THE ECHELON
From Proyart to Morcourt is five miles by a crossroad which in its many
curves and windings cuts across trenches, communication trenches and
barbed wire.
The snow had stopped, but it still covered the ground, the trees and the
farms with its regular white covering. The communication trenches showed
black on this vast screen.
The crows circled in innumerable flights and sought in vain for the
carrion which had been so abundant for months and which, to-day, was
buried.
We went along, boot to boot, slowly, for the roads were slippery. Kiki
wanted to dance about, for the keen air made him lively. But Zèbre’s
sedateness dismayed him, and Kiki wisely ranged alongside and regulated
the pace by his.
The lieutenant talked but little—a few detached words, chopped phrases,
about the company, an observation on the weather, a reflection on the
horses.
The road was almost deserted save for a few Territorials, muffled in
their sheepskins, who dragged along their heavy wooden shoes which were
made even higher by a thick sole of snow. From time to time a company
wagon, driven like an express train, grazed us with its wheels and
splashed us with mud.
Then, abruptly, without having had to climb the slightest hill, we saw
Morcourt, as one sees suddenly from the top of a cliff the sea at his
feet, in the midst of the thousand windings of the Somme, of the canal
and the turf-pits. Morcourt is a village scarcely as large as Proyart,
and like it hidden in a gully sheltered from the winds on all sides, and
also like it, hidden under the snow.
A blacksmith had set up his forge in the open air against the walls of
a tottering tile-kiln. All around the snow had melted in great black
puddles where the waiting horses had pawed the ground. The smoke from his
fire rose red-tinted and dark in the heavy air which seemed to muffle the
ring of the hammers on the anvil.
We come to a stop before a house nearly in ruins, whose tottering
remains are a constant menace. A corporal rushes out—nimble, short and
thick-set, a small Basque cap binding his sunburned forehead—and then
some men come from the neighboring stables.
The houses in the country which were invaded for a short time and in
which troops have had their cantonments for long weary months all look
alike. Their doors and windows are gone, but these are replaced by tent
canvas.
The drivers of the echelon and the war train in the machine-gun companies
are nearly always sailors, the older classes of the Territorials, who
after many changes have been assigned to the Colonial regiments. No one
knows why, but it is probably because the bureaucratic, stay-at-home
mental worker finds some relationship between the Colonials and the
sea. And so they make these men, accustomed to the management of ships,
infantrymen, or drivers, or even cavalrymen. But with the unfailing
readiness and the ingenuity of their kind they make up so much for all
that, that far from appearing unready and badly placed, one would say
that they were veterans already broken to all the tricks of the trade.
Their long ship voyages and the necessities of critical hours have taught
them to replace with the means at hand most things in material existence.
From an old preserve box and a branch of a tree, squared and split with
a hatchet, they make a strong and convenient table. With a scantling and
a bit of wire lattice taken from a fence, they make an elastic mattress
which, covered with straw and canvas, becomes a very comfortable bed.
The sailor is carpenter: the hatchet in his hand takes the place of the
most ingenious tools of the joiner; painter: he has painted and refitted
his boat from its tarry keel to the scroll work of the bulwarks and the
figures and the beloved words they put on the stern; mender: he mends his
sails and nets artistically; cook: during the long days at sea on his
frail craft with its limited accommodations, he makes the most savory
dishes from the fruits of his fishing and a few simple spices. His
qualities and his knowledge are numerous and wide: astronomer and healer,
and, as well, singer of beautiful songs which cradle his thought at the
will of the rhythms, as the sea rocks his boat at the will of the waves.
But in this multiplicity of talents he lacks that of a driver, and what
is more, a driver of a machine gun. That is a job which combines the
heavy and the mountain artillery. A machine-gun driver should be able to
drive in the saddle the leading team of horses and put the heavy caisson
of ammunition through the most difficult evolutions. Again, he should be
able to drive on foot the mule loaded with his pack-saddle and through
the most impossible and sometimes the most dangerous paths.
We had scarcely begun to swallow a cup of thick, smoking, regulation
coffee in a room of the cantonment, furnished with special skill, when
Sub-Lieutenant Delpos—smart, carefree, smiling, a cap on the back of his
head and a song on his lips—arrived.
Dedouche’s description seemed to me to be exact. He was indeed a very
young man, very quick, very blond and very gay. He was already an officer
when others of his age had scarcely left college; he was already a hero
counting in his active service a thousand feats of prowess when his
rather sceptical contemporaries were content to read about them in books.
