DAYS IN CANTONMENT
The regiment is holding the first line trenches in front of the La Vache
woods. When the company is in the lines, the echelons, the war train, and
the clerks remain behind in the cantonment at Morcourt.
Morcourt is a delightful little village hidden in the green meadows under
the poplars on the banks of the canal of the Somme. Morcourt was once
a hamlet of one hundred and fifty houses and their flower gardens, but
to-day it is a real village where there are crowded together a population
of more than ten thousand men. More than twenty thousand horses are
bivouacked in the neighboring villages of Proyart, Lamotte, Bayonvillers,
which have no water, and they come to Morcourt twice a day to dry up the
watering places.
Our quarters here are in the open fields. Everybody can’t have covered
shelters. The major of the cantonment showed us the field and said,
“Try to make shift with that.”
And we did.
Less than an hour later the grass was mowed, ground down by our haltered
horses, who devoured it with their sharp teeth.
Beyond, on the edge of the road, in impeccable alignment our sixteen
ammunition wagons are parked.
Behind are the horses, the huts of the four sections of the echelon, and
the war train.
And at the end the four large caissons of ammunition and the munition
wagons.
Burette and Morin, the clerks, cannot make a simple tent do. More
comfortable quarters are necessary for their work.
After a day of hunting around Burette came back to camp, radiant.
“_Mon vieux_, I’ve found something wonderful. We’ll live like princes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Some fine people. It’s next to the mayor’s.”
“_Mince!_ You look well. Did they offer you the house?”
“You’ll see. It’s better than that.”
“Better than that!”
We stamped our feet in impatience. Such a windfall is worth while. If we
stay here a whole month we shall be well lodged.
I was already rejoicing in the thought of being able to build a
comfortable bed.
Saux, on whom devolved the delicate and most often difficult care of our
getting moved, foresaw innumerable conveniences.
Morin alone remained sceptical. He is that temperamentally.
He sees no good in this north country. He has been morose ever since
he left Provence, and he won’t smile again until he hears tinkle in
his ravished ears the familiar evocative sonorities of Avignon, Arles,
Miramas, Le Pas des Lanciers, L’Estaque. The sun, the blue sky, the blue
sea!
And how right Morin is!
The sun exaggerates, but in openness and beauty. The fogs are
deceitful.... Far better to be dazzled than deceived....
Morin distrusts the splendid cantonment of Morcourt. He knows those at
Proyart, Chuignolles, Minacourt, Virginy ... and others besides....
Oh, for the commonest hut, the most modest cabin, ruined though it be
and sordid, but haloed in the sun, flooded with clear light, bathed in
the silver foliage of the olives, planted down there on the rocks of
Pointe-Rouge or of L’Estaque, beside the sea, sheltered in the valleys of
Camions, or perched on the hills of Allauch! How much better it is, how
much better worth living in, than the most sumptuous castles buried in
the damp forests where the stones are green under the moss.
High on a hill on the road to Harbonnières opens the courtyard of a farm.
Burette leads us there in triumph. It is his discovery. He crosses the
court, and opens majestically a small low door, with a barrel on each
side in which stunted geraniums vegetate miserably.
It is an old pig-sty!
Scraped and washed with a lot of water, it will be habitable. We’ll make
something out of it. Burette borrows a long table and at once covers it
with his innumerable account books. We make our beds against the walls.
Thirty ammunition caissons placed in double rows, a mattress stuffed with
hay, a tent cloth, two covers—that’s our camp.
The corner at the back falls to Morin. It is the longest way of the room
and he can stretch out his whole tall form at his ease, which he rarely
finds it possible to do in the cantonments.
Night reserves various distractions for us.
First, the rats.
The rats descended from the dove-cote in a dense horde and
made incursions on our haversacks, in mad gallops over our bed
clothes—gigantic rats with interminable tails!
They used the open space between the beds as their lists and had real
battles, biting, crying and moaning. The routed fugitives jumped over
Morin’s body to get to shelter and he shivered in terror.
Burette decided to try extreme measures, for hunting them with shoes
has no effect. So he begins to sing one of the most beautiful tunes in
his repertoire called “A Montparnasse.” It must have thirty verses, all
ending in an interminable “nasse ... nasse ... nasse.”
