shows too plainly to these men of the Landwehr that at bottom he is their
hereditary enemy. Still, he has a talk in the guardroom, smokes a cigar,
and drinks a glass of beer with the men, exchanging _Prosits_. Sometimes
he sees on the table, amid the beer-jugs and other debris of the meal, a
newspaper which they have forgotten to put away when the Frenchman came
in. My Durupt pounces upon it and stuffs it into his pocket. He strides
across the bridge, hurries down the staircase, and bursts into the
kitchen, breathless and radiant, with the air of a victorious athlete or
a hero who has saved the republic, and brandishes his paper as if it were
a flag taken from the enemy. Now he reads it, translates and comments,
with exclamations of joy or of rage at the passages which delight or
infuriate him. He actually talks, argues, and fights with this newspaper;
he regards it as a flesh and blood Bavarian who is trying to deceive him,
and with whom he has to join issue. Woe to the Bavarian if he does not
admit defeat, or at least disquietude, for he will then learn to what
lengths Durupt can go in his anger!
Never shall I forget these readings of the _Ingolstädter Zeitung_. If I
am ever tempted to doubt that the press exercises a terrible power, that
its influence upon the public resembles that of a shell bursting in a
cavalry square, I shall call to mind certain hours of imprisonment here,
passed round our table, Durupt reading aloud, Dutrex and I sketching
maps to clarify the news, while leaning over our shoulders, anxiously
following us, are Paix, Scherrer, Badoy, Noverraz, Donel, Lagier, and
a few others. When we break up in the evening we know what will be
the public sentiment next day. According as Durupt is able to sing a
triumphal pæan, or, on the other hand, the evidence of misfortune is
overwhelming, will our thousand comrades be light-hearted or sad, will
hope or despair permeate the fort from this centre, from this table,
from the newspaper on this table, from the group of men who sit round it
evening after evening.
Sometimes Durupt, returning to the kitchen excited by the chase, is
pulled up by the notice I have posted for the protection of my work:
“Please do not speak to me.” He then sits down beside me without saying a
word and unfolds the newspaper he has got hold of. Elbows on table, head
in hands, his whole body bent eagerly forward, Claudel would say he is
engaged on the “ingurgitation” of his paper.
Look at him, dissecting the leading article, heavy fare in which the most
trifling details of information are sandwiched between philosophical
disquisitions. He turns the fragments over and over as a starving man
turns over the contents of a dustbin. He labours to unveil hidden
meanings, to detect masked avowals. He displays a truly German patience
in securing here and there, _rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, the name of
a town, the number of an army corps, or some other shadow of positive
information.
Then he brings forth his maps, which are shabby in appearance, worn at
the folds, stained by the rain and sweat of his campaign in the Upper
Vosges. He takes out his pencil. He marks the places. At length, unable
to restrain himself any longer, he feels that he must tell me what has
happened. He turns my protective notice with its face to the wall, and
starts upon his commentary.
The splendid thing is that this commentary invariably leads up to the
proof of a victory. For him every French retreat is a strategic movement,
while every German retreat is a rout. All good news is positively
certain; all bad news is a falsehood published to restore the courage of
the German populace. Guided by these principles of criticism, he arrives
at a certainty of the truth; he then cons it over to himself, gives it
a portable form, and hurries off to disseminate it through the fort. He
bursts into No. 19, where Merlier, Charlier, and Gautin receive him as
an angel of the Lord; into No. 17, where his enthusiasm breaks vainly
against the obstinate and disdainful pessimism of Guido; into No. 34,
where Brissot and d’Arnoult, two mischievous devils who are equally well
acquainted with German and with the beer served out to the guardroom,
treat him simply as a gossip. Unfortunately, in the course of his round
he will encounter, now the quartermaster, now a _Gefreiter_, now one
of the sentinels. Remorselessly he overwhelms them with his news, thus
making himself more unpopular with them than before.
Thus he takes ample revenge for the “Paris _kaput_” of the first few
days. Dutrex and I chaff him about it, saying: “You’re behaving like a
Boche in being so regardless of your adversaries’ feelings!”
