We thought we were going to fire, but found that other orders had
arrived.
"Limbers!"
A mist, rising from the hollows of the plain, blotted out distant
objects one by one. The far-off hills occupied by the Howitzer battery
were lost in a purple haze, but quite possibly we could still be seen
thence as we stood silhouetted against the clear western sky.
We limbered up and rolled off. The Howitzers kept silent.
The rifle-fire now began to grow fitful, and the guns were hushed in
their turn. A death-like stillness settled down on the plain, which,
as the sun sank, became illuminated by burning buildings, the flare of
which blazed ever more brightly as the night crept on.
The day of severe fighting which was just drawing to a close had
decided nothing. Each of the adversaries slept in his own positions.
_Wednesday, September 9_
In a field near Sennevières, in position of readiness, we brewed our
coffee. The weather was very hot. This morning the battle had been slow
in opening, but now to the east and north-east the guns were roaring as
incessantly as yesterday.
Suddenly, about midday, the firing-line on our left opened out and
became slightly curved. We were occupying the extreme wing of the
French army, and were at once seized with misgivings. Was the enemy
outflanking us again?
We questioned the Captain, who was also intently observing the woods
which yesterday had been out of the enemy's range, and which were now
being heavily shelled.
"What does that mean, sir?"
"I don't know any more than you, I'm afraid. I only obey, you know....
I go where I am told to go.... That's all!"
But Déprez insisted:
"They're turning our left again!"
The Captain's finely chiselled face was puckered with anxiety.
"Well," said he, "they're certainly bombarding woods which they weren't
bombarding yesterday. But that at any rate proves that they haven't
reached them. On the contrary, perhaps they've been threatened on that
side by an enveloping movement of our troops.... Who knows?... Besides,
if they do outflank us we aren't alone here.... We'll face them!"
He gave us a searching look with his intelligent hazel eyes, and
repeated:
"We'll face them, won't we?"
"Of course we will, sir!"
Coffee was ready. The Captain pulled his aluminium cup out of his
pocket and dipped it into the black beverage smoking in the kettle. The
gunners stood round him, their drinking-tins in their hands, waiting
their turn, and when he had filled his cup helped themselves one after
the other. Conversation ceased, and the men sipped their coffee.
After a while the cook said:
"There's some more!"
"How much?" asked the Captain, anxious not to deprive any one.
"A good half-pint each."
The Captain helped himself and the men followed suit. Then, as there
still remained a little coffee mixed with grounds the operation was
repeated.
With that startling rapidity which we had observed each time we had
had to retire on the Meuse, the country became alive with lines of
infantry. Companies and battalions were emerging from the woods and
from behind the hedges, and overspread the stubble-fields, massing in
the hollows.
"Hallo! what does that mean?" asked Bréjard.
"Are those swine turning tail?" exclaimed Millon, crossing his arms.
The Captain anxiously observed the movements of the infantry.
"No," said he. "Those are reserve troops advancing towards the north in
order to face the enemy if he outflanks us."
Orders came for us to go and take up position between Sennevières and
Nanteuil-le-Haudoin.
There could be no doubt about it. The enemy was turning our lines.
We were seized with a fit of wild rage. Would they manage to pass us,
and get to Paris? To Paris ... to our homes ... to kill, sack, rape?...
"Ah," growled Hutin, "what wouldn't I give to murder some of those
savages!"
"Trot!" commanded the Captain.
Bending down over their horses' necks the drivers urged the teams
forward with voice, knees, whip, and spur.
The same gust of wind seemed to carry with it men, horses, and
guns--all this artillery let loose like a tide on the barren fields,
over whose furrows it billowed and surged.
We took up position with our guns pointing north-east. Behind us the
sun, already low in the western sky, lit up the railway-line and the
road from Nanteuil to Paris, flanked with tall trees.
Sections of infantry began to fall back.
"You see?" repeated Millon. "They can't stick it, the beasts! Haven't
they read the Army Order then?"
Suddenly, almost behind us, rifle-fire broke out. We had been
outflanked.
On the main road to Paris, and between the road and the railway, dense
masses of infantry were debouching from behind Nanteuil. We were
encircled by a huge hostile horseshoe, and it now seemed as if the only
means of retreat open to the 4th Army Corps was the narrow road running
south-east between Sennevières and Silly.
An officer wearing an aviator's cap arrived in a motor-car and hurried
up to the observation-post. Shortly afterwards the Major ordered us to
turn the guns right round.
