THE FUNERAL OF LORD ROBERTS—NIEUPORT-VILLE—IN THE TRENCHES—YPRES AND THE
NEIGHBOURING SECTORS—I TRANSFER TO THE LINE
A memorable ceremony in which with others of the regiment I took
part, was on the occasion of the ceremony at Saint-Omer in honour of
Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, who had died on the 15th November while on a
visit to the allied armies.
At half-past six the regiment was formed up on the road and the twelve
best specimens of manhood were picked out from each troop. We were soaked
by rain on the way, but the sun came out when the ceremony began.
We were formed up in battle array before the town hall. All round the
square, on the edge of the pavement, a single rank of Highlanders,
carefully sized, stood like statues. We waited the coffin, which appeared
at last from a side street, preceded by a troop of English cavalry who
marched slowly—their black horses were admirable creatures. Then came
a section of infantry, fine, big, taking fellows, who marched with
their heads down and their eyes fixed on the ground; next came superb
Indian troops, who wore turbans, amongst whom were great native princes;
then a contingent of Canadians, just disembarked; lastly some Highland
pipers playing a lament whose refrain was eternally alike. We had heard
this shrill lament for a long time, now it became stronger and more
penetrating the nearer the cortège approached, and gave a strange exotic
note to this old-fashioned setting of a little French town.
When the coffin appeared the Highlanders who formed the guard of honour
executed a strange movement. They slowly described an arc of a circle
with their rifles, their outstretched right arms forming an uninterrupted
line all round the square, then each man finished the movement by
crossing his arms on the butt-plate of his rifle, the muzzle of which was
now resting on the ground.
With their heads bowed, these mourners resembled some old bas-relief. The
coffin, enveloped in the Union Jack, was borne on a gun-carriage. It was
all very simple and very moving.
To the wild notes of the Scottish bagpipes, now silent, the clear
trumpets of our dragoons replied, and their sound was in itself like
sparkling metal. They continued to sound until the remains of the
Field-Marshal had been placed in the town hall.
After the ceremony, which we did not see, twenty-one guns thundered
out, fired by batteries posted behind the square. An immense rainbow,
as sharply defined as if drawn with a stroke of the brush, cut the sky
with a perfect and uninterrupted semicircle. Symbol of peace, it came to
earth directly behind the batteries, and the flash of the guns showed up
against its iridescent screen.
An English officer came to tell the Colonel that the ceremony was over,
and we returned to Clarques under a beating rain, which had begun to fall
again.
Our next active work was at Nieuport. Motor buses brought us to Coxyde,
where, amongst the slightly built villas of this watering-place, Belgian
and French uniforms swarmed. Sand-dunes, on which the sand encroached on
the scanty covering of grass, bordered the horizon on all sides.
Captain Vigoureux had sent me to lay out the camp with a corporal and
one man. Clère, Hénon and I went on ahead at a sharp pace. From Coxyde
to Ostdinkerque there was no trace of bombardment. On the road we met
several lots of horses at exercise, some waggons, many soldiers and a few
civilians. At Ostdinkerque a mill, two houses and a part of the church
had been gutted yesterday. Some vehicles contained civilians, who were
prudently clearing out.
From this place onwards (Nieuport-Ville was six kilomètres off) the road
became more and more deserted and the noise of the guns became louder. At
first we only heard the noise of our own batteries and the shell burst
a long way off. Two kilomètres from Nieuport I heard the whistle of the
first German shell, a shrapnel which burst some hundreds of mètres off.
Several people on the road were peppered with the fragments of shell; the
telegraph wires were broken and the rails of a tramway were torn up. The
country was a desert, and the eye saw nothing but sand-dunes without end,
and here our underground life began.
At the entrance to the town a prudent man on duty showed his profile
at the door of a cellar. I asked him, “Where is Captain Mahot?” and he
answered in an irritated voice: “Don’t stand there in the middle of the
road, don’t you see that the shells are falling just where you are?” I
had not noticed it, but I did not take long to find out. The man on
duty led me five mètres underground to Lieutenant Deporte. “Sir, where
is Captain Mahot? The town commandant of the 16th Dragoons? I see no one
about.” “Everyone has gone to earth,” he replied, placidly filling his
pipe, “and I advise you to hurry up and do likewise, for it comes down
like hail just about now.” It did indeed. I heard the most disquieting
sounds, the bursting of big shells, the splash of bullets, which
flattened themselves against the houses. Some streets were enfiladed, and
thousands of shrapnel bullets flew back and forward between the German
trenches and ours.
