our captain had had a keen eye for a good place, and while a few
explosions came perilously near, we suffered no casualties. At the
worst it was a few shrapnel or other shells which burst far too high
overhead to cause us concern.
For what reason are the aeroplanes remaining so long aloft up there?
For more than two hours they have floated above us, describing great
circles, drawing away only when our artillery became too pressing in
its attentions, then returning until the black crosses on their wings
were easily and plainly discernible. Towards evening they headed
directly for the heavy black clouds accumulating on the horizon.
Into those sombre masses the sun sinks, dyeing them crimson at first,
leaden as the light slowly fades. The finish of the day is ominous and
depressing. The darkness of night settles down almost tangibly, while
the stench of the dead bodies rises and spreads.
Sitting at the bottom of the trench, my hands crossed over my raised
knees, I hear before and behind me, over the whole plain, the sharp
thud of pickaxes against stones, the scraping of spades throwing up
the earth, the careful murmur of lowered voices. Occasionally, some
man whom one cannot see, coughs and expectorates. The night envelops
and hides us from the enemy's eyes, permitting us at last to bury our
dead.
The voice of my sergeant calls to me through the darkness:
"Are you there, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, I am here!"
Groping about until he finds my hand, he places something into it.
"Here, sir. This is all we found on them."
Crouching at the bottom of the trench, I strike a match. In the light
it sheds for a brief spell, I see a much-worn pocket book, a leather
purse, and an identification disc attached to a piece of black cord. A
second match! The pocket book contains the photograph of a young woman
nursing a baby in her lap; also I am enabled to make out a name
inscribed in straggling letters on the disc. The sergeant comments:
"There was nothing on the other--I searched him from his heels to
his--his neck--I mean the one whose head was blown off. And there was
nothing except the purse which belonged to him."
A third match. The purse contains a little money, a few coppers only,
and a piece of dirty, crumpled paper, on which is written: "Gronin
Charles, Railway employee. Class, 1904. Soissons." Then the match goes
out.
I shake the sergeant's hand; it is damp and feverish, and the fingers
are not steady.
"Good-night! Go and sleep! Go on!"
He departs, leaving me solitary and alone in the midst of fast
sleeping men. To sleep like them!... To be able to stifle all thought,
to forget! In my hand the little possessions of the dead men grow
heavier and heavier.... "Gronin Charles, railway employee...." The
smiling faces of the photograph dance beneath my closed eyelids, grow
bigger and bigger until they become almost a hallucination. The poor,
poor people!
_Thursday, September 10th._
Something splashes gently on my face: raindrops large and tepid. Have
I indeed been asleep, then? And what time can it be? The wind is
rising, but the night is still black. A little to the right front of
the trench a dark mass is outlined against the still darker sky. That
must be the heaped-up bundles of straw in which the major, the captain
and his messengers have ensconced themselves for the night.
I have just settled to sleep again when a few bullets whistle
overhead. It seems to me that they come from close at hand. Yet we,
being the advance posts, can have no other detachments before us. What
does it mean then?
I am not permitted much time for speculation; abruptly, a concentrated
fusillade breaks out, every second approaching nearer and nearer and
extending the whole length of the line. Without doubt, those are
Germans firing, directing a night attack against us.
"On your feet, every man of you. On your feet. Quick. Get up!"
I shake a corporal sleeping near me. From one end of the line to the
other a shiver passes, followed by the quick rustling of straw; then
bayonets clatter, and magazines click.
All this has passed in an instant, yet I have still had time to see
the major and the captain jump back down into the trench away to the
right, and scarcely have they done so before black figures are
silhouetted, barely discernible against the lightless sky, over the
top of the nearest rising. They were not thirty yards away when I
distinguished the pointed spikes of their helmets. That sight was more
than sufficient. At the top of my lungs I issue an order for rapid
fire.
Hardly has the command left my lips when the dense masses of men
rapidly approaching us burst into shrill, savage shouts.
"Hurrah! Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
How many thousands of soldiers are surging down upon us then? The
moist earth quivers beneath the tramp of their heavy feet. Most surely
must we be smashed to pieces, trampled down, broken. For there are not
more than sixty of us all told, and how may sixty men extended in
single file hope to resist the tremendous pressure of these ranks upon
ranks of men rushing down upon us like a herd of maddened buffaloes?
