preserve their flag for the Army so that their memory might be
perpetuated, could not the Cross of Honour be attached to a flag of such
distinction? This idea, it seems, has been entertained, but perhaps--I
know nothing of the matter--there is some impeding clause in the
regulations, for I seem to remember to have read there that before it
can be decorated with the Cross a flag must have been unfurled on the
occasion of a great offensive or a splendid feat of arms. Now the case
of our Naval Brigade is so unprecedented that no regulations could have
made provision for it. How could they have unfurled their flag in that
unparalleled conflict since in those days they still had none? This
Brigade, hastily organised on the spur of the moment, was thrown into
the firing-line without that incomparable symbol, the tricolour, which
all the other brigades possessed before they set out. It was not until
later, long after the great exploits with which they won their spurs,
that their flag was presented to them, at a time when they had a
somewhat less terrible part to play. In such circumstances I venture to
hope that the regulation may be relaxed in their favour. If this flag of
theirs were decorated, all the sailors who received it with such joy
over there, that day when all its three colours were still new and
brilliant, would feel themselves distinguished at the same time as the
flag itself, and later, in future days, when their descendants came to
look at it, poor, sacred, tattered remnant, tarnished and dusty, this
Cross, which had been awarded, would speak to them more eloquently of
sublime deeds done on the Belgian Front.
They can never be too highly honoured, the Naval Brigade, of whom it has
been officially recorded:
"No troops in any age have ever done what these have done."
And here is an extract from a letter which, on the day when they were
disbanded, after reviewing them for the last time, General Hely d'Oissel
wrote to the captain of the _Paillet_, who was then commanding the
Brigade, a letter which was read to all the sailors, drawn up in line,
and which brought tears to their honest eyes:
"I should be happy to preserve the Brigade State (the terrible roll of
dead, officers, non-commissioned officers, and men) as an eloquent
witness of the immense services rendered to the country by this
admirable Brigade, which the land forces are proud to have had in their
ranks, and which I, personally, am proud to have had under my command
during more than a year of the war.
"This morning when I saw your magnificent sailors filing past with such
cheerfulness and precision, I could not but feel a poignant emotion when
I reflected that it was for the last time."
* * * * *
Indeed it was just there, in the blood-drenched marshes of the Yser,
that for the second time, and finally, the onrush of the barbarians was
broken. The two great decisive reverses suffered by that wretched
Emperor of the blood-stained hands were, everyone knows, the retreat
from the Marne and then that check in Belgium, in the face of a very
small handful of sailors of superhuman tenacity.
They were not specially selected, these men sublimely stubborn; no, they
were the first to hand, chosen hastily from among the men in our ports.
They had not even gone away to fight, but quietly to police the streets
of Paris, and from Paris, one fine day, in the extremity of our peril,
they were dispatched to the Yser, without preparation, inadequately
equipped, with barely sufficient food, and told simply:
"Let yourselves be killed, but do not suffer the German beast to pass!
At all costs resist for at least a week, to give us time to come to the
rescue."
Now they held out, it will be remembered, indefinitely, in the midst of
a veritable inferno of fire, shrapnel, clamour, crumbling ruins, cold,
rain, engulfing mud, and ever since that day when they brought to a
standstill the onrush of the beast, France felt that she was saved
indeed.
Indeed, as a general rule, it is sufficient to take any honest fellows
whatsoever, and merely by putting a blue collar on them, you transform
them into heroes. In the Chinese expedition, among other instances, I
have seen at close quarters the very same thing: a small handful of men,
taken haphazard from one of our ships, commanded by very young officers
who had only just attained their first band of gold braid, and this
assembly of men, hastily mustered, suddenly became a force complete in
itself, admirable, united, disciplined, zealous, fearless, capable of
performing within a couple of days prodigies of endurance and daring.
