THE SONG OF THE MACHINE GUN
Dedouche brings me a note to sign for on the report book. It reads:
“The non-commissioned officers will assemble their sections in the
courtyard of Cantonment No. 77 at 2.30. Each gun captain will present his
gun. Service marching order, with masks and arms.”
I sign mechanically to please Dedouche, who thinks he is showing me a
special favor by offering me the first reading of all orders and reports.
But this one interests me but little, for I have neither arms nor guns to
present. So it is as a spectator that I am present at the lieutenant’s
inspection. This time I shall see the complete company.
I find myself at the appointed hour at Cantonment 77.
One must have lived in these remains of villages, which persist in
standing, near the lines to have an exact idea of what they are.
In these villages furious combats have taken place in the streets,
from house to house, and for two years they have been occupied and
overpopulated—a hamlet of one hundred and fifty inhabitants often serves
as a cantonment for ten thousand men—by men of all arms of the service,
from all regions, of all colors.
It is not ruin in all its tragic horror and majesty. It is worse.
It is something which appears to want to live, but which a latent leprosy
eats away. Often there are traces of shells, the splatter of bullets, the
marks of fire; the roofs may have fallen in from the recent shelling, but
even yet the general effect is that the houses on the streets are still
standing.
The fronts of these houses, made of straw and mud, with only a large
door swinging on its hinges, are whole. Of course the mud has often been
scratched in long, leprous wounds, and the straw tumbles out leaving the
bare skeleton of worm-eaten wood; and, besides, the windows are without
the glass, which has been broken to bits by the explosion of shells, and
which is replaced by bits of paper or by calendars. But the real ruin is
inside.
Here is the work of the carelessness and negligence of the wandering
multitudes who pass that way, who arrive at evening, tired, muddy, wet,
who fall asleep on damp straw, cut to pieces and crawling with vermin,
and who go on the next day, or three days later, leaving as a mark of
their passing a greater stench and a greater dilapidation.
The ruin is inside. It is not the beautiful ending of destruction by
fire, but the slow death by cancer which eats away, by gangrene which
mounts from the cattle sheds to the stable, from the stable to the barn,
and from the barn to the hearth. And at last a day comes when the front
alone is standing on the ruin of the annihilated house, and then men who
are passing by, seeing that it is tottering and dangerous, cut it down
with blows of the axe and chop the wood into bits for their little needs.
And so these houses die: houses which under their humble appearance had
great souls palpitating with life, where lives were born and passed their
years; where joys and griefs exclaimed and wept, where the peasant, the
son of the soil, drew from this soil, the generatrix of strong races, the
re-vivifying harvests which he stored away in the barn which to-day is
dead.
Whole villages and great villages agonize in this way through months of
wearing away, and their end is no less terrible, no less majestic, no
less pitiful than of those villages with glorious names which the wrath
of shells beats into dust.
Cantonment 77 is made up of those houses which waste away. Between the
fragile walls, notched by an empty barn and a fallen shed, opens a
courtyard. Filth spreads out in a vast pool on which float among the
refuse a pile of garbage, boxes, the waste of cooking and greasy papers.
In the corner of a recess open to every wind, on piles of bricks held
together by iron bars pulled from the window sills, the cook has set his
pots and bowls in line. His fire of wood so green that the sap oozes out
licks the already blackened walls with its long flames.
All that offers even a precarious shelter—a roof—is occupied by the men
who crowd in there on old, filthy straw, and on the meager rations of
fresh straw, often too fresh. And as the tiles and thatch let the rain
filter through, they stretch above them strips of tent canvas.
Oh, blessed canvas! To what uses is it not put! It serves as a roof
against bad weather, the rain and snow; a protection against dampness,
mud and vermin; planted on two stakes, stretched to a door casing, it
protects the fires for cooking from draughts; in the more comfortable
cantonments in the rear, where the straw is clean and abundant, where the
men are at last able to take off their shoes, and their muddy leggings
and their trousers heavy with dampness, it serves as the bed clothes;
and, finally, at the last hour it is in the tent canvas that they collect
the bodies with their torn and shattered limbs. It serves as shroud and
coffin. And, faithful to its rôle, it is the last shelter.
The men began to arrive by groups almost in order, at any rate as much so
as the littered ground in the courtyard would permit. They assembled by
sections in a half circle around the pool of filth. It was certainly a
picturesque sight when, at the command “Attention,” these men mounted a
faultless guard around this fetid pool, where, among papers, tossed about
and dirty, and box covers, there floated, bloated and fetid, all kinds
of carrion, the rats of the last hecatomb.
Near the doorway on the largest and cleanest part of the courtyard the
eight machine guns were drawn up in line.
Eight machine guns, the armament of the company.
Eight guns, so small, so fine, and such bits of workmanship, that one
would think to see them that they were a child’s playthings.
