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| aerial view of village in France (1918) |
NO WONDER CUBISM STARTED IN FRANCE! No one need wonder any longer where the cubists got their inspiration. They must have gone up in an airplane and had a good look at France! This airplane view of an observation balloon floating over a French village is as good a bit of cubist art as anything that Marcel Duchamp ever turned out.
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Henry G. Wales, Correspondent of the International News Service with the AEF, HOW THE LINES LOOK FROM A FRENCH AIRPLANE: Trip Across No Man's Land Has Its Thrills Even at a Height of 6,500 Feet—American Batteries' Havoc in The Stars and Stripes (France), May 3, 1918, p. 7—
I have been two miles inside the German lines—at a height of 6,500 feet. I flew over the American lines on the Toul front, crossed No Man's Land, and penetrated as far as the enemy second line defense. I saw some of the destruction inflicted by bursts of gunfire from American batteries, and even while over the German positions I saw American shells drop there and silently explode, spouting a dusty upheaval of brown dirt mixed with smoke.
I made the flight, which is the first taken over the actual fighting lines by a civilian, war correspondent or otherwise, since the war began, in one of the British two-seater Sopwith observation biplanes used by American observers in regulating American artillery fire, and piloted by a French sub-lieutenant who usually takes up with him an American observer. The only difference was that the twin machine guns were not put in place for my trip, as they are when the combination observer-machine gunner goes up.
It was just after four o'clock sun-time and excellently clear for observation. A group of mechanicians strapped me to the bucket seat deep down in the fuselage, so that only my head showed and I looked squarely at the pilot's cranium, just showing in front of me.
Mile a Minute on the Ground
We raced down the field and picked up a mile a minute gait, then rose so softly that before I realized we were off the ground the hangars and buildings seemed to be dropping below. We circled over the field a while, banking steeply on the turns to make our height, as the fields are near the front, and an airplane must fly high to cross the lines, otherwise it is dangerous business.
Mounting to 6,000 feet, we started toward the front, traversing roads and villages I knew well from passing through them daily in an automobile. As we gained height, with our speed exceeding two miles a minute and the wind pressure becoming greater, it seemed though we were standing stock still.
As I gazed through the floor glass of the plane, objects below made it seem as if we were barely creeping along, just making headway against some raging gale, though in reality there was scarcely any breeze. But gradually we passed landmark after landmark that I knew, and I realized we were really moving fast.
Then, far to the right, I saw another French machine at about the same level, also apparently stationary, although in reality moving as fast as we were. We were so far above the earth's surface that one lost all sense of movement save that the air rushing past and filling the lungs with great gasps of oxygen.
War Zone Creeps In
Scrutinizing the landscape below I passed the rearmost American Army zone, out of danger except for long-range guns, then gradually the war zone crept in almost imperceptibly. I first noticed the telltale shadows invariably cast by the most skillful camouflage. Then I saw how mere manmade camouflage cannot mimic nature exactly, no matter how hard he is trying to copy the landscape.
Soon we saw the beginning of the communication trenches. Sinuous, winding, irregular, they toiled devious ways like moles' tunnels seen on a moist morning at home. Then, instead of villages, I could see merely clumps of ruined, shell-torn stone houses, and out from the clumps stretched the wonderful French highways—clear, clean-cut and ribbon-like under the eye, so that I could tell exactly where I was by their configuration from the pilot's map I carried.
It was the roads that told us first that we were approaching the actual fighting zone—that stretch close up to the front line trenches which ie dally and nightly ploughed up by shells. There the highways widened, lost perceptibly, and vanished like a ribbon fraying in tiny strands at the ends.
Where the Road Ends
The thoroughfares gradually lost themselves in the yellowish-brown strip marking No Man's Land. Through powerful binoculars I looked down upon the maze of American trenches, inter-winding, interlocking, seaming the earth to a considerable depth behind a tiny hairlike line trench marking the advanced fire trench. All this area was so shell-pitted that it resembled nothing so much as the footprints of thousands of dogs on the seaside sands, at some places blurred and blended into millions of tiny undulations where the rain had washed down the softened shell crater marks.
The lane of No Man's Land, as far as the eye could see, was a baren, empty sit torn up, yet still with certain marks left, such as a shell-battered stone farmhouse which the gunners of neither side had so far seen fit to raze, and an old cow stable whose walls were still standing at a feeble height. These places are favorite rendezvous for night patrols in attempting to gain pos- session of the machine guns of their opponents, who try to enter.
Then I passed the advanced German line. It looked exactly like the American line, with the same endless scroll of trenches burrowing wormily every which way and extending back to great depth.
We veered left and saw the spot where the American bombardment had prepared the way for the raid of the previous morning. The effects of the rain of shells were plainly visible, the new craters bowing up bolder and deeper than others which had been made a long time before.
Roads Begin Out of Nothing
Passing over the Germans' first network of trenches, I noticed the stream-like communicating positions leading back towards the second organized position. There, too I saw clumsily camouflaged gun pits, and glancing at the map found them accurately noted there for our gunners' information.
The villages behind the enemy's line were crumbling and shot torn exactly the same as those behind ours, and the roads began again from nothing, gradually assuming shape in the fine highways a little way further on.
No puffs of white smoke, indicating shrapnel, nor of black smoke, indicating high explosive, molested us. We continued onward, not straight ahead, but obliquely, so that we could veer off and double back if a hostile fighting plane appeared. We saw a couple of German two-seater observation machines regulating artillery fire at about our own level, but they minded their own business and we paid no attention to them.
Gazing earthward, I saw shells coughed up from the from the throats of American guns far behind plump into the enemy's positions and burst, throwing up cloudlets of black-brown dirty smoke.
Once, when we were farthest within the enemy's lines, I looked back toward the German front line and saw several flashes which I afterwards learned were trench mortars throwing flying pigs over toward the American lines.
Not a Human Being in Sight
In all that journey I had not seen a single moving human being, through my glasses, despite the fact that the subterranean positions beneath teemed with fighting men. In all the advanced positions on both sides I did not see a single moving vehicle, although far off to the rear of the German lines I could discern dust clouds rising from convoys on the move.
We turned slightly, tilting steeply on our wing, and soared homeward. The pilot signaled to me to look down, and, staring through the floor-glass, I saw another French machine much lower. Almost at the same instant a dull thud penetrated the terrific noise of the whirling motor. The pilot motioned again, and I saw a fluffy white cloudlet of anti-aircraft shrapnel—enemy gunners trying to lay the range on the comrade beneath us.
Then came a dozen more almost inaudible thuds, and I saw a string of these fluffy white cloudlets hanging in the air along the path which the French machine below had been taking. But he was far away—he wing slipped, turned, and escaped entirely. Although we were less than 10,000 feet up, enemy anti-aircrafters did not choose us for a target.
Passing again the American battery positions, I saw ominous flashes from the breeches, but heard no shot fired or shell whistling through the air. We passed over an American observation balloon and reached the field, alighting like thistledown at 80 miles an hour.
I looked at my watch. We had been gone 35 minutes, but it had seemed ages because of the persistent idea that we had been battling continually against a head-on gale.
"Did you see that Boche single-seater above us just before we turned back?" asked the sub-lieutenant pilot, hopping from his seat. "I think he spotted us without a machine gun and thought us easy prey, as he was on his way home, then turned and chased us a little way. Otherwise, I would have taken you over and shown you the German positions there, with big guns mounted, and their observation positions."
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| WWI aerial photography |
RELATED LINKS
Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? / Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage / Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage / Optical science meets visual art / Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /
