Back to the Front (31 page)
Authors: Stephen O'Shea
When I walk from the wide lawn of the graveyard up the last two hundred yards to the cross at the summit, the notion of a
calvary is inescapable even if that image does not fit. There is nothing holy or sanctified about such tortured ground. The
peak is scarred, not sacred.
Far from being a national Golgotha, Hartmannswillerkopf is the Front's final testament to the sheer futility of the Great
War. Unlike every other part of the Front, however, the trenches here come with a view. Hundreds of feet below the peak, the
green and yellow plain of Alsace fans out toward the dark metallic ribbon of the Rhine in the distance. Beyond that, a dozen
miles away, the cloud-topped ridges of
Schwarzwald
—the Black Forest—roll in like breakers from the eastern horizon.
The view from this, the last great battlefield of the Western Front, might please some improperly weaned Nietschzean, but
it is inconveniently grandiose for my purposes. The war, like the Front, did not end on the heights of exultation, with some
clear-eyed view from a mountaintop of acquired wisdom. The war of our grandfathers ended the way it had been waged: sloppily,
cruelly, destructive of the past and disastrous for the future. The endgame of the war already partook of the twentieth century's
long march into forgetfulness.
S
o WHAT HAPPENED?
The byword of the regular Allied soldier stuck in France after the last of the Ludendorff offensives was:
"Wait for the Americans and the tanks." The former now numbered more than a million and the latter, proven devastatingly effective
in a limited engagement at Cambrai at the end of 1917, were rolling off assembly lines. The chief Allied commanders—Foch and
Petain for the French, Haig for the British, Pershing for the Americans—drew up plans for a grandiose offensive in 1919. In
the meantime, it was agreed, the exhausted Germans could be kept off balance by a series of attacks until the advent of the
wet, cold days of winter.
The French and the Americans began the decisive action on July 18, 1918, by attacking the new German salient that stretched
to the Marne. Their superiority in manpower and firepower pushed the Germans back until new defensive lines were formed south
of the River Aisne. On August 8, it was the turn of the British army. In a surprise attack out of the village of Villers-Bretonneux
in Picardy, Australian and Canadian troops followed a wall of tanks and made ten-mile incursions into the German front. More
important, the scale and suddenness of the success revealed to commanders on both sides the demoralization of the Kaiser's
armies. Many units surrendered after putting up only token resistance, the Feldgrau soldiers singing in delight as they emerged
from their dugouts to surrender.
The Allied attacks then came in quick succession, forcing the German warlords to scramble to send their ever-depleting number
of reinforcements to help manage an orderly retreat. On August 20, the French attacked again on the Aisne; the following day
the British hit north of Albert. By the time the Americans went into action at St. Mihiel the Germans had retreated in Picardy
once again to the Hindenburg Line. Even that could not be held. The Belgians and the British finally broke through at Ypres,
as the Americans pressed up in the Argonne in late September. Soon every Allied army was attacking as the German army slowly
backed its way through Belgium and northern France.
At home, imperial Germany began to fall apart. The autocratic government and the privations of wartime could be endured no
longer. Riots broke out, sailors mutinied, and a new liberal chancellor was appointed to work real reforms with the Reichstag.
Ludendorff resigned his post on October 27—and would remain in obscurity until 1923, when he participated in Hitler's failed
beer-hall putsch in Munich. In early November, 1918, the Second Reich finally collapsed under the pressure of mounting chaos,
and the Kaiser, forced to abdicate, fled to the Netherlands. The newly constituted republic consented to the Allied terms
for surrender and the armistice was signed in Field-Marshal Foch's railway carriage in a clearing of the Compiegne forest.
The papers were initialed in the early hours of November 11, 1918. A few seconds before eleven o'clock that same morning,
one observer with South African troops in Flanders saw a German machine-gunner fire off a scorching hail of bullets toward
their trenches. At the stroke of eleven, the gunner stood up, made a deep bow, turned around, and walked away.
The war was over. Princip's bullet had caused some
67
million men to don uniforms and go to fight. One in every six of these men was killed. Of the remainder, approximately half
were wounded. On the Western Front alone, more than 4 million had died in their ditches.
I
HAVE COME
down from the mountain. The Vosges end as abruptly as they begin, and here at their southern extremity vineyards
hug the lower slopes near the towns of Thann and Cernay. Once past the twine of roadways connecting the two, the Front leads
over slow rises of alternating field and woodland to the Swiss border. I set out alone over this uneven plain, glad to regain
the gentle rhythm of level walking after the strenuous trails in the mountains. Left-right, left-right, left-right—there is
little to occupy me now except a longing for closure. But for a flurry of movement in 1914, this may have been the quietest
part of the entire Front.
The route takes me past a garbage dump, then under an expressway near a village named Burnhaupt. I notice with practiced irony
that the expressway's restaurant complex, Les Portes de l'Alsace, is located in no-man's-land. My long afternoon's walk in
the fields yields no sign of the distant fighting, just the usual regiment of irritated farm dogs. After a night spent digesting
sauerkraut in the market town of Altkirch, the last day of my journey dawns. I decide that there can be no trace of the war
left in this land of plump cheeks and gabled domesticity. Rural Alsace is far too house-proud to leave trenches lying about.
In a village called Hirtzbach I walk alongside a watercourse overhung with scores of flowerpots. On either side of the stream,
half-timbered dwellings strain under the weight of several generations of geraniums. The place has won some sort of award.
Evidently, the region's villages try to outbloom each other every year in a competition adjudicated by flower experts. Neatness
must count, too—in Hirtzbach, even the dirt doesn't have dirt on it.
The gentle landscape outside the villages here is far prettier than that on the plain near the mountains. Low wooded ridges
alternate with paddocks of greenery on which listless horses graze. Signs in the villages now inform the curious that this
part of the world may be referred to as the Route of the Fried Carp. The tourist board must have decided that this name was
snappier than the End of the Western Front.
At twin villages named Seppois-le-Bas and Seppois-le-Haut, I arrive at a stream called the Largue. On either side of it ran
the final trenches of the Front. I scan an old French military map that shows the sector in great detail. The German side
was usually better built than either the French or the British, so I decide to follow the eastern, German side of the Largue.
My quest for old bunkers is quickly thwarted. After a mile or so the Western Front becomes a golf course, from which I am
shooed away by a party of four annoyed duffers. Reluctantly, I take a road around the links to the hamlet of Mooslargue. Two
children stop what they are doing to look at me in openmouthed astonishment. I feel as if I have disturbed a field of sunflowers
again.
Muddy little Mooslargue shares with Pfetterhouse, the much larger town on the other bank of the stream, the distinction of
being the last built-up area on the Front. On the other end of the ditch is Nieuport. It is said that when news reached the
German trenches that a mine had sunk the ship carrying Lord Kitchener, the British military chief, some clever Feldgrau in
a trench started banging his mess tin in delight. Soon the clatter spread, until the whole of the German Western Front was
smashing metal plates together, all the way from Nieuport to Mooslargue, through Flanders, Artois, Picardy, Champagne, Lorraine,
and Alsace, a chain of undergound derision 450 miles long. Today, of course, Mooslargue is deep in anonymous sleep.
The bridge over the Largue between Mooslargue and Pfetterhouse stands about half a mile away from the right angle the Swiss
border makes at this extremity of Alsace. The stream has been channeled to the south to create a linear fish pond, around
which a dozen or so sportsmen are snoozing on lawn chairs beside firmly planted fishing rods. There are signs posted prohibiting
outsiders like me from doing the same, but nowhere does it say that I cannot advance farther upstream. I walk under the shade
trees past the fishermen, glad to see they are not as secretive and antisocial as their counterparts on the Somme. Although
I'm willing to trade civilities—"Are the carp biting today?"—my presence does not excite any interest. The hiker, apparently,
is a transient phenomenon to be endured, like mosquitoes in the heat of summer. After continuing for about eight hundred yards
more along the bank of the Largue, I understand why the backpacker must be a common sight here in the high season. My path
crosses a trail marked by a sign for a
Grande Randonnée,
a long-haul hiking path that crisscrosses Europe. This one is the E5, which goes from the Atlantic to the Adriatic. It is
fitting that my unsignposted summer of walking down a metaphor should end on a track laid out by professional pedestrians.
Left foot meets right. There is even a shelter nearby, suitable for sleeping overnight or brewing some tea.
I am about to turn on my heels and head back to the road when I realize that this cannot be the end. The Front went all the
way to the border. I started at the seaside in Nieuport, on the strand, in the dunes, on the beach—not at some place hundreds
of yards away. If there is to be an end to this walk, let it be a proper one. For the first time in a week, my Great War presences
return. Go on—say Cadogan, Aronsohn, Tommy, Bartholomew, Daniel—find the right place.
There is a thicket of trees ahead, which I barge through in the hope of finding something that bespeaks finality. The undergrowth
thins gradually until I am walking freely up an ankle-twisting slope strewn with loose rocks and dead leaves. Just as a feeling
of foolishness begins to steal over me in this landscape of natural anarchy, I catch sight of three ghostly white markers
placed at regular intervals in a row. Two have a straight line painted across their top; one, an L-shaped pattern. This is
the border, where Switzerland hangs a right.
This should be enough—the Front stops here. But it isn't. I follow the markers farther uphill and, within minutes, find what
I've been seeking. A concrete pillbox crumbles onto the forest floor. The very last in a long line. My grandfathers, Tommy,
Cadogan, Aronsohn tell me what to do.
I give it a kick, then walk away.
T
HE TREES IN
the forest have shed most of their colors. Today the sun has come out, a brittle disk hovering tentatively overhead,
too weak to burn off the lingering mists and too tired to bring the forest of Compiegne to life. It is November 11, and the
Ohio Boomer and I — ten years older than we were during our wintry weekend visit to the Somme—have walked out of the village
of Rethondes and into the woods. The only concession made to the passing of a decade is the size of the lunch we've just eaten.
It was enormous, a foretaste of French middle age.
The road leading toward La Clairiere de l'Armistice (the Armistice Clearing) runs as straight as the bridle paths that crisscross
it at regular intervals. A dozen or so buses painted a drab army green are parked on either side of the paved roadway, their
uniformed drivers slouched behind steering wheels, smoking cigarettes and reading hardcover comic books with an intensity
that is almost religious. They take no notice of us as we pass, two more civilians on the way through the woods for the ceremony.
The clearing at Rethondes, formerly a railroad siding, is where the piece of paper was signed that put an end to the war on
the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.
At a junction in the road the police are preventing a small crowd of about twenty people from going the last two hundred yards
to the clearing. We make our way to the front of the group and see a platoon of women soldiers surrounded by rifle-toting
gendarmes. The police is protecting the army. A civilian in a dark suit talks into his lapel, a sure sign that bodyguards
and politicians are on their way.
"Who's coming?" I ask my neighbor.
"Dunno," he replies. "Maybe the president."
His companion lets out a derisive snort. "If it were the president, sausage-head, we wouldn't be this close."
The first fellow motions toward the police. "Then why are these jerks here?"
It's a good question, we all agree, and within minutes it is answered. A dark trio of Citroen limos, their cat's-eyes headlights
shining in spite of the slanting afternoon sunbeams, swings theatrically into the intersection. The women snap to attention,
the police tense and face us.
First out onto the pavement, no doubt because of the spring still left in their limbs, are two youthful men dressed in conservative
suits. Falling across their chests, in beauty pageant fashion, are sashes, which identify them as mayors of nearby towns.
Two fat sash-wearers then struggle out of the second car, followed by an elderly general laden with shiny medals and metallic
braid. The beige kepi on his head looks as if it has spent a week in the shop of a playful goldsmith. One man seems not dressed
for a costume party. He, we conclude, must be the out-of-town political dignitary. When he steps out of his limo, all of the
others mill about him in agitated deference.
No one in our crowd of onlookers stirs. There is a low buzz of whispered questioning and a repetitive exchange of shrugs.
Sausage-head turns toward his friend and closes his
eyes,
as if granting him a debating point. When he reopens them, it is to say, defensively, "Must be a minister." The unknown politico—he
is, I learn later, the French minister of veterans' affairs—nods to the small crowd of voters, who look back at him in stone-faced
disappointment at his lack of celebrity. He goes to lay a wreath at a monument obscured by the honor guard of soldiers, but
already the crowd has lost interest in him. Two dogs somewhere to the back of us have begun fighting, setting up a howling
call-and-response that drowns out any attempt at solemnity.
By the time everyone has turned around to face the intersection again, the limos are leaving. They go the last few yards before
turning up the drive toward the clearing, where the main ceremony of the afternoon is about to begin. The honking of a brass
band can already be heard. The police relax, the women soldiers whip out their cigarettes. The stone monument shows a Prussian
eagle, dashed and dying, brought down to earth. Eventually, we are allowed to continue on our way.
T
HE FRONT HAS
changed over the past ten years. More and more people are visiting it, and Western Front associations are booming.
All is not so quiet. In the Picard town of Peronne, a new museum and resource center has opened to initiate good Euro-citizens
into the history and historiography of the war. It is a radical departure from the private little museums that litter the
Front with their mix of undigested nationalism and sly war porn. Peronne's Historial is a stimulating place, giving primacy
to cultural studies over the usual military descriptions.
Elsewhere, people are sprucing up the Front. In Alsace, a weekend volunteer group formed in the early 1990s now comes to weed
the Linge and other battlefields. Around Soissons, a group calling themselves war archaeologists spends their time digging
up old bunkers and tracing the graffiti left by long-dead soldiers. The French state, always keen to improve its tourism infrastructure,
has adopted a World War I logo for signs and cemeteries. In some places, the unmarked battlefields I visited on foot have
since sprouted officially sponsored signboards giving officially sponsored versions of what happened. The one at the Chemin
des Dames, for example, manages never once to mention the most famous military mutinies in French history. At the Somme, the
local government has installed directional arrows with poppies on them, so that British visitors don't have to struggle with
any foreign iconography. Ten years ago, nothing of this sort existed. As it fades further and further into the past, the First
World War, paradoxically, seems to be having a revival.
Whether this renewal of interest will do the cause of truth any good is another question. For those who take even a glancing
interest in modern history, the First World War is usually seen as some natural calamity, like the biblical flood. Those who
see it otherwise are sometimes crackpots: on November 11, 1993, a group of anarchists took to the streets in my Paris neighborhood
and vented their antimilitarist ire by smashing the windows of the local McDonald's. Even I, who had hiked the length of the
Western Front in search of connections, found that one a bit of a stretch.
As I walk over to the clearing now, it occurs to me that the Front is losing its hold on my imagination, that this may be
my last visit to a site associated with the First World War. As a pastime, I've come to realize, it is decidedly odd, akin
to the zealous gardening hobby of the New Zealand couple I had met years earlier in a Belgian graveyard. What matters to me
now is less the content of the past than the way it informs the present. That is the one lesson drawn from my days and nights
at the Front: the past must be addressed, shaken up a bit, but then it should be relinquished.
"A
ND THEN FOCH
took the armistice and put it in his briefcase. Foch got up from the table. Then Foch got off of the train.
Foch, despite the earliness of the hour, went to Paris . . ."
A military man on a platform in the Rethondes clearing is giving the keynote speech. It is all about Ferdinand Foch, to the
exclusion of anything else. Out of the loudspeakers pours a weirdly outdated cult of the personality. Change a few names,
and we could be in North Korea.
The poor fellow's speech goes on and on. Foch, Foch, Foch, and more Foch. It's almost a comfort to see how consistent the
French army is in its tastelessness. A lifetime has passed since the armistice was signed here, and one of its officers can
still publicly behave as if a French colossus bestrode the planet. Instead of showing decency for the memory of the poilus,
the army spokesman is constructing a new Napoleon. The sclerosis of his institution inspires awe.
I look around the clearing. Aside from the official stand, there are two covered enclosures for special guests. The one closest
to me holds veterans and their wives. Only a couple of the men look old enough to have fought in the Great War. The rest,
in their seventies and eighties, are witnesses to the Second World War. Some, no doubt, were Resistance fighters. All would
know of another railway siding near Compiegne, called Royalieu. It is from there that 53,000 French people were sent to Auschwitz.
The trains of Rethondes and Royalieu ran through the darkness of the twentieth century.
A
s A GENERATION
like the Boomers heads into midlife, perhaps it is only natural we develop a longing for context. Hence an
interest in the past, and in the century that formed us. Which is a good thing, as long as the tools of our memory become
demilitarized.
Many studies, and certainly most official literature, minimize the bumbling and atrocious conduct of the war. Of Passchendaele
and Haig's decision to press on I have read in an otherwise literate book: "His decision to continue the offensive after the
weather broke may have been wrong but it would have been even more wrong to abandon the attack." This, and other examples
like it, make you question the simple humanity of some military historians. Anachronistic anger, of the type I felt at the
Chemin des Dames and at Ypres, may not be such a failing after all. If people are still lying, if the statue of Joffre still
stands in Paris, the likeness of Haig in London, then perhaps some anger is useful. Why should we accept the party line? If
we are to let the past inform our lives, then at least let it be a version that is not a self-serving story issued by some
institution like the army or the state.
What really should be remembered and taught about the Western Front is that, for the first time, societies were reorganized
to feed a killing machine. It would not be the last. My ghosts from the Great War tell me to get the word out: what happened
to them can happen again. On June 10, 1991, I stood on lower Broadway in New York's financial district and saw joyful crowds
hang people in effigy, as a way of greeting victorious troops back from Iraq. Celebration was in the air, but so too was the
sulfur of hate, thick and unadulterated. Something as degrading as the Western Front no longer seemed so implausible. Lest
We Forget—not just the dilemmas of our grandfathers, but the continual siren song of violence in uniform. The Serbs in Bosnia,
the Hutus in Rwanda, even the Canadians in Somalia. The next century's short list for enforced amnesia is already lengthening.
T
HE OTHER GROUP
of guests at the ceremony in the Rethondes clearing are schoolchildren. There are perhaps two hundred of them,
buzzing around their chairs and squealing for the sheer pleasure of it. Their teachers have almost given up trying to quiet
them. The contrast between the two groups of guests opposite the podium is striking. The veterans sit silently, almost motionless
with age; the young bounce up and down, in frenzied impatience. One is reflective; the other, unlistening. Don't move, says
one; don't preach, says the other. The divide is clear, and eternal. It says more about the transmission of experience than
any Western Front ever could. I turn and leave the ceremony, satisfied, at last, that I have seen enough of my metaphor.
The following year the French prime minister will visit Rethondes. By then, I will have learned that there was an unsuspected
presence with me when I walked the Front. Another great-uncle, Jeremiah O'Shea, the elder brother of my grandfather, was a
soldier in the British army. He was also a forgotten man, until a relative in County Kerry summoned up a vague recollection
of him. The archivists at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission did the rest. Jeremiah died at age thirty-two, in his native
Tralee, of wounds suffered in the Great War, most probably at Gallipoli. His date of death was July 6, 1916, two days after
poet Alan Seeger went to his fated rendezvous and two months, to the day, before yet another great-uncle fell at Guillemont.
Thus Jeremiah joins Tommy and the others just when it is time to leave them. I am sorry, Jeremiah.
The French government set about distributing prizes on November n, 1995. Surviving soldiers from the
guerre de quatorze
had been hunted down in the previous months, with the intention of bestowing on them the Legion of Honor. More than 1,500
poilus were found and informed of the extraordinary decoration they were going to receive. One veteran of Verdun, ninety-nine
years old and unimpressed, turned down the proffered medal. "I don't want to be a member of the Legion," he told the press.
"What for? Nobody learned anything from our war."
I disagree.