"Rapid fire! Nom de Dieu! Fire!"
The crackling of the rifles rends the air; spurts of flame shatter the
darkness. The rifles of my platoon have spoken simultaneously!
And now there is a gap in the very heart of the charging mass. I hear
shrill screams of agony as of beasts mortally stricken. The dark
figures divide to flow right and left, just as if, before the trench,
and extending its whole length, a tempest had raged and laid men to
the earth, as the breath of the gale bends down the growing wheat.
Some of the men about me say:
"Look, Lieutenant! See, they are lying down!"
"No, my friend! It is not so. They have fallen down!"
And ... (Censored)
Once more I repeat:
"Fire! Fire! Let them have it! Put it into them! Fire!"
The men reload their magazines swiftly, resting their cheeks ...
(Censored) ... and fire a volley at point blank range. Out there, men
fall in swathes! The gap widens and widens until no one remains
standing before us, not a living soul! But the shadows nevertheless
are still moving onwards to the right and left; they intend to
outflank, to envelop us. And to the right and left there is not a man
to stem for a moment that rushing torrent, which, at the best, we have
only been able to check for an instant, and divert to either side. The
wave will reform behind us--all will be lost!
"Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
They excite themselves with their own cries, like savages. Their
raucous voices rise loud above the crackling rifle fire, toned and
modulated in the flux of the wind-driven rain and the louder
detonations close at hand. Suddenly the wind has increased; the rain
descends literally in torrents: one gains the impression that the fury
of the fighters has moved the very heavens.
All at once a flame leaps up, glistening on brass buckles and helmet
spikes, turning bayonets to silver. The Germans have set fire to the
pile of straw beneath which the major and captain were snugly sleeping
a short while since. The flames writhe and waver this way and that at
the wind's caprice; drops of rain flying before the glow become like
the spray of a rushing fountain. The faces of my men are pale and
streaming with water; their eyes, under frowning brows, are
dark-ringed and like sparks of steel, expressing at once their
eagerness to strike and kill as well as to live.
"First section, right face!..."
Can they hear me?...
"Right face!..."
They do not hear me. The unceasing spatter of rifle fire, the moaning
wind, the rain beating a tattoo on mess-tins, and above all, the
shouting of human voices drown my command.
"Let me pass, you!"
I thrust a man against the parapet of the trench.
"Let me pass!"
From man to man I progress, calling aloud for the sergeant. One, two,
three soldiers I pass, and then before me the trench is empty,
abandoned; a little trampled straw, a rifle, a few knapsacks and
nothing more. But I am just in time to catch one dark figure of a man
hauling himself out of the trench by the overhanging brambles.
"Hey, you!" I cry. "The major? The captain?..."
The wind hurls a few disconnected words into my face.
"Have left ... orders!"
At that moment two helmeted figures appear above the parapet someway
further along to the right, two figures silhouetted against the light
of the fire. The next instant something falls heavily on to the straw
at the bottom of the trench.
Meanwhile behind me the shrieking Germans are right on the top of my
men. Obviously there is nothing to do but try and win through to the
trenches of a battalion of chasseurs located to the rear and right of
our line.
I give the order with all the strength of my lungs.
"Pass through the wood! Not alongside it! Retreat into the wood!"
I thrust forward the men who instinctively hesitate before the dense
entanglement of branches bristling with thorns, and I in my turn
bodily fling myself into the undergrowth. To the left of my trench
ring out oaths and strangled cries. Apparently, some fools afraid of
the thorns have hesitated too long and now perhaps have German
bayonets in back or chest!
I start to run towards the chasseurs' line. Before me and all around
me dark shadows move; and always the same cry rings out:
"Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
I am surrounded by Boches; it seems impossible that I can escape,
separated as I am from all my men. Nevertheless I grasp my revolver in
my hand and pray only I may be permitted to give a good account of
myself.
Suddenly I am sprawling face downwards, nose to the earth, having
stumbled over something hard and metallic. Lying in the mud is the
body of a dead German whose helmet has rolled a little away from him.
Instantly an idea seizes me. I pick up the helmet and place it on my
own head, passing the strap beneath my chin to secure it.
There follows a mad flight for the safety the chasseurs will afford.
Without hesitating a second, I rush by groups of Boches who are
wandering about doubtfully, their original plans having been rather
upset by our fusillade. As I pass them I cry:
"Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
Like them, too, I keep repeating the word to which they seem to attach
great importance, which is:
"Heiligtum!"
The rain stings my face: the mud adheres to my soles until only with
difficulty can I raise boots which have become enormously big and
heavy. Twice I fall on my hands and knees, only to rise again and
instantly resume my flight, notwithstanding my aching legs. Singing
and whistling bullets pass over me into the darkness beyond.
Out of the blackness at my feet a man rises and the words on his lips
are French.
"Is it you, Letty?"
"Yes, Lieutenant; I've got one in the thigh."
"That's all right, old man; we'll get there yet!"
Already there are no more harsh voiced brawlers around us. Manifestly
they must reform before continuing the assault. So I throw away the
helmet and replace my cap of which I have taken good care.
Before reaching the chasseurs I overtake four Boches, in each of whom,
either in the back or in the head, I put a revolver bullet. Each one
drops in his tracks with a long, strangled cry.
(Censored)
In the chasseurs' trenches I discover twenty or so of my men. They are
kneeling in the mud at the bottom, unable to find a place in the
firing line.
"Follow me, my boys," I cried.
The Vauxmarie Road is only a few steps away and I place my twenty
poilus along the sloping side of a ditch. One and all we feel that all
we want to do is to remain there until we die.
Still another outburst of rifles. Flat on my stomach on the
water-sodden grass I look upon a second fire the reflection of whose
ruddy glow seems to be carved out of the night's opacity--that must be
the Vauxmarie farm burning.
Behind us a voice unexpectedly rings out:
"Ohé! Trenches there? Is there anyone of the --th here."
I reply: "Present."
"An officer?"
"I am Lieutenant. Who is asking?"
"It is I, Lieutenant."
A man presents himself to me and tells me he has been sent by Captain
C----.
"Come quickly ... quickly, with every man you can find. The flag is
near here among the trees and the Captain is afraid that unless he has
assistance he will not be able to save it."
We set out instantly following the orderly.
Our trousers cling to our knees and thighs; the long grass pours water
into our boots.
We pass a machine-gun section. The men have attached the belt; but
they have only one gun and that won't work.
Hoarse cries rise again, increased to the point of frenzy, then weaken
and finally die away. The chasseurs are holding fast! One of my men
exclaim:
"And _that's_ their stopping place."
Easily I follow the sounds of the fight. All my senses appear to have
become abnormally sharp. And so I am able to perceive some vaguely
defined dark figures who move silently not twenty yards away to the
right of us. I strive with all my force to pierce the darkness, but my
eyes are filled with water and fail me. So, motioning with my hand, I
say in a low voice to one of my men:
"Look there, Chabeau. Can you see anything?"
"Yes, Lieutenant."
"What is it?"
"Some Boches. They are flanking us."
"Are there many of them?"
"No, not a pile of them."
"Can you count them?"
Two or three seconds and then:
"I believe there are seven of them."
His words confirm my own conclusions. A few stragglers, undoubtedly,
who have lost their way in this infernal mêlée of the night. At my
order ten of my men face towards the right, and in each one's ear I
whisper:
"Wait until I give the word to fire. Do not hurry and aim well."
The Boches have halted, hesitating, undecided; they form a dark group
framed in a stillness which seems almost palpitating.
"Fire!"
A spurt of flame, followed instantly by cries of agony and terror:
"Kamerad! Kamerad!"
Only two remain standing and they rush towards me. The younger of them
snatches at my hands covering them with tears and saliva. He utters a
few incoherent words which reveal the tempest of fear obsessing him:
"I am not a Prussian; I am a Swabian. The Swabians have never done you
any harm ... the Swabians did not want this war...."
And his eyes glare into mine in a very frenzy of revolting
supplication.
"I have given the French wounded, water. My comrades also: that is
what we Swabians are!"
He talks and talks, and always the same monotonous refrain is
repeated:
"_Das machen die Schwaben._ That is what the Swabians do."
Then, with ever mounting incoherence, he tells me other things; that
he is an electrician, that he can walk fifty yards on his hands ... he
would have done it instantly too if I had but given the signal,
possessed as he was by terrible fear, tortured by the thirst for life.