It seems that it was a triumph of the boulevards, and no true lover of
songs should be ignorant of it. Very possibly.
The rats must have shared my opinion, however, for they seemed to like
the great triumph of the boulevards only moderately, but they remained
quiet while the song lasted.
That song had another virtue, too. It put me to sleep and Burette as
well. His voice dragged more and more, and grew more feeble, when a
terrible cry pierced the night.
Morin shouted in terror.
We jumped for our electric lamps.
Their dim rays brighten the darkness.
Above Morin’s head, through a hole in the mud wall which separates us
from the neighboring stable, a calf—a young calf—gracious and smiling,
has stuck his great red head, and has imprinted a caress on the face of
our sleeping friend with his milky tongue.
“The salaud! He has bitten me,” grumbled Morin, wiping off the dribble
which stuck to his face.
“Get out, animal.”
But the calf was insensible to this harsh invitation. He continued to
endure the flashes from our lights with a placid eye, and, drawn no
doubt by Burette’s song, which seemed to him like familiar news, he began
to bellow, waking up the whole stable, and the cows added their powerful
voices to that of their offspring.... We slept no more that night.
* * * * *
The days which followed were not all exactly alike.
The lieutenant sent us word by a cyclist to come and see him in the lines
and get the list of changes to be made among the men and horses.
We started at daylight and went in the company wagon as far as Froissy.
When we got there, Morin told me that he knew a wonderful short cut
which avoided the great détour by Éclusier, and led directly to the
communication trench. Walking in the wet meadows where we sank in up to
our ankles had little attraction for me. I preferred the hard highway
and the towpath, but Morin knew the country and claimed that we would
only have several hundred yards of bad walking and then we would reach a
practicable path.
We walked more than an hour. The fog grew thicker and thicker, limiting
our horizon to a few steps. There was never anyone in sight.
“My dear Morin,” I said, “if your short cut is as wonderful as you say,
it must be known. But at the moment it seems somewhat deserted to me.”
Morin did not reply. There was no doubt that he wasn’t certain of his
way, but he did not dare to admit his mistake.
The weather inclined one to melancholy.
We walked on in silence. The path was very narrow and we were obliged to
walk one behind the other.
A sinister grumbling seemed to shatter the heavens above the fog.
Instinctively we hurled ourselves to the ground into the wet grass and
mud.
The shell passed over us and buried itself in the ground without
exploding.
“This quarter hardly seems the safest in the world, Morin.”
“They’re firing on the battery of ‘75’s’.”
“A battery of ‘75’s’? What battery?... Where have you seen a battery?”
Although he was seriously disturbed about our direction, Morin would not
budge.
[Illustration: A SINISTER GRUMBLING SEEMED TO SHATTER THE FOG _See page
110_]
“It was there day before yesterday. It must have moved.”
“I suppose you’re sure your short cut hasn’t changed its place.”
I had scarcely spoken when a shell followed the direction of the first
and exploded beside us, throwing up a mass of mud, grass and water.
The ground was soft and unfavorable for deadly splinters. In any other
terrain we would have been hit seriously.
This time Morin hesitated,
“I’m afraid I’m mistaken!...”
“I was sure of it a long time ago.”
“Let’s go on just the same; this must bring us out somewhere.”
“That’s my opinion, too.”
The fog was still heavy. We walked in a cloud the length of an
interminable trench recently cut in the clay. The bottom was full of
water. It leads us in an unknown direction. How can we find out what way
we are going? Where are we? We follow its windings for half an hour and
clamber over crossings. Perhaps we’re going around in a circle. The mist
is about us all the time. We can see nothing. Not a landmark.
In the distance far to the north, in the English sector, a heavy gun
hammers the air with loud regular shots. We started out at daybreak to go
ten miles. It is ten o’clock now and we have no idea where we are.
I get impatient and begin to grumble.
The air becomes fresher, and a fairly strong breeze comes up. In a few
seconds the blue sky reappears above our heads.
In front of us forms stand out—trees, shattered trees, stretching their
dead branches like broken arms, and seeming to cry to heaven in entreaty
for the martyred earth.
“The La Vache woods!”
