WITH MUSIC
We are in reserve cantonments at Chuignolles, and we all lodge together
at the end of the village, near the church, in a large house, which
isn’t injured much and which once served the servants of the presbytery.
We were shaken up in our last action, and they give us comparatively
generous liberty, no manœuvres, no reviews, and no drills. The section
leaders have seen to the arms and ammunition and have secured an entirely
new equipment from the ordnance officer.
The infantry have turned gunners over to us to fill up our ranks.
The lieutenant recommends the men to distract themselves with games,
gossip and songs.
At his solicitation we organized a concert, several concerts, in fact.
Each section has its artists which it believes in and of which it is
proud.
One evening in the garden adjoining the officers’ quarters we were
endeavoring to draw out the meal by chatting, but conversation flagged as
night drew near. So Sub-Lieutenant Delpos, who was opposed to dreaming as
engendering melancholy, demanded a concert at once, immediately.
The cantonments were scattered about in the surrounding gardens.
“Croharé,” he said, “run to each section and bring back artists—all the
artists in each company must be here in five minutes.”
And five minutes later they were there. All the company, too, for each
section followed its artists, who were to shine in all the glory of their
repertoire before the officers and the “little staff.”
We had singers, comedians and speakers, professional and amateur. Jacquet
gave with exquisite artistry several delightful songs, the words of
which he had composed and adapted to well-known tunes. The “Lettre à la
Marriane” was really touching.
Gaix and Corporal Vail sang with real talent and gave us a full
repertoire from the operas. The indefatigable Marseille gave, in a
hilarious gibberish, an Italian-Marseilles thing which brought down the
house with wild laughter.
“It’s too bad we haven’t a piano to play the accompaniments,” said
someone.
“A piano! I’ll attend to that,” said the ever-resourceful Chevalier.
“Four men in my bunch, and I’ll bring it at once.”
Some minutes later the party brought in an enormous harmonium which it
had found in a room of the presbytery. That harmonium had been the silent
witness of famous battles, had been taken and retaken with the village.
It had played “Die Wacht am Rhein” under the German heel, the “Rêve
Passe” with the artillery, “Sidi-Brahim” with our Blue Devils, and it was
still in good condition and almost all the notes played.
“And now we have a piano, we must have a player.”
“Oh, there, ‘Father Music.’ You know this is your job. You played for us
last summer in the church at Minaucourt.”
“Father Music” smiled gravely and pushed his way through the groups.
A candle stuck in the neck of a champagne bottle and placed on the
harmonium lighted up his Christlike face with a golden light.
He seated himself, without stopping smiling, on a pile of ammunition
caissons which served as a piano stool, and—honor to whom honor is
due—since we are machine gunners, he begins the “Song of the Machine
Gun,” with Gaix singing the first stanza.
* * * * *
“Father Music” stands out in the light in the middle of the dark night
and this group of a hundred men who one surmises are there, rather than
sees, squatting on the grass around the instrument.
Under his cap thrown back on his head the hair shows sparse and thin, his
beard is large and tangled, and he smiles through his large, clear eyes.
His lips move with the singer, and he sings the song with as much fervor
and composure as if he were chanting a Halleluiah.
“Father Music!” ...
He is a fine figure in our society, rich in epic types.
I have seen him near us for some weeks, as much in our echelon as in
the company of which he assumes the duties of infirmary orderly. I have
learned to know him, and to know him is to love him.
By scraps, by fragments of phrases, for he speaks but little—little of
himself, but instead launches out in real flights of declamation about an
idea, a poem, a well-known tune, the names of artists—I have been able
bit by bit and through deductions almost to reconstruct his life.
He is a quiet man in all his ways, habits and ideas. He lived in the
quarter of Saint-Sulpice in an old house in the quiet Rue Madame, and
made his living by giving music lessons in the institutions in the
neighborhood.
They knew him in the quarter as “Monsieur Placide.” On the appointed
days at the same hours he went to the Nuns of the Immaculate Conception,
to the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, or to special lessons in the city,
without ever wandering far away from the quarter, in the old venerable
houses, in the Rues d’Assas and Garancière.
On Sundays he played the organ in a small chapel of the Visitation
Sisters.
The people knew little about him through social intercourse, for he never
went out, or rarely. In summer he sometimes went to the Tuileries to
listen to secular music—and that is all.
When in August, 1914, the notices of mobilization called all able-bodied
men to arms, his orders were to join a regiment of Colonial infantry in
a fort around Paris.
This man lived a regular life apart from dangerous contingencies, and was
unacquainted with worldly ambitions and political strife, but he went
to war knowing nothing of it, and considering it only a little and then
through a professional view-point, as a sort of great drama in which he
was going to play a comparatively passive rôle.
Under the cap and great coat of the infantryman, bristling all over with
equipment, he was the typical “poilu”—the poilu of tradition. His large
beard covered the front of his brown coat, and this gave him the proud
appearance of a veteran.
At first he was going to sacrifice this thick beard which he had spared
since his liberation from his regiment, but his officers wanted him to
keep it. That brought him a place at the head of the company on the
march, and he drew all eyes. He was the poilu.
His reputation as a musician who played on any and all instruments was
quickly known throughout the cantonments. So he was at all the ceremonies
and all the merrymakings. In the morning on a harmonium carried to an
open field he might accompany a military mass said by stretcher-bearers,
while that evening he might play on a chance piano, perhaps on the same
harmonium, at improvised concerts, accompanying jolly, broad songs sung
by amateurs and playing the national hymns of the Allies, and astonishing
even himself in the patriotic choruses.