The Lieutenant gave me a man to take me to the Captain’s cellar, which
was at the other end of the town. He and I (I had left the others in
a cellar) skirted the walls, and at every step what a sight! All that
remained of the church resembled a sort of historic ruin—some pillars,
some arches, very fine ones, and some sculptures lying on the ground.
Everywhere the craters of the big shells had the dimensions of dried-up
ponds. In the principal _place_ there were two such, in which one could
have put two houses.
Speaking of houses, some had been destroyed with an art and a refinement
which made them look like builder’s models. One was standing, of which
the only thing wanting was the outside wall facing the street, and one
could see the section of the gaping interior. The pictures were hanging
on the walls, and on the piano were photographs and nick-nacks. The
drawing-room, the dining-room and the bedroom were intact; but the
flooring of the attics had given way and everything had fallen through
to the floor below. Another house was almost comical in appearance, for,
against a wall on the lowest story, stood a fine bamboo rack, on which
two statuettes of sham Saxe ware smiled an eternal and idiotic smile and
seemed to jeer at the bombardment. Other houses, and these were the most
numerous, were lamentable rubbish heaps, fallen in, blackened, broken up
in every sense, blocking the streets and forming a hideous lamentable
chaos. Even when no shell fell—and there were long moments of calm—the
houses dropped to pieces of themselves. This one might lose the remainder
of its tiles, which fell into the street with a din; the next one might
drop, let us say, a stove, or a small billiard-table, from one floor to
another.
I arrived at last at the end of my journey, having asked myself a
thousand times whether I should not be pulverised on the way there. The
worst bit was when I reached the last cross-roads. For the second time I
asked an orderly whether this was the house—pardon, the cellar—of Captain
Mahot, and for the second time I heard an irritated voice reply, “Don’t
stay there in the middle of the street”; but this time I lost the end
of the phrase, being blinded and deafened. The heavens seemed to fall
on me. I heard, “Get under cover,” and I felt my tympanum shattered. A
house twenty mètres from me, a large two-storied house, seemed to be
transformed into a volcano. A shell had entered its middle, through the
roof, and _the whole house collapsed into the street_, accompanied by a
formidable fall of rafters, bricks and furniture. “You see that,” said
the orderly in a severe tone; “get into the cellar.” I felt just like a
little boy.
Five marines had been buried under the ruins. A little later I saw their
bodies on stretchers. What a lamentable death for a sailor or soldier!
Captain Mahot said to me, “The billeting area of the 22nd Dragoons? Very
good, there it is,” and he showed me the butt-end of “the shepstraat.”
I looked at it in astonishment, saying to myself, “That?” Messina after
the earthquake would have offered more comfort. Nevertheless I inspected
the cellars and apportioned them amongst the troops, and, by myself this
time, I returned through the town to my point of departure, to meet and
conduct Captain Vigoureux, whom I found three hundred mètres beyond the
gates.
This made the fourth time that I had made this disquieting journey. I
began to feel that I had had enough of it, the more so as I had walked
twelve kilomètres, and, not being accustomed to carrying a pack, my back
hurt me. Clère was quite knocked up, and had looked at once so sad and so
comic that I did not know whether to laugh at him or to pity him.
The regiment settled in more or less (rather less) in the sector reserved
for it. The cellars were crowded. My orderly, who was a treasure of
devotion and very inventive, arranged my kit, found me a candle and
spread a mattress. I was kept on the run, everyone called me at once: “A
man wanted for the guard-room, a liaison officer to see the Captain, a
man wanted for water fatigue, the quartermaster-sergeant wants to know
how things are here, the 3rd troop have no billets and so on.” ... I
tried to reply to everyone, and my head was like a whirlpool. It was
impossible to keep the men in, though there were strict orders that they
were not to leave the cellars. They broke out in every direction, and,
in spite of the shells, they amused themselves like children, entering
the houses at the peril of their lives. One of them brought me a stuffed
stork; another a cornet and a draught screen; my orderly came last with a
woman’s mantlet, trimmed with lace!
Towards six o’clock the rain of shells ceased.
After dinner not a sound was heard. The cold was cruel. I wrapped
myself in my greatcoat and turned up the collar above my ears. I stuck
my head well into my fatigue-cap and, to amuse myself, I started off
on “reconnaissance,” armed with an electric lamp. I visited twenty
gutted houses, and this diversion was becoming monotonous when, from a
particularly damaged court, I heard a somewhat uncertain hand playing
the piano. The air was one of those old waltzes which dragoons dote on
and which suggest Viennese softness combined with the popular taste of
the Boulevards. There was no light in the yawning house. One might have
called it the house of Usher, at least I thought of that spontaneously,
for there was something weird about those black holes from whence came
this sad and popular jingle, though the eye was conscious of nothing but
darkness.
My ideas wandered for a moment, but, noticing a ray of light at my feet,
I found the key of the enigma: some lascars had brought the piano down
to the cellar to be more at their ease. At the foot of some ten steps,
or rather of a steep slope—I learnt afterwards that, in coming down
stairs, the piano had done the work of a “105”—I had only to pull a
canvas curtain aside slightly to see what was going on inside. It was an
affecting scene.
Some ten men lay on mattresses listening to the musician, who was seated
on a small cask, playing the same waltz over and over again, probably the
only thing he knew, with his great clumsy fingers. There was something
in the look of each of these men analogous to that of intoxication from
opium, or to the fascination on his subject of a mesmerist. Above, the
shells began to fall again; below, they had forgotten the war, because
they listened to a tune they loved, and, music is all-powerful over
simple hearts.
I remember this episode as one of the most picturesque souvenirs of the
war. I stayed in that cellar playing to them for more than an hour. They
were drunk with pleasure and with dreams of home. That night I could have
led them to the assault, even to the cannon’s mouth.
Next day, the 24th of January, réveillé was sounded at three o’clock.
At four o’clock we fell in. We were going into the second line trenches.
Our “dug-out” was a little rectangular room five mètres long by
two mètres wide, cut in the stiff soil, stayed up with planks,
covered with beams and roofed with earth.[3] It was dark as an
oven. It was entered by an opening so narrow that my pack could
not pass, and to get to this door, if one could call it a door,
one had to perform prodigies from the roadside onwards to avoid
being bogged up to the knees. There was a little straw on the
floor, and the furniture consisted of a chair.
There we were going to take up our residence, my seven men and
I—Dhuic, Laroche, Ponnery, Bobet, Thiérard, Emmanuel and that
terrible-looking fellow Hurel, with his vulture’s face and
insane alcoholic eye. I can see him now at the bottom of the
trench, his face emerging from a sheep-skin coat which made
him look more than ever like a wild beast. “If the Bosches
catch sight of you,” an unindulgent comrade said to him, “they
will certainly clear out in double-quick time.”
We got here from Nieuport at four o’clock in the morning. The
regiment was closed up and the men stumbled at each step over
the débris of houses, which littered the road. Dead silence
reigned, and the cold north wind of early morning made our eyes
water. No shells or bullets were flying, but we heard from time
to time the noise of tiles falling from some roof or the din
of a falling skirt of wall. Star shell were being used, and
each time they lit up the country they made us jumpy, for we
presumed that they would be followed by a shell only too well
placed.
Day dawned, and I came cautiously out of my hole to have a
look at the country. The human imagination never, I imagine,
has conceived, nor ever can picture, anything sadder or more
desolate than what I saw. I found myself on the road leading
from Nieuport to Saint-Georges at a point almost equally
distant from both of these remains of towns. The banked-up road
meandered over an immense muddy plain, necked with pools of
grey water, now frozen. Nieuport was on my right. From here
I could not see a single house which was, I won’t say intact,
but only damaged by the bombardment. It was a heap of gutted
buildings, crumbling walls and twisted and broken trees. On my
left was Saint-Georges, in if anything worse state. Nothing
remained but a pile of stones, and one would never have
supposed that a village had once existed there.
By the side of my trench there was a freshly made grave,
that is to say a square of mud surmounted by a white cross.
The cap of a marine lay by its side. I picked it up; it was
full of brains. The poor fellow must have been killed on this
very spot, and yesterday probably, mown down perhaps by that
same shell which had pierced two neighbouring trees with its
murderous fragments.
As I re-entered my trench the sharp clatter of our batteries
disturbed the air. They were placed quite near us, and well
hidden, for I could see nothing of them. I supposed that this
was the opening of the ball and that the enemy’s reply would
not be long in coming. Some of my men had come out. I made
them get back again quickly, and treated Hurel to a kick from
behind. The men become as quiet as sheep when there is danger
about. One of them warmed me some coffee on a solid fuel
spirit-lamp, and another let me make a pillow of his abdomen.
_25th January, 1915._—We were relieved at 5 o’clock and
returned safe and sound to Nieuport. I found the cellar
transformed, thanks to Clère and Hénon; there was a light, a
table covered with a cloth and some crockery. They had looted
these things from the town, and I did not find fault with them
for doing so, for these articles were safer where they were
than in the ruins exposed at any moment to squalls of shell.
The bombardment had kept on increasing until past midday. It
was dangerous to go outside. Every half-hour I made a round to
make the men get back into their cellars. We made some tea,
but the water came from the Yser, which was carrying down dead
bodies, and the tea smelt of death. We could not drink it.
The ration cart arrived to an accompaniment of shells. We did
not take long to unload it.
_26th January, 1915._—At midday a French aëroplane flew over
the dunes. It was bombarded at times, and it let fall some
silver trails which sparkled in the sky like the scales of
fish.[4]
* * * * *
To-night we buried a dragoon belonging to the 16th, who had
been killed some days before in the course of a reconnaissance.
The body was already at the cemetery, covered with earth, and
we brought the coffin, carried by two soldier grave-diggers.
It preceded, by some paces, the silent cortège formed by the
Captain, M. Chatelin, the priest, two non-commissioned officers
and myself. We crossed the canal bridge a little before
midnight.
A sentry, petrified by cold, asked us for the countersign,
which was given, and we went on our way, avoiding the white
patches of moonlight which might have betrayed our presence.
The rusted gate of the cemetery creaked lamentably as we
entered onto the holy ground that the shells had failed to
respect. They had hollowed monstrous and gaping graves that
yawned under our feet, laying bare, completely or partially,
the skeletons and corpses. A stiff north wind was blowing,
bending the slim shrubs and agitating the grass and the rotten
crosses as in a danse macabre. It was the devil of a night, and
I admit that we all shivered, preferring the risks of a charge
in full daylight to this sinister and furtive work. Every two
or three minutes a star shell traced a lovely curve of diamonds
in the sky, and, instinctively, we put our heads down in
silence. Four men dug the grave. We uncovered the poor body,
which had been covered with a thin layer of earth. It had been
wrapped up in sacking, like the big quarters of beef that are
unloaded from the supply carts when rations are given out.
It was the most lamentable thing I have ever seen.
Everything was hurried through in a few minutes. The coffin was
too big. The Captain put into it an envelope containing the
name of the soldier who was going to rest there between the
lines, and who would be crooned to sleep by the noise of shells.
The wind shook the surplice of the priest who recited the
prayers, and I heard only a confused murmur of odd phrases, for
the wind carried off the rest. We had to hurry, for the quiet
moments were rare, and we returned through the dark deserted
streets in impressive silence.
_Nieuport, 29th January, 1915._—To form an exact idea of
what this very peculiar war is like one must have lived the
twenty-four hours that I have just passed through—a bitterly
cold winter’s day and night.
We set out to occupy the first line trenches at 4 o’clock.
The night was clear and frosty, and the stars glittered like
splinters of ice. A clear and cold moon lit up the immensity
of the ravaged and desolated plain, making the ice glitter,
silhouetting the traitorous and dangerous ruins, betraying our
position by the glint from our bayonets, while the frost-bound
ground conducted sound to a great distance.
As far as the post from which the second-line trenches were
commanded the road was good and the distance easy; but from
there onwards the carrying out of reliefs became hazardous. We
marched in single file, holding our bayonets in our left hands
to prevent them from knocking against our rifles, raising our
feet and going on tiptoe, as in a sick-room. The road became
atrociously bad, it being impossible to repair it owing to
the nearness of the enemy. Nothing was wanting, ruts, holes,
fencing wire, overturned fencing posts, etc. The squadron
occupied some trenches on the right. These were arrow-shaped,
and were the nearest trenches to the enemy.
