WITH ORDERS
“There he is, Captain,” shouted a non-commissioned intelligence officer.
“It is necessary,” said the captain, “to take this order to the
lieutenant commanding your company at once. You’ll find that it’s only a
promenade. Go ahead.”
A promenade!
From the Château de Cappy where the headquarters of our brigade were all
one could see that morning on the horizon was smoke and flame.
The earth trembles as though there were some sort of a fanciful,
continuous earthquake.
Since the attack began and our waves crossed the first Boche lines, the
enemy’s artillery planted on the heights of Cléry, Mont St. Quentin,
Barleux has sent over a formidable barrage to prevent all possibility of
the arrival of reinforcements.
It hopes to cut off in the rear the forces engaged in the attack,
to encircle them, to exterminate or capture them. A wall of shell
and fire separates them from us. Three hundred yards in front of the
heights of the La Vache woods from La Vierge clear to Dompierre and
Fontaine-les-Cappy, it is one uninterrupted explosion of great shells
which throw to great heights enormous masses of earth and stones almost
as though they were gushing from the bowels of the earth.
This waste of shells is further beautified with “tear” shells and
asphyxiating shells and is designed to stop all attempts at passing the
barrage.
This is the delightful place in which I have to take a “promenade.”
I adjust my mask, make sure that the straps are on, and secure my steel
helmet by the chin strap.
With the order in the pocket of my revolver case, a solid boxwood baton
in my hand, I start towards the fiery furnace.
The communication trench which I try to follow is impracticable. It
is partly blown in and such dugouts as are still tenable are full of
wounded fleeing from the zone of combat. They crowd in pell-mell in their
efforts to find a breathing place.
Then, sooner or later, after the La Vache woods are passed, one has to
walk absolutely unprotected so one might as well go at once.
Few projectiles are falling here on the great quarry as yet, but only
a few shots too long or too short from the great guns aimed at the
ammunition depot at Froissy.
The barrage is further on....
As one approaches it, the earth and air seem to tremble even more....
One walks on a moving wave, as if tossed about on the bridge of a ship.
A displacement of air throws one to the right, the next one to the left.
They march swaying like drunken men.
I approach....
Some steps in front of what was the “Servian” trench is the beginning of
Hell.
Men, officers, and stretcher-bearers are crouching in holes in
half-blown-in saps, waiting for a lull which for several hours has not
come.
The sick and wounded, haggard and frightened, do not dare to make a move
outside the precarious shelters which even the smallest shell would
destroy and bury them alive.
A Zouave, with a swarthy face and a profile like a medallion,
gesticulates and shouts. A long gash cuts his forehead from the arch of
his eyebrows to the ear; the blood flows thick and black on his cheek and
runs into his beard. He waves a rag on the end of a stick.
“The noubah! the noubah! It is the noubah! They are going to dance.
You’ll dance with me, won’t you?”
And he runs towards the bombs, laughing a frightful laugh which makes me
shudder. Poor fool! A hole opens under his feet. He falls. Perhaps the
fall will save him from a mortal wound.
Some Colonials, fatalists, accustomed to so many other storms—for two
years they have been in the hottest part of all the engagements—talk
coolly under a dugout which is still intact. They squat on their crossed
legs and smoke peacefully. The smoke from their pipes, rising in slow
easy curves, seems to set at defiance the frightful cataclysm which rages
around us.
A stretcher-bearer, a priest, whom I think I recognize, is dressing a
wounded man who has escaped in some way from the furnace and who faints
in his arms. Intent on his bandaging he seems to have no idea of the Hell
two steps away. He gives him the same care with the same imperturbable
calm that he would in the absolute security of some faraway ambulance.
A staff-officer, a captain, is observing the ground through a glass. As
is my case, he is carrying an urgent order which cannot wait.
He looks at me and understands from my attitude that I, too, must go on.
“Shall we try it?”
“If you wish, Captain.”
“In case of accident, my pocketbook is in the pocket of my jacket, here
... you will take it to the officer of details of the ... first Zouaves.”
“Mine is here, Captain.”
I indicate the left pocket of my tunic.
“All right.”
“Let’s go.”
* * * * *
He grasps my hand and we advance flat on the ground, bounding from one
shell hole to another farther ahead.
We compel our bodies to take the shape of the excavation in which we
burrow.
Above our heads is a continuous whistling of shells, cutting like a
sword, and the constant djji-djji of the projectiles which tear up the
ground.
The explosions are so frequent that we perceive only one infernal noise
under a rain of fire.
We crawl through an indescribable chaos, in a field of terror, in the
midst of a pungent, fetid smoke. We reach the first German trench which
we conquered yesterday morning. We jump into it; we are dripping with
perspiration; our clothes are in rags. Our first act is to raise our
masks for we are stifling under them.
The asphyxiating shells now fall behind us, and their noxious gas blows
in another direction away from us. We stop for some seconds to regain our
breaths. We must go on.
As we are about to climb out on the field again, I see one of our
couriers coming at full speed. I must wait for him and learn where my
company is.
But he stops, leans backwards, and his hands contract and seem to try to
pull something from his breast. He falls inert.
I crawl towards him. A spasm still shakes him. He looks at me.
“The company! Where is the company?”
“——Maisonnette——” he murmurs in a faraway breath, then, with an effort,
his shaking hand reaches towards his jacket, but without success.
“Sergeant-Major ... there ... there ... to my mother ... in La Ciotat....”
“Yes, _mon vieux_, yes.”
He is dead. I am trembling but I search for his pocketbook. It is sewed
in a handkerchief and in drawing it out it is spotted with blood—his
blood. I shall send it to his mother just that way. It is forbidden, but
what difference does that make? I have promised.
La Maisonnette! It is still three miles, perhaps more. I’ll never get
there! The staff-officer leaves me; he is going to the La Chapitre woods
to the left.
We grasp hands once more.
“Thanks.”
Yes, thanks! Together we have done a most difficult thing—we have passed
through a barrage.
Now, I go on across that terrible plateau, alone.
Alone!
If a splinter of a shell hits me, no one will be with me during my last
moments to listen to my final wishes. I continue my way under the rain of
shells.
Why I have not already been blown to pieces or buried I do not know. How
little one feels in the face of this formidable power!
I turn around. On both sides and behind me there is no one! I am in a
desert in which a hail of fire falls. Will I get there?
At every step I cross, touch, jump over, as I run against them, formless
corpses, cut to pieces, or doubled into knots.
Perhaps in a moment I shall be like them, disemboweled and my brains
running out, or like those over there buried under rubbish and dirt. I
can see a foot here, an arm there; they are entombed forever. I shall be
listed among the missing, and my family and those who love me will cling
to this shred of hope—that the missing is perhaps not dead.
I go on steadily.
Abruptly, I experience a nervous reaction. I laugh.... I become a
fatalist! And after?... I shall not be alone. That’s the common lot of
millions of men.
What is going to happen will happen. Forward.
And I crawl on anew, thinking of everything else—a mass of things a
hundred leagues away; trifles; paltry trifles. I surprise myself by
making plans which I shall realize after the war—when that is over! And,
nevertheless, death hovers over me constantly, threatening, and I am much
nearer to it than life.
A trench opens before me; it is not badly demolished. I enter it and find
that it is an old one taken from the enemy this morning. German words
indicate directions. They abandoned all their belongings. On a plank in
a sentry post is a superb pair of prismatic field glasses. I pick them
up—what use are they to me? I throw them down at once.
I have enough to look out for close by without trying to see what’s
happening farther away.
“_Nach Maisonnette._”
This direction before my eyes fascinates me.
“To Maisonnette.” Well, I’m on the right track. If the trench continues
like this I have some chance of arriving there: _nach Maisonnette_.
I mark the directions at each turn of the trench, at each branch.
A big shell bursts on my left and utterly destroys the whole of the wall
behind me.
I take another course. The devil! Suppose that should be wrong.
I reach a sort of crater made up of stones and trunks of trees blown
apart and broken, in one complete tangle.
It would hardly be wise to stay here, for the crater is hammered full of
shell holes.
A voice comes out of the ground between the stones, at my feet.
“Oh, good morning, Margis. Keep to the right; the first street to the
left is Peronne.”
I recognize the joking voice and constant laugh of Sub-Lieutenant Delpos.
I have arrived; the company is here!
This hole is Maisonnette!
All right!...
And I jump into the protection of the bottom of the sap.
At last!!!
White wine, brandy, fine preserves. Sub-Lieutenant Delpos never lacks for
anything even in the most tragic hours of his life.
He makes an elegant and comfortable dugout out of the most filthy hole.
Ten miles from the living world, six feet under ground, in the midst of
the shell fire, ten feet from the enemy, he offers me, with a laugh, a
meal which is prodigious under the circumstances.
Coharé makes coffee on a burner and he flavors it with brandy.
We talk of many things, of a thousand things, all a hundred leagues
removed from the war. We talk about Marseilles.
Sub-Lieutenant Delpos is a lover of its picturesqueness, of its color,
its sun—we are in a deep sap lighted by a smoky candle—the sun means
something to us, something fairylike and superhuman. To think that at
that hour there are people living under clear skies, coming and going and
breathing the strong sea breeze, and drinking in with their eyes that
perpetual delight—a sunset on the rocks of Frioul!
And the women of Marseilles! They are the quintessence of France,
revivified by the air of the Mediterranean. Just think, _mon cher_, of
a villa perched in the pines, facing the sea, in the valley of L’Oriol,
with a brunette that I know,
...! ...!
“Oh, I forget, I must present you to the other gentlemen. Come.”
We emerge from the sap and come out in broad daylight. In a crater
organized in the expectation of a probable counter attack, guarded by the
strongest men of the section, twelve German prisoners are stretched out
in the mud.