And this man to whom everything that was not classical or the Gregorian
chant was strange, who for twenty years of his life had taught successive
generations Méhul, Gluck, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, to whom Massenet,
Delibes and Gounod seemed profane, surprised himself by pounding out on a
badly-tuned piano and singing with all his might the refrains of “Viens
Poupoule,” popular marches, and the ballads of the faubourg.
The soldiers had quickly named him “Father Music” and this nickname
pleased him immensely.
* * * * *
That night an order came from the commanding officer:
“Two companies of machine guns will go with the utmost haste to Hill 174,
northwest of Herbècourt, to stop the enemy which is trying to outflank
our right.”
At three o’clock in the morning we were at the position indicated.
A small chapel with a cross was situated on the top of the hill. The open
space in front commands the road which descends gradually toward the
Méréaucourt woods where the enemy is concealed.
We fortify our position in a few minutes. On both sides of the road a
gun sweeps the slope and the approaches and guards the way out of the
woods. In the little belfry which is shaped like a dove-cote another gun
commands the woods and can disturb evolutions in the wood itself.
We use the material at hand to fortify our emplacements—bits of benches,
a door of a confessional, and the railings of the chapel.
At our right across the road a company of riflemen also establish
entrenchments, so well camouflaged that the enemy cannot see them until
in its zone of fire, that is to say, too late.
The officer, a young sub-lieutenant, asks us not to fire until he gives
the signal. He has the idea—and a good one—to let the enemy advance
and come up the road. Here he would be unable to execute a converging
movement and our gun in the belfry would sweep the right side of the road
and prevent his turning aside, the company of riflemen would protect the
left, and his section of Grenadiers would attack on the road.
We are confident of the strength of our positions and our means of
resistance, and we wait for the launching of the attack without anxiety.
“Father Music” has organized his dressing station in the chapel in the
shelter of the altar and now wanders around the building.
The church recalls familiar surroundings to him and he delights in
looking at it. There are a few simple frescoes, pictures of the
Crucifixion, where gigantic men stand out in relief against a background
of microscopic mountains and Liliputian houses, and they interest him.
He lets his fingers wander over the keyboard of the harmonium which lies
forgotten in the choir.
His comrades jeer,
“‘Father Music’ is going to play our _De Profundis_.”
But the quiet does not last long. Towards five o’clock a frightful fire
begins all at once. The troops in the front-line trenches, at the bottom
of the hill, are decimated and cut down by a furious fire; they retreat
and take refuge behind the defense works of the village.
We make our final preparations. Evidently the enemy is going to try to
take the village and has already begun its destruction. A storm of great
shells falls on the trenches, very near us, some yards behind the houses.
We hear terrific explosions, the falling of roofs, and fires break out
everywhere.
An order from the commander of the sector reaches us, “Maintain the
position and hold on until the companies of reinforcements arrive.”
The bombardment becomes more and more violent. As the sound of each shell
whistles through the air we wonder if this infernal machine is going to
strike in our dugout this time. And every two minutes, mathematically,
the uproar comes again and this unimaginable suffering continues some
hours. At the sound of each shell we close our eyes. We think of the
loved ones with a calm certainty of never seeing them again. We begin to
wish that it would end at once, rather than have to endure this terrible
nervous tension longer.
And the reinforcements cannot advance under the avalanche of fire and
shell. Are they going to let us be massacred on the spot without defense?
The Teuton artillery imagines that they have cleared the objective and
their fire dies down. Cautiously but confident of their superiority and
tactics, the Germans now appear in numbers.
Suddenly, violently, like a clap of thunder the “Marseillaise” bursts on
our ears—tremendously.
It rushes out through all the breaches in the church; it comes through
the cracks; it goes up through the fallen roof; it traverses the
shattered windows. It unites in itself all human and celestial voices.
The soul of a whole nation, the spirit of ancient glories, animates the
old organ which sings its last song.
With all the strength of its breath, with all the breath of its pipes,
filled to bursting, with all the sonority of its bass, its horns, its
flutes and violins, the organ hurls forth the sacred song.
And it is not only the hymn of triumphant Liberty and the indignation
of an avenging people in the face of the invader. Magnified by the
liturgical sounds on the ritualistic instrument of sacred music, it
is the Hosanna of Glory, the Sursam Corda of Faith, confident in the
approaching victory, the Resurexit of the triumphant Past, and the De
Profundis of brutal domination.
And beside all that, all the songs of glory, all the exaltations of
faith, all the clamor of Gregorian theogony vibrate in the notes of the
“Marseillaise.”
Under the humble vault of a hamlet chapel the organ plays the
twice-blessed music, and intones the splendid Magnificat of the Republic,
the hymn of the Trinity, thrice human, thrice divine, Liberty, Fraternity
and Equality.
And, dominating all the sonorities of the organ, a thousand voices unite
in a sublime burst of song,
“_Aux armes, citoyens!_ ...”
“Grenades!” commands the lieutenant.
The men, electrified, mouths half open, the machines in their hands,
spring out of the trench in the teeth of the enemy, but two steps from
him. And with an irresistible dash they charge him, follow him, crumble
him. The Teutons flee in terror....
* * * * *
Night has fallen. Under a sky reddened by the lights of fires deep
silence is over everything. Numerous reinforcements have arrived. The
reconquered positions have been reorganized at once.
The general has been told of the exploit and he congratulates the
officers and men, and promises them rewards. He also expresses a desire
to see the church from which came the martial hymn which electrified the
company.
All is dark....
At the back near the altar a small lantern lightens the darkness ... we
approach.
On the ruined harmonium, forever silent now, “Father Music” sleeps....