The other was passed from one man to another, palpitating and
terror-stricken: we had not so far made any other prisoners! My men
jeered at him like curious children. They listened with an air of
wisdom to the conversation between myself and the German. Not
ill-naturedly they amused themselves by causing him involuntarily to
hunch his neck down between his shoulders when they placed a hand upon
him. And each time, they laughed heartily and boyishly.
All this time the crackling of rifles disturbs the night's stillness;
the short snappy reports emanating close at hand, the swift whistling
of German bullets from the distance. Nor did the rain cease to fall,
plastering our great-coats on to our backs, streaming in rivulets from
the peaks of our caps. The wind, however, had ceased to moan. It blew
gently now as though appeased, but cold and foxy. The day was
approaching and never was the light of day so longed for. I saw once
more the battlefield of Sommaisne, bathed in sunlight, clear in
outline, rich in colour. And all that night we had been as blind men,
fighting gropingly. I shrank from the thought of death in that icy
mud, or in those puddles of water into which one stumbled....
How strange everything is. During a brief calm, music, strange, sharp,
but rhythmic rings out. That must be the German bugles taking up their
message and approaching nearer and nearer all along their lines. I
turned to my Boche and asked:
"What is that?"
He bends his head, places his hand behind his ear to listen and
replies:
"Halt!"
Truly enough the firing begins to die away little by little. A few
more violent outbursts succeed, and then there is silence, except for
stray shots here and there, which echo with curious loudness in the
motionless, cold air. The stillness that follows seems almost
menacing. It falls over the scene of battle like an immense mantle--it
is a portentous silence, as though willed by some mysterious powers of
evil: pregnant has the night been with human anguish and suffering.
The advent of the wan day does not lighten our spirits; a faint
luminance, whitened and cloud-flecked, appears above the horizon,
moving slowly towards the zenith. Storm battalions move languidly
across the pale sky. The day is false to its season, presaging as it
does, and so long in advance, the coming of winter. It is like one of
those cold days which invariably arrive inopportunely to shatter the
illusion of spring, just when one has commenced to delight in the new
year's rush of life.
Not for a moment does the rain cease; steadily and stubbornly it falls
now, swamping us and penetrating our clothing. One of the Germans
remarks to me in a tone of familiarity:
"I am freezing!"
With hands in his pockets, elbows pressed close to his sides and
shoulders hunched up, he is shivering while lounging at ease.
The minutes drag slowly by. At daybreak the Colonel appears, his
cavalry cloak stiff and heavy with mud. About a dozen prisoners are
brought before him. I bring mine up also. The electrician will not
leave my side, but clings to me desperately in a renewed access of
terror, haunted probably by a vision of himself back to a wall facing
a dozen levelled rifles, ready at word of command to place a dozen
bullets through him.
There is a junior officer among the prisoners, whose lips and chin are
hidden by a curly beard. He understands a few words of French, and, as
the Colonel questions him, he stares directly back at him through
slitted eyes and answers:
"Yes, monsieur."
"Not monsieur, but Colonel!"
The words, uttered in a sharp voice, are accompanied by a meaning
glance. The Boche flinches as though he had received a cut from a
stirrup leather. He draws himself up, arms to the body, shoulders
squared, stiffly at attention.
Captain C----, who is present, turns to me:
"I do not think I shall need you any longer. Do not wait, but try and
find your captain and the rest of your company."
(Censored)
Hardly have we set out on the march, when a few shots sing over us.
Quick volleying succeeds, until the crackling of rifles again covers
the whole plain.
"They are starting again, Lieutenant," says Chabeau.
It is true; they are starting again, and, what is more, as hard as
they are able to. "Fire on and always, my Boches," I murmur, "that is
what you are best fitted for. You dared attack us hand to hand and man
to man, only under the cover of night, and even for that you paid
dearly, as you well know!"
I catch sight of a line of men, some thirty or so, away to the left.
They represent, apparently, all that survive of a section. They are
moving swiftly forward, stooping instinctively beneath the hail of
lead. At the head of them marches an officer, slim built, bearded, yet
of boyish appearance. Is it not Porchon?
I strike across towards him with all speed. I am certain now it is no
other than Porchon. And he also has seen me and is approaching me. He
is the first to utter the very question on my own tongue:
"Do you know where the Captain is?"
