encamped, roads where convoys were mounting toward the battle-line,
forests where cavalry were awaiting their call. The noise of the
cannon diminished to a distant rumble, became faint, and was lost. We
slept on. Occasionally, a man stretched himself, changed position, and
plunged again into oblivion like the rest. Some, in their dreams, cried
out disconnected words, mumbled, or wept. A madman in my carriage
suddenly leaped out and plunged into the blackness of the night. He
was not missed until the next day. Three camions had passed over him,
leaving him nothing but a mangled rag on the road.
At last we reached our destination, and came to life again. A camp
was ready to receive us--a camp so new and fresh we thought it almost
elegant. There were Adrian barracks[G] of unpainted spruce, with water
for drinking and water for washing; with coffee prepared, fresh bread,
hot soup, and abundance of clean straw. We knew that the horrible
inferno was at an end for us; at evening a train would take us each to
his own family to enjoy a furlough.
To come out of the abyss of hell and arrive at his own hearthside is
an emotion too deep for a mortal man. He knows not if he is living in
reality or in a dream. He goes on mechanically. He is hairy, barbarous,
dirty, hideous. He is black, and torn, and bruised, and ragged. He
reeks of powder, blood, and earth. He trembles. He is conscious of a
sensation of joy--he feels it without comprehending it.
Before long the train will be in the station. His wife will be there
with his mother, his father, and others who are dear. They will take
him in their arms. They will hold him, they will press him to their
hearts. He will feel the sweet thrill of their touch; he will receive
their caresses, will hear the familiar voices. His heart beats fast. A
feeling of faintness sweeps over him; he puts his hand before his eyes.
He speaks to his neighbor. He laughs. He drinks a little, he smokes.
He suddenly feels smothered. It must be his great-coat which bothers
him; he pulls it off. He holds imaginary conversations with himself.
He gesticulates. He recounts what he has seen, what he has done, what
he has said; the death of his comrades, the frightful wounds of his
dearest friends. He strives to classify his recollections; he yawns,
he gives it up. The battle still crowds his brain, obsesses him, holds
him, fills his entire consciousness. The other men are like himself.
Some laugh, some sing, some sleep.
The special train rolls away--passes stations, traverses pleasant
country, arrives at towns, whistles, snorts, runs smoothly, flies over
the rails, carries him on and on. The man is dumb with amazement: a
field where reapers are binding the grain enchants him; a glimpse of
a garden where a woman is hanging up washing moves him to tenderness.
A house intact astonishes him. The panorama passes before his window,
is gone, is repeated. It is not yet the country, the province, where
he was born, but that is approaching. Familiar names are seen at the
stopping-places along the track. In an hour the train will reach
his station. He can no longer sit still. He rises, fusses with his
clothing, sits down, gets up again. The train no longer is going fast
enough. It is stopping. What for? Now it goes again. Good. There it
is stopping again! This is deadly. Villainous train! Villainous trip!
Villainous life!
At last it is his own country, his own town, his own station ... and
the train is stopping! Yes, the family are all there, running to meet
him. The man leaves the carriage; he falls into their arms; he leans on
their shoulders. Tears are on his cheeks; his mind is benumbed, he can
only look. There is father, there is mother, there is wife and child.
“Well, well! How are you?”
“Ah, yes, all right,”--somewhat abstractedly.
He pulls himself together, recovers his strength and composure. He
stands erect, proudly. He is bruised, stained, and dirty; a dreadful
object, at once repulsive and sublime. He is in the midst of his
doting, distracted family, who forget all the questions they had
planned to ask about himself and the war, and can only ask: “Are you
hungry? are you thirsty? are you warm?” He does not know if he is or
not. He feels no need of anything. He goes with them. He recognizes the
land, the road, the trees, and the houses. He breathes deeply. What
delicious air! He is hurried along. As he passes the neighbors exclaim:
“There he is!”
He is safe and whole, he is brave and noble. He wears on his breast the
Croix de Guerre. He is petted. He is washed and cleaned and mended and
taken out for a promenade. He tries to tell his story, but he tells it
badly: he has not the words for it. He knows not how to express all
the misery endured, the bodily suffering, the horror of the battle. He
tells little fragments of stories, and already he is forgetting the
most terrible features. The struggle which was beyond all comprehension
seems small when he tries to recount it. It becomes nothing more than
a local fight with grenades, a patch of ground occupied in the night,
a brook crossed--a thing of shadow and of mystery. It is no longer
grandiose. It really was a catastrophe: it becomes a mere fist fight.