Oh that Brigade of the Yser, whose destiny I just missed sharing! I had
plotted desperately, I admit, for the sake of being attached to it, and
I was about to gain my end when an obstacle arose which I could never
have foreseen and which excluded me inexorably. To have to renounce
this dream when it was almost within my grasp will be for me unto my
life's end a subject of burning and tormenting regret. But at least let
me comfort myself a little by paying my tribute of admiration to those
who were there. Let me at least have this little pleasure of working to
glorify their memory. Therefore I herewith beg on their behalf--not only
in my own name, for several of my comrades in the Navy associate
themselves in my prayer, comrades who were likewise not among them, the
disinterested nature of whose motives cannot consequently be
questioned--I beg herewith on their behalf almost confidently, although
the regulation may prove me in the wrong, that it may be accorded to
them, the distinction they have earned ten times over, at which no one
can take umbrage, and that a scrap of red ribbon be fastened to their
flag.
XXII
THE ABSENT-MINDED PILGRIM
_December, 1915._
That day, during a lull in the fighting, the General gave me permission
to take a motor car for three or four hours to go and look for the grave
of one of my nephews, who was struck down by a shell during our
offensive in September.
From imperfect information I gathered that he must be lying in a humble
emergency cemetery, improvised the day after a battle, some five or six
hundred yards away from the little town of T---- whose ruins, still
bombarded daily and becoming more and more shapeless, lie on the extreme
border of the French zone, quite close to the German trenches. But I did
not know how he had been buried, whether in a common grave, or beneath a
little cross inscribed with his name, which would make it possible to
return later and remove the body.
"To get to T----," the General had said, "make a _detour_ by the village
of B----, that is the way by which you will run the least risk of being
shelled. At B----, if the circumstances of the day seemed dangerous, a
sentinel would stop you as usual; then you would hide your motor behind
a wall, and you could continue your journey on foot--with the usual
precautions, you will understand."
Osman, my faithful servant, who has shared my adventures in many lands
for twenty years, and who, like everyone else, is a soldier, a
territorial, had a cousin killed in the same fight as my nephew, and he
is buried, so he was told, in the same cemetery. So he has obtained
permission to accompany me on my pious quest.
To-day all that gloomy countryside is powdered with hoar-frost and over
it hangs an icy mist; nothing can be distinguished sixty yards ahead,
and the trees which border the roads fade away, enveloped in great white
shrouds.
After driving for half an hour we are right in the thick of that inferno
of the battle front, which, from habit, we no longer notice, though it
was at first so impressive and will later on be so strange to remember.
All is chaos, hurly-burly; all is overthrown, shattered; walls are
calcined, houses eviscerated, villages in ruins on the ground; but life,
intense and magnificent, informs both roads and ruins. There are no
longer any civilians, no women or children; nothing but soldiers,
horses, and motor cars; of these, however, there are such numbers that
progress is difficult. Two streams of traffic, almost uninterrupted,
divide the roads between them; on one side is everything that is on its
way to the firing-line; on the other side everything that is on its way
back. Great lorries bringing up artillery, munitions, rations, and Red
Cross supplies jolt along on the frozen cart ruts with a great din of
clanging iron, rivalling the noise, more or less distant, of the
incessant cannonade. And the faces of all these different men, who are
driving along on these enormous rolling machines, express health and
resolution. There are our own soldiers, now wearing those bluish helmets
of steel, which recall the ancient casque and bring us back to the old
times; there are yellow-bearded Russians, Indians, and Bedouins with
swarthy complexions. All these crowds are continuously travelling to and
fro along the road, dragging all sorts of curious things heaped up in
piles. There are also thousands of horses, picking their way among the
huge wheels of innumerable vehicles. Indeed it might be thought that
this was a general migration of mankind after some cataclysm had
subverted the surface of the earth. Not so! This is simply the work of
the great Accursed, who has unloosed German barbarism. He took forty
years to prepare the monstrous _coup_, which, according to his
reckoning, was to establish the apotheosis of his insane pride, but
which will result in nothing but his downfall, in a sea of blood, in the
midst of the detestation of the world.
There is certainly a remarkable lull here to-day, for even when the
rolling of the iron lorries ceases for a moment, the rumbling of the
cannon does not make itself heard. The cause of this must be the fog and
in other respects, too, how greatly it is to our advantage, this kindly
mist; it seems as if we had ordered it.
