MUD—CORPSES—TAKING A GERMAN TRENCH—IN THE SECOND LINE—RETURN TO THE
FIRST LINE—PARADE MARCH BEFORE THE FLAG
_March 15._ We returned yesterday to encampment. During the last five
days, the most terrible I have yet spent, I have not had a minute of
physical or mental quiet to write a single line of my diary. I have run
the gamut, I think, of nearly all the emotions afforded by
war,—bombardment, attack, counter-attack,—all the while in a most
precarious position, long painful marches through the communication
trenches, and above and over all, the mud, that terrible enemy, much
more terrible than the Boches. For the Boches have their moments of
respite. The mud is there ever and always, implacable and relentless—the
mud that keeps you from walking, chills you, clutches you, weighs you
down, and drives you to despair. Five days of dragging one’s self along
more than knee deep in the horrible, cold, gluey paste.
It began as soon as we left Cabane-Puits. But at first it was bearable.
We slipped, or got stuck or splashed or splattered, but that was a mere
nothing. The terrible part came when we went into the communication
trenches. It was fortunate that our knapsacks were at Hill 181 and not
on our backs. The chalk of Champagne when combined with water rapidly
forms a soft paste in which one plunges nearly up to the waist. And it
was necessary to march in this; in other words, to put one foot before
the other, to pull it out with enormous effort only to replunge it in
the mire; and so on for five kilometres. At the start, the effort was a
conscious one, but at the end of the first hour the motions became
automatic; all one’s sensations resolved themselves into one dull pain
in the whole body. Several times I got my leg stuck, and had to appeal
to the man behind me to help get it out. One of the lieutenants left his
shoe in the mud; he was literally caught like a lark on a lime-twig, and
when, by dint of desperate efforts, he brought forth his shoeless foot,
a great laugh went round. But a little farther on we were sobered by a
terrible discovery. We found the body of a soldier who had perished in
the mud; he had evidently fallen while alone and was unable to extricate
himself from the horrible embrace of the mire. This was the first corpse
I had seen and I was much affected.
And then the tiniest of obstacles interrupted the march and upset the
distances—a telephone wire getting loose from a crumbling wall, a
soldier who was stuck, a fatigue coming in the opposite direction; those
ahead would have to stop and the ones behind struggle to march at the
double to catch up with them. A regular march was impossible.
At the end of three hours we reached the village of Perthes, or rather,
the ruins of Perthes, melancholy wraith of a village, a few dismantled
walls, barns that looked as if they lay in the path of an avalanche, and
a church by some miracle still standing, though all ruinous. Just at
that moment we were obliged to halt in the communication trench. The
Boches were firing shrapnel. We huddled against the bank. I was so tired
that I slept a few minutes standing up leaning on my stick. The
sensation that people were moving awoke me, and once more began that
slow, automatic, painful advance. A cold rain was falling, which in
spite of my mackintosh trickled down my neck to my chest. Occasional
spent bullets went grunting over our heads. Each moment seemed eternal.
Day broke, still overcast. We had been on the march more than four
hours. Several shells burst near by. One man had his head blown open,
and remained standing. It was necessary to push this ghastly thing
against the wall of the trench and nearly climb over it.
At last, after a long time, we stopped. I went with the guide to inspect
my new quarters. The trench was an abomination—a charnel house—with dead
piled upon dead, on the ground where you walked, above the parapets, in
the walls of the trench half buried, with either their heads sticking
out or their feet or their hands or their knees. We were in a
communication trench that had just been seized and hastily repaired to
make it tenable. I was horribly agitated, but I managed to listen to the
explanations of the officer I was replacing. We should have to use the
greatest care. The trench was caught in an enfilade. Alas, our
predecessors had not had a very gay time. They lost more than twenty
killed or wounded. A pleasant prospect, truly. I went to get my men, and
told them beforehand what to expect, so that they might be spared the
worst of the shock I had had. It was not very cheering, the sight of all
these dead, but our sufferings in the mud had dulled our sensibilities.
