veritable avalanche of stones and rubble. This deposits me in a
well-sheltered, luxuriant little ravine. Almost irresistible is the
desire that springs up in me to stretch myself full length among the
fresh, fragrant grasses, to bathe my fevered face in the moisture, to
lie still there and forget.... In a panic I force myself to my feet,
afraid of losing grip!
A 77 drops neatly into the hollow and explodes at the bottom of it. I
receive a tremendous and disconcerting shock, while about me fragments
of steel and lead plough and tear up the earth.
In response to a command, some chasseurs suddenly appear at the edge
of the ravine, and roll down exactly at the point where a few moments
earlier I had descended. One of them jumps down, his legs quite stiff,
blood trickling out of one of his boots from a smashed leg.
"How pale you are," says a second-lieutenant who comes up. "Are you
wounded?"
"I don't think there is anything much the matter with me," I reply. "A
bunch of shrapnel caught me in the knapsack fortunately."
The wounds of the injured soldier are dressed. A second man lies prone
and still, a bullet through his brain.
Shells are hurrying over us now, carrying their shrill messages; a
good number burst a little before us, and the echo of their harsh,
metallic explosions is flung from one side of the ravine to the other.
At each explosion huge, torn fragments of steel fly high above us
across the sky. Columns of yellow smoke, dense and heavy, drift slowly
through the still air, until they encounter the pines whose branches
part and disperse them.
"Do you know where I can find Colonel G----?" I ask the chasseur
lieutenant.
"Not exactly! Somewhere close at hand, I think. But the major will be
able to inform you of his whereabouts."
I find the major to be quite a young man, tall, with an expression at
once frank and resolute. He listens to my mission and says:
"That is quite all right. You will find the Colonel behind that wood
there--at least he was there less than an hour ago. Some of the --th
are entrenched on that slope.
(Censored)
... "Go along, and good fortune go with you!"
I am pretty well exhausted by this time. Only some internal exaltation
sustains me. This hollow is endless ... this hill steep beyond
imagination! Up at the top some men are moving about and talking. I
tell myself to run onwards ... but all I can do for the moment is to
rest on my sword and slowly drag one swollen foot after the other. The
pain in my back has become intense. Nevertheless I must go on. One
final effort and I shall have reached my destination. Onwards!...
(Censored)
The men I totteringly approach have assumed the dimensions of giants.
They possess enormous, unbalanced bodies; they are monstrosities who
dance before my burning eyes. With a gentle, sustained power, the mud
itself seems to draw me towards them.
Forward!... But I can no longer move forward.... The light is
failing.... Ah, what an unfortunate devil I am!
Someone raises and carries me with strong, careful arms. The sensation
is good. Then some burning liquid scorches my mouth and throat, and
instantly causes me to open my eyes. Close to my face, a voice asks:
"How do you feel now?"
"It is nothing at all," I say weakly. "Fatigue! no sleep ... nothing
to eat. Been fighting all night. It is all right!"
I am lying in a trench covered with muddy straw. Near me is a
lieutenant and several men. It is the former who just spoke to me and
who presses whiskey upon me from his flask.
I look at the collar of his coat and see the number of the regiment I
have been seeking.
"Ah! So I have found you," I cried. "Is the whole regiment here?"
The abruptness of my question takes him back for a moment.
"Yes, that is so! Didn't you know?"
"I should say I didn't, seeing that I have zig-zagged all over the
countryside for you and Colonel G----. We hadn't the slightest idea
where to find you at the advance post and for hours we, unsupported,
have been at grips with more Germans than you could count in a week.
"You are wanted very badly indeed over there. Do you know where he
is--Colonel G----?"
"In this wood, I believe. He has taken up his position somewhere
before those batteries you can hear firing. It should be possible to
see him from here."
He raises himself and looks about.
"I can see him no longer, but he has been here for a long time past.
They will certainly be able to tell you over there where he is gone."
I thank him and ask before leaving: "Just one more drop of '_Gniole_,'
if you can spare it. I am very badly in want of a stiffener."
I take a long gulp of neat spirit and set off towards the 75's which
are growling together in the wood.