Here we are at the village of B----, which, the General had expected,
would be the terminus of our journey by car. Here the throng is chiefly
concentrated among shattered walls and burnt roofs; helmets and
overcoats of "horizon" blue are crowding and bustling about. And every
place is blocked with these heavy wagons, which, as soon as they arrive,
come to a halt, or take up a convenient position for starting on the
return journey. For here we have reached the border of that region
where, as a rule, men can only venture by night, on foot, with muffled
tread; or if by day, one by one, so that they may not be observed by
German field-glasses. At the end of the village, then, signs of life
cease abruptly, as if cut off clean with the stroke of an axe. Suddenly
there are no more people. The road, it is true, leads to that town of
T----, which is our destination; but all at once it is quite empty and
silent. Bordered by its two rows of skeleton trees, white with frost, it
plunges into the dense white fog with an air of mystery, and it would
not be surprising to read here, on some signpost, "Road to Death."
We hesitate for a moment. I do not, however, see any of the signals
which are customary at places where a halt must be made, nor the usual
little red flag, nor the warning sentry, holding his rifle above his
head with both hands. So the road is considered practicable to-day, and
when I ask if indeed it leads to T----, some sergeants who are there
salute and confine their answer to the word "Yes, sir," without showing
any surprise. So all that we have to do is to continue, taking,
nevertheless, the precaution of not driving too fast, so as not to make
too much noise.
And it is merely by this stillness into which we are now plunging, by
this solitude alone, that I am aware that we are right in the very
front; for it is one of the strange characteristics of modern warfare
that the tragic zone bordering on the burrows of the barbarians, is
like a desert. Not a soul is visible; everything here is hidden, buried,
and--except on days when Death begins to roar with loud and terrible
voice--most frequently there is nothing to be heard.
We go on and on in a scenery of dismal monotony, continually repeating
itself, all misty and unsubstantial in appearance as if made of muslin.
Fifty yards behind us it is effaced and shut away; fifty yards ahead of
us it opens out, keeping its distance from us, but without varying its
aspect. The whitish plain with its frozen cart ruts remains ever the
same; it is blurred and does not reveal its distances; there is ever the
same dense atmosphere, resembling cold white cotton wool, which has
taken the place of air, and ever the two rows of trees powdered with
rime, looking like big brooms which have been rolled in salt and thrust
into the ground by their handles. It is clear indeed that this region is
too often ravaged by lightning, or something equivalent. Oh, how many
trees there are shattered, twisted, with splintered branches hanging in
shreds!
We cross French trenches running to the right and left of the road,
facing the unknown regions towards which we are hastening; they are
ready, several lines of them, to meet the improbable contingency of a
retreat of our troops; but they are empty and are merely a continuation
of the same desert. I call a halt from time to time to look around and
listen with ears pricked. There is no sound; everything is as still as
if Nature herself had died of all this cold. The fog is growing thicker
still, and there are no field-glasses capable of penetrating it. At the
very most they might hear us arrive, the enemy, over there and beyond.
According to my maps we have still another two miles at least before us.
Onwards!
But suddenly there appears to have been an evocation of ghosts; heads,
rows of heads, wearing blue helmets, rise together from the ground,
right and left, near and far. Upon my soul! they are our own soldiers to
be sure, and they content themselves with looking at us, scarcely
showing themselves. But for these trenches, which we are passing so
rapidly, to be so full of soldiers on the alert, we must be remarkably
close to the Ogre's den. Nevertheless let us go a little farther, as the
kindly mist stays with us like an accomplice.
Five hundred yards farther on I remember the enemy's microphones, which
alone could betray us; and it so happens that the frozen earth and the
mist are two wonderful conductors of sound. Then it suddenly occurs to
me that I have gone much too far, that I am surrounded by death, that it
is only the fog which shelters us, and the thought that I am responsible
for the lives of my soldiers makes me shudder. It is because I am not on
duty; my expedition to-day is of my own choosing, and in these
conditions, if anything happened to one of them, I should suffer remorse
for the rest of my life. It is high time to leave the car here! Then I
shall continue my journey on foot towards the town of T----, to find out
from our soldiers who are installed there in cellars of ruined houses,
whereabouts the cemetery lies which I am seeking.
But at this same moment a densely crowded cemetery is visible in a field
to the left of the road; there are crosses, crosses of white wood,
ranged close together in rows, as numerous as vines in the vineyards of
Champagne. It is a humble cemetery for soldiers, quite new, yet already
extensive, powdered with rime too, like the surrounding plains, and
infinitely desolate of aspect in that colourless countryside, which has
not even a green blade of grass. Can this be the cemetery we are
seeking?