My trench, then, formed a point in the German trench. It was one of
their communication trenches that we had not succeeded in seizing clear
to the end. The general system of our company was in the form of a
letter “H.”
At the end nearest the Germans, the trench that I was in was closed by a
cave-in of earth. In front of us, the rest of the communication trench
was empty up to the German trench running at right angles to our sector,
and situated only about twenty or twenty-five metres beyond. At the end
of the trench was the listening-post, and a machine gun kept the Germans
out of the vacant trench. Very likely their machine guns also were ready
to pepper us if we made the least move in their direction. Thus the
situation was far from being amusing. We were caught in an enfilade, and
all day long grenades, bullets, shells, and mines assailed our position.
Something must be done. Two sentries were killed at their post, so I
decided to use a periscope. Three in succession were shattered by
bullets. The problem was a hard one. I changed the arrangement of the
sentry loopholes, making them as small as possible. I took my place
there myself for a few minutes; somewhat reassured, my sentries remained
on duty without flinching, beside the bodies of their dead comrades,
both of whom had been shot through the eye. The Germans have gun
supports to which they fasten their guns and aim them at a loophole with
the aid of a field-glass. After that, they have nothing to do but fire.
Every shot goes home. But we managed to find a remedy for this
difficulty.
There are no dug-outs, of course, and no possibility of digging any in
this earth that crumbles at each stroke of the spade. I took my place
nearly in the middle of the trench, on what looked like a seat that some
ingenious soldier had dug in the wall. As it was rather high, I asked my
orderly to dig down a little so that I could sit more comfortably.
Several strokes of the pick brought to light the cloth of a uniform. I
was sitting in the lap of a corpse. I went and took up my domicile a
little farther on. The explosion of a shell knocked down some of the
earth of the wall opposite, and in the breach appeared the green and
earthy head of a corpse. From that moment, this head was my vis-à-vis,
and once the first shudder of disgust had passed, I thought no more
about it.
In the end, one gets used to living beside corpses, or Maccabees as we
call them. They not only cease to make us uncomfortable, but they even
make us laugh. Beyond the parapet there were two or three corpses, in
the drollest attitudes. One looked as if he were invoking Allah; another
was in the midst of a back-somersault. One of my _poilus_ hung his
canteen to a foot that was projecting over the wall; the others laughed
and followed his example. The true French spirit was to the fore—an
extreme adaptability, and above all, good humor.
The odor of the corpses was nauseating, but pipes soon got the better of
it. Meanwhile, shells and grenades kept pouring in on us. We were
obliged to use the greatest care, and keep as near the side of the
trench as possible. The shells were not very dangerous when they fell in
the mud, for they either did not burst at all, or they exploded without
much force, but when they went from one end of the trench to the other
and landed farther on, they were indeed deadly. Toward noon a messenger
came to bring orders from the captain. He was standing in front of me,
halfway up to his waist in mud. Suddenly he was without a head; he
tottered, but did not fall; two streams of blood spurted violently from
the headless body and bespattered me. It is hard sometimes not to have
the right to show feeling; my men were all around me and I did not want
them to see me blanch. I simply told them to cover his body with a tent
sheet that was lying near, and sent word to the captain.
These various shocks hardened me. After that, I was more or less
indifferent to the terrible things that happened. I even ate with good
relish in the company of the head that was sticking out of the trench.
The day passed slowly, full of the anguish of explosions, to say nothing
of the pain of every movement and the cold that came from sitting
motionless in this prolonged foot-bath.
Night fell early. Then came orders. In the darkness a trench was to be
dug, joining the two ends of our position. The men were to start at the
same time from the two communication trenches and meet before daybreak.
The digging was done from the trench itself, working forward as the new
trench advanced. Several times corpses were turned up; the place was a
regular cemetery. The work went on rapidly. The trench was to be only a
metre deep and the earth was very easy to dig. But the Boches threw hand
grenades, and I received for my share a splinter near my right eye. I
stopped the bleeding and remained at my post. At three in the morning
the crews met.