“Poor fellows,” he makes answer, “it is obvious that you don’t know the
Germans. As far as they are concerned the proverb is absolutely true:
‘Oignez vilain, il vous poindra; poignez vilain, il vous oigndra!’”[12]
I was walking the other day with Durupt and Sergeant Foch. We were on
the little footpath which runs along the parapet, and opposite to us,
across the great ditch, on the road which skirts the outer slopes, there
appeared two German women. They were walking slowly, wheeling bicycles,
and they looked at us curiously. We mended our gait, for no one likes to
look unhappy under the eyes of the enemy.
Durupt spoke to them in German.
“Have you a newspaper?”
“No.”
“What’s the latest news?”
“Things are going well in France.”
“For which side?”
“For ours. Trainloads of wounded are coming back every day.”
“Your wounded?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, it is for our side that things are going well!”
“Possibly.”
These women had such fat bodies and short legs as to produce an
impression of caricature. Sergeant Foch, Alsatian and infantry chasseur,
has a malicious wit. He was cogitating a joke, but I managed to induce
him to suppress it.
We walked on slowly, talking across the ditch, and the women said:
“You treat our prisoners badly, and you finish off the wounded!”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s in the papers.”
“All your papers lie, and you are stupid enough to believe them. It
is just the same with the war news. You are beaten everywhere. It’s
perfectly clear to any one who can read intelligently. Yet you believe
yourselves to be the victors! The newspapers take their readers to be
idiots. Is it possible that they are right? The real fact is that we are
starved here, whilst in France, where people are rich and generous, your
prisoners are fed on the fat of the land!”
“It may be so. But it was those rascals of English who caused all the
trouble. If only I had them here!” (the larger woman shook her fist).
“The English are the apaches of Europe (_die Lumpen Europas_)!”
Thus the conversation began. It must have lasted about half an hour.
The conscientious Durupt “sowed discouragement” in the minds of his
interlocutors, refusing to leave them until he felt that their confidence
in victory had been undermined.
SUNDAY
_September 27, 1914._
I have been at work all the morning.
At ten o’clock, Guido came to fetch me for mass. Under his arm he
carried the great missal, borrowed from the curé of Lenting, in which he
likes me to follow the service. The sermon was delivered by one of his
colleagues. It filled me with astonishment, so harsh, so pitiless was its
tone, reeking of fire and brimstone, representing God as a cross between
a satrap and a bogy. The preacher seemed a veritable priest of Saturn.
His firmness of conviction, be it noted, was absolute. But—shades of St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Francis of Sales, where were you?
Guido often discusses his faith with me in the evenings, when, before
the roll-call, we stroll together on the deserted glacis, just after the
stars have come out. He takes great pains to expound to me the beauties
of the Catholic liturgy. It is, in very truth, incomparable. For those
who can believe in the miracle of the host, nothing in the world can be
so touching or so sublime as the daily drama of the mass. But what a
pity that it has to be said in Latin, so that none but those who have had
a classical education can appreciate it to the full. This morning, for
instance, I doubt if there were three of the comrades able to understand
the Epistle and the Gospel of the day. If it is considered essential
to retain Latin as a symbol of universalism, why should not the Latin
reading be instantly followed by vernacular rendering of these verses of
Scripture wherein are contained the essentials of our faith, be it Roman
Catholic or Protestant?
Yet how simple and how moving was the ritual, improvised, shortened, of
necessity reduced to its elements—altar, candles, incense, vestments. No
Saint-Sulpician imagery! Bare walls, rough and white. It was possible to
fancy oneself in a catacomb, in the first ages of the church.
Quite recently this armoured keep has been deprived of its four or five
ancient guns. There they were at their posts, muzzles in the loopholes,
ready at the supreme moment to sweep with their fire the north of the
counterscarp beyond the second encircling wall. They had been in this
damp crypt for perhaps thirty years, without ever being used. Now they
are on their way to the Russian front. The Germans must be hard put to it
for guns, to make use of these relics!
The crowd of the faithful, French soldiers and Bavarian _Landwehrleute_,
standing indiscriminately, peacefully pressed shoulder to shoulder,
served to warm the casemate a trifle. I shivered, none the less, whilst
Boude, with a voice grave and sweet, sang the ample strophes of the
_Adoro te_ of St. Thomas. At one moment, impressed by the strong and
noble simplicity of this sanctuary of exile, I called up in memory the
interior of the church attended by the bathers of Trouville. The contrast
was so violent that.…
* * * * *
In the curé of Lenting’s missal, I have read several times lately, lying
on my heap of straw, the couplets of the _Adoro te_. What an ardent hymn
it is! How sublime is its cry of passion! When it was written, the cult
of the eucharist was, so to say, novel, and had numerous opponents within
the church. Béranger, the Angevin, a species of early Calvin, denied the
material transformation of the elements. Christianity took sides about
the matter.