The machine guns appeared very coquettish and pretty as they rested on
their bluish-gray tripod, with their steel barrels well burnished even to
the mouth of their muzzles. They hardly appeared at all threatening with
the polished leather of the breech, where the bronzed fist of the gun
layer stood out in graceful designs, and the attenuated round and svelte
circles of the radiator.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF VILLAGES NEAR THE LINES _See page 36_]
And the machine gun is a coquette, too. Under its appearance of delicacy
and grace it conceals a terrible power of domination and strength. Yet it
hurls pitiless death without noise, with a rapidity as furtive as a shout
of laughter, with a tac-tac which is scarcely perceptible and which is
no more menacing than the familiar tac-tac of the sewing-machine or the
typewriter.
And the machine gun is a coquette, too! Fashioned like a work of art,
the brilliancy of its polished steel and the voluptuous roundness of the
brass invite caresses. Its shots come from they know not where, since
they can see nothing—a bush is sufficient to conceal it; light, it is
here one minute and there another; it is not visible until one is almost
upon it, yet its shots are fatal at some miles.
It is delicate and costly, needing a hundred things for its adornment,
skilled care for its toilet and a hundred men to serve. Is not the
machine gun a coquette?
As the Company Casanova is of recent formation it received an entirely
new armament of the latest model. The guns are built on the Hotchkiss
system—the last word of perfection in war. They are light, scarcely
fifty pounds, and they are easy to manipulate skilfully. The rapidity of
their fire is extreme, more than five hundred shots a minute, and their
adjustment is such that they can fire on the most varied objects. First,
there is blockade fire, which concentrates all the shots on a narrow
point; then the sweeping fire, which sweeps the whole of an extended
field; and finally, indirect fire, which hits its designated target with
mathematical precision, at the same time concealing the source.
The machine gun is the little queen of battles. One may smile to look at
her, but one shudders when he thinks of her ravages.
And the men are proud of their guns.
I observe them while the lieutenant speaks to them and their eyes look
alternately at the lieutenant and at their respective guns. They know
their gun; they love her; possess her. They have confidence in her, and
it is she who defends them.
To-day there are about one hundred and fifty men grouped in the same
specialty, from all regions, all regiments, all arms, who have come after
more or less lengthy stays in the instruction camps at Nice, Clermont,
and La Valbonne.
Their specialty has created among them a certain sort of affinity, a
family characteristic. Machine gunners are an element apart, a sort of
élite. In their ranks there is a certain homogeneity which comes from the
practice of the same competency which is nearly a science. They feel
somewhat superior to, at least different from, the ordinary companies.
They appreciate the worth of their distinction and scarcely ever
associate with other troops. The companies of infantry are swamped in a
battalion, while the companies of machine guns are isolated, autonomous,
directly dependent on the commanding officer, and they enjoy an absolute
initiative in a battle. Finally, they are not anonymous or numbered;
they are not called the fifth, seventh, or the twelfth, but the “Company
Casanova,” as they once said Royal-Piémont or Prince Condé.
Then, too, there is their insignia. The insignia is the bauble, the
jewel, of the soldier. It is a real satisfaction to have something on the
uniform which distinguishes one from his neighbor. To such a point do
they carry this that many cannot resist putting on insignia to which they
haven’t the slightest right. And none of the insignia arouses greater
envy than the two small intersecting cannons of the machine guns.
It takes one hundred and fifty men, two officers, ten non-commissioned
officers, and sixty horses to serve, supply and transport the eight small
guns, one hundred and fifty men trained and inured to hardship. There is
none here who has not been in several battles and received several wounds
in his active service. There is none here who has not a good record. When
said of one that means little, but when said of all it is worth telling.
There are artillerymen, cavalrymen, and sailors who have become foot
soldiers through their different changes; and not only are all arms
represented, but all professions, all classes and all temperaments.
Jacquet, a poet and musician, a dreamer with an exquisite soul, is
an accurate gun layer. Finger drives milk wagons in Paris, but with
his gigantic hands he manipulates with delicacy the wheelwork of his
Hotchkiss. Millazo, who behind his counter at Hanoï showed gracefully
the jewels of Indo-Chinese art and learned at Lure the meticulous art
of watchmaking, now manages a “sweeping” fire as calmly and accurately
as he used to mount a spiral spring on its microscopic pivot. Corporal
Vial, who used to verify accounts in the luxurious banks on the Riviera
and handle tinkling gold and checks, here shows that he knows the
science of fire and his machine and leads his squad with authority.
Charlet drove the heavy locomotives on the railways of the North; Gamie
regulated the powerful looms in the textile factories, and they both owe
to their knowledge of mechanics their duties as range takers. Imbert
was a fisherman and, as he knows how to cook a savory bouillabaisse,
he is assigned to the difficult rôle of cook and acquits himself
conscientiously and well. However, Chevalier, an expert in geometry,
who for twenty years grew pale in profound studies of logarithms and
co-ordinates, here assumes the duties of mess corporal, and discusses
with asperity the supplies and remarks pitilessly on the regulation cup
of wine and the mathematical pounds and ounces of mutton, lard and beans.
