THE QUARTERMASTER’S BILLETS
I was seated under a shed of loose boards in the courtyard of Cantonment
No. 77, and just tasting some excellent macaroni which the cook had
warmed up for me, when Dedouche, the orderly, came to find me.
“Say, Sergeant,” he asked, “are you the intelligence officer?”
The title of “sergeant” sounds strange in the ears of a cavalryman, and
I felt a little hurt in my _esprit de corps_; but I at once answered
Dedouche’s summons, for the orderly, in spite of being at the beck and
call of everyone, enjoys a certain prestige. He has a real importance,
small though it be, but an importance which carries weight when he gives
his opinion in the discussions of the “little staff” of the company.
This staff is the household of the quartermaster’s billets.
With some slight differences it is in general composed of the
quartermaster-sergeant, lacking a sergeant-major which companies of
machine guns rarely have, a quartermaster-corporal, an adjutant and
a mess corporal. I was admitted to the honor of taking part in the
discussions of the staff on account of the detached and unusual character
of my duties.
But Dedouche was summoning me. I turned and observed him leisurely.
Dedouche is an excellent fellow. Without even knowing him one would guess
it at first glance. He is good-natured, never in a hurry, no matter
how urgent his errand, and indifferent alike to blows and invectives.
He smiles under torrents of abuse and threats of the most terrible
punishments, and does his duty as man of all work silently. In a word, he
possesses all the qualities inherent in his duty. He is tall and spare;
his face is beardless and sanctimonious; his eyes smile, but they look
far away under his great round glasses with their large rims. All in all
Dedouche looks like a lay brother. To complete the illusion, when he
talks he has a habit of thrusting his hands into the large sleeves of his
jacket and lowering his head to look over his spectacles. In civil life
Dedouche was an assistant in a pharmacy in one of the large provincial
cities. He knows the art of making up learned formulae. His long slim
fingers manage the most fragile things with skill, and his grave voice is
accustomed to the mezzotints of the laboratory.
“Yes,” I answered at last, “it is I.”
“The lieutenant wants you.”
I gulped down my plate of macaroni in two mouthfuls, swallowed the
coffee which the cook, already attentive to my wants, held out to me,
and followed Dedouche the two hundred yards which separated us from the
billets.
Two hundred yards is nothing, and yet it is a world. In less time than it
takes to tell it I learned a mass of things from Dedouche.
First, what part of the country we are from. The ... first Colonials
was organized in the South. So, in the hope of finding in each newcomer
another “countryman,” Dedouche asked the new arrival at once,
“What part of the country are you from?”
He had some doubt about my reply. A Hussar of a regiment with an unknown
number, who had given little opportunity to study his accent, might be a
man from the North or the East. “One never knows with these cavalrymen,”
he seemed to say, “they’re so uncertain.” So he changed the form and
varied his traditional question somewhat,
“You’re not from the South, by chance, Sergeant?”
At this repetition of his offense about my title, I thought that I ought
to slip in a discreet observation, so I said,
“In the cavalry, my friend, the sergeant is called ‘_maréchal des
logis_.’” And then having satisfied my slightly offended _esprit de
corps_, I replied, “Yes, mon _vieux_, I am from the South, in fact from
the Mediterranean, from L’Herault.”
“How things happen!” exclaimed Dedouche. “I’m from Le Clapas.”
Le Clapas is the nickname given to Montpellier in the territory. And
at that there came all at once a bewildering flow of words. Dedouche
began to tell me, mixing it all up in an incredible confusion, about his
birthplace, his adventures, his former regular occupation, in the depths
of a pharmacy in a small street under the shadow of the University, his
transfer from the auxiliary to active service, his wound in Champagne.
All this was interspersed with frequent exclamations and repetitions,
“Say, tell me, _Maréchal_, will this war ever be over?” and then regrets
for his home land, “Say, tell me, _Logis_, wouldn’t it be better down
there in the good sun?”
In these different attempts to get nearer to the term “_maréchal de
logis_,” I observed Dedouche’s obvious good will, but what interested me
most was a little advance knowledge about the company.
So Dedouche sketched in a few words a picture of it, which was absolutely
accurate, as I was able to appreciate later.
“The lieutenant is a very chic type. No one would think to look at him
that he is from the South, too. He appears cold and hard, like that,
but it’s not natural; he puts it on. He’s good-hearted at bottom.
He’s a Basque and isn’t afraid of anything. You ought to have seen
him in Champagne at Massiges. Oh, and then we have besides his fellow
countryman, Sub-Lieutenant Delpos, a blond. He’s not here now; he’s down
at Morcourt with the echelon. He’s a type too, not stuck-up, but he’s
agreeable and good-humored.