"Yes, certainly this is it," exclaims Osman, "this is it, for here is my
poor cousin's grave. Look, sir, the first, close to the ditch which
borders the cemetery. I read his name here."
Indeed, I read it myself, "Pierre D----." The inscription is in very
large letters, and the cross is facing in our direction more than the
others, as if it would call to us:
"Halt! we are here. Do not run the risk of going any farther. Stop!"
And we stop, listening attentively in the silence. There is no sound, no
movement anywhere, except the fall of a bead of frost, slipping off the
gaunt trees by the wayside. We seem to be in absolute security. Let us
then calmly enter the field where this humble cross seems to have
beckoned to us.
Osman had carefully prepared two little sealed bottles, containing the
names of our two dead friends, which he intended to bury at their feet,
fearing lest shells should still be capable of destroying all the labels
on the graves. It is true we have carelessly forgotten to bring a spade
to dig up the earth, but it cannot be helped, we shall do it as best we
may. The two chauffeurs accompany us, for knowing the reason for our
expedition, they had, with kindly thoughtfulness, each brought a camera
to take a photograph of the graves. Pierre D---- had been discovered at
once. There remained only my nephew to be found among these many frozen
graves of youthful dead. In order to gain time--for the place is not
very reassuring, it must be confessed--let us divide the pious task
among us, and each of us follow one of these rows, ranged with such
military regularity.
I do not think human imagination could ever conceive anything so dismal
as this huge military cemetery in the midst of all this desolation, this
silence which one knows to be listening, hostile and treacherous, in
this horrible neighbourhood whose menace seems, as it were, to loom over
us. Everything is white or whitish, beginning with the soil of
Champagne, which would always be pale even if it were not powdered with
innumerable little crystals of ice. There is no shrub, no greenery, not
even grass; nothing but the pale, cinder-grey earth in which our
soldiers have been buried. Here they lie, these two or three hundreds of
little hillocks, so narrow that it seems that space is precious, each
one marked with its poor little white cross. Garlanded with frost, the
arms of all these crosses seem fringed with sad, silent tears which have
frozen there, unable to fall, and the fog envelops the whole scene so
jealously that the end of the cemetery cannot be clearly seen. The last
crosses, hung with white drops, are lost in livid indefiniteness. It
seems as if this field alone were left in the world, with all its myriad
pearls gleaming sadly, and naught else.
I have bent down over a hundred graves at least and I find nothing but
unknown names, often even that cruel phrase, "Not identified." I say
that I have bent down, because sometimes, instead of being painted in
black letters, the inscription was engraved on a little zinc
plate--nothing better was to be had--engraved hastily and difficult to
decipher. At last I discover the poor boy whom I was seeking, "Sergent
Georges de F." There he is, in line as if on a parade ground, between
his companions, all alike silent. A little plate of zinc has fallen to
his lot, and his name has been patiently stippled, doubtless with the
help of a hammer and a nail. His is one of the few graves decked with a
wreath, a very modest wreath to be sure, of leaves already discoloured,
a token of remembrance from his men who must have loved him, for I know
he was gentle with them.
For reference later, when his body will be removed, I am now going to
draw a plan of the cemetery in my notebook, counting the rows of graves
and the number of graves in each row. Look! bullets are whistling past
us, two or three in succession. Whence can they be coming to us, these
bullets? They are undoubtedly intended for us, for the noise that each
one makes ends in that kind of little honeyed song, "Cooee you! Cooee
you!" which is characteristic of them when they expire somewhere in
your direction, somewhere quite close. After their flight silence
prevails again, but I make more haste with my drawing.
And the longer I remain here the more I am impressed with the horror of
the place. Oh this cemetery which, instead of ending like things in real
life, plunges little by little into enfolding mists; these tombs, these
tombs all decked with gem-like icicles which have dropped as tears drop;
the whiteness of the soil, the whiteness of everything, and Death which
returns and hovers stealthily, uttering a little cry like a bird!
Yonder, by the grave of Pierre D----, I notice Osman, likewise much
blurred in the fog. He has found a spade, which has doubtless remained
there ever since the interments, and he finishes burying the little
bottle which is to serve as a token.
