FIRST BLOOD
On the third morning after our entry into the Ricciotti's first foreign
legion, both Hugh and I awoke stiff and chilled by the frost. The lucky
among us had early found quarters in byres and cattle-sheds, where the
closely packed animals kept the place warm. We had to make the best of
it on a floor of beaten earth, still sparsely strewn with heads of wheat
and flecks of straw. The fodder had been requisitioned to the last
armful, and not enough was left to build a nest for a sparrow. The barn
was doorless, and, except for the shelter of the roof, we might as well
have slept in the open air. At least so we thought, but next day men on
the outposts told us a different tale. That night the head-quarters
thermometers had showed twenty below zero, and many men slept never
again to waken, under the open sky--slept leaning on their chassepots,
and so died standing up, no one guessing they were dead till they fell
over all in one piece like an icicle snapped.
But even Hugh Deventer and I were sorely tried in our open barn. We had
lain soft and fed well all our lives. We were not yet broken to the work
like the campaigners of Sicily, or even like those who had passed
through the war since the autumn.
"If I bored a hole or two where the joints are," groaned Hugh, "one of
Jack Jaikes's oil cans might easy my bearings greatly this morning!"
"From what I can guess," said Victor Dor, "you will find it warm enough
in an hour or two. Manteuffel is going to make a push for it to-day.
Ricciotti managed to capture a couple of Werder's Uhlans, and one of our
_franc-tireurs_ says that the whole Pomeranian army corps is coming upon
us as fast as the men can march."
"A _franc-tireur_ always lies," said another Valtelline man, Marius
Girr, scornfully, but enunciating a principle generally received in the
army.
"Still, it is possible that this one told the truth by mistake--at any
rate, it is not a safe thing to lie to Ricciotti about a matter which,
in a few days, will prove itself true or untrue. Ricciotti knows the use
of a firing party at twelve yards just as well as Bordone."
The morning grew more and more threatening as time passed. The chill
tang of coming snow clung to the nostrils. We had breakfasted meagrely
on the last rinds of bacon and scraps of sausage in our haversacks. We
longed for hot coffee till we ached, but had to content ourselves with
sucking an icicle or two from the roof of the barn, good for the thirst,
but very afflicting to the tongue at a temperature of minus twenty.
Presently the inexorable bugles called us forward to the trenches, which
extended in a vast hollow crescent from the Arroux bank opposite Autun
to the hills above St. Leger on the borders of the Nievre. We could see
against the snow dark masses of overcoated Prussians defiling this way
and that among the valleys, and at sight of them our field-guns began to
speak. With eyes that hardly yet understood we watched the shells
bursting and the marching columns shred suddenly apart to be reformed
automatically only an instant after, as the narrow strips of dark blue
uncoiled themselves towards the plain.
Hugh and I lay close against a railway embankment from which the rails
had been ruthlessly torn up. I was inclined to make an additional
shelter of these, and indeed Hugh and I had begun the work when Victor
Dor stopped us.
"As much earth as you like," he said; "earth or sand stops bullets, but
iron only makes them glance off, and often kill two in place of one.
Scatter all the rails, plates, and ties down our side of the slope. I
will show you something that is far better!"
And with the edge of the shallow iron saucepan which he carried like a
targe at his back, he scooped up the earth so that we soon had in front
of us a very competent breastwork, giving sufficient cover for our heads
and shoulders as well as a resting-place for our rifles.
During the next hour we heard the roar of the German artillery away in
the direction of St. Leger, and the resounding "boom-boom" of our heavy
mortars and twelve-pounders answering them.
"What would Jack Jaikes give to see these in action," I said in Hugh's
ear.
"And still more my father," he answered.
Our outposts began to be driven in, but they had stubbornly defended our
front, nor did they yield till the masses of blue battalions showed
thickly, and then only to give the artillery free play.
It was in waiting behind us, and the first crash as the shells hurtled
over our heads made Hugh and I feel very strange in the pits of our
stomachs--something like incipient sea-sickness. The veterans never once
looked aloft, but only cuddled their rifles and wriggled their bodies to
find a comfortable niche from which to fire.
"Dig your toes into the embankment, you English," Marius Girr of our
company called to us; "if you don't, the first recoil of the rifle will
send you slipping down into the ditch."
It was good advice, and with a few kicks we dug solid stances for our
feet, in which our thick marching shoes were ensconced to the heels. We
excavated also hollow troughs for our knees, and, as Hugh said, we
behaved generally like so many burying beetles instead of gallant
soldiers. All this was not done easily, for the ground was frozen hard,
and in the river behind us we could hear the solid blocks of ice
clinking and crunching together as the sullen grey-green current swept
them along.
It was Sunday, and upon the town road a little behind our line, but
quite within the zone of fire, comfortable mammas and trim little
daughters were trotting to Mass with their service books wrapped in
white napkins. Hugh and I yelled at them to go home, but it was no use.
Luckily I remembered their fear of the Iron Chancellor, and assured them
by all the saints that "Bismarck was coming," whereupon they kilted
their petticoats and made off homeward, their fat white-stockinged legs
twinkling in the pearl-grey twilight. It was like a Dutch
picture--trampled snow, low brooding sky, white-capped matrons and
little girls wrapped in red shawls.
But in a few moments we had other matters to occupy us. The Tanara
regiment was on our right, and the sweep of the crescent being farther
advanced than at our position, they received the first rush of the
Pomeranians.
But there was no waiting, for suddenly out of the woods in front of us
stiff lines of blue emerged and began moving forward with the Noah's Ark
regularity of marionettes. It seemed impossible that these could be
soldiers charging. But we were soon convinced. The dip of the ground hid
them for a long time, and then suddenly they appeared not four hundred
yards off, no longer in column, but in two lines close together, with a
supporting third some distance in the rear.
We could see them extending companies far away on either side. But this
we knew to be in vain, for the river protected us on the right, while on
the left our entrenchments reached as far as the St. Leger hills which
were crowned with our forts.
Then came the splitting growl of the mitrailleuses behind us. These were
still held to be rather uncertain weapons. Men familiarly called them
pepper-pots, and it was as likely as not that a few bullets might come
spattering our way, spread-eagled as we were on the railway embankment,
and offering a far more practicable target than the advancing Germans.
But there were no casualties, at least near us, and in a moment the
Germans fired a volley which swept the embankment like hail. The rifles
of the first Milanese cracked on every side, but I bade Hugh hold his
fire till the charging enemy was only a hundred yards away. Our Henry
rifles gave us an immense advantage in speed of firing. They came on,
breaking at last through a dark barrier of yew and poplar hedge, and as
they came we could see their bayonets flash like silver in the dull
light. Their colonel was mounted on a black charger, a tall fine-looking
man who pushed his horse up every knoll in order the better to see whom
and what he was attacking.
But he dropped a little way from the yew hedge, and almost before he
reached the ground two men with a stretcher were lifting up their
officer, while a third had taken the horse by the bridle and was leading
him to the rear, as composedly as a groom in a stable-yard.
"Now, then, Hugh," I cried, "you take the right of the line and I will
take the left. But sight carefully and don't aim high."
"_Crack_--_crack_--_crack!_!" went our magazine rifles, and the big
Pomeranians went down as if an invisible sickle had mown them. As I
expected, Hugh was finished before me, but we had scarcely time to
adjust our new cartridge holders before the line broke and the blue
coats turned and ran. A few officers and a man or two immediately in
their wake got as far as the curve of the embankment--only, however, to
be shot down.
The air rang with the shouts of "Evivva Garibaldi!" And a few minutes
afterwards the Tanara regiment, encouraged by our success, repulsed the
enemy's bayonet charge, so that in an instant our whole line was
disengaged. Only out in the open the trampled earth and the glistening
crushed-sugar snow were starred here and there with spots and splotches
of red and the contorted bodies of men, some still moving, but mostly
stricken into the strange stiff attitudes of death.
It was our first battle in the service of Garibaldi. It was destined to
be our last. For that night the news of the fall of Paris and the
signing of the armistice stopped the fighting everywhere, except at
Belfort and along the desperate rear-guard line of Bourbaki's army,
which was being driven like a pack of famished wolves into the passes of
the Jura.