Seventeen of us held the main trench, and in an adjacent
one were two marines with a small pom-pom trench gun. These
were called trenches; in reality they consisted of sloping
beams laid against an embankment of stones and sand-bags. We
had to crawl into them, and, once in, we were condemned to
immobility. We could not even sit down without bending our
heads. Little by little the cold took hold of us, beginning
with our feet, and we felt as if we were transformed into
blocks of ice.
The wind brought us a suggestive odour, which mingled with
the smell of rotting litter on which we were lying. We felt
inclined to vomit. Day came and brought the need for absolute
immobility. It was impossible to risk oneself outside the
trench, even flat on one’s belly, until night-time. M. Chatelin
and I shivered side by side, and inspected the horizon
through field-glasses. On the left we saw some suspicious
smoke, and the same distance off, on the right, we found
the explanation of the stink we had smelt on our arrival.
A score of German corpses were there, caught between their
barbed-wire entanglement and ours, and destined to rot there
for an undetermined period. They were in all sorts of poses
and horribly mutilated. Some bodies were without heads, some
heads and arms were lying separated and all the bodies were in
convulsive postures. A number of crows were disputing their
bodies, as were some half-wild cats, which refused the meat
we offered them—a pretty sight indeed; happily there were no
French bodies amongst them.
The artillery opened the ball about eight o’clock. We were
almost in the middle, and well below the trajectory of the
shells. We saw some shells strike their target—some farms,
that fell to pieces—but many missed. That, however, was of no
account.
From the direction of Lombaertzyde a sudden thunder resounded,
and for the whole of the afternoon the earth was shaken by a
bombardment which nothing could describe. To represent it one
must think of a furious sea, an express at full speed, lowing
of cattle, cat-calls, creakings; one must think of a mixture of
all these sounds forming a sort of savage harmony. In the rays
of the rising sun Lombaertzyde was crowned with plumes of black
and white smoke, made by the bursting shells.
Nothing else happened till evening. The night was less
monotonous, for, in spite of the pitiless moonlight, one could
go out. We looked on with much interest at a raid by two
aëroplanes, which marked down an enemy’s trench and a supply
convoy with luminous bombs. An instant afterwards the “75’s”
hit hard. Towards midnight seven shots were let off from the
listening post. I said to myself, “At last, here comes the
attack.” I shook up my men, benumbed with cold and sleep; but
dead silence again fell.
It was freezing hard enough to split stones. Over a surface
of several kilomètres the newly formed ice cracked and made
one think that an advance was taking place. Little Duval, in a
moment of hallucination, fired on the dead bodies, mistaking
them for skirmishers.
From time to time an imperceptible breeze distinctly brought us
the sound of the enemy at work. We heard the blows of mallets,
used doubtless to consolidate his wire entanglements. I made
our freezing men do the same.
M. Chatelin and I walked up and down or made reconnaissances
simply for the sake of keeping on the move. On the plain I
stumbled on the body of a dragoon between two frozen pools.
His head was wrapped up in hay, but he was frozen so hard that
we could not move him. I tried to lift him by his belt, but it
broke in my hands. Two cats, a white one and an Angora, seemed
annoyed at being deranged. Oh, the horror of it!
Décatoire had his feet frost-bitten and was unable to walk.
M. Chatelin and I returned to the trench, and, huddled up one
against the other, we passed the remaining hours of that trying
night in shivering.
At five o’clock the 5th Chasseurs relieved us.
* * * * *
Long weeks followed, during which the cavalry, become useless on account
of the time of year and the novel trench warfare, remained inactive far
from the front in muddy rest-camps.
Officers and men were sent by turns into the trenches for eight or ten
days at a time, being taken there in motor omnibuses.
When we returned to regimental headquarters we led an ordinary barrack
life there. The admirable unity which made us all brothers in the firing
line had a tendency to relax in face of the pettiness of ordinary
military duty. Peace-time jealousies showed themselves during our forced
inactivity, when our tour of service did not call us far from our horses
to dismounted fighting. For this reason, and as I was desirous of living
again and renewing acquaintance with those intoxicating hours to which
one becomes accustomed as a necessary factor in life, preferring, in
short, to perform the duties of a foot-soldier with real infantry men,
knowing their duties and suitably equipped, rather than to degenerate
into a dismounted dragoon, I asked to be appointed 2nd Lieutenant in an
infantry regiment as soon as the ministerial circular concerning cavalry
non-commissioned appeared. Fifteen days later my request was granted.
I was gazetted 2nd Lieutenant on February 3rd. The 22nd were at
Volckerinkove. M. de Vesian told me of my appointment, and a few
hours later I was sent with the others who had been recently
promoted—Fuéminville, Marin and Paris—to the headquarters of the 5th
Division, and from there to Poperinghe to the headquarters of the 9th
Army Corps.
In spite of my decision, taken freely of my own accord, I was very sorry
to leave the 22nd. It was for me a page turned over, something finished.
I passed down the ranks and shook hands with all those comrades by whose
side I had marched, slept and fought for six months, and then, without
looking behind me, I set off on horseback on a fine sunny day.
Having been posted to the 90th Regiment of the Line, I followed a course
of instruction at Vlamertinghe, with the newly gazetted officers from
Saint-Cyr. After fifteen days of a monotonous and tranquil life the class
broke up on the 21st. On the morning of the 22nd I rejoined the 90th, and
the same evening we left to go into action.
In February I was again in the trenches, those which I occupied affording
me great amusement. We left at half-past eight in the morning, and we
had eighteen kilomètres to march. At Ypres we made a few minutes’ halt
on the edge of the pavement before the celebrated Cloth Hall. I looked
eagerly around me, wishing to fix the sights which met my eyes. They were
intensely picturesque and of peculiar interest. When the war is over
shall we ever again see such a picture? It is not likely.
Night had come. It was a time propitious for reliefs, hence everywhere
feverish activity reigned. All lights in the town were masked. Under a
moon, luminous as shining chalk, the cathedral and the Cloth Hall were of
a dazzling white, which made the gaping wounds which the shells have made
in the stonework all the blacker and more apparent.
The scudding clouds masked the moon for a moment, and everything faded
from view, or rather, as in a kaleidoscope, the ever-changing shadows
changed the forms of the ruins. Sudden beams of light rested for a moment
like furtive phantoms on the stonework, to disappear a second later.
On the edge of the horizon star shell were being thrown up, pitting
the night with a white or green fixed star, or appearing as a diamond
spray held by some invisible hand, to sparkle a moment and then vanish.
The silence was cut by the regular cadence of the march of the various
companies towards the neighbouring sectors.
They debouched from every cross-road. There were French, Belgians and
English, the latter whistling in chorus, “It’s a long long way to
Tipperary,” and keeping step to it. As soon as they saw us by common
accord they started the _Marseillaise_—a charming courtesy—and strange
and rapid dialogues were exchanged between the “poilus” and the “Tommies”
in a language so untranslatable, so indescribable, that most of the men
burst out laughing at hearing themselves speak. Then some guns crossed
the _place_ at the trot making a deafening noise.
Every unit had its destination, its appointed place and perfect order
prevailed. Those back from the trenches are glad at the prospect of rest;
those going there are light-hearted also, and so the active ant-heap
swarms with busy people.
From time to time shell would fall in the town, crumbling still further
the marvellous Cloth Hall or causing irreparable damage to the humble
house of some inoffensive civilian. It was stupid and useless.
From Zonnebeck onwards the ground was swept by rifle fire, and we had
to cross a horseshoe sector exposed to fire from all sides. It was
impossible to find cover, and the relief was extremely difficult and
dangerous. Then it was that I made acquaintance with the new and the
unknown.
New trenches, new customs. We groped our way through a little pine
wood. Every now and then a bullet struck the trunk of a tree with such
a loud and sharp sound that the drum of one’s ear was all but torn.
Insensibly the company advanced along the cutting which got deeper and
deeper under ground. Soon one was in up to the shoulders, and the deeper
the communication trench got the deeper we got into mud and water. I
pretended to myself that we were figures in some “attraction” at Luna
Park or the Magic City. We were in a labyrinth which turned to the right
and left, doubled back on itself and got deeper and more difficult at
each step, while “the bees” passed whistling over our heads.
There was a sudden stop, just as I had given up hope of ever seeing the
end. The section in front of me emerged into a trench, and a ray of light
fell on the wet clay at my feet. A form leaned out of a hole, and a voice
said to me, “This way, sir; this is your command post.” Hardly had I
entered when the curtain which masked the door fell again, to shut in the
light. I found myself in a tiny square room constructed entirely of rough
logs, that is to say of the trunks of pine trees. It was buried under a
mountain of earth, very solidly beaten down, and it had a brick fireplace
in which a good coke fire blazed (within 100 mètres of the enemy). There
was a bed, or rather a straw mattress, which exactly filled up the middle
of this “casba.” The other half was taken up by a stand on which were
ranged miscellaneous objects—gum boots, tin boxes, grenades, petards,
flares, etc. One could not stand up, but lying down one felt like a king.
The network of trenches which unites the sections was so complicated
that I lost myself in it every time. In the early morning I made a
reconnaissance of the neighbouring sections. At places the parapet became
so low that, even by stooping, one was not completely under cover. My
presence was hailed by a salvo which passed whistling over my head.
_24th February, 1915._—It snowed last night. The trenches
are white and my “poilus” are cold. And so am I! A man of my
section has just been wounded in the head by a bullet which
ricochetted off a bayonet. But, generally speaking, the Germans
leave us in peace.
_Six o’clock._—My trench has been demolished in part by a
“105.” We shall have to work all night to repair it.
_26th February, 1915._—Under cover of fog I left my shelter
and had some wire entanglements made. The men were able to
work without drawing fire. _Per contra_ a German patrol came
exploring, counting on the fog for concealment. Having arrived
opposite Règues’s section, they must have lost their way and
pitched straight on to us. We hit three of them. All the
morning, fifty mètres off, we saw them wriggling and raising
their legs, and we heard them crying out. It was impossible to
go to bring them in, the Germans would have fired on us. One
of them signalled that he was ready to surrender. He put up
his hands and cried, “Kamarad, Kamarad,” so he can’t be badly
wounded. We could see him rise, unbuckle his belt and throw off
his pack. My men, very pleased, were ready to receive him with
open arms, but he regained his own lines at a bound. We let off
a salvo, but the “Kamarad” had already disappeared. The two
others kept on wriggling like worms.
_2nd March, 1915._—I am occupying a new sector, not nearly
so good as the first; trench fallen in, full of water,
communications difficult, no comfortable command post; I sleep
on the hard ground in the cold. My predecessor, when giving me
my instructions, warned me that for two days past we had been
badly shelled.
_3rd March._—At 8.30 the first shell, a “105,” came over and
pitched some mètres from my post. I was almost thrown out of
the dug-out; earth and mud flew in all directions, and shell
fragments fell with a sharp noise. Some moments after a second
one came over, then a third and then, for three-quarters of an
hour, they fell without ceasing.
All the shells fell on my left. The men were a little pale in
face of this form of danger, against which there is nothing
to be done. After a quarter of an hour the trench became
untenable, the shelters, the parapets, the dug-out, were all
tumbling down. Sometimes the shock and the displacement of air
threw us in bunches one against the other.
I remained at the command post until the next dug-out was
knocked to pieces, burying a man under the ruins. I then caused
the whole section to be evacuated, except by a watcher, and I
asked hospitality from a 2nd lieutenant of machine-guns.
At last the storm calmed down and I sent everyone back to his
place. The trench was a veritable timber yard, and rifles and
mess tins littered the ground. The parapet by the side of my
shelter was knocked down level with the ground, leaving a
gaping opening that we must repair to-night.
_Six o’clock._—After the tension of such a morning I heard with
pleasure the cry of “Stand to your arms.” Each man flew to his
rifle; they too, I think, were pleased. I had gone back to see
my comrade the machine-gunner, but it did not take me long to
cover the thirty or forty mètres of trench which separated me
from my men.
How good a thing it was to hear this crackle of rifle fire
after the disquieting row of the “105’s”! “Stand to the
machine-gun.” I saw with pleasure the four men at their gun,
and I admired the graceful movement of the man who crouched to
fire and who, unconsciously, assumed the posture of an animal
ready to spring. Unfortunately the enemy were not “for it.” At
our first shots the Germans got back into their trenches.
_27th March._—We arrived yesterday in the second line, or
rather in reserve. The huts are in a pine wood, surrounded with
ridges. We arrived by moonlight. The bullets passed high and
struck the tops of the trees. These huts are in the form of a
redskin’s wigwam, made of earth and sacking. To-day we went
hunting with revolvers and we killed a rabbit! We cooked it
ourselves and enjoyed it for dinner.
