Fleet Street's Finest Goes to War
from a French magazine : a humorous view of the life of a war-correspondent at the front
Memories of Some Fellow Wanderers
If you imagine that war correspondents are anything like the fancy portraits of them drawn by novelists and playwrights please get that idea out of your head at once
The first of whom I read in fiction were the two newspaper men in Jules Verne's capital tale "Michael Strogoff. The Courier of the Tsar." Do you recollect how one of them, in order to prevent the other from getting at the telegraph wire, while they are waiting for important news begins to transmit the Book of Genesis and carries the story well beyond the Fall of Man ? If a correspondent did anything of that kind nowadays, he would soon be in search of a job.
Then there are war correspondents in Rudyard Kipling's "Light That Failed". Not a bit like I as far as I remember, they frequented smart restaurants in evening dress, and drank large quantities of champagne to the day when war would begin again. All the correspondents nowadays who really know war hate it. And they are not in the least likely to be discovered drinking champagne unless someone else is paying for it.
When I talked in the United States and Canada about my experiences during the war I used to begin by apologising to my audiences for not coming up to the popular idea of what a war correspondent should look like. For nearly all the men I know in this line of activity the same apology would have to be made. We are not an adventurous, dare-devil lot by any means.
Uniform - and an Umbrella
Far from being "armed to the teeth," as stage war correspondents always are, we scarely ever carry arms at all. I had never done so until I was wandering about in Rumania among a peasantry made savage by their sufferings, and in certain districts specially furious with us because they thought we were going to destroy the stores of grain to prevent the enemy getting them. I have avoided trouble many times by having no weapons with me, and at least once in Mexico during the Revolutionary War, it saved my life.
I have known war correspondents who neither rode a horse nor drove a motorcar, who would have hated to sleep without a bed, and who became very peevish if they were not fed at regular intervals. One in particular with whom I once campaigned grew so intolerable if he got hungry that another man and I used to carry eatables about with us and give them to him to keep him in good humour. He is in the Army now. I have no doubt he luxuriates in a "cushy " job.
On the British front the correspondent's costume has been wisely standardised. He wears officer's uniform without badges. On some other fronts the question of dress was left to be decided by each man for himself. I recollect one, a thoroughly good fellow and really brilliant writer for American periodicals, who went campaigning in Russia attired thus. He wore a soldier's blouse with breeches and gaiters. That was an odd combination by itself. Over the blouse he wore a. tweed overcoat, on his head was a squashy looking canvas cap like a muffin and in his hand he always carried an umbrella.
One of the English artists sent over to France to make pictures at the front had an adventure with an umbrella. He had put on his uniform for the first time and was walking along the Strand when it began to rain heavily. Instinct drove him into a shop and caused him to buy an umbrella. Then, just as he was leaving the shop and putting the umbrella up he recollected that of course being in uniform, he could not use it. He backed into the shop, told the salesman a lame story about buying it as a present for a friend and blushingly asked that it might be sent.
An "Officers" Predicament
Another American in Russia was the hero of a delightful little comedy, one of those absurd incidents which amuse one all the more because of the sombre background against which they occur. He had been doing very good work for a long time, and was quite contented with his lot, when there appeared on the same front another American newspaper man who bore the rank of and wore the uniform of a colonel in the U.S. National Guard. This seemed to help him a lot so the first correspondent immediately began to consider how he might do likewise.
He found out that it was possible to be nominated a major or colonel in the National Guard by joining the staff of a State governor This was what Correspondent No. 2 had done. So No. I cabled over to the governor of his State, and in a short while received a document appointing him A.D.C. with the rank of major. Then he procured a uniform, had new cards printed, and went left to the front.
As soon as he got there his troubles began. He used to give the funniest accounts of them, for he had a real sense of humour and could laugh at himself. Troops would be paraded for him to inspect, he not knowing even how to take a salute correctly. Problems of strategy would be submitted for his opinions. Worst of all, every officer he talked to would ask him : What is your branch of the Service ?
Now, he could not answer this question for the best of reasons: he did not know. So he hit upon this ingenious method of parrying it. He used to ask, "Well now, do you know the system of the American Army ?" They always said, "No." Then he would go on, "I should like to explain to you the system of the American Army," and would embark upon a rigmarole of confused intricacy of interminable length. No Russian officer ever stayed awake long enough to know what the system of the American Army was or to which branch of the Service my friend belonged.
Lady as War Correspondent
Correspondents, when they wear uniforms, are sometimes saluted and sometimes not. Most of us, I think, would rather not be. It makes us feel we are receiving a recognition to which we are not truly entitled. But in such a matter we accept of course the ruling of the Army authorities. The first time I went to the Russian front I went with a correspondent who was at the outset, quite shy about acknowledging salutes.
We drove to the station together and tried not to look as if we expected the soldiers who passed us to pay us any attention. Yet in a few days, my companion had changed his attitude completely. If a man went by without saluting he was quite annoyed.
A war correspondent whom Italian soldiers took pleasure in saluting was a woman, the only woman I have met engaged in reporting this war, There was a Rumanian girl (in the Balkan campaign of 1912), but Mr. Alice Waterman is, so far as I know, the only representative of her sex who has campaigned during the last three and a half years. She campaigned vigorously too and with all a man's endurance.
She is a pretty woman, and doesn't look as if she could support severe fatigues. But the way she reported on almost the highest part of the Italian front, a battle in which the Italians captured a horn of snow-covered rock which had a very troublesome gun mounted on it, proved her to be a woman of rare spirit.
To get up to this region of eternal snow it was necessary first to drive to the head of a valley, then to be swung up in five successive "telefericas." These are wire ropes running at a steep angle up the mountains. Upon them, runs a small wooden box, holding only two people. The wire is moved by motors at either end, winding it round a capstan. As you move through mid-air and look down en the tree-tops hundreds of feet below, or at stony ground which makes you shiver if you think of falling on it, your impressions at first are rather scary. Mrs. Waterman took the five journeys without showing that she felt any tremors at all
Novelty-and Staleness
Then for some miles dog-sleighs took us over the snow as far as the headquarters of a division. From here there was a long and tiring walk to a point of vantage whence the attack on the horn could be perfectly seen. It was an attack exceedingly well-planned and carried with dashing energy. The Italians wore white cloaks and even white shoes. They crept up under the horn and then stormed it. Mrs. Waterman saw everything and wrote a capital despatch; only alter all was over did the strain and the weariness of what she had gone through overcome her.
She kept her enthusiasm and interest always warm. In a great many correspondents they inevitably grow cold and are only stirred to flames by unusual events. At first everything is fresh and stimulating. Little by little all becomes familiar and stale.
I recall a vivid illustration of which happened in Galicia. Several correspondents had been lunching with a Cossack regiment. Lunch over, we went outside their mess. In the air two aeroplanes were fighting a duel. A Dutch correspondent was greatly excited by this. He had never seen anything of the kind before. As he gazed, fascinated and thrilled, a Cossack officer went up to him and said: "Will you come. please ? We want to have a group photograph taken."
The Dutchman was furious, He could not understand that to the rest of us air duels were everyday events.
*see also links on other war-time correspondents :
on the far right :reporter/artist Frederic Villiers