We are in the La Vache woods within sight of the enemy’s lines. Thirty
yards from them! We are on the further side of the trenches, where the
terrific storm of shells rages daily. We have the honor of being the
finest target that will ever be offered for a shot with a grenade.
We throw ourselves flat, but the embankment overhangs the lines so much
that even crawling is only a moderate safeguard.
“Nom de Dieu! I’ll remember your short cut! To go to the Boches it’s the
best ever!...”
We slide along on elbows, stomach and knees like snakes, which puts our
clothes to a severe test. And we let ourselves fall head first into the
“Servian” trench, just over the lieutenant’s sap, who cannot believe his
eyes when he sees us fall as from the moon.
“Where did you come from?”
“We’ve been taking a walk in the La Vache woods. Does that mean anything
to you?”
“How did you come?”
“By a short cut!... a fine short cut, you know. I recommend it to you!”
Sub-Lieutenant Delpos was making his rounds in the sector and was told
of the exploit. He is nervous and in a murderous humor, for he spent a
sleepless night on a special mission between the lines. So Morin caught
it a hundred times worse than he deserved. Sub-Lieutenant Delpos’s
moments of ill humor are, like some storms, violent but quickly over.
The adventure ended with an excellent cup of coffee, flavored with XXX
brandy, which he offers us in his sap, sumptuously furnished with every
possible comfort, twelve yards underground.
Towards midnight I went down to Éclusier through an English observation
trench. It is only accessible at night. In the daytime a Boche machine
gun is placed on the other side of the Somme and enfilades it. It is
suicide to venture there. Cut out of the rock in the hillside, its ridges
are short and steep. It is a bad trench, but an important short cut....
Saux should be waiting for me with the horses in a ruined house behind
the church.
Éclusier is a hamlet on the left side of the canal. There is a single
street with ragged houses on each side, but they are not badly ruined.
The church, protected by a bend in the cliff, still has its steeple
intact through some prodigy of equilibrium, although the roof has fallen
in. At the side, in what was once the presbytery, is the regimental
dressing station.
Lights come and go.
Men are coming back from fatigue duty, searching for their dugouts
by feeling for them. Through the air-holes, from which come odors of
cooking, one can see lighted cellars.
I make my way by the aid of my electric lamp through this labyrinth
which was once a street, and I find the house. I guess at it, rather,
from the pawing of the horses, which are nervous and are pounding on
the flagstones. It is an old grocery and its sign still reads: “Fine
Wines—Desserts—Choice Preserves.” A ragged green cart cover takes the
place of the door. I raise it.
A gust of foul air hits me in the face, and I stop on the threshold
gasping for breath. I see Saux asleep, his head on my saddle, and rolled
up in horse blankets. Burette is asleep beside him.
Burette, the quartermaster, spent three months in the heavy artillery.
He is an enthusiast on horses, but his equestrian ability is far from
equaling his love for it. His style produces many falls, but they don’t
discourage him.
I wake up Saux, who gets up dizzily. Is he half drunk, I ask myself.
That’s not like him at all.
“Look, Saux, what’s the matter?”
But Saux leaned against the partition, searching for the door with his
haggard eyes. He dashed outside seized by nausea. The noise woke up
Burette, and he too got up with difficulty.
“Say, what have you two been up to?”
“Oh, _mon pauvre vieux_, I don’t know, but I’m sick.”
“The fact is there is considerable of an odor here; you might have found
a better....”
The horses are troubled by it, too. Kiki jumps about and paws furiously.
Burette’s and Saux’s horses are sleeping heavily and their breathing is
difficult and oppressive.
There’s something wrong somewhere, although the enemy hasn’t sent over
any gas.
With the aid of a light we poke about in the dark. I see a pile of
canvas in the corner of the room which is oozing with dampness. I raise
the bottom of the canvas with my stick and a swarm of great flies comes
buzzing out around us.
There are the bodies of German soldiers abandoned for no one knows how
long. Weeks, perhaps; since the attack on Fries without doubt. The blue
swollen flesh is spotted by bites made by the teeth of rats. They are
rotting and filling the soil with purulent matter.
With their monstrous faces, sunken eyes, cheeks fallen in, and their
mouths convulsed by their last struggles, they seem still to shout with
the fright of their last hours. Burette and Saux have slept beside this
charnel-house.
