Prussian cyclist had in fact ridden by the gate, followed by the first
patrol. They did no more than glance at the field hospital in passing.
At this moment I was about to open the surgical instrument wagon to get
something I needed. While we were all so busy, the officer of whom I have
spoken above was standing two paces from me, his arms hanging by his
sides. When he heard the words “There they are,” he was dumbfounded. The
brown hairs of his thin beard were bristling on his pale skin. His cheeks
were blanched; he stared at vacancy. He swayed upon his little legs.
Having his back towards the gate he had seen nothing. But he had heard
the words, “There they are.” He knew that he was about to be seized,
and he thought that his last hour had come. He stood for two or three
seconds, mute, pale, as if thunderstruck. Then, talking to himself, he
said tonelessly, “They’ll slit all our throats!”
* * * * *
While the German _Feldwebel_, with Dutrex at his elbow, conducts the
convalescents to their rooms, section by section, I return to the
“salon,” and bury myself in my papers. All at once the door is noisily
opened, and Dutrex, with his usual shortness of manner, insistently
martial, in a state of cheerful exhilaration, ushers in a tiny man,
corporal of the 146th of Toul. Shepherding, hustling, dominating with his
great blustering voice, he pushes the stranger into my arms.
“Here’s a man for you!” I shake the little corporal’s hand. The first
downy growth of beard is appearing on his face. The _juventa intonsa_ of
Euryalus. He has the callow air of a candidate for university honours.
With thoughtful eyes, quietly obstinate behind glasses, he resembles my
friend Bonifas.
Durupt arrives. Several others, attracted to the spot, form a circle
round us. As one man, the cooks desert the “plutonic region”; Davit, the
Hercules, and the painstaking Devèse seat themselves unceremoniously upon
the ministerial table.
“Friend,” begins Dutrex, “we’ve brought you here before Riou because you
look intelligent, restrained, judicious. Riou insists upon trustworthy
news. Don’t exaggerate when you are talking to him. If you are a
romancer, clear out!”
The little corporal smiles. I open the conversation with the usual
commonplaces, asking him about his wound, where he was taken prisoner,
his last battle, his impression of the Germans at the hospital, his name,
what part of France he comes from. Then I put the great question:
“Have you any news of the war?”
His name is Lahire. He comes from Paris. He obviously has news of
importance. In a quiet, rather husky voice, speaking jerkily with
intervals of silence, he tells his tale simply.
“This morning,” he says, “at half-past seven, an artillery lieutenant
with a wound in the leg arrived at the hospital. He still wore his sabre
and his revolver, for he had been granted the honours of war. His coming
made a great impression upon our little world of wounded, causing much
more stir than the recent visit of the princess of Bavaria. In a trice
every one knew of his advent, and he immediately secured an attentive
audience.
“I must tell you that at the Ingolstadt hospital officers and men live
in close association. The officers, who number about fifty, are all in
the same ward; but the rest of the ward, which is just like the others,
is occupied by the men.
“Thus, while the lieutenant was speaking to his brother officers, we
of the small fry gathered round them in a second compact circle. He
had opened one of the last numbers of the _Bulletin des Armées de la
République_; he read out loud, and, above all, he made comments as he
read. He was bubbling over with delight. His fort, a fort of the third
class, which was expected to hold out for thirty-six hours, had held out
for six days. Three thousand melinite shells had been fired into the
place. They would have resisted much longer had not their guns been of
such short range. The fact is that, after they had broken up a German
division, they were forced to surrender, four hundred of them, including
fifty killed and a great number of wounded. This happened on September
25th. Until the surrender the fort was in communication with Verdun. As
you see, my news is recent.”
“But which fort was it?” I asked.
“The Camp des Romains to the south of St. Mihiel.”
“What! The Camp des Romains has fallen? But in that case the Germans must
have forced the Spada gap. The Hauts-de-Meuse must have been taken!”
“Not a bit of it! The Camp des Romains was taken from the north-west,
and its capture has been an empty glory for the Germans. It is the fort
of Paroches which commands the bridges of the Meuse and the passage
through Verdun, and they are not going to get this fort. Be easy in your
minds, Spada and the Hauts-de-Meuse are all right. Better still, we have
regained in the east, in Lorraine and in Upper Alsace, all the positions
of the opening days of the campaign. We are at Château-Salins.”