"No! Are you also looking for him?"
"And you! Then let us march together, old fellow."
We range our men in skirmishing formation and set off. All the while
the bullets are whistling and spattering about us. Chancing to turn my
head to one side, I suddenly detect an officer, sitting, the sodden
ground notwithstanding, in the middle of a field. As he catches my
eye, he waves his arm. I have an idea that he is shouting to us, but
the infernal noise prevents me hearing what he says. I take a few
steps in his direction, unexpectedly to find it is the Colonel.
Turning to Porchon I shout the news aloud:
"It is the Colo! I am going to see what he wants ... look after my
men, will you? ... you understand?... Take my men.... Can you hear
me?..."
He nods swiftly, turns and continues steadily on his way towards the
rising, beyond which one can hear the noise of hard fighting.
Saluting, I present myself to the Colonel.
"Second-Lieutenant of Reserve."
He nods, smiling, and glances towards a puddle metamorphosed
temporarily into a muddy fountain by a bullet.
"Reserve--or the Line! Ah, well, I fear bullets take no heed of such
distinctions!"
He stares at me long and fixedly, as if engaged in weighing my
invisible merit in the scales, and then explains clearly and rapidly
exactly what he expects of me.
"All my orderlies are busy on some mission or the other. I wish you to
find, without loss of an instant, Colonel G----, commanding the
brigade, and ask him, in my name, to send to me here as many men as he
can possibly spare of the --th. Tell him we are in contact with
enormous effectives, that our losses up to the present have been very
heavy, so heavy, in fact, that I am afraid my regiment is no longer
capable of holding on.
"He must be near Hill 281, a mile to the north of Marats-la-Petite. Do
everything in your power to find him, not losing a second, and impress
upon him how urgent is my necessity for immediate reinforcements."
"Very well, mon Colonel!"
With the bullets humming in my ears, I set out at a speed which sends
the mud splashing all over me, from head to foot. The old sense of
elation is upon me, impelling me forward, forgetful of the night's
happenings, impervious to fatigue--I must find the commander of the
brigade and obtain the assistance so desperately needed, from him.
There is no room for other thought than that in my brain. Happily, I
do not dwell on the weight of the responsibility thrust upon me in
this unlooked-for fashion; my burning desire is to succeed in my
mission, nothing more.
I have already started away at a run when the Colonel receives a
bullet in the forearm. With his other arm, he imperatively motions to
me to keep on my way.
Skirting the base of a steep slope, I pass through a fire zone where
the bullets in hundreds, whining and shrilling, tear up the soil all
about me. Then I encounter a group of men, standing at the foot of a
tree. There is a dying officer in the centre, supported against the
tree-bole. A glimpse I have of a dark blue tunic wide opened, of a
shirt stained with bright blood. The wounded man's head sags heavily
down to his shoulder, and in the whitened, tortured face, moist from
fearful agony, I recognize my own major.
But I must not stay!
My heart is thundering within me; there is a sharp pain between my
shoulders; there is a rending pain at the small of my back. And my
legs! Every other minute violent cramp paralyses thighs or calves,
sending me sprawling to the earth, where I lie gasping and panting for
what seem eternities, striving to fight it back. My sodden clothes
become almost fantastically heavy, and the weight is for ever
increasing. To the very tips of my fingers I feel the irregular,
violent pulsing of my arteries; my cloth-covered sword scabbard pricks
my hand.
On the top of a rising alongside the road is a road-mender's hut.
Behind it, a section of dismounted chasseurs is drawn up. It opens out
into skirmishing order and sets off briskly and confidently for the
scene of the fighting.
I take a steep declivity at full speed. Once or twice I fall full
length in the mud. Another slope is negotiated in a sitting attitude.
At the bottom of it I stumble, bruised from head to foot, into a
little wood, where some soldiers stand, waiting orders, leaning on
their rifles. Still more dismounted chasseurs! They too deploy, ascend
the slope, and march unflinchingly into the inferno. The fight rages
continuously behind me, as well as away to the left.
For the third time I encounter dismounted chasseurs, formed up in
sections. And one after another these sections breast the rising
ground, reach the summit, where for a moment they remain clean-cut and
distinct against the sky, and then plunge downwards into the heart of
the fight.