Again that sound, "Cooee you! Cooee you!" The place is decidedly
unhealthy, as the soldiers say. I should be to blame if I lingered here
any longer.
Upon my soul, here comes shrapnel! But before I heard it explode in the
air I recognised it by the sound of its flight, which is different from
that of ordinary shells. This first shot is aimed too far to the right,
and the fragments fall twenty or thirty yards away on the little white
hillocks. But they have found us out, so much is certain, and that is
owing to the microphones. This will continue, and there is no cover
anywhere, not a single trench, not a single hole.
"Stoop down, sir, stoop down," shouts Osman from the distance, seeing
another coming towards me while my attention is still occupied with the
graves. Why should I stoop down? It is a useful precaution against
shells. But against shrapnel, which strikes downwards from above? No,
we ought to have our steel helmets, but carelessly, anticipating no
danger, we left them in the car with our masks. All that is left for us
is to beat a hasty retreat. Osman comes running towards me with his
spade and his second little bottle, and I shout at him:
"No, no, it is too late, you must run away."
Good heavens, the car has not even been turned! Why, that was an
elementary precaution, and as soon as we arrived I ought to have seen to
that. What a long, black record of carelessness to-day; where is my
head? It is because our entry to the cemetery was so undisturbed. I call
out to the two chauffeurs who were still taking photographs:
"Stop that, stop! Go at once and turn the car! Not too fast though, or
you will make too much noise, but hurry up! Run!"
Osman took advantage of this diversion with the chauffeurs to begin
digging in the ground near me.
"No, I tell you, stop at once. Can you not see that they are still
shelling us? Run and get behind a tree by the roadside."
"But it is all right, sir, it is just finished. It will be finished by
the time the car has been turned."
In my heart I am glad that he is disobeying me a little and completing
the work. Never was a hole dug so rapidly nor a bottle buried so nimbly.
Then he puts back the earth, jumps on it to flatten it down, and throws
down his sexton's spade. Then we run away at full speed, stepping on the
hillocks of our dead, apologising to them inwardly. Nothing seems so
ridiculous and stupid as to run under fire. But I am not alone; the
safety of these soldiers is in my charge, and I should be guilty if I
delayed them for as much as a second in their flight.
Shrapnel is still bursting, scattering its hail around us. And how
strange and subtle are the ways of modern warfare, where death comes
thus seeking us out of invisible depths, depths of a horizon that looks
like white cotton wool; death launched at us by men whom we can see no
more than they can see us, launched blindly, yet in the certainty of
finding us.
We reach the car just as it has finished turning; we jump in, and off
our car goes at full speed, all open. We pass the occupied trenches like
a hurricane; this time heads are scarcely raised because of the shower
of shrapnel. These men, to be sure, are under cover, but not so we, who
have nothing but our speed to save us.
In our frantic flight, in which my part is simply passive, my
imagination is free to return to that gloomy cemetery and its dead. And
it was strange how clearly we could hear the shrapnel in the midst of
this silence and in this extraordinary mist, which increased, like a
microphone, the noise of its flight. It is, moreover, perhaps the first
time that I have heard it performing a solo apart from all the customary
clamour, in intimacy, if I may say so, for it has done me the honour of
coming solely on my account. Never before, then, had I felt that almost
physical appreciation of the mad velocity of these little hard bodies,
and of the shock with which they must strike against some fragile
object, say a chest or a head.
The game is over, and we are entering again the village of B----. Here,
out of range of shrapnel, only long-distance guns could reach us. We
have not even a broken pane of glass or a scratch. Instinctively the
chauffeurs draw up, just as I was about to give the order, not because
the car is out of breath, or we either, but we need a moment to regain
our composure, to arrange the overcoats thrown into the car in a
confused heap, which, after our hurried departure, danced a saraband
with cameras, helmets, and revolvers.
And then, like people who at last succeed in finding a shelter from a
shower in a gateway, we look at one another and feel inclined to
laugh--to laugh in spite of the painful and still recent memory of our
dead, to laugh at having made good our escape, to laugh because we have
succeeded in doing what we set out to do, and especially because we have
defied those imbeciles who were firing at us.
XXIII
THE FIRST SUNSHINE OF MARCH
_March 10th, 1916._