“At Château-Salins? Are we then also at Dieuze? My corps entered the
place on August 19th and had to vacate it the next day.”
“Yes, we are at Dieuze. In our batch there is a man who was wounded at
Dieuze on September 13th—I think that was the date. This same day we took
the town, lost it, and retook it.”
“Are we also back at Thann?”
“Yes, and at Gwebwiller too.”[13]
“What more did your lieutenant say?”
“He said that the disorder in France at the beginning of September was
intense, and that Paris had almost abandoned hope at the news that
the advance guard of the Boches had entered Compiègne. Then energetic
measures were taken. A few days later, the Germans lost two great
battles: one at Meaux, where we took 60,000 prisoners, barely half of
whom were wounded; the other between Rheims and Craonne. Since then, for
more than a fortnight, hand-to-hand fighting has been going on fiercely
along the whole front. Their right wing has been cut off. We have
occupied the line from St. Quentin through Charleroi to Namur. We have
effected a junction with the Belgian army, and are closing in upon the
Germans like a pair of scissors. We speak of it as ‘Japanese tactics,’ le
coup de Moukden, and it seems that the coup has been successful. The two
blades of the scissors draw nearer day by day. Everywhere the Boches are
in retreat. Their front, which was at Rheims, has now been pushed back
sixty kilometres from the town. We have entered Varennes. We have made
quick work of it to spue them into Luxemburg and Prussia by way of the
Moselle! Besides, our government is back in Paris, and Poincaré has been
to London to visit George V.[14]
“Let me assure you that this lieutenant was in earnest. He was not
orating to his inferiors in order to keep up their spirits. He was
talking to officers, among whom were several captains and men of higher
grade. He was absolutely confident of victory.”
Little Lahire was still talking in the quiet voice with which he had
opened. But we felt that he was animated by a sombre and intense, though
subdued fire. We listened, mute and solemn. There is a keen joy which,
overflowing and submerging our individuality, suddenly surges out to the
utmost limits of our highest affections—family, country, humanity, God.
_Freude_, _Freude_, sings the sublime chorus of the 9th symphony. Joy,
joy. But this joy is grave and heroic. A shiver goes through your being,
you are transfigured. You suddenly feel your footing in the eternal, in
the absolute. I said not a word. The little corporal of the 146th, his
eyes remaining cool behind his glasses, continued his story. The circle
of the audience pressed ever closer. Unable to restrain my tears, I took
his hand, said “Thank you,” and hastened from the room.
Oh France, my France!
A BREAKFAST
_October 5, 1914._
Plenty!
I wake at twenty minutes to five, or, by French time, twenty minutes to
four. There is a glimmer of moonlight in the casemate. The place looks
like a fantastic sawmill with piles of planks lying about on the floor.
The snores rise and fall rhythmically. However much divided our prisoners
may be by day (as divided as men are in time of peace, and perhaps more
so, for intimate association emphasizes differences and accentuates
shocks), they, unknown to themselves, attain harmony in sleep.
As you know, I find this harmony distasteful. Moreover, for some time
past, with the chill coming of dawn a violent rheumatic pain in the loins
has rendered the recumbent position intolerable to me. I determine to
rise.
Moving gently, in order to avoid waking Guido, who is an extremely light
sleeper, I throw off my coat, which has been tucked round my neck,
and lay it down to the right of my couch, close to my képi, which
I have lately pressed into service at night as a receptacle for the
miscellaneous articles from my pockets. At this moment I should have
appeared to you like a mummy, torso rolled up in the French military rug,
brown with a red stripe, and the rest of the body, from the waist to the
feet, tightly enveloped in the Ingolstadt blanket, stamped with the royal
arms.