When I reach them I find the artillerymen absolutely overjoyed. They
are working their guns at a speed and with a precision and enthusiasm
which greatly impresses an infantryman such as I am. One has scarcely
time to perceive the small copper shells which are gallantly waging
their part in this long distance duel. They pass before the eyes in a
thin line, red and yellow, instantly to vanish into the breech, still
smoking from the last shot. And the next second the gun hurls its
shrapnel message with a report imperious and gay as though delighting
in the glory of the spurting flame and the heavy smoke drifting away
in a column. The artillery-men run, jump and gesticulate about their
gun. Most of them have flung aside their coats and rolled their
sleeves to their elbows. They are one and all in high spirits, joking
and laughing boyishly. With my mud-stained clothes, with my pale and
lugubrious face, my advent has an effect similar to that of an owl
suddenly alighting in the midst of a flock of sparrows. But their
happiness is contagious, and little by little I feel my own spirits
rising. They give me the impression that something happy has occurred.
I question a lieutenant who is marking the fall of the shells through
his glasses, shaking from head to foot the while from excitement.
"Things going well? Eh?"
He turns towards me. The joy which fills him is plainly legible in his
face. He laughs exuberantly:
"I should say they are going well. The Germans are giving
way--deserting their positions like rats a sinking ship."
He laughs once more. "Listen to our 75's! They are making them dance
like madmen! That is the way to carry on, what? They are being kicked
in the sterns now, the swine!"
A staff captain on foot is watching the delighted gunners. He laughs
also and repeats several times in a loud voice: "Good! Very good!"
I approach him and in a few words inform him of what was befalling
half an hour ago over towards Vauxmarie on the Erize road. I repeat to
him my wounded colonel's words, indicate the course I have followed,
express my joy at having finally reached my destination, and add:
"I should, however, like to see Colonel G----, as I have been sent to
him."
The Captain pauses before he replies kindly:
"You go and get some rest now. The --th are no longer needed. Nor
will you be wanted for a little while. You have done well."
Then he informs me that my regiment has been withdrawn from the firing
line and is being re-established a little to the rear. On his map he
indicates the point of assembly and afterwards shakes me warmly by the
hand.
"_Au revoir_, young man," he says. "Sleep well, eat well, keep
yourself fit. You will want all your strength to keep fast on the
heels of the Boches."
My heart leaps within me.
"Then, Captain, we have won a great victory?"
"I do not know ... not yet. But truly it will be so if all our rascals
have progressed since Sunday as these have."
A surge of joy sweeps through me--a curious warmth, sweet, fervent and
strong. Oh, that this may be true, that it may be true! The nervous
tension under which I have laboured for hours past breaks suddenly. I
feel strangely small and weak, and am obsessed by an insane desire to
cry without constraint.
In the background, the 75's aligned along the edge of the wood
continue joyously their triumphant salvoes. But the rattle they make
now sounds queerly afar off, as though my head had been enveloped in a
thick hood of wadding. Beneath my feet the soil, strewn with wet
pine-needles, becomes elastic, enabling me to walk without effort. And
so I leave the Captain, walking slowly, already forgetful of my recent
travails, blind to the things about me.
Visions of those who are dear to me dance before my eyes. I can see
them as though in life smiling tenderly upon me. They give me a sense
of being protected, watched over, soothed. I can even hear their
familiar voices speaking rather solemnly but caressingly,
nevertheless.
"Be of good heart. It is only the passage of the cruel moments such as
those of yesterday, of to-day, and maybe those of to-morrow which,
bringing victory, shall reunite us."
(Censored)
Before rejoining my regiment I have to pass along a road leading from
one of the Marats to the other. Near Marats-la-Petite I discover a
first-aid post, and show the surgeon my back, which has become still
more painful. The post consists of a dimly-lit barn, containing
several seriously wounded men lying on straw. One could scarcely
distinguish the outlines of their bodies and could only hear their
groans emanating from the gloom. The floor was littered with pieces of
cotton wool stained with blood, dried and brown, or freshly crimson.
"You must rest," the surgeon told me. "The shrapnel has not
penetrated, but you have some really famous bruises."