Some of them stand up automatically at the appearance of an officer and
assume a rigid military attitude.
“Look at that rabble with their blessed faces like professors of natural
history or like sacristans mumbling their prayers. Who would think to
look at them that they are such cynical brutes?”
“But I forgot. You speak German!... Try and get something out of them.”
So I ask them where they come from.
No one replies. Their eyes remain hostile and timid and full of fear.
They distrust one another; informing is the common practice in their
ranks.
I look at one in particular, and, taking him by the arm,
“_Dü! wohen bist dü dann?_”
“_Aus München...._”
From Munich. Munich! I passed the best days of my youth there. Its
splendid life, the magic of its lakes, the first iridescent snows of the
Tyrol reflecting in their dark waters, the intoxication of its music,
Munich! the city of my dreams! The mystic grayish tints of the inns more
smoky even than those of Auerbach but lighter, the impressive harmony of
the statues, its incomparable museums, the June evenings on the Isar and
the blue sunsets of the Propylées. Munich! And this man in rags, this
tatterdemalion speaks to me of Munich.
“Well, Margis, are you wandering?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. As a matter of fact I was woolgathering.”
And I come back to cruel reality.
“Since you must return to the brigade at once, you can take this crowd
to the provost. I’ll give you four men. That will be enough.”
“All right, Lieutenant, but I’ll not guarantee to deliver them whole.
It’s a bad neighborhood. It rains shells.”
He looks at them and they are ready. All they have to do is to group
themselves.
“Go ahead, au revoir,—and a safe return.”
“_Nun jetz Vorwaerts!_”
We go back along the road I came by this morning. The artillery fire has
let up a little. As far as the crossing of the roads from Biaches to
Herbècourt, we march along without much risk, but beyond there we are
taken anew by a crossfire from the batteries of Barleux and Hem, and by
the fire of a cursed machine gun. It seems to be hidden in the ruins of
Flaucourt, but our artillery has not been able to spot it yet and silence
it.
My twelve prisoners march along ahead silently with bowed shoulders. They
understand that they must march along peacefully at the same pace as the
four big fellows who form the escort, and that once out of this zone
their lives are saved.
We reach without incident the old road which cuts the Le Signal woods,
and get back on the road from Herbècourt to Éclusier. An orchard here
which before the attack was a signal station has not suffered much. The
dugouts are whole and I stop my troop to look after my leg which has
begun to bleed.
A little while ago, as I was crossing some barbed wire entanglements, I
felt a tear but I thought it was of no consequence. But now the blood
has soaked through the drawers and trousers. I tear off a strip from my
package of dressings and put on a bandage which stops the bleeding until
we reach the next dressing station.
I have hardly put my equipment on again than I hear beyond me in the road
an infernal noise of scrap iron, oaths and cries.
I jump up.
It is our movable kitchen driven by Gondran. Yesterday, it went ahead to
Herbècourt on premature orders. To-day, it was right in the barrage. Now
that the long expected lull has come, the lieutenant is sending it back
to Froissy.
On the way back Gondran met four wounded men who were getting to the
rear only with the greatest difficulty, and he took them on his rickety
wagon. This torpedo, with its big sheet-iron smokestack which is full
of holes and twisted, doesn’t look much like an ambulance. Instead, one
might think it was some archaic engine of war of the Gauls.
Phoebe and Lidoire, the two lean hacks which drag it, are marked and cut
by the harness and their legs are bent from pulling this badly balanced
weight.
Suddenly, the bombardment, which seemed to have ceased, begins again.
First two shots, then repeated more and more rapidly, and only in our
direction. A shower of splinters beats around us, wounds the two horses
and cuts the reins.
They run away at a mad pace with wild plunges through the fields. Gondran
is wounded in the hands and is helpless; he clings to the smokestack; the
wounded are tossed about. They shout from the pain of their re-opened
wounds and hang on as best they can to the handle of the kettle.
The speed of the two horses becomes giddy. They head for the quarry at
a gallop. A hundred yards more and they will inevitably fall into the
canal, a fall of more than fifty yards. That would mean their utter
destruction.
I have no choice of ways in which to save the five men.
With six shots from my revolver I kill one horse and throw the other to
the ground. The kitchen comes to a stop twenty yards from the cliff.
But danger is not averted by any manner of means. Shells follow us. From
some faraway place an observer must have taken us for a “75” getting into
position and he tries to destroy us. We abandon the kitchen which is now
almost completely done for, and as fast as we can, saved by some miracle
from the shells, which double in intensity, we throw ourselves into the
first trench we find.
I find the Territorials and the provost at the great quarry and I hand my
prisoners over to him.
It is only a step from there to headquarters. I arrive at six o’clock.
Captain Chatain is outside the door, and I give him the reply he is
waiting for.
He runs it over with a smile of satisfaction.
“Everything went all right, Sergeant-Major?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Good. Didn’t I tell you that it would simply be a promenade ... but I’ll
recommend you for a citation.”
Half an hour later I was snoring soundly in a dugout.