Rations arrived in very bad shape. The cooks had to make the same long
trip through the mire that had cost us so many efforts. So they brought
us the coffee cold, meat all covered with mud, and vegetables that had
to be thrown away. The wine alone arrived intact. Instead of its being
brought in pails, I had taken the precaution to have it put in tightly
stoppered canteens, the same ones the Boche was carrying when he crawled
up and surrendered. Although the fatigues had slipped down several times
or been knocked down by the impact of shells, the _pinard_ arrived
untouched, to our very great joy. Fortunately, every one was well
supplied with canned goods.
In the morning, although we were exhausted by a sleepless night in
addition to the strain of all our other hardships, the order came to
attack. There was a good deal of grumbling, but I emphasized to my men
that if our situation was pitiable, the thing to do was to improve it.
It was to the interest of all of us to go across the way, where we
should certainly be more comfortable; and the attack would not be
dangerous. We should dash to the assault from the trench dug the night
before, at a moment when the Boches did not expect it, and there would
be so little ground to cover that the risk would not be great. Besides,
it was our duty, and I was certain my _poilus_ would keep the promise
they had made me to follow wherever I led.
At two o’clock the whole company was to take its place in the new
trench; at 2.10 we were to make the attack. However, things did not
happen according to schedule, and the Germans gave us the opportunity to
take their trench almost without any losses on our own side, but with
many losses on theirs.
Toward eleven o’clock, when our bombardment had only just begun, our
machine guns began to clatter and likewise all the guns at the
loopholes. The Boches were attacking! They had a hankering after the
trench we had dug during the night, and wanted to launch an assault on
our lines from that point—the exact thing that we were planning to do to
theirs. They came on in full force, but there was time for the machine
guns to mow down numbers of them before the first ones reached the new
trench. The mud kept them back, and the poor wretches made a tragic
struggle to get their feet loose and to hurry. Three successive waves
started. The machine gun at the end of our trench was quickly shifted,
and enfiladed our new trench full of Boches, killing nearly all of them.
It was horrible but magnificent. But others were coming on. Then I
commanded, “Fix bayonets! Forward! Forward!” and we dashed against the
assailants. The whole company followed my example and rushed forward.
Was it to be a hand-to-hand fight? Our murderous grenades crushed the
first row, and in the face of our air of determination the others
hesitated, then turned tail. We threw grenades at them and fired at
close range. We kept sticking in the mud and stumbling over bodies, but
the opportunity was too good to be lost. We followed them home; their
batteries and machine guns could not fire for fear of hitting their own
men. They had no sooner reached their trenches than we were at their
heels, stopping just long enough to shower in grenades before we jumped
in after them. I had a feeling that some one was aiming at me and I
emptied my revolver point-blank into the head of an _Oberleutnant_ who
was wearing a monocle. I did this automatically, by reflex action. I
seized another enemy by the throat and struck him in the face with the
butt of my revolver. He fell like lead. But the hand-to-hand fight did
not last long. The forty soldiers who were left quickly surrendered.
“Quick! Quick!” I commanded. “Reverse the trench!” In other words,
pierce several loopholes and turn the German machine guns against their
own trenches. We stopped up the communication trench, and opened up the
ones toward the rear, and the prisoners filed through my former trench,
which was once more a communication. We then prepared to ward off the
counter-attack. Barbed wire was brought and securely fastened. The
Germans proceeded to treat us to reprisal fire, which damaged our newly
conquered trench rather badly, but did little real harm.
I lost nine men in all, four killed and five wounded. The Germans had
been neatly outwitted. By quarter-past eleven we were established in our
new positions. These events had lasted but a very few minutes—the
hand-to-hand fight just long enough to let me kill two Germans.
Nevertheless, the situation was none too cheerful. German corpses were
all about. Our grenades had done their work well, and any wounded were
drowned in the mud as they fell. As we walked, the bodies sank in
deeper, for the bottom of the trench was literally covered with them,
forming a sort of carpet under our feet. In spite of it we were radiant.
