The nerve-racking, deafening din went on and on without a respite.
Bracques was hit in the head—he was a living, breathing horror, his
whole jaw gone—one hand plucking at his coat. He lay grotesquely
uncomfortable on his back, rolling this way and rolling that way on
his knapsack and his tin gamelle and the dozen other accouterments
he couldn’t get rid of. A dozen lads he had gone to school with in
Toulouse were screaming. One called for his mother again and again,
“_Maman! Maman! Maman!_” Most of the wounded lay still in their blood,
or moaned and writhed in their agony. On Coco’s left, he said, was a
body without a head. Coco, he confessed, thought more than once of
running. What was the use of staying only to be butchered? They could
do no good that way. But still the regiment held its place; yes, but
the regiment was getting strangely thin. It could not last long.
Coco looked round for François, who should have been beside him.
There he was, close by, grinning. He called out something to keep up
Coco’s courage, but in that inferno Coco couldn’t hear a word. Then,
instantly, there was a gigantic explosion; and when Coco rose again,
he looked—he grew numb. There was François on his back—with both legs
queerly bent in an impossible position. With a sickening wave of nausea
Coco saw that both the boy’s legs were shockingly crushed, all but torn
off, and his red pantaloons were soaking in blood. François’s face
was horrible now; his eyes were shining wildly. Coco, shrinking with
horror, managed to crawl toward him....
In the hospital at Toulouse, when Coco told me this, lying in his cot,
he shrank convulsively into himself with horror, just as he must have
recoiled, I fancy, that day. He wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were
fixed on the window. Coco told me then that François’s legs were torn
“quite off”—he was sure of it; but I imagine that, in his agony of
horror, Coco must have been mistaken, or François would have bled to
death very quickly. Coco says he lived for nearly three-quarters of
an hour. At any rate, his chum was done for, and suffering torments
unspeakable.
“He just looked at me and begged me to kill him,” said Coco, his eyes
still on the window. “He said”—Coco could hardly speak now—“he said
if—I was his friend—I’d finish him—so he wouldn’t suffer. There was
such a terrible noise of the shells bursting that I couldn’t quite
hear at first— I had to hold my head close to get what he said.... He
said—if he had helped me, ever—now was my chance to be his friend ...
and put him out of his misery....”
We were silent for a while. I was looking at him, getting up my courage
to ask a question. Finally I dared. I simply _had_ to ask it:
“_Did_ you do it, Coco?”
The tears poured into Coco’s eyes now. He shook his head slowly,
without a word.
“Do you regret not having—done what he wanted, Coco?”
Coco said simply, “I don’t know. _I_ would have wanted to die quickly.
Perhaps as his friend I ought to have done it. But I am a good
Catholic, you know, m’sieur; and I was taught that it is a sin to take
human life.” Quite naturally he added: “And yet I suppose I have killed
a lot of Germans.” He shook his head wearily. “I can’t understand it.
I must leave it for the church to decide. I did the best I could....”