Paths of Glory

Paths of Glory

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Paths of Glory, by Irvin S. Cobb This
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Title: Paths of Glory Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front
Author: Irvin S. Cobb
Release Date: January 22, 2004 [EBook #10798]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PATHS OF
GLORY ***

PATHS OF GLORY
Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front
BY IRVIN S. COBB
AUTHOR OF "BACK HOME," "EUROPE REVISED,' ETC., ETC.
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave." --Thomas Gray

To the Memory of MAJOR ROBERT COBB (Cobb's Kentucky
Battery, C. S. A.)

NOTE
What is enclosed between these covers was written as a series of
first-hand impressions during the fall and early winter of 1914 while
the writer was on staff service for The Saturday Evening Post in the

western theatre of the European War. I tried to write of war as I saw it
at the time that I saw it, or immediately afterward, when the memory of
what I had seen was fresh and vivid in my mind.
In this volume, as here presented, no attempt has been made to follow
either logically or chronologically the progress of events in the
campaigning operations of which I was a witness. The chapters are
interrelated insofar as they purport to be a sequence of pictures
describing some of my experiences and setting forth a few of my
observations in Belgium, in Germany, in France and in England during
the first three months of hostilities.
At the outset I had no intention of undertaking to write a book on the
war. If in the kindly judgment of the reader what I have written
constitutes a book I shall be gratified.
I. S. C.
January, 1915.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. A Little Village Called Montignies St. Christophe. II. To War in a
Taxicab. III. Sherman Said It. IV. "Marsch, Marsch, Marsch, So Geh'n
Wir Weiter". V. Being a Guest of the Kaiser. VI. With the German
Wrecking Crew VII. The Grapes of Wrath.. VIII. Three Generals and a
Cook IX. Viewing a Battle prom a Balloon X. In the Trenches Before
Rheims.. XI. War de Luxe... XII. The Rut of Big Guns in France.. XIII.
Those Yellow Pine Boxes.. XIV. The Red Glutton.. XV. Belgium--The
Rag Doll of Europe . XVI. Louvain the Forsaken.

Chapter 1
A Little Village Called Montignies St. Christophe
We passed through it late in the afternoon--this little Belgian town
called Montignies St. Christophe--just twenty-four hours behind a dust-

colored German column. I am going to try now to tell how it looked to
us.
I am inclined to think I passed this way a year before, or a little less,
though I cannot be quite certain as to that. Traveling 'cross country, the
country is likely to look different from the way it looked when you
viewed it from the window of a railroad carriage.
Of this much, though, I am sure: If I did not pass, through this little
town of Montignies St. Christophe then, at least I passed through fifty
like it--each a single line of gray houses strung, like beads on a cord,
along a white, straight road, with fields behind and elms in front; each
with its small, ugly church, its wine shop, its drinking trough, its priest
in black, and its one lone gendarme in his preposterous housings of
saber and belt and shoulder straps.
I rather imagine I tried to think up something funny to say about the
shabby grandeur of the gendarme or the acid flavor of the cooking
vinegar sold at the drinking place under the name of wine; for that time
I was supposed to be writing humorous articles on European travel.
But now something had happened to Montignies St. Christophe to lift it
out of the dun, dull sameness that made it as one with so many other
unimportant villages in this upper left-hand corner of the map of
Europe. The war had come this way; and, coming so, had dealt it a
side-slap.
We came to it just before dusk. All day we had been hurrying along,
trying to catch up with the German rear guard; but the Germans moved
faster than we did, even though they fought as they went. They had
gone round the southern part of Belgium like coopers round a cask,
hooping it in with tight bands of steel. Belgium--or this part of it--was
all barreled up now: chines, staves and bung;