The commander expressed his satisfaction. The counter-attack might come
at any moment, but we were ready for anything; as for shells, we laughed
at them. Every one gathered trophies. I carried off the revolver and
field-glass of my _Oberleutnant_, also his notebook, which I proposed to
decipher and hand over to the staff officers.
Night fell gradually. The air was very sharp, and it began to rain
again. We all looked like Capuchin friars with our blankets wrapped
around us and our tent sheets over our heads. No one could sleep, or
rather, no one was allowed to sleep; but as I made my way with great
difficulty back and forth in the trench, I saw several men asleep,
holding their guns at the loopholes. In order to keep them awake I made
them fire salutes. The bombardment was intense all night, but it was
directed more especially against our second lines. That augured a
counter-attack for the next day. At midnight word was sent that we
should be relieved at 2 A.M. Great rejoicing. At last we should be able
to get some sleep! Quickly we folded blankets and tent-sheets, but we
had a long wait in the rain that was falling and under the shells that
were dropping.
It was not until daybreak that the others came to relieve us. And then
began anew the fight with the mud. It took us nearly two hours to reach
Perthes. There we learned that we were not to be sent to recuperate, but
were to reinforce the third line in the fortified dug-outs of Hill 200.
Then we left the communication trenches, for they were in too bad a
state, and walked in the road, almost in the open. A rather high parapet
protected us from bullets and from being seen by the Germans, who were
about a kilometre to the north. But we had to march bent double,
alternately making rapid leaps and stopping. Of course, a few bullets
came our way, but the Boches did not see us and we were not molested.
Once when we stopped, I saw stretched out in the road beside me a dead
soldier, with his pipe still in his mouth. Evidently, he had not
suffered much.
After five hundred metres on the road we had to go into the
communication trench again; that is to say, begin to flounder through
the mire. A big German shell had fallen into the trench without
bursting, and we were obliged to climb over it. Dangerous engines those,
that a mere trifle may cause to explode. I wonder now how we managed to
keep going for another hour, for it seemed at every step that we should
sink in our tracks. It had been impossible to send up rations, and we
had nothing to drink. Some of the men suffered so from thirst that they
scooped up in their hands the muddy water that was lying stagnant in the
trench and quaffed it with delight. I had a flask of mint and I drank a
swallow that refreshed me greatly. We were so tired at the last that we
could neither see nor feel, but stumbled on with our eyes shut, some of
the men asleep as they went. At last we arrived.
These dug-outs were a sort of cave made in the side of the hill, large
galleries well propped up with planks with the entrance carefully
protected by a regular rampart of bags of sand. The minute we arrived we
threw ourselves down and slept and slept, in spite of the big German
shells that were bursting with a frightful hubbub, and in spite of a
French battery concealed near by that kept up an incessant fire, and in
spite of our consuming thirst. We didn’t wake up until the commissary
arrived, bringing letters and rations. Everybody demanded the letters
first. We were in such sore need of a few words of endearment, much more
so than of food! I got for my share five letters which I read hungrily.
I also got a package of eggs my little godmother managed to send me from
Lorraine, and they were a wonderful feast, sweet as a caress of the one
who sent them.
Then we ate, and went to sleep again. We cannot be entirely brutish,
since letters bring us such joy. We have killed men, under penalty of
being killed ourselves, and also because it was our duty, but these
combats took place in a sort of frenzy, the frenzy of action, of
enthusiasm, and likewise of suffering. I have killed two Germans and I
am proud of it, and yet, I have not the soul of an assassin.
At eight in the evening the major received word that two companies were
to be sent to the trenches. All the troops were jaded, all had labored
long and hard; we drew lots—Eleventh and Twelfth. So I had to set out
again. I went to rouse my men. They grumbled a little, but obeyed
philosophically, buckling on their equipment and folding their blankets.
At nine o’clock we set out to traverse in the opposite direction the
ground we had come over in the morning: trench, road, trench, village,
trench, mud, and again mud. It was impossible to maintain distances. One
section got lost and had to turn back; then troops were met coming the
other way, the ditch was narrow, and it was slow work squeezing through.
