But everybody applies himself to the job courageously, except for some
invincible sleepers whose nap will involve them later in superhuman
efforts.
We attack the first layer of the new line--little mounds of earth,
stringy with grass. The ease and speed with which the work begins--like
all entrenching work in free soil--foster the illusion that it will
soon be finished, that we shall be able to sleep in the cavities we
have scooped: and thus a certain eagerness revives.
But whether by reason of the noise of the shovels, or because some men
are chatting almost aloud, in spite of reproofs, our activity wakes up
a rocket, whose flaming vertical line rattles suddenly on our right.
"Lie down!" Every man flattens himself, and the rocket balances and
parades its huge pallor over a sort of field of the dead.
As soon as it is out one hears the men, in places and then all along,
detach themselves from their secretive stillness, get up, and resume
the task with more discretion.
Soon another star-shell tosses aloft its long golden stalk, and still
more brightly illuminates the flat and motionless line of trenchmakers.
Then another and another.
Bullets rend the air around us, and we hear a cry, "Some one wounded!"
He passes, supported by comrades. We can just see the group of men who
are going away, dragging one of their number.
The place becomes unwholesome. We stoop and crouch, and some are
scratching at the earth on their knees. Others are working full length;
they toil, and turn, and turn again, like men in nightmares. The earth,
whose first layer was light to lift, becomes muddy and sticky; it is
hard to handle, and clings to the tool like glue. After every shovelful
the blade must be scraped.
Already a thin heap of earth is winding along, and each man has the
idea of reinforcing the incipient breastwork with his pouch and his
rolled-up greatcoat, and he hoods himself behind the slender pile of
shadow when a volley comes--
While we work we sweat, and as soon as we stop working we are pierced
through by the cold. A spell seems to be cast on us, paralyzing our
arms. The rockets torment and pursue us, and allow us but little
movement. After every one of them that petrifies us with its light we
have to struggle against a task still more stubborn. The hole only
deepens into the darkness with painful and despairing tardiness.
The ground gets softer; each shovelful drips and flows, and spreads
from the blade with a flabby sound. At last some one cries, "Water!"
The repeated cry travels all along the row of diggers--"Water--that's
done it!"
"Melusson's team's dug deeper, and there's water. They've struck a
swamp."--"No help for it."
We stop in confusion. In the bosom of the night we hear the sound of
shovels and picks thrown down like empty weapons. The non-coms. go
gropingly after the officer to get instructions. Here and there, with
no desire for anything better, some men are going deliciously to sleep
under the caress of the rain, under the radiant rockets.
* * * * *
It was very nearly at this minute, as far as I can remember, that the
bombardment began again. The first shell fell with a terrible splitting
of the air, which seemed to tear itself in two; and other whistles were
already converging upon us when its explosion uplifted the ground at
the head of the detachment in the heart of the magnitude of night and
rain, revealing gesticulations upon a sudden screen of red.
No doubt they had seen us, thanks to the rockets, and had trained their
fire on us.
The men hurled and rolled themselves towards the little flooded ditch
that they had dug, wedging, burying, and immersing themselves in it,
and placed the blades of the shovels over their heads. To right, to
left, in front and behind, shells burst so near that every one of them
shook us in our bed of clay; and it became soon one continuous quaking
that seized the wretched gutter, crowded with men and scaly with
shovels, under the strata of smoke and the falling fire. The splinters
and debris crossed in all directions with a network of noise over the
dazzling field. No second passed but we all thought what some stammered
with their faces in the earth, "We're done, this time!"
A little in front of the place where I am, a shape has arisen and
cried, "Let's be off!" Prone bodies half rose out of the shroud of mud
that dripped in tails and liquid rags from their limbs, and these
deathful apparitions cried also, "Let's go!" They were on their knees,
on all-fours, crawling towards the way of retreat: "Get on, allez, get
on!"
But the long file stayed motionless, and the frenzied complaints were
in vain. They who were down there at the end would not budge, and their
inactivity immobilized the rest. Some wounded passed over the others,
crawling over them as over debris, and sprinkling the whole company
with their blood.
We discovered at last the cause of the maddening inactivity of the
detachment's tail--"There's a barrage fire beyond."
A weird imprisoned panic seized upon the men with cries inarticulate
and gestures stillborn. They writhed upon the spot. But little shelter
as the incipient trench afforded, no one dared leave the ditch that
saved us from protruding above the level of the ground, no one dared
fly from death towards the traverse that should be down there. Great
were the risks of the wounded who had managed to crawl over the others,
and every moment some were struck and went down again.
Fire and water fell blended everywhere. Profoundly entangled in the
supernatural din, we shook from neck to heels. The most hideous of
deaths was falling and bounding and plunging all around us in waves of
light, its crashing snatched our fearfulness in all directions--our
flesh prepared itself for the monstrous sacrifice! In that tense moment
of imminent destruction, we could only remember just then how often we
had already experienced it, how often undergone this outpouring of
iron, and the burning roar of it, and the stench. It is only during a
bombardment that one really recalls those he has already endured.
