RELUCTANTLY the ashen dawn is bleaching the still dark and formless
landscape. Between the declining road on the right that falls into the
gloom, and the black cloud of the Alleux Wood--where we hear the convoy
teams assembling and getting under way--a field extends. We have
reached it, we of the 6th Battalion, at the end of the night. We have
piled arms, and now, in the center of this circle of uncertain light,
our feet in the mist and mud, we stand in dark clusters (that yet are
hardly blue), or as solitary phantoms; and the heads of all are turned
towards the road that comes from "down there." We are waiting for the
rest of the regiment, the 5th Battalion, who were in the first line and
left the trenches after us.
Noises; "There they are!" A long and shapeless mass appears in the west
and comes down out of the night upon the dawning road.
At last! It is ended, the accursed shift that began at six o'clock
yesterday evening and has lasted all night, and now the last man has
stepped from the last communication trench.
This time it has been an awful sojourn in the trenches. The 18th
company was foremost and has been cut up, eighteen killed and fifty
wounded--one in three less in four days. And this without attack--by
bombardment alone.
This is known to us, and as the mutilated battalion approaches down
there, and we join them in trampling the muddy field and exchanging
nods of recognition, we cry, "What about the 18th?" We are thinking as
we put the question, "If it goes on like this, what is to become of all
of us? What will become of me?"
The 17th, the 19th, and the 20th arrive in turn and pile arms. "There's
the 18th!" It arrives after all the others; having held the first
trench, it has been last relieved.
The light is a little cleaner, and the world is paling. We can make
out, as he comes down the road, the company's captain, ahead of his men
and alone. He helps himself along with a stick, and walks with
difficulty, by reason of his old wound of the Marne battle that
rheumatism is troubling; and there are other pangs, too. He lowers his
hooded head, and might be attending a funeral. We can see that in his
mind he is indeed following the dead, and his thoughts are with them.
Here is the company, debouching in dire disorder, and our hearts are
heavy. It is obviously shorter than the other three, in the march past
of the battalion.
I reach the road, and confront the descending mass of the 18th. The
uniforms of these survivors are all earth-yellowed alike, so that they
appear to be clad in khaki. The cloth is stiff with the ochreous mud
that has dried underneath. The skirts of their greatcoats are like
lumps of wood, jumping about on the yellow crust that reaches to their
knees. Their faces are drawn and blackened; dust and dirt have wrinkled
them anew; their eyes are big and fevered. And from these soldiers whom
the depths of horror have given back there rises a deafening din. They
talk all at once, and loudly; they gesticulate, they laugh and sing.
You would think, to see them, that it was a holiday crowd pouring over
the road!
These are the second section and its big sub-lieutenant, whose
greatcoat is tightened and strapped around a body as stiff as a rolled
umbrella. I elbow my way along the marching crowd as far as Marchal's
squad, the most sorely tried of all. Out of eleven comrades that they
were, and had been without a break for a year and a half, there were
three men only with Corporal Marchal.
He sees me--with a glad exclamation and a broad smile. He lets go his
rifle-sling and offers me his hands, from one of which hangs his trench
stick--"Eh, vieux frere, still going strong? What's become of you
lately?"
I turn my head away and say, almost under my breath, "So, old chap,
it's happened badly."
His smile dies at once, and he is serious: "Eh, oui, old man; it can't
be helped; it was awful this time. Barbier is killed."
"They told us--Barbier!"
"Saturday night it was, at eleven o'clock. He had the top of his back
taken away by a shell," says Marchal, "cut off like a razor. Besse got
a bit of shell that went clean through his belly and stomach. Barthlemy
and Baubex got it in the head and neck. We passed the night skedaddling
up and down the trench at full speed, to dodge the showers. And little
Godefroy--did you know him?--middle of his body blown away. He was
emptied of blood on the spot in an instant, like a bucket kicked over.
Little as he was, it was remarkable how much blood he had, it made a
stream at least fifty meters long. Gougnard got his legs cut up by one
explosion. They picked him up not quite dead. That was at the listening
post. I was there on duty with them. But when that shell fell I had
gone into the trench to ask the time. I found my rifle, that I'd left
in my place, bent double, as if some one had folded it in his hands,
the barrel like a corkscrew, and half of the stock in sawdust. The
smell of fresh blood was enough to bring your heart up."
"And Mondain--him, too?"
"Mondain--that was the day after, yesterday in fact, in a dug-out that
a shell smashed in. He was lying down, and his chest was crushed. Have
they told you about Franco, who was alongside Mondain? The fall of
earth broke his spine. He spoke again after they'd got him out and set
him down. He said, with his head falling to one side, 'I'm dying,' and
he was gone. Vigile was with them, too; his body wasn't touched, but
they found him with his head completely flattened out, flat as a
pancake, and huge-as big as that. To see it spread out on the ground,
black and distorted, it made you think of his shadow--the shadow one
gets on the ground sometimes when one walks with a lantern at night."
"Vigile--only Class 1913--a child! And Mondain and Franco--such good
sorts, in spite of their stripes. We're so many old special pals the
less, mon vieux Marchal."
"Yes," says Marchal. But he is swallowed up in a crowd of his friends,
who worry and catechise him. He bandies jests with them, and answers
their raillery, and all hustle each other, and laugh.
I look from face to face. They are merry, and in spite of the
contractions of weariness, and the earth-stains, they look triumphant.
What does it mean? If wine had been possible during their stay in the
first line, I should have said, "All these men are drunk."
I single out one of the survivors, who hums as he goes, and steps in
time with it flippantly, as hussars of the stage do. It is Vanderborn,
the drummer.
"Hullo, Vanderborn, you look pleased with yourself!" Vanderborn, who is
sedate in the ordinary, cries, "It's not me yet, you see! Here I am!"
With a mad gesticulation he serves me a thump on the shoulder. I
understand.
If these men are happy in spite of all, as they come out of hell, it is
because they are coming out of it. They are returning, they are spared.
Once again the Death that was there has passed them over. Each company
in its turn goes to the front once in six weeks. Six weeks! In both
great and minor matters, fighting soldiers manifest the philosophy of
the child. They never look afar, either ahead or around. Their thought
strays hardly farther than from day to day. To-day, every one of those
men is confident that he will live yet a little while.
And that is why, in spite of the weariness that weighs them down and
the new slaughter with which they are still bespattered, though each
has seen his brothers torn away from his side, in spite of all and in
spite of themselves, they are celebrating the Feast of the Survivors.
The boundless glory in which they rejoice is this--they still stand
straight.