Order was once more established as we came near our goal. The night was
full of the uproar of a battle. Machine guns were emitting in the
distance the regular click of a sewing-machine, while the little guns
sounded like the sputtering of fish in a frying-pan. A few bullets
whizzed by. I heard one of the men say, in his utter weariness, “I hope
one of those bullets is for me.” I chided him mildly, but it was
exhaustion that wrung this cry from him, for the day before at the
moment of the attack he had fought with the bravest.
We arrived at an empty second-line trench that we were to occupy, and
defend in case of need. But it was very different from having the enemy
right before us, and we could be comparatively tranquil. We went to
sleep sitting in the mud, or in the dug-outs, where the brittle earth
crumbled and fell in tiny frozen pellets. We slept the rest of the night
and spent the following day almost without moving, wearily awaiting the
moment to depart. We were disgustingly dirty, caked with mud from head
to foot. We scraped the mud off our hands and faces with our knives; our
hair was converted into a strange, unfamiliar substance that looked as
if it would withstand any process of cleaning.
A few shells fell among us, and several of the men were wounded, but we
were perfectly indifferent and didn’t budge when the explosions came.
The _marmites_ were not honored by us with the slightest attention.
Although we were physically tired, our morale was intact, and the men
laughed and joked, every one recounting the deeds of prowess he had
performed at the time of the attack. Who shall blame us if we were a
little boastful? We were tasting the satisfaction of work well done. If
the Boches had chosen that moment to attack us, they would have had a
warm welcome. However, they didn’t risk it.
Toward eight in the evening orders came that we were to be relieved.
They were greeted with a satisfaction not unmixed, for no one smiled as
the prospect rose before him of the return trip through those
communication trenches. Slowly, with many difficulties, and at the cost
of great efforts, we made our way once more through the mire. We were
simple automatons with very little more notion of time and space than a
pendulum on the end of its pivot.
We reached Hill 181 and solid ground, solid except for big shell holes
filled with water. A number of the men, blind with fatigue, fell into
them and had to be pulled out with rifle butts. Shells were falling, so
we changed into open formation to march the five hundred metres that
separated us from the kitchens. Hot coffee awaited us there, but we
could not stop long enough to drink it, as shells were coming down too
fast. It was not until some distance farther on when the coffee was cold
that we were able to refresh ourselves. The Germans were keeping up a
continuous bombardment of Cabane-Puits, so that we could not stay there,
but had to go to B.-le-Château, twelve kilometres beyond.
The long column of the regiment wound through the plain four hours
longer with numerous halts and untold weariness. The knapsacks that we
had picked up again dragged heavily on our shoulders. From time to time,
exhausted men left the ranks and lay down in the road, falling asleep
with their packs on their backs. We were very near the end of our tether
when the cock on the steeple appeared at a turn of the road. A long halt
was made here, and the stragglers had time to regain their places before
we marched into the village. Was there such a thing as being able to
shoulder arms and march at attention in our state of exhaustion?
Yes indeed, and it was sublime. The colonel, before dismissing us to
recuperate, wished to have us file before our flag, our beloved flag,
blackened and torn by battles. We had earned this honor, and it made us
forget everything else. Every man of all the mud-smeared ranks felt that
his very soul was wrapped in the glory of that sacred emblem for which
he had suffered so much and so willingly. Now as a supreme reward, while
we still bore upon us the marks of duty well done, we were to perform in
the presence of the flag an immense and joyous act of faith in our
native land. All the men felt the solemnity of the moment; and to the
ringing notes of the farewell hymn that tells us to live and die for our
Republic, these worn and footsore men, so covered with grime as to have
scarcely a human semblance, defiled before the flag and presented arms
as they never had presented them before. And when I saw my men stand up
proud and straight to present arms, putting into this act all the little
strength that was in them, and when it came my turn to salute our
colors, I was so stirred that the tears rolled down my mud-stained
cheeks. I am happy. I give thanks for all I have suffered, since it has
won for me the joy of this moment.