“Oh, those in the billets,” Dedouche sketched with a vague wave of the
hand, as if to say something like this: “They’re of no importance;
they’re brothers, friends, and not worth talking about.” Perhaps his
gesture meant something else, but that’s what I thought it meant.
And as if he were responding to my implied question, he went on:
“—there is only the drummer who’s from the South, too; he’s what they
call the ‘quartermaster corporal,’ I don’t know why. He’s a good fellow,
but he does not talk. At least he only talks rarely, and he’s from
Marseilles, too; no one would think it to see him. He makes me mad most
of the time.
“Oh, the rest! The corporal of infantry is from Paris. I don’t know him.
He only came five or six days ago. He hasn’t told us anything yet; he
only sings. And what songs! Good God, they’re enough to make one blush!
“The _juteux_—the adjutant,” interrupted Dedouche, for he rarely used
slang. With the exception of “_pinard_” and “_tacot_,” which have become
hallowed and have taken an official place even in the most refined
language of the armies, Dedouche rarely used a vulgar or misplaced word
in his conversation. This was not because he was opposed to it nor from
false modesty, but because his occupation as a “scientist” had given him
the habit of using good language.
“The adjutant,” went on Dedouche, “he’s not an adjutant. He’s a
brother, a father, a friend, a man, what! Never a word of anger, never
a punishment, always agreeable and kind. And in spite of that he’s had
a career. He’s been in Morocco, China, and Madagascar, and no one knows
where else. He’s been in the service eleven years, but you wouldn’t think
it to look at him.”
This running biography brought us to the open door which framed the
lieutenant’s tall figure.
“Say, _Margis_” (the lieutenant knew his military terminology and this
abbreviation was not without zest), “are you rested from your journey?”
“I wasn’t tired, Lieutenant.”
“How about your horse?”
“No more than I was. Do you think that after three days stretched out on
the straw in his car, without moving ...?”
“Then, if you are willing, we’ll both go to the echelon.”
“All right, Lieutenant.”
A question must have framed itself on my face, for he added almost at
once:
“Yes, the echelon, the fighting train, the cavalry. You’ll be more at
home there. We left it below at Morcourt, seven or eight miles away, on
account of the shells that fall here sometimes. Horses, you know, cost
more than men, so we have to economize them. It is understood, then?
We’ll go about noon. Saddle both horses. Meet me here.”
Then he strode off and joined a group of officers who were coming up the
main street of the village to the church.
Dedouche was already full of attention for me—just think of a man from
home on the “little staff”—and he now burst forth eagerly:
“Don’t trouble yourself, _Logis_. I’ll tell the groom to saddle the
horses and bring them here.”
The smoke still persisted in the dark, littered confusion of the room,
but combined with it now was an odor of burnt grease mixed with the moldy
smell of a ragout with onions and strong cheese. In addition, spread out
on the table, were the remnants of a meal, which had just been finished,
the rolls, the account books and reports.
The quartermaster-corporal, the silent fellow from Marseilles, immersed
in reading _Le Soleil du Midi_, did not even condescend to look up. In
response to my friendly good-by, he let a scarcely perceptible “adieu”
slip through his lips.
The quartermaster was stretched out on a dirty mattress thrown on the
ground, and juggling two packages of English cigarettes, while he sang at
the top of his lungs—and what a voice he had!—the latest song:
_Mes amis, dans la vie_
_Faut faire des économies_
_Les journaux vous l’ont dit._
_C’est aussi mon avis._
This intellectual refrain must have given him extreme pleasure, for he
began it again and again without any interruption.
“Well,” I said, “judging from the looks of things, you aren’t often
disturbed here?”
At this the drummer cast me a searching look, cold, disdainful and
commiserating, as much as to say to me,
“One can see that you’ve just come!”
As for the quartermaster, he replied to everything in the repertoire of
the _Eldorado_. Without stopping his juggling, he shouted at me in his
amazing voice:
_Moi! je m’en fous,_
_Je reste tranquil’ment_
_Dans mon trou!..._
He was going on when the infernal noise of some aerial trolley tore
through space.
“Attention!” he cried, without moving from his mattress. “There’s the
Metro!”
Almost at the same moment, a great shell, a “310” at least, burst in the
court of the house opposite, demolished the roof, and crushed a dozen
horses.
The adjutant was just crossing the street and he stopped at the door to
estimate the damage.
“They missed the steeple again,” he said, with a disdainful shrug for the
Boche artillery.
And Morin, the drummer, by way of commentary, without interrupting his
reading:
“Close the door. If they send any more shells, that will make a draft.”