At any moment we might be caught between two fires, for, to the
north-west of Nanteuil, on the hills commanding the road, there could
be no doubt that the enemy's artillery was taking up position in order
to support the infantry attack.
Our batteries opened fire.
The same wild frenzy immediately gained possession of men and guns. The
latter became roaring monsters--raging dragons, which from their gaping
mouths belched fire at the sun as it sank to rest in the soft summer
twilight. Piles of smoking cartridges-cases mounted up behind the guns.
In the stricken zone in front of us we could see men waver, turn tail,
run, and fall in heaps. From the heights above Nanteuil, from which our
guns could have been counted, came no answering roar of artillery.
For a long time the slaughter continued.
"Ah! _That_ lot will never get to Paris!"
Night fell. The infantry regiments began to retire in order down the
hollow of which we were occupying one of the slopes. Some mounted
Chasseurs passed by at a trot, followed by a whole brigade of
Cuirassiers. It was the retreat!
We were beaten!... beaten!...
The enemy was marching on Paris!
The sun was now but a red crescent on the horizon. The horsemen
advancing towards Silly disappeared in their own dust. We still
continued firing, lavishing shrapnel on the plain where men still moved
here and there.
"Cease firing!"
The gunners either had not heard, or did not want to hear.... Three
guns still barked. Shouting at the top of his voice the Major repeated
the command.
Perspiring and brick-red with heat the gunners sponged themselves
over and then, with folded arms, stood silently behind their guns,
contemplating the fields of which not one square inch had been spared.
We were expecting orders to retire in our turn, but eventually received
instructions to pass the night here. A battalion of infantry had been
sent to support us, and the men deployed in skirmishing order and took
up positions about two hundred yards from the park, which we had had to
form on the spot.
We heard that in front of us not a single French unit remained. We were
at the mercy of a cavalry night attack.
_Thursday, September 10_
After yesterday's engagement we had expected a furious cannonade to
begin at dawn. But not a sound was heard. The sun illuminated the plain
and the slopes upon which we were waiting for the enemy in firing
position. Not a single gun was fired, and we began to grow surprised
and uneasy.
A Lieutenant-Colonel at the head of a passing column recognized the
Major and hailed him.
"Hallo! Solente!"
"Hallo!"
"How are you?"
"I'm all right, thanks."
"What's your Group doing there?"
"Guarding the Nanteuil road."
"Then you don't know what's happened?"
"No, what?"
"The enemy retired during the night."
"No!"
"Yes, it's quite true! We've got orders to advance.... The Germans are
retiring all along the line."
The two officers looked at each other and smiled.
"Then in that case...."
"It's victory!"
The news passed rapidly from gun to gun and nearly set the men dancing
with joy. Victory, victory! And just when we were not expecting it!
Towards midday we also received orders to advance.
At Nanteuil a slight recrudescence of life was noticeable. A grocer was
taking down the wooden shutters of his shop, and some of the windows
were thrown open as we went by. As at Dammartin I read on several of
the doors the notice: "_Gute Leute_."
The road we were following skirted the fields on which we repulsed the
enemy yesterday. We halted, doubtless waiting for fresh orders.
The surrounding country was motionless, but, between the Paris road and
the railway, grey-coated corpses lay among the mangel-wurzels as far
as the eye could reach. On the fringe of some large maize-fields six
Germans had fallen in a heap. The last to die had toppled backwards
on to the others, his stiffened legs pointing skywards. His neck was
doubled up under the weight of his body, and his chin touched his
chest. His eyes were wide open and his mouth twisted in a horrible
grimace of agony. With a single exception, nothing could be seen of the
other corpses under him save the shoulders, necks, and feet. But one of
them, who had not been killed outright and who lay half buried beneath
the rest, must have died hard. Scalped by a shell splinter he had tried
to rid himself of the ghastly burden crushing his back and legs, but
his strength had failed him. Propped up on one elbow, his mouth wide
open as though his last breath had been a shout, he had died stretching
a huge knotted fist towards the hills we had just left, whence death
had come to him.
His cheeks, already turning grey, had begun to fall in, and in the
stiffening features from which all semblance of life was rapidly
departing one already seemed to see the hollow-eyed, square-chinned,
grinning mask of Death.
A little farther on three Army Service Corps men were standing round
a Prussian lying on his back, his arms clasped as if in some awful
embrace. As one of them lifted his head in order to take off his helmet
a stream of black blood gushed from the dead man's mouth and covered
the soldier's hands.
"Pig!" growled he, and wiped his gory hands on the skirts of the
German's grey coat.