I discovered my regiment bivouacked in a meadow near a stone culvert
bestriding a large ditch full of water.
Porchon is there, also the Captain.
(Censored)
Of the 5th Company there survive about 50 men only. And only a few
more of the 6th. Not a single officer remains. They were stationed
further ahead than we were that night, and the darkness, the
confusion, the rain, enabled the Boches to enfilade their trenches,
marked during the day by those large aeroplanes with the black
crosses. It was a white-handed massacre, the disgusting exploit of
assassins who stab in the back.
The Germans in question belonged to the 13th Army Corps, and were for
the most part Würtembergers. They had been made drunk with alcohol and
ether--such at least the prisoners had avowed. In the knapsacks of
some of them were found incendiary pastilles, and many of my men
assured me that they had seen a number of Germans burst into flame
from head to foot when struck by a bullet, and continue to burn like
torches.
A march across inundated fields or over roads whose puddles reflect
the wan sky. I walk in the rear of the company with the Captain, who
moves onwards with long, slow steps, his inevitable lance marking time
against the pebbles. Two prisoners march alongside us. The Captain, a
man of Lorraine, from the neighbourhood of Sarrebourg, gossips with
one of them, I with the other. He is a gardener from Esslingen, near
Stuttgart. I chat with him about these towns which I know well. A
certain confidence having been established between us, he offers me
his tin of meat. I accept it without exhibition of much pride; it is
certain he will be given something to eat to-morrow, and as for us,
maybe we shall get nothing. I divide the booty with my orderly and two
of my men. It was excellent, that meat, surrounded with a transparent
jelly. ... (Censored) ... Bread is lacking, but that does not matter.
The meat suffices to fill a void.
Halt at the edge of a wood on a slope. Dead leaves from last autumn
still lie about, and here and there are some quite freshly yellow
which the convulsion of the night has stripped from the branches.
As company after company comes up the men hail one another, laughing
and congratulating themselves on having escaped. Sitting amid the
undergrowth, they eat what they have got. Those who have been wise
enough to preserve at the bottom of their knapsacks a tin of meat have
become kings. The others roam about in their vicinity, tortured by a
covetousness which is plain in their eyes, burning with a desire to
commandeer, yet not daring so far. Fortunate, too, beyond their
fellows are those who have found in the knapsacks of captured Germans
small sweetened biscuits. Many men raid the fields, returning with
carrots and terrific turnips which they cut up with their
pocket-knives and swallow voraciously.
A night dull and cold. Lying on the bare earth of the slope, I am
constantly freezing. The stones which form my bed penetrate my flesh
and make me as uncomfortable as if I had as many wounds. A nightmare
haunts me. It concerns the loss of my flask by one of my men who
should have brought it to me filled with water, but whom I cannot find
anywhere. Deeply do I regret having teased Porchon because he left his
sword among the straw of his trench, while I contrived to save mine! I
have my sword, I have my cap, I have my knapsack, but no longer have I
my flask. And that is a loss that renders the future dark and gloomy.
Still sleeping, I recall the exquisite taste of the few drops of tepid
water I swallowed that night at Sommaisne, which were as balm to my
arid, burning throat; I recall the spirit I gulped that very morning,
and which built up anew my declining strength ... no longer a flask!
What a misfortune!
_Friday, September 11th._
"Attention! Fall in!"
We depart. Ten or so "marmites" burst behind us over a wood not very
far away. The Boches must have smelt us hidden beneath the trees.
There is just as much water in the fields as yesterday--puddles, pools
forming miniature lakes, and microscopical rivers running between
upstanding ridges.
We encounter more woods and lose our way among the dense growth,
vividly green by reason of the recent rain. We stumble through
ditches, grass-choked, and thrust a way through interlacing brambles
which push their shoots into the middle of the path. From the heart of
the wood ring out monotonously the sharp trilling and twittering of
many birds at song. Occasionally, a blackbird rises and flies before
us, but so low that it is almost able to touch the earth with its
claws; in the breeze its wings create the leaves rise and flutter.