And still, without ceasing, newly-wounded men crept over us, fleeing at
any price. In the fear that their contact evoked we groaned again, "We
shan't get out of this; nobody will get out of it."
Suddenly a gap appeared in the compressed humanity, and those behind
breathed again, for we were on the move.
We began by crawling, then we ran, bowed low in the mud and water that
mirrored the flashes and the crimson gleams, stumbling and falling over
submerged obstructions, ourselves resembling heavy splashing
projectiles, thunder-hurled along the ground. We arrive at the
starting-place of the trench we had begun to dig.
"There's no trench--there's nothing."
In truth the eye could discern no shelter in the plain where our work
had begun. Even by the stormy flash of the rockets we could only see
the plain, a huge and raging desert. The trench could not be far away,
for it had brought us here. But which way must we steer to find it?
The rain redoubled. We lingered a moment in mournful disappointment,
gathered on a lightning-smitten and unknown shore--and then the
stampede.
Some bore to the left, some to the right, some went straight
forward--tiny groups that one only saw for a second in the heart of the
thundering rain before they were separated by sable avalanches and
curtains of flaming smoke.
* * * * *
The bombardment over our heads grew less; it was chiefly over the place
where we had been that it was increasing. But it might any minute
isolate everything and destroy it.
The rain became more and more torrential--a deluge in the night. The
darkness was so deep that the star-shells only lit up slices of
water-seamed obscurity, in the depths of which fleeing phantoms came
and went and ran round in circles.
I cannot say how long I wandered with the group with which I had
remained. We went into morasses. We strained our sight forward in quest
of the embankment and the trench of salvation, towards the ditch that
was somewhere there, as towards a harbor.
A cry of consolation was heard at last through the vapors of war and
the elements--"A trench!" But the embankment of that trench was moving;
it was made of men mingled in confusion, who seemed to be coming out
and abandoning it.
"Don't stay there, mates!" cried the fugitives; "clear off, don't come
near. It's hell--everything's collapsing--the trenches are legging it
and the dug-outs are bunged up--the mud's pouring in everywhere. There
won't be any trenches by the morning--it's all up with them about here!"
They disappeared. Where? We forgot to ask for some little direction
from these men whose streaming shapes had no sooner appeared than they
were swallowed up in the dark.
Even our little group crumbled away among the devastation, no longer
knowing where they were. Now one, now another, faded into the night,
disappearing towards his chance of escape.
We climbed slopes and descended them. I saw dimly in front of me men
bowed and hunchbacked, mounting a slippery incline where mud held them
back, and the wind and rain repelled them under a dome of cloudy lights.
Then we flowed back, and plunged into a marsh up to our knees. So high
must we lift our feet that we walked with a sound of swimming. Each
forward stride was an enormous effort which slackened in agony.
It was there that we felt death drawing near. But we beached ourselves
at last on a sort of clay embankment that divided the swamp. As we
followed the slippery back of this slender island along, I remember
that once we had to stoop and steer ourselves by touching some
half-buried corpses, so that we should not be thrown down from the soft
and sinuous ridge. My hand discovered shoulders and hard backs, a face
cold as a helmet, and a pipe still desperately bitten by dead jaws.
As we emerged and raised our heads at a venture we heard the sound of
voices not far away. "Voices! Ah, voices!" They sounded tranquil to us,
as though they called us by our names, and we all came close together
to approach this fraternal murmuring of men.
The words became distinct. They were quite near--in the hillock that we
could dimly see like an oasis: and yet we could not hear what they
said. The sounds were muddled, and we did not understand them.
"What are they saying?" asked one of us in a curious tone.
Instinctively we stopped trying to find a way in. A doubt, a painful
idea was seizing us. Then, clearly enunciated, there rang out these
words--"Achtung!--Zweites Geschutz--Schuss--" Farther back, the report
of a gun answered the telephonic command.
Horror and stupefaction nailed us to the spot at first--"Where are we?
Oh, Christ, where are we?" Turning right about face, slowly in spite of
all, borne down anew by exhaustion and dismay, we took flight, as
overwhelmed by weariness as if we had many wounds, pulled back by the
mud towards the enemy country, and retaining only just enough energy to
repel the thought of the sweetness it would have been to let ourselves
die.
We came to a sort of great plain. We halted and threw ourselves on the
ground on the side of a mound, and leaned back upon it, unable to make
another step.
And we moved no more, my shadowy comrades nor I. The rain splashed in
our faces, streamed down our backs and chests, ran down from our knees
and filled our boots.
We should perhaps be killed or taken prisoners when day came. But we
thought no more of anything. We could do no more; we knew no more.