NEWS AT LAST!
The next day reinforcements arrived from our depôt. There were forty
men for the company, one of whom was an N.C.O. called Langlois--seven
men for the section.
The poor wretches were very much depressed. They had been detrained at
Bar-le-Duc, and sent off to find us, in charge of a subaltern. They
had been wandering about for three days, with little or no food. They
were worn out when they joined us. Their feet were bleeding, and in
their eyes was the reflection of horrible visions. Oh, those fields of
corpses! And the smell! Several of them were sick once more at the mere
recollection of it. Or again, in other places--those bodies buried in
haste--the arms and feet sticking out of the ground! And then, on the
second evening they had suddenly found themselves in the firing line.
Bullets whizzed past their ears--Zzp, Zzp--and shells surrounded them.
Several of their men had already been killed.
It must be added that these men left F---- five days before under
a gloomy impression. News had just got through of our regiment of
regulars who since the very beginning had been fighting a few miles
away from us, though we had never come across them. And what news it
was! Leaving Longuyon on the morning of the 21st, engaged that evening
at Ethes, and thrown back on Tellencourt, they had been, so to speak,
volatilised, during those two days. Their losses had been enormous. One
battalion had been wiped out and another was missing--the only hope was
that the whole of it might have been taken prisoners--the third had
been saved by the self-possession of a company commander.
When one thought of the recruiting, to a great extent local--The
regulars! All the young harvest! The flower of the country! A great
many of our _poilus_ had a younger brother, sometimes two or three,
among these troops which were said to be exterminated. They were to be
seen with anxious eyes, and quivering nostrils, hazarding some name or
other, in an agony of suspense. Details were generally lacking, but a
trenchant reply would sometimes come:
"Killed, killed!"
"Killed?"
"Exactly."
What a blow it was. Some of them staggered, but most of them bowed
their heads and said nothing. Then seized with compassion, I would go
up to them.
"Poor old chap!" I soothed them with a vague hope--how many of the
missing would turn up again?
What I was more anxious about than anything else was, as may be
imagined, the general situation. What was happening? I feverishly
questioned Langlois.
He was a school-master too, but from Paris. Playoust's set had
immediately tried to get hold of him, but he made it quite clear
that he intended to remain neutral, on good terms with us. He had an
interesting head. He was sunburnt, and had intensely blue eyes, a big
nose with a narrow bridge, and a determined chin. Besides that, he was
slim and muscular, and had a graceful carriage. There was a look of
a musketeer or condottiere about him--a look which was deceptive for
that matter, as I soon realised. He was a good sort, but nothing beyond
that. His intelligence was limited.
During his weeks at the depôt everything seemed to have rolled off him,
like water off a duck's back, without making the faintest impression.
He was eager for news, no doubt, but he was far from attaching to it
the tragic and capital importance which clothed the least occurrence in
this hour of our history.
It was disappointing and exasperating to me. I would have given a
lot to meet Fortin and have a talk with him. We had just heard that
he had become a humble private again, and was with the reinforcement
detachment.
However, I set about extracting all the news from Langlois, bit by bit,
and finished by attaining my end.
To begin with, the period of optimism had continued. The enemy had
been intercepted on the Meuse, and at Liège, Namur, and Dinant. Our
offensive was developing at Mulhouse and towards Morhange. That had
gone on until Friday, the 21st. That day's _communiqué_ still gave a
favourable picture of the situation. There were two shadows on it,
however: the day was described as having been "less fortunate" in
Lorraine, and the occupation of Brussels. The next day, there was
nothing very new. A huge battle was going on. The guns were talking.
Complete silence for two days. On the third--it was Tuesday--the
_communiqué_ announced, in terms very flattering to our troops, that
the attack had had no decisive results and that we had fallen back on
our covering positions. The casualties were heavy on both sides. One
paper claimed to see a second Valmy in the engagement.