* * * * *
Near-by a Sub-Lieutenant of Engineers was counting the corpses for
burial.
"So it's you gunners who have given me all this work! I've already
counted seventeen hundred, and I haven't finished yet! There'll be more
than two thousand."
As I returned, sick at heart, across the maize-fields I stumbled
against something soft. Suspecting a corpse I hastily jumped to one
side.
* * * * *
Again we advanced, towards the north.
The roadside was strewn with Mausers, bayonets as short as butchers'
knives, cartridge-pouches, helmets, cowhide-packs, wallets, saddles,
dead horses....
On the evening of the Battle of Virton the Ruettes road had borne
a similar appearance. Upon that occasion I had dejectedly said to
myself: "This is a French defeat," and now I was equally astonished to
realize that I had taken part in a victory, of which these remains were
the proofs, a victory which had snatched Paris from the jaws of the
Germans, saved France, and which conceivably might open a new era for
us all. In sight of this Calvary of the German army we told ourselves
that the enemy would evacuate France as quickly as he had entered it.
Across one of the broad, flat fields ran a yellow line of freshly
turned earth, staked out with rifles planted butt-end upwards. Hundreds
of men--thousands perhaps--had been buried there side by side, and
the air was tainted with all the pestilential odours of decomposition
which escaped through the cracks and fissures in the sun-baked soil.
On approaching one of the scattered clumps of trees under which
other corpses had been buried, the same sickening smell assailed our
nostrils. Despite ourselves we kept sniffing the air with an uneasiness
like that shown by dogs when they are said to scent death.
Farther down the road we came upon a party of sappers busily plying
pick and shovel. At the bottom of a hole they had just finished digging
lay a brown crupper marked "Uh. 3" (3rd Uhlans), and on the ploughed
land at the edge of the ditch lay a dead horse covered with clayey
earth. Worms were swarming in the putrid blood surrounding him.
One of the sappers, who was covering up the carrion with large
spadefuls of earth, looked up.
"Phew! he smells bad, doesn't he?" he said. "Nasty job, this! I shan't
apply for undertakers' work when I've finished soldiering! And horses
smell worse than men. We shall end by getting the plague!"
"When I started to drag him," said another, "his hoof came off in my
hand."
And he pointed with his foot to an iron-shod hoof lying on the ground
like a stone.
Close by, in a newly harrowed field, undisturbed save for the
hoof-prints of a couple of horses which had galloped across it, lay two
lances, one of them broken, a light cavalry sword, a Uhlan's helmet,
and a water-bottle.
* * * * *
The weather gradually became foggy. The fields, monotonous and drab
under the grey sky, and littered at intervals with uniforms, arms, and
corpses, imbued us with a sadness which bordered on fear. We had to
keep repeating to ourselves "Victory, victory!" in order once again
to feel the joy--which nevertheless was so deep--of knowing that the
Country was saved.
_Saturday, September 12_
For two days it has rained incessantly, and we have advanced about
twenty-two miles under the downpour. The enemy is still retiring,
his retreat covered by a few Howitzers which appear to be short of
ammunition. Each hour that passes confirms our victory, and we should
be in excellent spirits were it not raining so heavily.
* * * * *
The Captain has sent me to pass a few days with the first line of
wagons, partly on account of persistent diarrhoea, which was weakening
me considerably, and partly owing to a rather serious cut in the wrist.
Life in my new billet is far less strenuous; one's rations are better
cooked, and one gets plenty of sleep.
While our batteries keep up a lively bombardment on the rear of the
German columns in retreat, the first lines of wagons are installed in
a wide ravine cut right across the plateau as if by giant swordstroke.
It almost seems as if the rain converged in this hollow from all points
of the compass. Shells fall also, but they bury themselves without
bursting in the marsh near-by, raising geysers of mud.
* * * * *
To-day the N.C.O. of the 6th gun, to which I am temporarily attached,
called the men round him:
"_Les poilus!_"[2]
"Here we are!" answered a voluntarily re-enlisted man who was already
grey about the temples. "Hairies without a dry hair on our bodies!"
"Listen to this!"
And the N.C.O. in a hoarse voice began to read an order of the day:
"_For five days, without interruption or respite, the 6th Army has
been engaged in combat with a foe strong in numbers, whose morale
has hitherto been exalted by success. The struggle has been a hard
one, and the loss of life due to gun-fire, and the exhaustion
caused by want of sleep and sometimes food, have exceeded all that
could have been imagined. The courage, fortitude, and endurance
with which you have borne all these hardships cannot be adequately
extolled in words.
"Comrades, the G.O.C. has asked you, in the name of your Country,
to do more than your duty; you have responded even more heroically
than seemed possible. Thanks to you, victory has now crowned our
arms, and now that you know the satisfaction of success you will
never let it escape you.
"For my part, if I have done anything worthy of merit, I have been
rewarded by the greatest honour which in a long career has fallen
to my lot--that of commanding men such as you.
"From my heart I thank you for what you have done, for to you I owe
that which has been the aim of all my efforts and all my energy for
the last forty-four years--the Revenge for 1870.
"All honour and thanks to you and to all combatants of the 6th Army.
"Claye (Seine-et-Marne) 10th September 1914.
"Signed: Joffre.
"Countersigned: Manoury."_
* * * * *
"Hear, hear!" cried some one.
"I say, sergeant," shouted the old soldier who had spoken before, "as
the General is pleased with us, can't you get them to ask him to turn
off some of this water?"
* * * * *
We started off again. The country through which we had been marching
since dawn, with halts of one and sometimes two hours during which the
guns went into action, seemed, at the first glance, an endless and
almost deserted plain. The beetroot-and corn-fields where the crops,
often in sheaves, had now rotted, seemed to succeed each other without
interruption from one side of the horizon to the other under the
lowering, cheerless sky, from which the cold rain poured relentlessly
down. But suddenly, in the middle of the flat and barren country,
there opened a dale whose existence one would never have suspected,
well wooded and so deep that even the church steeple of the village
nestling in its lap was hidden from view.
Under the stinging rain the teams walked on with heads held low and
twitching ears, their coats shining like oil-skin. By this time many of
our horses were only kept on their legs as if by a miracle. The foul
weather had put the final touch to their ruin, and we had to abandon
three of them, one after the other. They keep going until they reach
the extreme limit of their strength, and then suddenly they stumble
and stop dead; after that no power on earth will make them advance
another inch. They have to be taken out of the traces, unharnessed, and
abandoned where they stand. They remain in the same place until they
die.
The men were apathetic and taciturn under their black cloaks. Water
ran down our backs and made us shiver. Many of the drivers had turned
their képis round so that the peaks protected their necks. Their faces,
wincing under the sting of the lashing rain, were half hidden in their
upturned collars. Our shirts clave to our shoulders and our trousers to
our knees. The soaking garments absorbed the warmth of the body, and
we experienced the horrible sensation of gradually becoming chilled to
the marrow. It seemed as if life was slowly ebbing from our limbs and
as if we were dying by inches.
We passed a group of miserable, saturated foot-soldiers, from the
skirts of whose coats the rain ran in streams. Some of them had thrown
sacks full of straw over their shoulders. One man was sheltering his
head and back underneath a woman's skirt, and others under capes,
neckerchiefs, and flowery-patterned bed-curtains.
The road was a river of liquid clay upon which neither the men's boots,
horseshoes, nor the tyres of the wheels left a trace.
As night approached the grey vault of the sky seemed to sink still
lower, drawing in the horizon over the fields, and almost to touch the
earth itself. A dense fog first surrounded and then smothered us. We
could not have told upon which side the sun was setting; the west was
as opaque as the east. The yellow, diffused light gradually became
weaker. Here and there by the wayside we could still distinguish the
dark forms of dead horses. Night fell. The rain was trickling down my
back as far as my loins. I was very cold and now felt more acutely than
ever that indescribable sensation as if my life's blood was being
slowly sucked from my veins. The battery lumbered on and on....
It was perhaps ten o'clock when we finally halted on the outskirts of
a village and ranged up our carriages by the side of the road. We had
to wait there some time, sitting motionless on the limbers and becoming
more frozen every minute. Our teeth chattered with cold. The delay was
probably caused by a cross-roads, a block in the transport traffic, a
passing convoy, or some other obstacle; in any case we could not move
on. I began to wonder whether we should have to pass the whole night in
the rain....
Eventually we reached a field in which we bivouacked, stretching the
lines between the carriages. The hurricane lamps formed large yellow
points in the opaque darkness, piercing the night without lighting
anything. There was no sound save the squelching of dragging footsteps
as the exhausted men and horses moved about in the mud.
The sergeant-major summoned the corporals for the issue of rations. But
the distribution between the guns had not been finished and the men
immediately went away again, preferring to wait until the next day to
get their rations. The sergeant-major shouted after them, declaring
that if there should be an alarm they would risk going for a whole day
without food. He was perfectly right, but no one listened to him.
The darkness was so intense that it was difficult to follow the road,
and in order to keep together the men kept shouting:
"Eleventh!... This way.... Eleventh!..."
Convoys passed by, splashing us with mud. A wheel just grazed me.
After a long march the only shelter we could find was some rickety old
barns, open to the four winds of heaven, in which a thin sprinkling
of straw hardly separated us from the beaten-down earth. Here the
battery, silent, soaked to the skin and smelling like wet animals, sank
shivering into a troubled sleep, continually interrupted by the cries
of men dreaming.
_Sunday, September 13_
This morning the sun was shining. Clouds were still banked up to the
west, but the blue, which cheered us up wonderfully, eventually spread
over the whole sky. We continued our march forward.
The enemy's Howitzers were still bombarding the country round us, but
spasmodically and at haphazard. The Germans were being hotly pursued;
in the villages we learned that less than two hours previously
stragglers were still passing through. It seems that yesterday the
enemy's retreat almost became a rout. Disbanded infantrymen without
arms, gunners, dismounted horsemen--all fled pell-mell, pursued by the
fire of our ·75's and harassed by our advanced guard.
At Vic-sur-Aisne, while waiting till the pontoon bridge should be
clear, I entered a pretty little house, the doors and windows of
which had been left wide open by the Germans on their departure. The
wardrobes and chests of drawers had all been broken into and pillaged.
Women's chemises and drawers together with other underlinen were
trailing down the staircase. A meal was served on the dining-room
table, but the overturned chairs bore witness to the precipitation
with which the guests had fled. I was hungry and sat down without
hesitation. The food was good although cold.
The leading carriages of the column had already begun to cross the
bridge before I learned that the luncheon I had just eaten had been
prepared for the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, but had been
interrupted by the arrival of the French advanced guard.
We crossed the Aisne without difficulty. How came it that the enemy was
allowing us to cross the river? The thought of a trap, such as that
we laid for the Germans when they crossed the Meuse, made me a little
uneasy.
Near Attichy our batteries went off to take up position, while the
first lines of wagons halted on a winding road leading to the plateau
through some extremely dense woods, all damp and odorous after the
rains of yesterday. In a little quarry of white stone yawning on one
side of the road in the full glare of the sun, I lay down with a few
comrades in some tall ferns. I was nearly asleep when, suddenly, the
noise of a bursting shell, which had just fallen close by, spread in
vibrant waves through the trees, of which every leaf seemed to rustle.
At the entrance to the quarry appeared a gunner staggering from side to
side, his face deathly pale. He grasped his right elbow with his left
hand and let himself fall among the bracken.
"Oh!" he murmured, "I'm hit!"
"Where?"
With a slight movement of the head he indicated his elbow, which was
cut open and bleeding. And, suddenly, from the road which at this point
made two successive bends and then plunged beneath a dark vault of big
beech-trees, came a confused sound of groans, cries, and stamping.
A driver hurried up without his képi, his face streaming with blood.
"Come quickly ... it's fallen down there ... it's fallen on the road!
Everything's all messed up, the horses are on top.... Oh, my God!...
"Are you wounded?"
"No ... where?"
"Your cheek...."
"Oh, that's nothing--it's a horse, my off-horse.... Come on!"
More shells whistled overhead. We started to run. Suddenly, at the bend
of the road I stopped dead, breathless, paralysed by a ghastly sight.
Under the sun, which, breaking through the branches, marbled the white
road, lay a shapeless mass of mangled men and horses. The entire teams
of the forge and store wagon were welded together in a writhing heap of
bleeding flesh. Men were struggling underneath. In the middle of the
road lay two gunners, face downwards; others were dragging themselves
about on their hands among the fallen saddle-horses. Wounded were
moving in the ditches.
From this shambles rose long-drawn-out groans similar to the harrowing
cries made by certain animals at night, a muffled and interminable
"Aaah!... aaah!" rising and falling like some savage song. Blood was
running in streams in the gutters on each side of the way. A nauseating
stale stench, like that of a slaughter-house, a sort of warmth, an
odour of steaming flesh and flowing blood, a smell of horses, entrails,
and animal gasses gripped our throats and turned our stomachs.
One man, who lay buried beneath the team of the forge, had succeeded in
passing his arm through a mass of tangled intestines, but the viscera
had gripped his wrist in a tenacious grasp. He shook them furiously,
scattering jets of blood in all directions. Round him the horses lay
writhing in their death agony, breaking wind, dunging, staling, and
scraping the ground with their stiffening limbs, their shoes grating
stridently on the flints. In their death-throes they strained at the
traces and one heard a noise of cracking chains. The vehicle to which
they were harnessed advanced a few inches, and then rolled back.
Near-by lay a dead foot-soldier, his whole chest one gaping wound. In
his wide-open blue eyes was a fixed expression of horror that went to
my heart like a knife. An artilleryman, his stomach ripped open, had
been pinned to the road in an almost erect posture by a wounded horse
which, bleeding at the nostrils, had fallen across his feet.
Whenever the groaning and wailing stopped for a second one heard the
noise of the blood as it burbled and trickled stream by stream and drop
by drop, and the gurgle of the intestines which lay in an entangled
pink and white mass on the road.
I ran to help the man buried under the forge team. His face was red
all over, and horribly convulsed, his hair and beard glued with blood,
and his white eyeballs rolling like those of one asphyxiated. A horse
in its agony was threatening to kill a gunner wounded in the loins who
was dragging himself along on his hands, so I quickly killed the animal
with a revolver shot. It was only then that I perceived, stretched out
between two horses, my friend M----, very pale, with closed eyes. I ran
up and put my arm round him in order to lift him up.... All my blood
suddenly ceased to flow, my heart stopped beating.... My arm had sunk
up to the elbow in an enormous wound in my friend's back....
I stood up. For an instant the ghastly scene turned round and round....
I thought that I should faint with horror. I put my hand--dripping
with blood--to my forehead.... I daubed my face with gore. In order not
to fall I had to lean up against the wheel of the forge.
A hospital orderly had succeeded in extricating a couple of untouched
stretchers from the ambulance, which had also been shattered by the
shell. On one side of the road the Medical Officer, still much upset,
himself slightly wounded by the explosion, was occupied with some
first-aid dressing. Three of us hoisted on to one of the stretchers a
big, fair-haired gunner with a Gaulois moustache, whose foot, almost
completely severed from the leg, dangled in the air, and who was
yelling with pain. We remembered that there was a dressing-station at
the foot of the hill on the fringe of the woods.
We started off, bending our knees in order to jolt the stretcher as
little as possible, but we continually had to step over the scattered
limbs of horses and pick our way between corpses so disfigured as to be
unrecognizable.
A wounded man clasped my leg as we passed, lifting up a deathly face
which the blood, running from his ear, had surrounded with a gory
collar. His eyes implored us to stop, and in a low voice of profound
supplication he murmured:
"For God's sake don't leave me here!"
But we could not carry two men at a time. I bent down a little:
"The others will be along in a minute or two with the other stretcher.
They'll take you. Come, now, let go of my foot!..."
We left the shambles and began to breathe again....
The closely meshed cloth of the stretcher retained the blood of the
wounded man, whose foot swam in a red pool. He was suffering horribly
and twisted his arms together, groaning:
"Oh, my foot!... You're shaking me.... Oh, how you're shaking me!"
And then:
"For God's sake walk slowly!"
In spite of all our efforts we could not avoid the shaking which caused
him so much pain, and he continued to murmur, his voice getting fainter
and fainter:
"Walk, walk ... slowly!..."
His lips silently repeated "walk" until a fresh jolt made him cry out.
In front of the field-hospital some medical officers had improvised an
operating-table in a shady part of the road. The wounded were laid out
in rows on the edge of the ditch. A fat doctor with four stripes on
his arm ran hither and thither, shouting.
Carried on stretchers or limping on foot, either alone or with the aid
of their comrades, the wounded arrived. One man's chin was no more than
a bloody jelly; one of his eyes was shut and the other wide open.
The veterinary surgeon's horse, shot through by a shell splinter,
had followed the wounded as far as the ambulance, but as soon as he
stopped he sank to his knees by the side of the road. The eyes of the
animal were full of a suffering almost human, and as he turned his head
towards me I fired my revolver in his ear. With a dull, heavy thud like
that of an axe as it sinks deep in a tree-trunk, the animal fell on
his flank, and from the top of the slope skirting the road rolled over
twice into the field below.
We had at once to return to the scene of slaughter, where we were badly
needed. As soon as I left the fresh air and sunshine and re-entered
the woods I felt almost paralysed by the thought of what I was going
to see, and the shadows of the trees, growing darker as the daylight
waned, helped to intensify my fear.
"Come on!..."
Two saddle-horses with bleeding wounds were walking away from the
shambles by instinct. With faltering steps they slowly descended the
road towards the sun. The dead horses had been unharnessed and dragged
to one side of the way, but two artillerymen had been left lying in the
middle of the road, and some one, either out of force of habit or out
of pity for the dead, had broken two branches off one of the beeches
and had covered their faces with leaves.
In the gutters the rivers of blood had become congealed. The hot, fetid
smell, imprisoned under the vault of the trees, still floated in the
air, more nauseating and terrifying than ever. The efforts the men
had made in order to unharness the horses and clear the roadway had
caused the intestines to split and break, and they now trailed about
everywhere, covered with dust, separated by several yards from the
gaping, empty bodies from which they had been torn.
Two prisoners, tall men whose height was increased by their long
grey cloaks and pointed helmets, came down from the plateau. The
foot-soldiers accompanying them, fearing that this spectacle of death
might cause their enemies too keen a delight, had blindfolded them,
and led them by the hand in and out the corpses. But the Germans had
recognized the smell of blood. A line of uneasiness barred their
foreheads and they continually sniffed the tainted air.
_Monday, September 14_
At Attichy we spent the night in some splendid, well-closed barns
in which the hay lay deep, but our rest was disturbed by horrible
nightmares. I dreamt that I was rolling among mutilated corpses in
rivers of blood. When I awoke it was raining.
A countryman with a drooping white moustache brought us some beer
and wine in buckets. He lived in an isolated house easily visible
from our barn, in a copse on the side of the hill. During the German
occupation he had left his house as being too solitary and had taken
up his quarters in the village. When the enemy took their departure
the day before yesterday he had returned to his house accompanied by a
foot-soldier. He was going on ahead when through the broken-in front
door he saw, in the hall, a helmeted German in the act of aiming at
him. He jumped to one side, exposing the French soldier behind him,
whereupon the German at once dropped his rifle and threw up his hands.
The two Frenchmen seized him and, sitting him down on a chair in the
kitchen, shot him through the head. There they left him, still sitting,
his head on his breast and the blood dripping from his forehead
between his knees on to the tiled floor, and went off to reconnoitre
the surroundings of the house and the garden. They could discover
nothing suspicious, but when they returned to the kitchen they found it
empty. Nothing remained of the German save a pool of blood in front of
the chair. But near the door and on the stairs were red stains and they
heard groans coming from the garret.
We asked the peasant:
"Well, what did you do with your Boche?"
"Oh, he's still in my garret," he answered placidly.
"But you must get him out of that. He'll soon begin to smell!"
"Yes, I'm going to dig a hole for him to-night near the dung-heap."
And, as I ventured to say that instead of killing the man treacherously
they might have taken him prisoner, seeing that he had surrendered:
"Why?" asked the peasant. "Wouldn't he have killed me if I'd been all
alone? And yet I'm a civilian!"
"No!" he added, "we shall never kill enough of those swine!"
* * * * *
The wind had risen and the rain ceased. Our Group advanced along the
Compiègne road, which runs by the side of the river. But we had hardly
gone a mile when the word was given to halt. We prepared to make our
soup, but there was no water, and I searched in vain for a spring or
well. Finally we decided to draw water from the Aisne. On the opposite
bank a dead German was lying among the rushes, half his body submerged
in the stream. Well, we would boil the water, that was all! One must
eat!
As night fell a horseman arrived with orders. We set off at a trot.
Under the lee of a high wall some Spahis were resting, their burnous
making red patches in the dusk. Near them their little horses stood
motionless under their complicated harness. Against an apple-tree
leaned an Arab with magnificently cut features, as regular as those
of a statue. Under the purple, woollen hood his brown face bore an
expression of that resigned melancholy, at once so pitiful and so
noble, in which men of his race always languish when far from the
desert. His large, apathetic black eyes, which seemed fixed upon
something in the distance, had a mystic look in them. He appeared to
feel cold. The gunners greeted him smiling:
"Hallo! old Sidi!"
But the Arab, without moving, only replied with a condescending blink
of his eyes.
The batteries took up position, the first line of wagons halting behind
a screen of acacias. The silence of the night was hardly broken by a
confused murmur of the far-off battle when suddenly, as if at a given
signal, more than forty French field-guns, almost in unison, fired a
terrific volley across the plateau.
The vivid flashes from the muzzles cleft the twilight like red
lightning. The air continued to vibrate. It was as though the
atmosphere were filled with huge sound-waves dashing and splitting one
against the other like the waves of the ocean in a storm. The earth
quivered in response to the twanging air. Gradually the night became
darker.
Our batteries were certainly firing at registered aiming-points. The
enemy only replied now and again, and then at haphazard.
Suddenly a rumour began to circulate:
"The Germans are entraining! That station is being bombarded!..."
"Oh, well, I shouldn't prevent 'em taking their tickets," said an
imperturbable-looking reservist. "I shouldn't interfere with 'em. Let
them clear out and let us go back home. I've a wife and two kiddies.
It's no joke, war!..."
It was pitch-dark when the guns, one by one, gradually became silent.
In a few moments there was complete stillness, a stillness almost
surprising, almost disturbing after the deafening cannonade.
We rejoined the batteries. Noiselessly, one behind the other, the
carriages plunged like phantoms into the darkness, the soft field,
as it yielded under the wheels, giving a strange impression of
cotton-wool. The nocturnal clarity, diffused and as if floating, did
not enable us to see what kind of field it was which the long column
was crossing without a jolt or jangle, with only an occasional creaking
of badly oiled wheels.
The whole countryside smelt of death, and this was not due to
imagination. Far off a burning building stood out like a fixed point of
light. The massive trees of a neighbouring park filled us with nameless
fears.
The wheel of the limber passed over something soft and elastic which
yielded under the weight. I felt sure that it was a dead man, and
looked behind me fearfully. But I could see nothing.
We halted on the outskirts of a village called Tracy-le-Mont, where the
supply-train was waiting for us. Rations were issued, the men in their
cloaks standing in a black circle round the provision wagon, which was
lit by a solitary lantern. Hutin and Déprez were among them. Somebody
was calling out the guns:
"Third!... Fourth!..."
"First!" cried Hutin.
"You've missed your turn. You'll have to come last now."
We talked while waiting. Hutin was very tired and hungry.
"There's some good grub going," said he. "We're going to get some fresh
meat."
"Yes, but fires will be forbidden."
"I suppose you haven't seen the postmaster?" he asked suddenly.
"No, why?"
"Because in the first line you see him more often than we do."
"Well, I've begun to doubt whether there is such a person."
"It's true.... The brute never turns up! Confound it all! If only we
got letters sometimes the time would pass quicker. The last I had was
simply to say that they hadn't any news of me. It does seem hard!"
"First gun!"
"At last," said Hutin. "Good-bye, old chap! I'm off to get my grub.
Try to get back to us soon."
_Tuesday, September 15_
It was splendid weather when we awoke. During the night it had rained
a little, but we had surrounded our guns with armfuls of hay gathered
from some large ricks near-by. I slept under the ammunition wagon,
which sheltered me as far as the knees, and I had covered my feet with
a couple of sheaves. The ground was not very damp and I slept well in
spite of the shower.
With the dawn the sky cleared. The air was soft and warm, and the tall
trees in their infinite variety of green shades stood out in clear-cut
silhouettes against the pale blue of the sky. The grass, although cut
short, now that the summer was ending, had regained some of its lost
freshness.
Here and there in the fields dark heaps arrested the eye. These were
the bodies of fallen Germans. Once one has seen three or four one
instinctively searches for them everywhere, and a forgotten wheat-sheaf
in the distance looks like a corpse.
We started, the wheels of the leading carriages tracing a well-marked
track across the fields. On one side lay a dead German. The vehicles
had brushed by him as they passed and would have crushed his feet had
the drivers not seen him in time. His face was still waxen in colour,
and the eye-sockets alone had begun to turn green. The solemn, regular
features were not lacking in a certain virile beauty.
The man sitting next me on the wagon looked long at the dead man's face
as if trying to catch his last expression.
"Poor devil!" said he, shrugging his shoulders.
A little moved myself, I echoed:
"Yes, poor devil!"
But the wheel-driver, who had left a wife and children behind him, and
was wondering how they fared, turned in his saddle:
"Dirty pig!" he growled.
* * * * *
This morning the battle started early and with unusual violence on a
front which appeared to stretch from east to west. As far as one could
see the sky was fleecy with shell smoke.
"There!... And they said the Germans were going--were entraining! Do
you see them over there?... Brutes!"
"Yes. They were detraining!"
The men bitterly cursed their erstwhile credulity. Nevertheless I
knew that this evening they would be ready to believe the news that
the Russians had reached Berlin, provided that it was sufficiently
vigorously affirmed.
We learned the truth from some passing foot-soldiers. The Germans had
entrenched themselves strongly on the wooded hills and in the quarries.
The pursuit was held up, and a new battle was about to begin.