However, they listen, they ask questions. He must repeat and go into
detail. And he, who has escaped the jaws of death, who by a miracle
has come out of the destruction, who feels with strangeness the new
pulses of life, he runs about to see his friends, he shakes the burden
from his thought, he amuses himself--and finally is aware that the time
has passed like a flash of lightning and he must again depart. Then
the anguish again lays hold upon him; for that which he could not tell
clearly he knows only too well. No fibre of his being has forgotten it.
His flesh creeps at the thought of entering again the bath of blood,
of noise, of war; the long vigils in the trench, the whistle of the
shells, the infantry attack.
He goes to join his regiment. He is loaded with delicacies, tobacco,
and presents. He has new socks on his feet and a new sweater on his
back. He is made over, he is a man again. He is sad, but he goes: there
is no other way.
Once more he is at the front with all its horrors. He is in a sector
of great commotion, where ruins pile upon ruins; where the very earth
under his feet explodes; where a fresh drive is being pushed; where
no minute is without its danger. There is the patrol toward the
enemy’s lines, the life underground, the sky shot with airplanes, the
shrapnel overhead and the mine under feet. There is the torpedo coming
with its ugly growl; there are all the changing forms in which death
beckons--the Grim Monster which prowls and shrieks; there is the agony
renewed.
The attack is resumed. The attack, yes. “C’est la Guerre.” There is no
longer, as in former days, a battle of a single day, wherein one is
either victor or vanquished, where the outcome is decisive. The attack
of to-day is one of the rôles in the drama of life, like being a
soldier. Yes, it is life itself.
We made an attack, then, on a certain day, toward Mont Cornillet,
which stood out before us like a volcano of chalk. The German and
French artillery were crossing their shell-fire. Below, the French were
holding. The position was hardly tenable after it was gained, and we
were trying to enlarge and strengthen it a bit. My regiment, entirely
reformed and equipped, formed a part of the advancing force. Each man,
grown wise from his experience in war, could estimate the distance,
and the effect of the firing. It was going well. It was hard, but
the firing was good. Perhaps we would suffer less this time than on
former occasions. Perhaps once more we would return alive. But then,
what matter? One is a fatalist in such moments. Destiny will decide.
A man is nothing, can do nothing. He is a mere atom, a drop of water
in the ocean, a grain of sand in the desert. He goes where the wind
drives him. If he is lucky, he comes back alive; if he is unlucky, he
returns to the bosom of the earth. It is all very simple, clear, and
clean-cut. The sacrifice was made long since. Once for all, the very
first time, he has said: “What will come, will come.” He has left his
home, he has marched, he has fought, he has suffered. Some men have
been killed, others only await their turn. Infinite Fatality holds them
in her hand. Those who believe in God, and that God brings solace, have
their comfort always with them. They piously attend religious service
when they can, wherever the chaplain sets up his altar: in a crushed-in
chapel of a demolished village, or in a barn without a roof, or in the
trench itself. The man who believes in nothing has no greater fear of
death.
Certainly, were it not for the war, one would have lived otherwise.
One would have lived in a world of work, with its pains and pleasures,
founding a family and rearing his children. One would have lived as
lived his father; one would have had a wife like his mother; one would
have pursued happiness. But this dream is one of peace. Now, “C’est la
Guerre.” The giant struggle passes the control of men, and its unknown
end is still far off. One no longer fights merely for his home, his
land, his own well-being. One feels that these things have become
dwarfed in the tremendous world tragedy, and that at the foundation it
has to do with great principles, ideals, and human destiny.
The soldier in action does not see so far. The immediate, the concrete,
demand his close scrutiny; but he feels that the war is waged for all
the human race, and that his blood will not flow in vain. Emancipation
is coming. Man is throwing aside autocratic authority; he has
reached his age of majority and wishes to be free. Society impels
and guides him. He is no longer the soldier of a people, he is the
soldier of a principle. He fights for the triumph of ideals that are
noble, ideals that are just, ideals that are free. He assists at the
ghastly death-throes of an autocracy which can live only through his
enslavement. He knows the price of a revolution: some men must die that
others may live. He accepts it. He knows not just how great must be his
sacrifice. He knows only that he is resigned.