But since then things had been going from bad to worse! To how great
an extent? I pressed Langlois, and implored him to try and recall the
smallest details--the text even of the bulletins. We were holding
out? Apparently. Towards Nancy our luck seemed to be re-establishing
itself. In the North? Oh. Langlois admitted that he really knew nothing
about the North. I pretended to be as calm as possible in order to
encourage him. Come along! The daily reports? What did they point to?
They were perplexing--"The English have lost a little ground on our
extreme left...." "We have had to bring our line slightly farther
back...." What else? Ever since the day following "Charleroi" they
had talked of German patrol parties venturing right up to near Douai
and Valenciennes. A note which had an official twang about it had
appeared on this subject. There was no cause for alarm! Merely isolated
instances! That was all very well! But the same day we read in the
socialistic manifesto that "Our richest and most cultivated regions are
invaded."
"And what about the Russians?" I asked. "Haven't they come in yet?"
"Yes--things are going all right down there apparently."
There were no details, of course.
The detachment had left F----, Langlois continued, at midday on the
29th,--the Paris dailies had just arrived.
This time there was a _communiqué_ which was undeniably odd. Even he
had been startled. He quoted the exact text: "_The situation on our
front, from the Somme to the Vosges, is exactly the same to-day as it
was yesterday._"
From the Somme to the Vosges! It was my turn to get a shock. What! Then
the Huns were at Amiens! Yes, everything went to prove it. Even nearer
perhaps? They had heard a rumour on their train journey, of sanguinary
engagements at Bapaume and at Peronne. Other reports were circulating.
Soisson and St. Quentin were said to have been cut off, the Compiègne
forest on fire.
I would not believe it all. I clung to the _communiqué_ of the 27th.
But in any case it was a terrible awakening. Even Guillaumin, who
joined us, was not incredulous, for once. An orderly had just confirmed
the news of the investment of La Fère. We put this fortress down as
being about half-way between the frontier and Paris. Was the capital in
danger? Not yet, after all! We pictured a huge force barring the way to
the intrenched camp.
What worried me most was public opinion which, with us, is so nervous
and impressionable. There was good reason to be calm about the morale
of the army. But the departments in the background. We were given a
gloomy reflection of the spirit reigning there now....
And the government especially? I had a vague dread of some faltering,
some lack of real energy in this coterie of middle-aged _bourgeois_,
who had grown up amid the dejection which had followed the defeat, and
had been softened by forty years of enjoyable egoism. Would they hold
out? What did we know of it? We had got no more letters since the game
had been played and lost in the North.
Certain facts which I learnt from Langlois were not calculated to
reassure me. The cabinet had been modified! Socialists in the Ministry.
If it should mean the road to some humiliating pact? There was still a
fear of civil war, in which France would drown herself in a fratricidal
struggle or, worse than all else, fling herself into the arms of the
infamous wretch who would speak of peace!
* * * * *
I kept my anxiety to myself in my continuous endeavour not to shake
any one's courage. I watched my _poilus_ with delight as they exerted
themselves to cheer up the new-comers. The Judsis and Lamalous laughed
at their glum looks.
"Like to know wot they'd say, if they'd seen any real fightin'!..."
They pulled their legs, inventing fantastic feats of prowess by the
regiment, or the company. The taking of "Beauclair" for instance!
Judsi often returned to the subject of that exploit. They had found
more burnt and spitted Bosches in there than you'd believe possible.
A carpet, no a pile, of them rising right up to the first storey.
Maddening for the ground-floor people of whom there was not a sign to
be seen.
The audience was greatly tickled.
"Now you'll do. W'en a man knows 'ow to laugh, 'e'll make a soldier!"
Thereupon, news arrived. We had been attached to the 4th Corps again,
and were to be entrained. What for? Paris. We were to form a part of
the troops constituting the mobile defence.
There was general rejoicing. Paris! A certain number of the men came
from the city or the suburbs, and even for the others the magic
syllables evoked endless delights. What ho! for the picture palaces and
the pretty girls, in their first free hour....
It opened up a perspective of repose for everyone, after so much toil.