Without being noticed by the two men I leave the drama narrowly
developing in this lamentable corner and its jostling and traffic and
hubbub.
Now I touch the composed and convalescent chat of two poor
wretches--"Ah, my boy, the affection he had for that vine of his! You
couldn't find anything wrong among the branches of it--"
"That little nipper, that wee little kid, when I went out with him,
holding his tiny fist, it felt as if I'd got hold of the little warm
neck of a swallow, you know."
And alongside this sentimental avowal, here is the passing revelation
of another mind: "Don't I know the 547th! Rather! Listen, it's a funny
regiment. They've got a poilu in it who's called Petitjean, another
called Petitpierre, and another called Petitlouis. Old man, it's as I'm
telling you; that's the kind of regiment it is."
As I begin to pick out a way with a view to leaving the cavern, there
is a great noise down yonder of a fall and a chorus of exclamations. It
is the hospital sergeant who has fallen. Through the breach that he was
clearing of its soft and bloody relics, a bullet has taken him in the
throat, and he is spread out full length on the ground. His great
bewildered eyes are rolling and his breath comes foaming. His mouth and
the lower part of his face are quickly covered with a cloud of rosy
bubbles. They place his head on a bag of bandages, and the bag is
instantly soaked with blood. An attendant cries that the packets of
lint will be spoiled, and they are needed. Something else is sought on
which to put the head that ceaselessly makes a light and discolored
froth. Only a loaf can be found, and it is slid under the spongy hair.
While they hold the sergeant's hand and question him, he only slavers
new heaps of bubbles, and we see his great black-bearded head across
this rosy cloud. Laid out like that, he might be a deep-breathing
marine monster, and the transparent red foam gathers and creeps up to
his great hazy eyes, no longer spectacled.
Then his throat rattles. It is a childish rattle, and he dies moving
his head to right and to left as though he were trying very gently to
say "No."
Looking on the enormous inert mass, I reflect that he was a good man.
He had an innocent and impressionable heart. How I reproach myself that
I sometimes abused him for the ingenuous narrowness of his views, and
for a certain clerical impertinence that he always had! And how glad I
am in this distressing scene--yes, happy enough to tremble with
joy--that I restrained myself from an angry protest when I found him
stealthily reading a letter I was writing, a protest that would
unjustly have wounded him! I remember the time when he exasperated me
so much by his dissertation on France and the Virgin Mary. It seemed
impossible to me that he could utter those thoughts sincerely. Why
should he not have been sincere? Has he not been really killed today? I
remember, too, certain deeds of devotion, the kindly patience of the
great man, exiled in war as in life--and the rest does not matter. His
ideas themselves are only trivial details compared with his
heart--which is there on the ground in ruins in this corner of Hell.
With what intensity I lamented this man who was so far asunder from me
in everything!
Then fell the thunder on us! We were thrown violently on each other by
the frightful shaking of the ground and the walls. It was as if the
overhanging earth had burst and hurled itself down. Part of the
armor-plate of beams collapsed, enlarging the hole that already pierced
the cavern. Another shock--another pulverized span fell in roaring
destruction. The corpse of the great Red Cross sergeant went rolling
against the wall like the trunk of a tree. All the timber in the long
frame-work of the cave, those heavy black vertebrae, cracked with an
ear-splitting noise, and all the prisoners in the dungeon shouted
together in horror.
Blow after blow, the explosions resound and drive us in all directions
as the bombardment mangles and devours the sanctuary of pierced and
diminished refuge. As the hissing flight of shells hammers and crushes
the gaping end of the cave with its thunderbolts, daylight streams in
through the clefts. More sharply now, and more unnaturally, one sees
the flushed faces and those pallid with death, the eyes which fade in
agony or burn with fever, the patched-up white-bound bodies, the
monstrous bandages. All that was hidden rises again into daylight.
Haggard, blinking and distorted, in face of the flood of iron and
embers that the hurricanes of light bring with them, the wounded arise
and scatter and try to take flight. All the terror-struck inhabitants
roll about in compact masses across the miserable tunnel, as if in the
pitching hold of a great ship that strikes the rocks.
The aviator, as upright as he can get and with his neck on the ceiling,
waves his arms and appeals to God, asks Him what He is called, what is
His real name. Overthrown by the blast and cast upon the others, I see
him who, bare of breast and his clothes gaping like a wound, reveals
the heart of a Christ. The greatcoat of the man who still monotonously
repeats, "What's the use of worrying?" now shows itself all green,
bright green, the effect of the picric acid no doubt released by the
explosion that has staggered his brain. Others--the rest,
indeed--helpless and maimed, move and creep and cringe, worm themselves
into the corners. They are like moles, poor, defenseless beasts, hunted
by the hellish hounds of the guns.
The bombardment slackens, and ends in a cloud of smoke that still
echoes the crashes, in a quivering and burning after-damp. I pass out
through the breach; and still surrounded and entwined in the clamor of
despair, I arrive under the free sky, in the soft earth where mingled
planks and legs are sunk. I catch myself on some wreckage; it is the
embankment of the trench. At the moment when I plunge into the
communication trenches they are visible a long way; they are still
gloomily stirring, still filled by the crowd that overflows from the
trenches and flows without end towards the refuges. For whole days, for
whole nights, you will see the long rolling streams of men plucked from
the fields of battle, from the plain over there that also has feelings
of its own, though it bleeds and rots without end.