Alan Seeger graduated from Harvard College in the remarkable class of 1910 that also produced T. S. Eliot, John Reed, and Walter Lippmann; and his life beyond Harvard Yard quickly became as artistic and bohemian and politically engaged as any of theirs. Trying his hand at poetry, he lived in Greenwich Village for the next two years and in Paris for two years after that. He enlisted in the French Foreign Legion in August 1914, along with fifty other Americans. By the fall he was serving in the trenches, and on December 8, he wrote to the New York Sun: “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.” His first major battle experience came with the French offensive in Champagne, which began on September 25, 1915, as he had anticipated in his diary entries during the preceding days.
Suippes, September 16.—Left Plancher-Bas for good, day before yesterday evening. The fine weather which had lasted without a break for several weeks came to an end, and the gray skies corresponded with the melancholy that many of us felt at breaking forever with associations that had grown so dear to us. Marched away after dark in the rain, our rifles decorated with bouquets and our musettes filled with presents from the good townspeople. The Tirailleurs and Zouaves, coming from the direction of Giromagny, preceded us. We entrained at Champagney, about 45 men in a car. Terrible discomfort. Impossible to stretch legs or lie out flat. Several fights; had a fight myself with the corporal. Found ourselves next morning at Vesoul and from there followed the same route as on coming, that is, up through Langres, Chaumont, Vitry-le-François, to Châlons. We had been hearing for some time of the big concentration of troops at the Camp de Châlons and were not surprised when we turned north and stopped at the way station of St.-Hilaire. Everything bore testimony of the big offensive in preparation, troops cantonned in the villages, the railroad lines congested with trains of cannon and material, but most sinister and significant, the newly constructed evacuation sheds for the wounded, each one labelled “blessés assis” or “blessés couchés.” Violent cannonade as we disembarked.
Marched seven or eight kilometers up a national road and then made a grande halte at sundown for soup. Pleasant country that we marched through, the Champagne pouilleuse with its broad plains and vast distances. The good weather had come back and the waxing moon hung in the south. After the grande halte we resumed the march at ten o’clock. Everyone in good spirits and full of excitement at the prospect of the big action in preparation that everything bore evidence of. Heavy cannonading continued during the entire march and the northern skies were lit up continually with the German fusées. During our last pose, just before entering Suippes, several heavy German shells fell into the town with terrific explosions. The flashes of the cannon lit up all the sky like summer lightning. Marched into the dark, silent town about two o’clock in the morning. The civils apparently have all been evacuated. Marched on and bivouacked in an open field beyond the town. Slept well on the ground.
This morning we moved up here into a big grove and pitched tents, the first time we have done this on the front. Do not know whether we are to go up to the trenches or wait here until we go into action. The 2me Etranger ought certainly to be first. It is going to be a grandiose affair and the cannonade will doubtless be a thing beyond imagination. The attack this time will probably be along a broad front. Our immediate object ought to be Vouziers and the line of the Aisne, but it is probably the object of the Etat-Major to expel the Germans from Northern France entirely. They are fortunate who have lasted to see this, and I thrill at the certain prospect of being in the thick of it.
September 18.—Took pick and shovel yesterday evening and marched up to the front—the whole regiment—where we worked all night. Our road lay again through dark and silent Suippes, where the moonlight, less covered tonight, revealed the heaps of ruins—rent walls, shells of burnt-out buildings, and a whole quarter completely razed by the fire the Germans must have started before evacuating the town a year ago. Took the Vouziers road northward toward the trenches, where the sky was lit continually with the fusées éclairantes and the flash of the cannon. At one time during our first pose there must have been an attack of some sort, for the German rockets began popping up like “flower pots” of our Fourth of Julys, and the cannon flashes redoubled, but we could hear no fusillade for the continual rumble of traffic on the highroad beside us.
Turned off a side road after a while in the direction of Perthes-les-Hurlus. Climbed a long, gradual ascent. Our batteries fired occasionally close at hand. During last pose a half dozen heavy German shells—probably 210s—fell near a battery emplacement near us with the most terrific explosion, the singing shell-fragments falling among us. Walked through the pine groves at the summit of the crest and then came out through a deep-cut boyau to a magnificent spectacle. The position here is a valuable one that must once have been fiercely disputed, for it dominates all the low rolling country to the north. Here, illumined by the German fusées that shot up continually from their trenches a mile or so off, lay the vast battlefield that in a few days is to see one of the most tremendous actions ever fought. The clouds had blown off, the stars were all out, the night was a glorious one. We formed a long file, one man with a pick and one with a shovel at five yard intervals down the open northern slope and started digging an immense boyau to rush troops up through for the attack. Worked all night, then marched back and arrived at bivouac at dawn. A fatiguing night but can sleep late and rest all day.
September 19.—Went up and worked again last night. Beautiful starry night; bright moonlight. A pleasure walking up, but the work was tiring and the road long. A violent artillery duel. Our advanced batteries of heavy guns fired continually. The Germans replied less frequently, but when their heavy shells fell by twos and fours the explosions were terrific beyond anything I have heard before on the front. They covered the lines with smoke, through which the fusées glimmered, blurred and reddened. The smell of powder was heavy in the air. It was daybreak when we returned. . . .
Today at rapport the captain read the order from Joffre announcing to the troops the great general attack. The company drew close around him, and he spoke to us of our reasons for confidence in success and a victory that would drive the enemy definitely out of France. The German positions are to be overwhelmed with a hurricane of artillery fire and then great assaults will be delivered all along the line. The chances for success are good. It will be a battle without precedent in history.
September 21.—About twenty heavy shells fell yesterday evening around the Suippes station, which is right near the park where we are bivouacking. Went out to watch them burst; no serious damage. Went up to work after supper. The dead and wounded were being carried in litters through the streets of Suippes, which had been bombarded, too. The fine weather is continuing, and it was a beautiful moonlit night, but frosty. Hard work until two o’clock digging communication ditches. Officers went down to the trenches to reconnoitre the terrain. The captain spoke to us again at rapport today, and gave us his impressions of this visit. The Colonials apparently are to lead the attack; we ought to come in the third or fourth wave. Our objective is the Ferme de Navarin, about 3½ kilometers behind the German lines. Here we will halt to reform, while the entire 8th Corps, including numerous cavalry, will pass through the breach we have made. These will be sublime moments; there are good chances of success and even of success without serious losses.
September 22.—The day ought to be near at hand. The artillery is becoming more and more violent and tonight as I write here by candlelight in our tent the cannonade is extremely violent down the line toward Reims. The Germans continue to bombard Suippes and the Suippes station. Luckily they have not discovered our bivouac, for the French keep continual patrols in the air and no German aeroplane dares to come over here. Should they bombard us here the execution of these terrific 210 shells would be appalling. Today several fell in the park, not more than fifty yards from the tent. I thought they were going to bother us, but these were really bad shots at the station that had gone astray. Spend a hard night at work yesterday, leaving here at 6 P.M. and not getting back till 6 this morning. This afternoon walked to Somme-Suippe to try and buy something, but there is nothing to be had. The fine weather continues. We have received steel casques in place of the képis.
September 23.—Bombardment of the station resumed this morning. Went out to the gate to watch the shells burst. The men of the génie “beat it” as usual into the fields near by, but a few nervy ones remained to take the little Décauville engines and a trainload of shells out of danger. When the bombardment seemed over I noticed them all running back and commencing digging. Went over and joined them and helped disinter three men who had been buried alive. They had taken refuge in a deep trench that had been dug for the purpose. But a big shell had fallen right beside this trench and covered the unfortunate men with dirt. We dug and dug and finally came upon a piece of cloth. With difficulty we uncovered one after another and pulled them out, but it was too late. They had been smothered to death. . . . Wild rumors are reaching us of victories on other parts of the line. It is said the French have taken the plateau of Craonne and that the English are at Lille.
September 24.—We are to attack tomorrow morning. Gave in our blankets this morning; they are to be carried on the wagons. Also made bundles, in order to lighten the sack of all unnecessary articles, including the second pair of shoes. We are admirably equipped, and if we do not succeed it will not be the fault of those responsible for supplying us. A terrific cannonade has been going on all night and is continuing. It will grow in violence until the attack is launched, when we ought to find at least the first enemy line completely demolished. What have they got up their sleeves for us? Where shall we find the strongest resistance? I am very confident and sanguine about the result and expect to march right up to the Aisne, borne on in an irresistible élan. I have been waiting for this moment for more than a year. It will be the greatest moment in my life. I shall take good care to live up to it.
October 25, 1915.
The regiment is back in repos after the battle in Champagne, in which we took part from the beginning, the morning of the memorable 25th September. We are billeted in a pleasant little village not far from Compiègne, quite out of hearing of the cannon. It seems that absurd rumors were current about the fate of Americans in the Legion, so I hasten to let you know that I am all right. Quite a few Americans were wounded, but none killed, to my knowledge.
The part we played in the battle is briefly as follows. We broke camp about 11 o’clock the night of the 24th, and marched up through ruined Souain to our place in one of the numerous boyaux where the troupes d’attaque were massed. The cannonade was pretty violent all that night, as it had been for several days previous, but toward dawn it reached an intensity unimaginable to anyone who has not seen a modern battle. A little before 9.15 the fire lessened suddenly and the crackle of the fusillade between the reports of the cannon told us that the first wave of assault had left and the attack begun. At the same time we received the order to advance. The German artillery had now begun to open upon us in earnest. Amid the most infernal roar of every kind of fire-arms and through an atmosphere heavy with dust and smoke, we marched up through the boyaux to the tranchées de départ. At shallow places and over breaches that shells had made in the bank we caught momentary glimpses of the blue lines sweeping up the hillside or silhouetted on the crest where they poured into the German trenches. When the last wave of the Colonial brigade had left, we followed. Baïonnette au canon, in lines of tirailleurs, we crossed the open space between the lines, over the barbed wire, where not so many of our men were lying as I had feared (thanks to the efficacy of the bombardment) and over the German trench, knocked to pieces and filled with their dead. In some places they still resisted in isolated groups. Opposite us, all was over, and the herds of prisoners were being already led down as we went up. We cheered, more in triumph than in hate, but the poor devils, terror-stricken, held up their hands, begged for their lives, cried “Kamerad,” “Bon Français,” even “Vive la France.” We advanced and lay down in columns by two behind the second crest. Meanwhile, bridges had been thrown across trenches and boyaux, and the artillery, leaving the emplacements where they had been anchored a whole year, came across and took position in the open, a magnificent spectacle. Squadrons of cavalry came up. Suddenly the long, unpicturesque guerre de tranchées was at an end and the field really presented the aspect of the familiar battle pictures—the battalions in manœuvre, the officers, superbly indifferent to danger, galloping about on their chargers. But now the German guns, moved back, began to get our range and the shells to burst over and around batteries and troops, many with admirable precision. Here my best comrade was struck down by shrapnel at my side—painfully but not mortally wounded.
I often envied him after that. For now our advanced troops were in contact with the German second-line defenses, and these proved to be of a character so formidable that all further advance without a preliminary artillery preparation was out of the question. And our rôle, that of troops in reserve, was to lie passive in an open field under a shell fire that every hour became more terrific, while aeroplanes and captive balloons, to which we were entirely exposed, regulated the fire.
That night we spent in the rain. With portable picks and shovels each man dug himself in as well as possible. The next day our concentrated artillery again began the bombardment, and again the fusillade announced the entrance of the infantry into action. But this time only the wounded appeared coming back, no prisoners. I went out and gave water to one of these, eager to get news. It was a young soldier, wounded in the hand. His face and voice bespoke the emotion of the experience he had been through in a way that I will never forget. “Ah, les salauds!” he cried, “They let us come right up to the barbed wire without firing. Then a hail of grenades and balls. My comrade fell, shot through the leg, got up, and the next moment had his head taken off by a grenade before my eyes.” “And the barbed wire, wasn’t it cut down by the bombardment?” “Not at all in front of us.” I congratulated him on having a blessure heureuse and being well out of the affair. But he thought only of his comrade and went on down the road toward Souain, nursing his mangled hand, with the stream of wounded seeking their postes de secours.
The afternoon of the 28th should have been our turn. We had spent four days under an almost continual bombardment. The regiment had been decimated, though many of us had not fired a shot. After four such days as I hope never to repeat, under the strain of sitting inactive, listening to the slow whistle of 210-millimetre shells as they arrived and burst more or less in one’s proximity, it was a real relief to put sac au dos and go forward. We marched along in columns by two, behind a crest, then over and across an exposed space under the fire of their 77’s, that cost us some men, and took formation to attack on the border of a wood, somewhere behind which they were entrenched. And here we had a piece of luck. For our colonel, a soldier of the old school, stronger for honor than expediency, had been wounded in the first days of the action. Had he been in command, we all think that we should have been sent into the wood (and we would have gone with élan) notwithstanding that the 1er Etranger had just attacked gallantly but unsuccessfully and had been badly cut up. The commandant of our battalion, who had succeeded him in command, when he heard, after a reconnaissance, that the wire had not been sufficiently cut, refused to risk his regiment. So you have him to thank.
The last days of the week we went up into first line to relieve the tired troupes d’attaque. It was an abandoned German artillery position, full of souvenirs of the recent occupants and of testimony to their hasty departure. They did not counterattack on this sector and we finished this first period in comparative tranquillity.
Then two days repos in the rear and we came back to the battle field. The attack of the 6th October netted us some substantial gains but not enough to call into action the troupes de poursuite among which we were numbered. It became more and more evident that the German second line of defense presented obstacles too serious to attempt overcoming for the moment, and we began going up at night to work at consolidating our advanced trenches and turning them into a new permanent line. We spent two weeks on the front this time. But as luck would have it, the bombardment that thundered continually during this period did not fall very heavily on the wood where we were sheltered and we did not suffer seriously in comparison with the first days.
And now we are back in the far rear again, the battle is over, and in the peace of our little village we can sum up the results of the big offensive in which we took part. No one denies that they are disappointing. For we know, who heard and cheered the order of Joffre to the army before the battle, that it was not merely a fight for a position, but a supreme effort to pierce the German line and liberate the invaded country; we know the immense preparation for the attack, what confidence our officers had in its success, and what enthusiasm ourselves. True, we broke their first line along a wide front, advanced on an average of three or four kilometers, took numerous prisoners and cannon. It was a satisfaction at last to get out of the trenches, to meet the enemy face to face, and to see German arrogance turned into suppliance. We knew many splendid moments, worth having endured many trials for. But in our larger aim, of piercing their line, of breaking the long deadlock, of entering Vouziers in triumph, of course we failed.
This check, in conjunction with the serious turn that affairs have taken in the Balkans, makes the present hour a rather grave one for us. Yet it cannot be said to be worse than certain moments that arrived even much later in the course of our Civil War, when things looked just as critical for the North, though in the end of a similar guerre d’usure they pulled out victorious.
But perhaps you will understand me when I say that the matter of being on the winning side has never weighed with me in comparison with that of being on the side where my sympathies lie. This affair only deepened my admiration for, my loyalty to, the French. If we did not entirely succeed, it was not the fault of the French soldier. He is a better man, man for man, than the German. Any one who had seen the charge of the Marsouins at Souain would acknowledge it. Never was anything more magnificent. I remember a captain, badly wounded in the leg, as he passed us, borne back on a litter by four German prisoners. He asked us what regiment we were, and when we told him, he cried “Vive la Légion,” and kept repeating “Nous les avons eus. Nous les avons eus.” He was suffering, but oblivious of his wound, was still fired with the enthusiasm of the assault and all radiant with victory. What a contrast with the German wounded, on whose faces was nothing but terror and despair. What is the stimulus in their slogans of “Gott mit uns” and “für König und Vaterland” beside that of men really fighting in defense of their country? Whatever be the force in international conflicts of having justice and all the principles of personal morality on one’s side, it at least gives the French soldier a strength that’s like the strength of ten against an adversary whose weapon is only brute violence. It is inconceivable that a Frenchman, forced to yield, could behave as I saw German prisoners behave, trembling, on their knees, for all the world like criminals at length overpowered and brought to justice. Such men have to be driven to the assault, or intoxicated. But the Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a passion beside which any of the other forms of experience that are reckoned to make life worth while seem pale in comparison. The modern prototype of those whom history has handed down to the admiration of all who love liberty and heroism in its defense, it is a privilege to march at his side—so much so that nothing the world could give could make me wish myself anywhere else than where I am.
Most of the other Americans have taken advantage of the permission to pass into a regular French regiment. There is much to be said for their decision, but I have remained true to the Legion, where I am content and have good comrades. I have a pride particularly in the Moroccan division, whereof we are the first brigade. Those who march with the Zouaves and the Algerian tirailleurs are sure to be where there is most honor. We are troupes d’attaque now, and so will assist at all the big coups, but be spared the monotony of long periods of inactive guard in the trenches, such as we passed last winter.
I am glad to hear that Thwing has joined the English. I used to know him at Harvard. He refused to be content, no doubt, with lesser emotions while there are hours to be lived such as are being lived now by young men in Flanders and Champagne. It is all to his credit. There should really be no neutrals in a conflict like this, where there is not a people whose interests are not involved. To neutrals who have stomached what America has consented to stomach from Germany—whose ideals are so opposite to hers—who in the event of a German victory would be so inevitably embroiled, the question he put to himself and so resolutely answered will become more and more pertinent.