In spite of what one might think, this odd collection of men is as
homogeneous as could be imagined. This comes from the fact that above all
this different knowledge is a uniform purpose, because all these multiple
alliances tend toward a common end which is incarnated in their chief,
a man from the South, who is expansive and impetuous, but who curbs his
temperament under the rigid calm of a man from the North, one of the
common people, a son of the soil, who has risen to the rank of officer,
and a commanding officer at that, solely through persistency and courage.
* * * * *
When the lieutenant had finished his rapid but close inspection, and had
examined with the eye of a connoisseur the condition and repair of the
guns, he took in the whole company with a look, for it is his work which
he commands with firmness and which he loves. He is already going, after
addressing a few remarks to the adjutant and the classic, “All right.
Break ranks,” when a man steps out of the ranks and comes towards him.
“Lieutenant, the company is now completely equipped and armed, but there
is, however, still something lacking.”
“Indeed,” replied the lieutenant, “and what’s that?”
“Its marching song.”
“Its marching song! Have you chosen one?”
“Chosen one! Oh, no! We have an unpublished one, as new as the company
itself, composed for us and created by us. Will you do us the honor of
listening to it?”
“Will I? The devil. I ask it; I demand it. I want to learn it, too. Go
on. Start it!” he exclaimed.
And then Gaix turned towards his comrades and began to sing in his great
deep baritone voice our marching song, “Ma Mitrailleuse,” which each
section had learned secretly and which they sang together for the first
time to-day.
On a rhythm taken from some war march, some one had composed simple
words, which were nevertheless image-provoking and vibrant, where the
alternating motet “Ma Mitrailleuse,” sung in chorus, sounds like a bugle
call.
This marching song is one of those which engrave themselves at once on
the memory and in the heart, which are never forgotten, for in their
accents are rooted the strongest impressions of the hours lived in the
simple brotherhood of arms, the memory of dangers encountered together,
the pride of victories, and the pious homage to those who sang it with us
and whose manly voices were silenced forever in the night of battles.
And I find in writing it the same deep stirring emotion that I
experienced when I first heard it.
_MA MITRAILLEUSE_
_Sur notre front, dans ton abri,_
_Tu dors sur ton trépied bleu gris,_
_Calme dans l’ombre vaporeuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
_Et ton canon d’acier bleui_
_Benoîtement perce la nuit._
_Que tu parais peu dangereuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
_Si parfois en te transportant_
_Je trouve ton poids fatigant,_
_Et dis tout bas “la sacré gueuse!”_
_Ma mitrailleuse,_
_Pardonne-moi, car j’ai grand tort,_
_Sachant que tu chantes la mort_
_De l’Allemagne furieuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
_Mais dans le petit jour blêmi,_
_Alerte! Voici l’ennemi!_
_Et t’éveillant soudain rageuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse,_
_Avec tes tac tac réguliers_
_Fauche les Boches par milliers,_
_Sans t’arrêter, noire et fumeuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
_Et comme nous elle attendra_
_Le grand jour qui déclanchera_
_L’offensive victorieuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
_Poursuivant le bandit germain,_
_J’entendrai sur les bords du Rhin,_
_Au grand soleil, claquer joyeuse_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
When the last accents, sung by the men at the top of their lungs, died
away, there was silence and I looked at the lieutenant.
He was seated on a staircase, with his head leaning on his clenched
fists. He had listened to the whole song, and now he remained for a
moment as if waiting. And when he stood up his eyes were slightly red and
his lips concealed under a smile the impress of intense emotion.
“It is good,” he said, “very beautiful, my friends, and I congratulate
you all. Your song is admirable, it will go with us everywhere, and we
will lead it to victory. But who is the author? There must be an author.
The devil, there must be an author!”
There was a moment of silence as if each one hesitated to reply, but a
big sergeant cried out in a stentorian voice:
“A _ban_ for the author, Lieutenant Delpos, and a couplet for him
besides.”
Then the men broke all alignment, pressed around their young
sub-lieutenant, joyous, proud and blushing with pleasure, weeping with
joy, and burst out at the top of their lungs, with indescribable feeling,
which showed all their strength, their will for victory and their
unbreakable confidence:
_Et comme nous elle attendra_
_Le grand jour qui déclanchera_
_L’offensive victorieuse,_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
_Poursuivant le bandit germain,_
_J’entendrai sur les bords du Rhin,_
_Au grand soleil, claquer joyeuse_
_Ma mitrailleuse._
Then, amidst the applause and the “vivats,” the lieutenant embraced his
young friend vigorously and said:
“Nom de Dieu! You didn’t tell me that you were a poet. I congratulate
you.”
And taking him by the arm, he went off joyous, skipping like a gamin,
taking up again the inspiring refrain:
_Ma Mitrailleuse ... Ma Mitrailleuse!_