I saw all this among my comrades. I gathered it in their discussions:
for we talk, at the front. The squad argues, reads the newspapers,
makes its comments, follows the trend of events when it can. But--when
the “Coup de Chien” comes; when the unit enters an engagement; when
one fills his cartridge-box or receives his case of grenades; when
one goes over the top, to storm the enemy’s parapets and rush to
the assault, all else disappears, is wiped out. There remains only
exaltation and the act of the moment--a sacrament.
The zero hour is passed from one to another in advance. The attack will
be at ten o’clock. A half-hour before, each man is in his place. The
artillery fire is redoubled. The German knows that his last minutes
have come. As for ourselves, we are attentive and impatient. The
anguish of the drive puts our nerves on a tension; eyes take on a hard
look, hands grip convulsively. One wishes he could start, leap to the
surface, cross No Man’s Land on the run, and drop into the opposite
trench. The half-hour drags on slowly.
The hour strikes. With one leap, furiously, the first wave bounds
forward, spreads, and crosses the intervening space. The second line
follows. We of the next line look and listen. They cry out--they go
on--they are running--they arrive! We start. The others are already
upon the German. The grenades crackle and snap. The machine-guns spit,
the airplanes hum, the shells burst. Forward, forward! We run at full
speed. Each knows his rôle. Each knows his act, his allotted piece of
work. Each is strangely lucid. The movement is admirable. All is going
well, everything is working out with precision. We will gain our point.
With an infallible glance the soldier knows the outcome, and in that
moment he judges his chief without error, without appeal.
The trench is taken. The shelters are crushed in, the dead are lying
all about. Pale and haggard prisoners run toward us, huddled together
with up-lifted arms to give themselves up:
“Gut Franzose! Kamarad! Polones, Polones!”
They are Poles: big and little, tall and short; a whole troop. They
shrink, now. They would like to run. They are anxious to get away
from the place, for the miserable creatures cling to life and fear
the shells, their own shells, the German shells, which follow each
other in gusts. We drive them on. They go as captives. Three pass, a
Frenchman follows, then three more prisoners and another Frenchman,
with gun ready. The procession follows the wrecked trench, leaps over
the débris, reaches the open space between our lines. Now there is
less danger. The prisoners are parcelled off by twenties and are led
to the rear. They stop at the first post where wounded are cared for.
The stretchers are taken up and carried by the same men who made the
wounds, by these men now quite docile, who, dressed in dirty gray made
still more dirty by the ground, march with their burden, fearful, but
at heart happy: for them the war is over.
It will continue for their conquerors who still live. Death has once
more made her choice. The prisoners are safe. Those others who took
them will die perhaps to-morrow, on this same ground or on another.
Satiated to-day, the Grim Monster is reserving them: they are kept for
a coming feast of death.
How well they know it! but they care not at all. They are tired and
happy. They wander about the captured trench and gather up little
nothings: fragments of clothing, pieces of arms, splinters of
cartridges. They go to and fro; or, impassive, they choose a corner and
go to sleep, indifferent to the shells, to the battle which is dying
out; indifferent to to-day and to-morrow.
They know their task is accomplished.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The trial of Mme. Caillaux for the murder of the editor of _Le
Figaro_.--TRANSLATOR.
[B] “Les compagnons--ceux avec qui on rompt le pain.”
[C] The banquette is about eighteen inches above the pathway at the
bottom of the trench. The men stand here when firing or when on
guard.--TRANSLATORS’ NOTE.
[D] The trenches were about seven feet deep. On the forward
side was a step, or ledge, on which the men could stand when
shooting.--TRANSLATORS’ NOTE.
[E] It has been found that water must not touch the skin for many hours
after suffering a gas attack. The chemical action of the water rots
the flesh. For the same reason the “poilu” is now clean-shaven: the
poison of gas remains in a beard for days, and perspiration adds to the
dangers of inhalation.--TRANSLATOR.
[F] Literally, “I am gnawing them away.”
[G] Adrian barracks are made in sections, which enables them to be put
up or taken down quickly.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.