Open merriment shone in his eyes. He had gained his promotion in the
field far from the stifling atmosphere of study halls. Yesterday he was
still a sergeant in Madagascar, Senegal, and Morocco; to-day he is an
officer who has fought since the beginning of the Great War; to-morrow he
will be a trainer of men. He knows them all; many are his old bedfellows
or companions of the column. His remarks are keen and unrhetorical and
they please the men. They love him and fear him; they are free with him
and respect him. They know that he understands his trade perfectly and
that they can deceive him in nothing.
Our introduction was short and unceremonious. A man brought on the table
a bottle of very sweet Moselle wine, which is christened at the front
“Champagne.” It was one of those wines which make up for their qualities
by such pompous appellations and well-intentioned labels as “Champagne de
la Victory,” “Champagne de la Revenge,” “of the Allies,” “of the Poilu,”
“of Glory.” They are all equally bad, but they make a loud noise when the
cork is drawn and most of the wine flows away in sparkling foam.
We drained our cups to the common health, and to the success and certain
glory of the company.
Then the lieutenant, who has memories of the drama, said in a voice which
recalled the tones of the already classic Carbon de Casteljaloux, his
neighbor,
“Since my company has, I believe, reached its full number, shall we not
show it to the _logis_, if you please?”
Under the rays of an anemic sun which had waited until the hour of sunset
before it deigned to appear, we made a brief visit to the echelon.
First the roll; five corporal muleteers or drivers: Raynal, the owner of
a vineyard in Gironde; Liniers, a salesman of wines and spirits and a
great elector in the Twelfth Arrondissement; Glanais, Bonecase, Glorieu,
carpenter, vine-grower, and farmer—and none of them had ever managed a
horse in his life.
And the men—one in fifty is a cavalryman—but that one is perfect. He was
trained at the cavalry school at Saumur; trained horses and bred them,
so they at once turned him over to the echelon, where he had to lead a
mule by the bridle. That, of course, was a reproach to his old trade,
so in default of any other satisfaction it taught him the philosophy of
resignation and peaceful blessedness.
The cavalry!
“Oh, the cavalry, that’s been posing five minutes,” said Sub-Lieutenant
Delpos—he was extremely fond of that expression.
There were horses and mules varying in age from five to seventeen. They
were all sensible, settled down, their legs somewhat worn out, and more
accustomed to the hearse than to a caisson, and more familiar with the
song of the worker than with the roar of cannon. They were all gentle,
only demanding oats and straw; some with their bones sticking out of
their hides, while others were still sleek and shiny from their warm
stables and fresh straw; all unconscious of what awaited them on the
morrow.
One of the mules was a veteran, an enormous, cunning animal. His hair
was short and rough, and in places there were great patches where the
hide showed. His skin was hung on a projecting framework of bones, and,
although he was well fed, he was very thin—with a thinness so unyielding
to rations that it was impossible to get him fat. His head was that of
an epicurean philosopher with deep mocking eyes. This was Chocolate.
Chocolate is beyond the time when he has an age. The oldest soldiers
in the regiment have always known him, even at Marrakech and Rabbat in
Morocco.
Chocolate has made many campaigns during his active service and he has
received several wounds as well.
The story goes that one day in Morocco Chocolate got loose from
the bivouac, and started browsing on the grass and wild oats in an
ambuscade—between two fires. Absolutely indifferent to the crackling
of bullets which he had known from infancy, he continued to lop off
the plants until the pernicious bullets began to graze his skin. Then
he stretched out at full length in a hollow in the sand and browsed on
the grass within reach of his teeth, while he waited the end of the
adventure. Then he went back to the bivouac in search of a pail of water
and a bag of oats.
Now Chocolate is the file leader. He indicates by his example to the
horses whom the pack-saddle galls that the best way of carrying it is to
avoid romping to the right and the left, shifting about, and trotting,
in fact, all movements which misplace the saddle or wrinkle the skin
beneath. The secret is to work soberly, slowly and at an even pace.
Chocolate belongs to a family of mules which ranks high in history. The
broad, rounded backs of his ancestors have borne debonnair sovereigns,
preacher monks, magnificent Sultans and Sancho Panzas, baskets of
vegetables and cans of milk. To-day Chocolate, their descendant, carries
an infernal instrument—a machine gun. But what matters that to him? The
road rolls on before him and he follows it. There are oats at the end,
to-night or to-morrow, what difference does it make?
“He is cool,” the drivers say. Coolness is the great secret of the
Colonials.
Coolness, indifference to danger, bad weather, adversity, obstacles,
death—no nervousness, no useless bursts of anger, no dangerous hurrying,
no false starts. It is necessary to go—they will go—they arrive. That is
all.