It is quite a business to get rid of these wrappings, for my straw is
now mere chaff, and Bertrand, doubly soft as a betrothed lover and as
a Phocæan, has a nose extremely sensitive to dust. Still recumbent, by
means of slow contortions from right to left I unswaddle the upper part
of my body. Then, sitting with my back against the wall, I take off my
nightcap—my ancient nightcap, thoroughly impregnated with the dirt of
Lorraine and of Bavaria, as dirty as Queen Isabel’s shift. (I sleep with
it pulled well down over the ears, to protect my head from the chaff.) At
length I rise to my feet. The second wrapping, which confines the lower
extremities, makes me look like a man about to take part in a sack race.
I untie it at the hips. It falls to the ground like a skirt. Now I am
dressed. I fold up my two rugs with infinite precaution and put them on
the top of my knapsack. Seated on this improvised stool, I take off my
night slippers and put on my heavy military boots, delightfully supple
since Devèse, the cook-butcher, anointed them for me with a wonderful
preparation of beef marrow. Emptying my képi of watch, pipe, tobacco,
pipe-lighter, pocket-knife, purse, and handkerchief (the huge regulation
handkerchief), I stuff all these things into the pockets of my trousers.
It is done. Guido has not stirred; he dreams misanthropically. Bertrand
has not sneezed; he dreams amorously. With catlike stealth, képi on
head, coat tucked beneath my arm, and shouldering my two haversacks,
respectively containing my papers and the small articles of my kit, I
hasten to the kitchen. To my great surprise I find the place lighted up.
That villain Marie, pipe in mouth, sticky, greasy, smeared with blacks,
alert as a fox-terrier just let out for a run, is rummaging in his
stoves. While I was still dreaming he had shaken up from their slumbers
two others: Lambert, most devoted of men, my good little Lambert; and a
famished specimen from the 6th corps, by trade a charcoal-burner in the
forest of Argonne, who would cut up an oak for you in return for a piece
of rancid bacon rind. Yesterday evening there was not a scrap of wood in
the kitchen. Dutrex “rowed” the cooks about it. But Marie, the wiliest
of all the Normans in Normandy, rose by moonlight. Where can he have
been? How, knowing not a word of German beyond _nichts_ and _ja_, did
he manage to circumvent the guard? Anyhow, axe in hand, Lambert and the
charcoal-burner are vigorously and noisily attacking logs of pine. I am
surprised. These logs have a strong resemblance to the timber-shores of
the outer ditches. What has he been up to, this Marie!
“Canaille!” Dutrex sometimes exclaims to him.
“That’s all right,” says Marie cheerfully; “that’s the only sort that
knows how to live!”
In fact, he does know how to live. Always on the go, doing little
services for every one in turn, swapping for chocolate the cigars which
are given him, reselling this chocolate retail, buying with the money
packets of tobacco and cigarettes, which he hawks for halfpennies in the
dark passage outside the kitchen—he will find his way back to the valley
of Auge with a nest-egg.
But I fancy he will get rid of some of it on the way. “Just think of it,
you fellows,” he frequently exclaims. “‘Mézidon, fifty minutes’ stop!’
I tumble to the ground. I put away the first bottle of Calvados [cider
brandy] I can get hold of. Then, ‘Lisieux, fifty minutes’ stop!’ Won’t
it be splendid to get a little good Norman stuff into one’s guts, after
the ditch-water of Fort Orff! One will get home to the missus thoroughly
cheerful.”
This Marie is a delight to me. Our philosophies differ considerably. He
has no pity, he says, for lame ducks. But he has such keen vision, he is
so spirited and plain-spoken, and he is so original in his methods of
expression, that he is above criticism.
While Lambert and the charcoal-burner (his name is Deschênes and he
has been through two campaigns in Morocco) are apportioning for the
stoves the spoils of Marie’s raid, I empty on to the table the second
of my haversacks. I wash and shave. Marie pours me out half a pint of
steaming coffee. “_Ja, ja_,” he says, as he adds a lump of sugar, smiling
his mischievous and knowing smile. _Ja_, in his vocabulary, signifies
everything that is good; _nichts_, on the other hand, denotes everything
that is bad. This done, he returns to the plutonic region.
Then, in the blessed solitude of the “salon,” by the pale and smoky light
of the distant lamp and of the dawn, I withdraw from the manuscript
haversack the packet about which I fancy I have been dreaming all night.
