novelties that German prevision introduced into the present war.

The projectiles, as I understand it, are thrown from a spring gun, and not by explosive force, so that there is no explosion on their leaving the cannon. A sentinel with a whistle stands in the French line; whenever he sees one of these bombs arrive he gives the signal and anybody that is outside in the trenches dives into the nearest shelter at hand till the terrific explosion that they produce is past. Fortunately the fire of these machines cannot be trained with much accuracy.

I asked this soldier if they had been attacked lately and he described to me their last engagement, a typical assault in the desperate kind of struggle that goes on at these points of close contact along the front. A ditch has been dug previously to the very edge of our lines of barbed wire. For hours before the attack is to be delivered the trenches are deluged with artillery fire so intense that the French are unable to man their first line defences, but must remain back in the communicating galleries waiting the decisive moment.

Suddenly the guns are silent and simultaneously the enemy pours out of the ditch forty, thirty yards away. Some carry wire cutters, others hold the rifle in the left hand and with the right shower the trenches with grenades that they draw from sacks slung over the shoulder. The French rush to their crénaux. The roar of rifle and machine gun fire bursts out, and a brief, ferocious struggle ensues, which is simply a question of the speed and number of balls that can be discharged in a given number of seconds and the speed and number of men that in the same time can be rushed against the position.

The attack in question was a complete failure and only resulted in piling higher the heaps of dead that lie where they fell in the continuous battle that at this point has been going on now for six months, with alternations of success that in no case can be estimated in more than fractions of a hundred meters.

Before I had time to gather details of this affair from my comrade of the —-ème the order "Sac au dos" ran through the ranks. Baïonnette au canon!" "Présentez-armes!" went from captain to captain. Again the flash of the 4,000 bayonets. And while the battalions stood there, silent, motionless, the band broke out into the "Marseillaise."

At the first bars of the familiar strains even the horses felt the wave of emotion that rippled over the field and whinnied in accompaniment. There was something sublime about it there in such a place and under such circumstances. Unconsciously our lips framed the words of the wonderful song. Instinctively our eyes turned to the north. There on the furthest ramparts of the bare hills was the faint white line that marked the enemy's trenches, and two hundred, one hundred, fifty yards below, our own, where the comrades of our alternating battalions were even then engaged in the grim conflict-pressing always on, desperately, determinedly, heroically.

Quoi, ces cohortes étrangères

Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!

How marvellously every phrase of the song of 1792 applied to the situation of 1915!

Entendez-vous dans nos campagnes

Mugir ces féroces soldats?

The crisis was the same, the passion the same! May our hearts in the hour when the supreme demand is to be made on us be fired with the same enthusiasm that filled them as we stood there on the sunny plateau listening to the Battle Hymn of the Army of the Rhine!

All were in high spirits as we marched home that evening. We took a short cut, cross-country, for it was already getting dark enough to traverse without danger the field where we passed a while exposed to the distant artillery. The last glow of sunset shone down the gray valley, illumining with a brazen lustre the windings of the river as we tramped back over the pontoon bridge and into cantonment again. Something breathed unmistakably of spring and the eve of great events.

And that night in our candle-lit loft we uncorked bottles of bubbling champagne. Again the strains of the noble hymn broke spontaneously from our lips. And clinking our tin army cups, with the spell of the afternoon still strong upon us, we raised them there together, and we too drank to "the day."

VI — APRIL 15—APRIL 28, 1915

Rousseau's "Confessions." Routine of the trenches. Work and exercises at the rear. Night patrol. Death between the lines. German letters. Enemies' courtesies.

TO HIS SISTER — (Written in pencil on the fly leaves of "Les Confessions de J.-J. Rousseau," Genève, MDCCLXXXII.)

April 15, 1915.

We have just come back from six days in C— where we were cantonnés in the caves of the petit c...

Table of contents

• Title page
• PREFATORY NOTE
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• I. - SEPTEMBER 27-DECEMBER 4, 1914
• II - DECEMBER 8, 1914
• III - DECEMBER 14, 1914-JANUARY 11, 1915
• IV - FEBRUARY 5, 1915
• V - FEBRUARY 17-MARCH 24, 1915
• VI - APRIL 15-APRIL 28, 1915
• VII - MAY 10-JUNE 15, 1915
• VIII - JUNE 18-AUGUST 8, 1915
• IX - AUGUST 10 - SEPTEMBER 24, 1915
• X - OCTOBER 4, 1915-APRIL 13,1916
• XI - MAY 12-JUNE 28, 1916
• XII - CONCLUSION
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER