By F.H.  Gailor, American Rhodes Scholar of New College, Oxford

[From The London Daily Mail, March 24, 1915.]

At the kind invitation of General Longchamps, German Military Governor of the Province of Namur, I spent two days with him going along the country in and behind the firing line in Northern France from near Rheims to the small village of Monthois, near Vouziers, on the Aisne.

About five miles out of Monthois we came to the artillery positions of the Germans.  We could see the flashes of the guns long before we reached the hills where they were placed, but when we came up and dismounted the position was most cleverly concealed by a higher hill in front and the heavy woods which served as a screen for the artillery.  I noticed many holes where the French shells had burst, and the valley to the north looked as if some one had been experimenting with a well digger.  One 21-centimeter shell had cut a swath about 100 yards long out of the woods on the hill where we dismounted.  The trees were twisted from their stumps as if a small cyclone had passed, and one could realize the damage the shells could do merely by the displaced air.

We went on forward into the valley on foot and stopped about two hundred yards in front and to the left of where the German guns were firing.  There, although of course we could not see the French position, we could hear and see their shells as they exploded.  They were firing short, one of the officers told me, because they thought the Germans were on the forward hill.  He could see one of the French aeroplanes directing their fire, but I could not make it out.  We stayed there listening to the shells and watching the few movements of German batteries that were taking place.  A party of officers hidden by the trees were taking observations and telephoning the results of the German fire and, no doubt, of the French fire in the German trenches.  There was no excitement; but for the noise the whole scene reminded me of some kind of construction work, such as building a railroad.

After about an hour, when nothing had happened, one began to realize that even such excitement may become monotonous and be taken as a matter of course.  One of the officers told me that the Germans had been there since the beginning of October and that even the trenches were in the same position as when they first came.

Certainly the trenches seem permanent enough for spending many Winters.  A number of them have now been built of concrete, especially in that swampy part near the Aisne where they strike water about three feet underground.  The difficulty is in draining out the water when it rains.

Some of the trenches have two stories, and at the back of many of them are subterranean rest houses built of concrete and connected with the trenches by passages.  The rooms are about seven feet high and ten feet square, and above the ground all evidence of the work is concealed by green boughs and shrubbery so that they may escape the attention of the enemy’s aeroplanes.