Above our heads a break in the clouds forms a lake, blue, limpid and
deep. All is stillness and peace.
But when we leave the wood the world has become grey and depressing.
We splash across a marshy field in which guns and ammunition wagons
are drawn up, plastered with mud to the axles, and tarnished with
splashes. There are the entrails and soft skins of sheep lying in
little round piles in the puddles. Bones are scattered about, to which
fragments of rain-washed meat are still attached, and they serve to
give the bare field the semblance of a charnel-house. A road crosses
it, shining with stagnant water and bordered until lost to sight by
dejected-looking trees. And over this unelevating prospect, leaden
rain-laden clouds hang low and drift one into the other, until the
little lake of blueness is completely veiled from view.
We are at Rosnes. It is a village alongside the road. It serves to
make me think rather pathetically of all those houses which have not
yet suffered bombardment, of those barns even, which contain hay, hay
soft and fragrant, in which one can find warmth and comfort.
We leave Rosnes behind us and, marching easy, slowly ascend a steep
rising, finally to arrive on a plateau covered far and near with thick
growth. The breeze passing over it gives it the appearance of a
mysterious and noisome pond whose icy surface is ruffled by autumn
winds.
At Captain C----'s invitation, a meeting of officers takes place. It
is he who, at Gercourt, distributed the men of our detachment into
companies. And now here he commands the regiment, since the colonel
and the chief of the first battalion are wounded, and those of the
second and third are killed. It is only then I learn that for several
days past the 3rd Battalion has been commanded by the officer of
gendarmerie whom I saw on the morning of the 9th, when he ran up
shouting at us and at our major because he hesitated to throw us out
over a bare plain swept by machine-gun fire. He had died
magnificently.
Captain C---- addressed us in his unimpassioned voice. He congratulated
us and told us he relied on each one of us. We were worn out, but it
was necessary to keep going and preserve appearances before the men,
in order to maintain their courage so long as the present hard times
continued; to prevent them, by the exhibition of our own energy and
enthusiasm, from succumbing to the temptation of grumbling and
complaining.
From the expression of the faces about me, from the serenity legible
in each man's eyes, I gathered we were all ready to face the future,
whatsoever it might contain. It almost seemed we leaned on each other
for support, true brothers by the common faith within us. A grace
exalted and fortified us.
Thus my captain became my battalion chief and Porchon my company
commander. I was well content, because the passage of each day had
brought Porchon and myself nearer each other. I know him to-day to be
a man open and frank to the last word, ambitious to show himself just,
but indulgent in all things, and brave with that simplicity which
exalts courage. Moreover, I love his good humour, his never failing
laugh, the ardent life in him. To be gay and light-hearted, to remain
so under the sharpest physical sufferings, even when devastation and
cruel death break or snatch away the men or human things about you; to
remain constant before these assaults which strike more at the heart
than at the intellect, is for a leader a hard but sacred duty. Porchon
had perhaps taught me this. No longer did I wish to deaden my senses
in order to render my task the easier. I was eager to confront all the
demands of this prodigious and unnatural world into which I had been
suddenly cast; I no longer even sought to escape those duties which
seem to lead one to certain death. And these things would be easy to
achieve if only I could attain something of that good humour which I
sedulously sought to possess as one sets out to conquer a virtue.
Porchon would assist me.
We set off together to settle the location of the trenches which our
company must construct. Our men set to work with tools obtained from a
park. The picks quickly break up the brown, heavy soil. It is raining,
but the task is not difficult. The men sing and jokes fly about--probably
because the first section has already been called up for the distribution
of rations!
They have descended towards Seigneulles, a village close at hand at
the bottom of the valley. From our position we can see the regimental
carts pointing their shafts towards us, tilted and supported on garden
fences. Further away, emerging from a lake of greenness, is a small
group of houses, and the cock on a church steeple.
Soon now along the roadside the fires begin to smoke. This evening we
are going to eat cooked meat and hot potatoes. We shall have straw for
our beds and a roof to shelter us from the wind and rain. Who cares
for to-morrow since life to-day is so good!