We lead out the horses in a hurry and saddle them in the open air. We
gain the hard towpath, the only practicable way, and go on at a lively
pace.
The first light of dawn appears. At the bridge at Éclusier we stop a
minute before climbing into the saddle. The Territorials there offer us
a cup of coffee. It warms us, for the morning fog on the Somme is always
cold.
“To horse!”
I decide to go at a good pace as far as the bridge at Froissy and take
the lead. We must get along before the towpath is encumbered by all the
loafers of the companies which are resting in the huts along the length
of the canal.
A battery of “75’s” in position near the military cemetery at Cappy is
firing shells.
We pass very close to some guns as they are starting off. Coquet is
frightened, jumps, and dashes into the fields, heading straight toward
the hedges of some vegetable gardens.
“Attention! Burette, pull on the bits.”
“Don’t be afraid. He knows me.”
He knows him so well that Burette had scarcely spoken than Coquet stopped
short before the fence. Burette went over alone, head first, and landed
in the vegetables. Fortunately, the ground is soft, but in hurdling the
obstacle he bumped into some bushes, and gets an eye bruised and a cheek
scratched.
“That’s nothing. That’s all right,” he says.
He remounts his horse, laughing and singing:
_Ah! les p’tits pois, les p’tits pois,_
_C’est un légume très tendre._
He can appreciate them this time.
* * * * *
We meet Hémin, our comrade of the third company of machine guns, at
Froissy. He came out at dawn with orders from his commandant and is going
back to Morcourt, and we go along together.
Going from this bridge to that at Méricourt, the towpath is almost
deserted. Hardly anything crosses our path except some English
motor-cyclists.
Hémin is riding a superb charger, a great long-legged, bright chestnut,
who carries his head proudly—a fine beast.
Some yards away from the branch from Neuville marines from the gunboats
have planted huts along the towpath between the poplars.
The regular trot of our horses sounds clearly along the way.
A marine hears us and raises the flap of his tent to see us.
This frightens Hémin’s horse and he jumps into the canal.
Our comrade is unhorsed and disappears under the water. We jump down. But
even before we jump two marines have plunged in. Others poke around with
poles in the mud from a boat. In an eddy a hand appears, then a head,
swollen, bloody, crushed.
Hémin got a blow from a shoe full in the face and could not swim.
The body is brought on to the bank.
A surgeon from the gunboat doubles his efforts in vain.
Hémin is dead.
* * * * *
We buried him in the little cemetery at Méricourt one Sunday morning.
It is the ideal cemetery of the poets, hidden in green from every sound.
Each grave seems alone in a thicket of lilacs and honeysuckle. No
scientific gardening here; no trees butchered by experts; no cultivated
flowers; no bombastic marbles. The grass overruns the paths; the simple
flowers of the field have blossomed on the graves, thus bringing in every
season the natural homage which returning life pays to the dead.
Nature is pleased to shut every sound from this field of rest.
At the end of a lane, at the foot of a willow, we lay Hémin to rest in
his last sleep.
The men of the echelon come, the major, a captain, and the officers
who knew him particularly well. The intelligence officers of the three
companies joined in buying a wreath and came to the services together.
Hémin’s captain speaks a few words. It is not the time for a long talk,
for a simple touching farewell is sufficient.
And before he goes each one throws in the grave the symbolic bit of earth.
Sad duty!
Before the grave is filled in I drop over him petals of peonies....
Poor fellow! He is not the most unfortunate. He is in that luminous land
of day and knows what we are powerless to know. He has finished with
our poor human troubles, and on him have fallen the curtains of his last
resting place.
But those who are left, his wife, his child!... That is where sorrow
begins. They don’t know yet, and for a long time they will know nothing
and will live in anxiety.
To-day, at the very hour perhaps, when we let him down in his last
resting place, his wife received the letter he wrote her yesterday
morning. She read this letter to her child, this letter in which he
announces his next arrival on leave, where he said to her,
“In a week or two I shall be with you without a doubt.” He never will
be now, or, rather, he is there already, for the immaterial presence of
loved ones accompanies us, if it is true that they are loved and are not
forgotten.
And pensively, under the fine rain which is falling, we return to our
cantonments.