It is only periods of combat which are fruitful. To-day the altar is too
peaceable. Too many questions are considered closed. I doubt if a St.
Thomas or a St. Bonaventura would now vie with one another in love and
genius to sing, as sincerely as did these saints of old, the flesh and
the blood of Christ in the host.
Mass said, we hastened to the ordinary. It consisted of soup and a morsel
of pork. The distribution of the meal lasted until two. Then Dutrex,
Durupt, the cooks, and I sat round the ministerial table to dine in our
turn. It was late, and we were hungry. I furnished some cigars, smuggled
goods. Dutrex provided tea, likewise smuggled. As there were eight of
us and we had but four half-pint mugs, it was necessary to use four
enamelled iron bowls—basins belonging to Fort Orff. The tea was lost in
the bottom of these; one might have imagined it had been dispensed with
a medicine-dropper. But how good it was! With our half-pint mugs and our
bowls we clinked three times, drinking to France, to the destruction
of autocracy and militarism in Europe, to those at home. Our meagre
love-feast had quite a family air. Cooks and “ministers” alike, we all
felt that we were truly brothers.
After dinner, Dutrex, Durupt, and I went for a walk. There was a high
wind as we strolled along the parapets. In shady corners, I was able
to pluck some dwarf gentians, mosses, and lichens. I even discovered a
tuft of dwarf heather from which the flowers had almost all fallen. I
have arranged this posy in my campaigner’s mug. There it is, beside your
portrait. If only we could hope to get away from here before it fades!
Durupt left us to attend vespers, whilst I went on walking with Dutrex.
At ordinary times he is a man of extreme reserve, fencing off his
intimate soul, and all the more unapproachable in proportion as he
becomes gayer; but to-day, as if in spite of himself, he was a little
expansive.
There had been a silence, and then he said:
“Just at this hour, coming from his office, my father has doubtless been
greeted by the words, ‘Still no news of the little one?’ I’m afraid I
shall find them greatly aged.”
“But, my dear fellow, they’ll get young again fast enough when they see
you!”
“I have a presentiment,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look out at the view
before us, this dead countryside. No smoke rises from Ingolstadt. There
is not a soul in the fields. Does not this suggest defeat? Last Sunday
there were still some men among the idlers at the gate who came to stare
at the French. To-day there were only women and children. All their
men are at the front. And this wind from France! I am sure that it is
sweeping back their armies. I am confident that just now, when we were
drinking our toasts, we were unwittingly celebrating a French victory.”
He went on to speak of his family and of his studies. The cold breeze
stung our faces. A chill vapour was floating across the melancholy plain,
so that it seemed as if all that we looked down upon was covered with
mysterious veils of crêpe. How sweet it was to me to listen, in exile, to
the delicately simple confidences of this son of France.
When I re-entered the “salon,” Durupt, back from vespers, was reading the
German translation of a novel by Sienkiewicz, _Mit Feuer und Schwert_. He
turned towards me with a dazed and yet decisive air: “Old Riou, I have a
presentiment of victory!”
THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE
_September 28, 1914._
A batch of eighty-two convalescent wounded arrived at the fort on the
stroke of five. We thought at first that they were ordinary prisoners
sent here direct from the last battle. We were already running to meet
them on the bridge, eager for trustworthy news, ready to throw a fire of
questions at the unexpected messengers across the curtain of Bavarian
bayonets. Then we noticed that several of them were limping, while
others, though not limping, were leaning upon sticks after the manner of
old men, and we perceived that they had all lost the bronzing of trench
and camp life. We were disappointed. These white-faced men came from the
hospitals of Ingolstadt, and such drafts, as a rule, bring but little
news.
While the transfer was being effected, and while the two German
non-commissioned officers, the one belonging to the fort and the one
belonging to the town, paper and pencil in hand, ticked off their men as
sheep are counted at a market, we studied our comrades’ appearance. They
were not very ragged. They had almost completely repaired the terrible
havoc of battle.