You will think me very materialistic, I fear. But as you read, bear in
mind that I am extremely well, that I am working as hard as usual, and
that my appetite, with which you are acquainted, has to be satisfied here
with a daily allowance that in Paris would barely have sufficed for a
single meal.
It was Fritz Magen, the _Gefreiter_, the leading private of our Bavarian
guard, who gave me this parcel yesterday evening. I had no thought of
such a windfall. In the same mood as any other prisoner, I was waiting
like the rest in No. 17 at the foot of my “bed” for the brisk appearance
in the casemate of the men to take the roll-call.
It is half-past eight. Suddenly the door opens. “The roll-call,”
bellows Dutrex, bursting in gustily, followed by the _Feldwebel_ and
the lantern-bearer. Dutrex rapidly counts us. “_Zweiundzwanzig_,” he
announces to the _Feldwebel_. “Twenty-two.” He shakes me by the hand,
saying: “_Gute Nacht, mein Freund; schlafe wohl._” The round passes on.
But Magen, the rear-guard, about to shut the door, lays down his lantern,
produces a good-sized box, and thrusts it into my hands in a manner that
is almost timid. “_Da_,” he explains to me in German, “my wife sent me a
hamper this morning.”—“Oh, thanks,” I reply. But he hastens off with his
lantern to join the _Feldwebel_ in No. 18.
Greatly touched by this unexpected mark of friendship, I turn to Guido.
We tell over the contents of the box. Five apples; two walnuts; a piece
of thick pancake, smelling of the _gnädige Frau_ Magen’s frying-pan; and
half a bilberry tart! What luck! Monsieur Magen, Bavarian as you are, you
are a brother, _ein Bruder_, a true comrade! I love you! I give Guido
his share. I put mine away in the haversack of papers. I go to sleep to
the thought that to-morrow, instead of the wretched thin coffee with rye
and barley bread, I shall have a succulent fruit breakfast. This thought
immediately transports me to Dully, to Fontainebleau, to Lablachère. But
what is there that does not transport me there, visions of longing and of
hope?
Thus it is that to-day, at earliest dawn, slowly pacing the deserted
“salon,” I make the first good breakfast since my imprisonment.
THE FIRST LETTER
_October 8, 1914._
Yesterday the rumour was current, derived, it was said, from the guard,
that we were going to be permitted to write to our families. A similar
report has stirred the fort two or three times before, but has hitherto
always proved false. Consequently the pessimists and all the disciples
of Heraclitus and the Porch—headed by Guido—had a fine time of it in the
casemates making fun of the comrades who were jubilantly commenting on
the news.
On the glacis, at three o’clock, I met Sergeant Feutrier walking with
Corporal Heuyer.
“Riou,” observed the sergeant, “it’s the first fine day of our
imprisonment!”
“No, no, my friend,” I said, half-heartedly aping Guido’s pessimism, “it
is raining.” It was, in fact, drizzling; the sopping grass spirted as we
trod. But Heuyer answered:
“Don’t tease Feutrier to-day; he is too happy.”
That evening, when I was working as usual at my side of the table, I was
deluged with requests: “Riou, could you lend me your pen and ink?”—“Can
you spare a sheet or two of paper?” There was a regular procession of
them. The mere thought, or rather the conviction, that they would be
able to write home transfigured them. Home, the fireside! The loved
ones, the familiar objects, the birthplace, the motherland! From this
secret universe, at ordinary times deep buried beneath the surface of
their minds, but suddenly exposed by the delvings of hope, there arose a
powerful incense which intoxicated them all. What will they feel like at
the prospect of going home, if the still dubious possibility of writing
can arouse such an outburst of cheerful excitement?
Even the cooks, more practised in criticism than the other prisoners, had
lost all sense of proportion. They handled their utensils with a terrible
joy. Then the tumult was stilled. A gentle atmosphere of harmony hovered
over the stoves. The cooks were silent and motionless.
O memories! Sweet images in which our love of life subsists and is
fulfilled. Sweet images which, at night, in the gloom and fatigue of
the camp, make us weep silent tears. Sweet images which, when death
threatens, rise suddenly in our minds and maintain themselves, bringing
benediction, the sole realities amid the void, very angels of God!