_28th March._—The enemy leaves us in peace. Not a shell, not
the least little “77.” We went hunting again and brought back
a pheasant. After supper Maugenot and I intend to go and play
cards with Captain Lametz, a little in front of our trenches.
We must cross a glacis in front of the ridge; the bullets come
over there head high. We slipped along the edge of the wood to
take advantage of the lie of the land; and then all at once
we said, “So much the worse,” and we crossed the field at
its widest part. We jumped the parapet of an old trench and
we arrived at the 1st company. Captain Lametz has his post
buried in a wood. We played, seated cross-legs on the ground,
by candlelight. The rest of the post were asleep, rolled up
in blankets. The moonlight peered into the dug-out each time
that the wind blew aside the canvas of the tent. In coming
back Maugenot and I were almost stopped by bullets, chance
bullets, be it understood, which fell with regularity and in
disconcerting abundance, often, as they struck the ground,
hitting some shell fragments which would ring like glasses
knocked together.
To save time Maugenot suggested taking a short cut, and he
succeeded in entangling us in an inextricable network of
barbed wire. It was too late to draw back, we had to jump and
crawl. We arrived, however, at the hut safe and sound, but our
great-coats were badly torn.
_29th March._—A man had been killed some little time ago. While
I write I am looking at the cortège which has brought him back.
The body, a little bent, is carried on an improvised stretcher
by four men and is wrapped up in the canvas of a tent, tinted
red where it has touched his wound. The little procession
advances with difficulty in the narrow communication trench,
and every two or three steps a drop of blood falls and stains
the ground like a star, brown-red, and the cortège may be
traced by these as far as the grave.
Such was the daily life of almost the whole army during the winter
months. Though monotonous, I have thought it well to transcribe these few
passages from my daily journal, for they are human documents. In spring
the benumbed army stirred itself, stretched its legs and awoke to the
fact that a new era was about to begin. The change took place with the
greatest mystery. News, come no one knew whence, began to circulate.
When we left Belgium on the 30th March some extravagant hypotheses took
shape. Haute-Alsace, the Argonne, the Dardanelles and Turkey were spoken
of. The least bellicose would have it that we were to rest near Lyons;
but no one knew anything, and each day we went farther south-west, being
ignorant even of the billets we would occupy that evening.
So we passed Saint-Omer, Arneke, Pilens, Blingel, Frévent,
Avesne-le-Comte, etc.... and we approached Arras, whose town hall and
belfry we saw one morning profiled in a blue haze against a spectral sky.
On passing through Arneke on the 8th of April we marched past General
Foch headed by our band. When the regiment had passed by he sent for the
officers. We were all presented to him, and he had us formed up in a
circle to say a few words to us.
Listening to the General was like experiencing a species of shock. He
hammered out his words and scanned his phrases in a manner which made us
feel ill at ease. His speech was a flagellation, and we felt a sort of
moral abaissement as a result of it. His look seized upon and held us. He
brought us to bay and then crushed us.
First he spoke to us of our mission, of the utility of training the men
in view of the coming fatigues. “Train their arms, train their legs,
train their muscles, train their backs. You possess fine qualities,
draw on them from the soles of your feet, if necessary, but get them
into your heads. I have no use for people who are said to be animated by
good intentions. Good intentions are not enough; I want people who are
determined to get there and who do.”
There are shreds of his phrases that remain graven on my memory, curt
short phrases, punctuated by a sharp gesture, or by an indescribable look
of the eye: “If you want to overturn that wall, don’t blunt your bayonet
point on it; what is necessary is to break it, shatter it, overturn it,
stamp on it and walk over the ruins, _for we are going to walk over
ruins_. If we have not already done so”—and here he suddenly lowered his
voice and gave it an intonation almost mysterious—“_it is because we were
not ready_. We lacked explosives, bombs, grenades, minerwerfers, which
now we have. And we are going to be able to strike, _for we have a stock_
such as you cannot even have an idea of. We are going to swamp the enemy,
strike him everywhere at once: in his defences, in his morale, harass
him, madden him, crush him; we will march over nothing but ruins.”
Then he went off quite naturally, without any theatrical effect. He said
just what he had to say, and he did not add a word too many. He saluted
us: “I hope, gentlemen, to have the honour of seeing you again.” A moment
later his motor-car was carrying him off towards Cassel, leaving us
deeply stirred and impressed by his spoken words and no less influenced
by his personality.