The havoc of battle! These words have no meaning to a fire-eater past the
age for active service who fights his battles among women. He speaks of
the beauty of the assault, of the heroism of a bayonet charge. All that
his imagination conceives is the richly dressed shop-front of war. It
would be different if he knew the reality that lies behind! One must have
been over several battlefields immediately after the fighting in order to
understand the meaning of the phrase, “the havoc of battle.”
“They throw away their shakos, their muskets, even their colours,”
writes Victor Hugo. Alas, dropping with fatigue, some of them will even
throw away their coats. You see them in shirtsleeves, running across
the stubble. The firing gets hotter; suddenly a shell bursts, and a man
is wounded in three places—hit in the back, scratched on the thigh,
and deeply torn in the arm. He falls. To make matters worse it begins
to rain. The ground soon becomes a slough. The battle passes off into
the distance. Rain continues. Night comes. Our man, half drowned, and
almost buried in a furrow, no longer hears a sound. He tries to rise, but
finds it impossible. He strains his eyes to see something. The effort is
useless. He is glued to the ground; he can see nothing beyond the tuft
of grass where his head is resting, nothing unless it be, close at hand,
the mist-wraiths which gradually surround him and hide him. In anguish
he cries: “Maman, maman!” He believes himself lost. “Maman!” He screams
this with all his might. It is an appeal, a complaint, a prayer. He is in
pain. He is parched with thirst. “Maman, maman!”
The stretcher-bearers have heard the cry. “The ambulance!” they shout to
reassure him, making a speaking-trumpet of their hands. Here they are
with their red lamps knocking against their legs. A red cross man takes
our soldier on his back. The wounded man groans. What can be done? They
let him groan. On the road is waiting a forage cart with straw on the
bottom. It creeks and jolts; it is a bed of torture. It is packed with
wounded. The rain never ceases. Our man feels that he is dying of cold,
but he has the good luck to faint. The cart reaches a dilapidated farm.
Beside the entrance are two lanterns, one white and the other red; it is
the field hospital.
As soon as its turn comes the blood-stained bundle is smartly brought
in and placed upon a truss of fresh straw. Amid the horrible concert of
lamentations the man gradually returns to consciousness. What pain! The
chief hospital orderly comes by with his dark-lantern. He examines the
newcomer. “Here’s another of them hit in the back,” he says with a growl.
He summons assistance, and two or three men painfully turn the poor devil
on to his face.
“Have you the scissors?”
“No, they are in use.”
“Have you a knife?”
“Here you are.”
Rip, rip. With two slashes the orderly removes the back of the shirt.
Rip, rip. He does the same with the rest. But this is sticking to the
wound. “Oh, oh,” groans the patient. It is finished. The skin is free.
“He has blood-stains on his trousers, too.” Rip, rip. “Hullo! what a
nasty tear in his thigh.” Rip, rip. “Gently—how it sticks!” Half of the
trousers, stiff and black with blood, is thrown into the alley way to
join the other rags.
At last comes the turn of the shirtsleeve. This is an easier job. Rip,
rip.
“Monsieur le Major.”
“Yes,” answers the medical officer, at work at the other end of the barn.
“Have you exposed the wounds?”
“Yes, Monsieur le Major.”
Oh yes, they are fully exposed. So is the wounded man! He had nothing on
when he was brought in beyond a shirt and trousers. Now his shirt lacks
an arm and most of the back, while his trousers have but one leg! Poor
devils, whom the panic of retreat and the orderly’s knife have reduced to
this condition. Such men as these may well speak of “havoc.”
And if the field hospital is in the hands of the enemy, the patients
in this condition will have to endure two or three days of railway
travelling, slowly jolted along in the foreigner’s cattle trucks.
Just now I was talking about our new comrades. They had known the
extremity of wretchedness. Two or three weeks had passed. There they
were, behind the curtain of Bavarian bayonets, standing on their own
feet, their clothing a little worn; but they were full of pluck, and,
considering everything, almost gay. Doubtless a Frenchman might see
reason for surprise at their equipment, for this was somewhat unusual.
But no German could find anything to laugh at; he could not but feel that
he was looking at true French soldiers. I was grateful to our comrades
for the spirit and ingenuity which had enabled them, by the use of chance
expedients, to assume a military, a French aspect, under the eyes of the
enemy. In certain conditions, coquetry is heroic.