Suddenly the plutonic region burst into melody:
“O moun païs! O moun païs!
O Toulouso! O Toulouso!…”[15]
sang Pailloux in his boy’s voice; and our Bouquet, a son of Cahors, his
heart filled with thoughts of his betrothed, intoned in a mellow bass:
“Vieillo villo de Cau, tan vieillo et tan fumado!…”[16]
The cooks, like every one else, were bewitched with thoughts of France.
For France they forgot the most serious of their immediate duties. One
was allowed an entrance into the secret universe of their thoughts, as if
into a public place.
In the evening, when the roll-call was finished and the round was leaving
with the _Feldwebel_ and our new Bavarian sergeant, only just recovered
from a wound in the foot received at Lunéville, Dutrex made eyes at me,
and uttered the single word, “Oui.” I went to sleep with the certainty
that the news was true.
To-day every one has spent the morning in writing _his_ letter, the one
and only letter to which we are entitled. But what a disappointment! No
more than one company is to be allowed to send letters each day. We are
five companies. Only one letter every five days![17]
But that melancholy barrier of silence which for a month and a half has
separated us from the world has at last been broken down!
It is true that we have been ordered to say nothing about the war, and
to instruct our correspondents to observe a similar restriction. This
morning these _Verboten_ have disturbed us little. Do you think any one
of the prisoners, when writing his letter, had a fancy for dissertations
upon strategy? His wife, his fiancée, his children, his mother, his whole
life, were before his eyes. At length people would know that he was
alive! His head was singing with voices from his own fireside. He was
intoxicated—at once giddy with excitement, softened, bitter, almost mad.
The most indifferent, the most torpid, seemed to have been awakened with
a start. Permission to write, the act of writing, had shaken them out of
their inertia.
For, fortunately, imprisonment dulls our sensibilities. At first it
causes poignant suffering; and suffering, of whatever kind, sharpens the
faculties. But imprisonment is above all hunger, chronic hunger. Those
only who have experienced it can understand the effect which chronic
hunger speedily exercises even upon an active brain. At first it induces
hallucinations. With terrible realism the sufferer recalls meals eaten
before the war some particular dinner, such and such a picnic. The nerves
of taste and smell, exasperated by the scanty regimen, are visited by
memories of odours and tastes. The man thinks of nothing but eating.
Literally he is nothing but a clamorous stomach. He will lie awake the
entire night thinking only of this: What can I do to-morrow morning to
secure a supplementary loaf?
Little Brissot, my friend of the Alpine infantry, when we were walking a
few days ago with our two French medical officers, made this unexpected
confession: “Only one thing can give me pleasure now—to get food. Only
one man interests me—the man who is capable of getting me food.”
This calm declaration from one so highly cultured that he will distract
his mind from the cares of important business by reading James and
Bergson, from one intimately acquainted with Montaigne and the Lake
poets, seemed to us neither paradoxical, nor irrelevant, nor cynical.
Among those who are able, by illicit and extremely laborious methods,
to procure food from outside, there are few who do not seize their
opportunity.
Men will try to get a thorough chill, hoping to be sent to the infirmary,
where they usually receive double rations. Yesterday two prisoners,
one of them a corporal, fainted from hunger. Quite a number are so
weakened by want of food that they can no longer climb the staircases
leading to the courts and to the slopes. When we heard just now that in
the neighbouring fort, Fort Hartmann, one of the prisoners had hanged
himself, the same thought ran through all our minds: “The epidemic has
begun, and will speedily spread to our own prison.”
Ultimately, however, people grow accustomed to short commons. Their
activities, in some cases at least, gradually become accommodated to
their regimen. In the long run, physical and mental life are reduced to
nil. The man hardly suffers, and he no longer revolts.
Even in the bravest the soldier-spirit dies. Look at these men crouching
on their heaps of straw hour after hour, silent and half asleep; or look
at them as with hands in pockets and hanging heads they slowly make
their way up the slopes; who can imagine that these are the men who
fought like lions at Montcourt and Lagarde?
These sudden visions of home were requisite to restore many of our
prisoners, though but for a moment, to life. But for how many of them
this has also involved a revival of suffering.