Dominating the troop was a gigantic chasseur d’Afrique whose appearance
drew the most indolent in the fort to look at him. Seen close at hand, he
was simply a foot soldier of the 146th, from Toul, who had cut himself
a chéchia [elongated fez] out of a red trouser-leg. Beside him was a
dragoon, sporting an extremely elegant police-cap manufactured from
the same cloth. A chasseur alpin partially concealed beneath his ample
cloak a perfectly new pair of greenish trousers, bought from a sutler
through the hospital gate at Ingolstadt. A colonial infantryman of the
6th, from Tarare, who had received a horrible wound in the shoulder,
had a linesman’s coat and an artilleryman’s trousers. It was only
his red-anchored képi, saved from the general wreck, which revealed
him to be a marine. I regret to say that some of our warriors wore
peaceful-looking civilian caps of grey cloth which would have given an
unsoldierly appearance to Ney himself.
Nevertheless, this debris of broken regiments, rigged out at haphazard as
it arrived from the battlefield, soiled, torn, and deplorable odds and
ends collected from the abandoned slaughter-houses and thrown pell-mell
into transport wagons, had now an appearance that was far from being
filthy or wretched. Besides, the men were smiling.
On the other hand, the soldiers who come here direct from the battlefield
are far from smiling! Their brains are filled with terrible visions. They
anticipate cunning tortures. They are astonished that their throats have
not yet been cut. I was struck by their aspect as of hunted beasts when
the gate of the fort was opened wide to admit them.
I call to mind one of my comrades, an officer in the medical service.
His red cross armlet protected him. Upon the roof of the field hospital
he had with his own hands conspicuously unfurled the great neutral flag.
I remember the circumstances perfectly. The cannonade had ceased. Our
ears, which for three successive hours had been deafened by an infernal
noise, were astonished by this sudden, palpitating, and immense silence.
The men of our regiment, sent forward on a bayonet charge across the
open, had been mowed down in masses. The survivors retreated in headless,
incoherent, almost indifferent groups. While this was in progress I saw
some of the men pause, quietly strike the plum-trees with their rifles,
fill their mouths and their pockets with the unripe fruit, and continue
on their way with the same careless gait as if at manœuvres. But the
Prussians were in hot pursuit. We saw them advancing in regular order,
close at hand, at first in open formation, and subsequently by sections.
They halted, fired, bounded forward, fired again. Repeatedly they fired
upon our field hospital, where the flood of bleeding flesh overflowed
into the little garden behind the house. Dzing, dzing. Their bullets
cannoned among our utensils, broke off limbs from the little fruit trees
shading our wounded, and sometimes covered the poor hungry fellows with
plum branches.
The whole of our staff was at work, and the work was overwhelming,
utterly disproportionate to the equipment and the personnel. Yet it was
all the better, for excessive labour blinds us to danger. When the body
is utterly exhausted, this reacts upon the mind, which becomes dull and
insensible, so that imagination is paralysed. No doubt when, all of a
sudden, quite close to your ears, a passing bullet utters its sharp but
gentle flute-like note, the mind starts and rears like a frightened
horse. It is invaded by a flow of precise and positive thoughts of
self-preservation. But this is for a moment only. The act upon which you
are engaged is mechanically finished, and there you are at your post,
just as before. Heroism? The word is too lofty. It is better to say
simply that action is a vice which holds the mind in its powerful grip
and prevents reflection. In actual warfare, all ordinary men are worth
pretty much the same; all are, as circumstances vary, equally cowardly or
equally courageous. But the leaders are different. I am now of opinion
that the true leaders, those to whose troops panic is unknown, are those
who never abandon their men’s minds to themselves even for a moment, who
keep these minds permanently occupied, concentrated upon the immediate
vision of some simple and direct action which has to be performed.
“There’s no end to them,” said the hospital orderlies. And indeed there
seemed no end to them. The wounded streamed in from all directions, in
Indian file, in groups, or in pairs helping one another along. When the
house was full we did not know where to put them. For the time being we
packed them together outside, wherever there was a patch of shade. Poor
lads! already exhausted with hunger, fatigue, and loss of blood, they had
used up the last ounce of energy in making for our flag. “Orderly,” they
would say when reaching the door, “do what you can for me!” Then, out
of breath, they would slowly sink to the ground, with little cries like
those of a sick child. More than one of us, at sight of this, had to wipe
his eyes furtively.