_Saturday, September 12th._
Heavily and dreamlessly I sleep, and awake to find myself in precisely
the same attitude as that in which I flung myself down the preceding
night. The straw wraps me in grateful warmth, rather moist, perhaps,
because the water in my saturated clothes has evaporated during the
night. Above me I can see the rafters of the roof from which dusty
spider-webs hang; for the moment I am amazed to find myself thus
snugly ensconced beneath a roof, instead of the usual branches or the
bare sky to which I have become accustomed. The rain trickles softly
and gently over the tiles. The sound intensifies my sense of comfort,
and it pleases me to think that I have slept in warmth and comfort,
despite the never-ceasing downpour.
But the rain exacts its revenge in the course of the day. For duty
compels us once more to climb up to the plateau to complete the
trenches commenced the day before. We find that in the night the
torrent has well-nigh filled them with liquid mud. Some sappers,
however, come to our assistance, and, thanks to them, we are able to
shelter ourselves from the worst of the downpour; they hastily
construct a thick roof of baulks of timber covered with earth.
The men work easily, flinging jests one to the other. The incidents of
the night attack are revived and acquire a totally new force by reason
of the simple words in which they are related.
"I was all right at the beginning," says Martigny, one of my men. "But
all at once, while I was still firing, down toppled a Boche right on
top of me, without so much as a "by your leave!" I was on my knees and
he lay across my calves. It's not easy to fire in such a position as
that! Little by little the weight forced my knees down into the mud;
the water rose almost up to my hands: how was I to refill my magazine?
I could not see the animal, but you can take my word for it, he was
heavy."
And a second:
"A good job for me that I was once fencing-sergeant in the regulars!
Otherwise I should not be here now. Not even time to fix my bayonet
before I found one of the ugly pigs on top of me with his skewer. I
thought to myself: 'What's all this about? But you are going to find
you can joke once too often, my Boche!' And there we were all in and
at it. I parried a thrust with the stock of my rifle, but what sort of
defence could I put up, seeing that my weapon was much shorter than
his? Only he didn't manage to get his bayonet into me!... There wasn't
even a cartridge! I tell you that Boche kept me jumping from side to
side until I felt like dying from weariness. You know what a job it is
to parry, when you can no longer feel your own fingers? Still jumping,
I said to myself: 'What in the name of glory are those asses right and
left footling about? Are they going to stand by and see me knocked
out?' Oh! but they were there all right, and it was Gillet to the
right who put a bullet into him while he was pausing to take a breath.
Then I stuck on my bayonet and filled my magazine. There were others
still coming up, you understand!"
"Sons of pigs, these Boches!" rasps a miner from the North. "And what
mugs they are too, _Mon Dieu!_ When I saw them swarming over towards
me, 'Martin,' said I to myself, 'you're done for this time!' And then:
'Hurrah!' they're off! Bang, bang, bang! And I knew no more."
"Martin, you are babbling," grunts a huge Champenois, who is smoking
his pipe and listening with eyes atwinkle. "Hammer away at the earth,
seeing that is what you were born for; but don't mix yourself up in
conversations, because you can't talk."
He spits on his hands, rubs them against each other, and taking up his
pick starts digging again with long, steady, powerful strokes.
Eight o'clock in the morning and nothing before us but a day of rest.
We do not go down to the village, however, until four o'clock in the
afternoon. Then we hastily erect temporary shelters against the
weather, building them of pointed stakes, branches and bundles of
straw. The rain sweeps down obliquely, driven by a westerly wind. Men
lie face down in the straw through which course streams of rain. Many
of them fall asleep, and when they wake after their short siesta, the
straw has left on their cheeks crimson furrows which look like scars.
The plateau, covered as it now is with little huts of straw erected in
less than an hour, has all the appearance of a gipsy encampment. The
Captain's stick thrust in the ground before one of the larger of these
shelters indicates Headquarters. He's pretty certain to be there
himself, although there are no signs either of him or of his
messengers. Through the rain-mist, indistinct figures occasionally
drift across the deserted plain without giving it life. The rain makes
them vague, colourless, almost formless. Gradually they draw away into
indistinctness, finally to disappear so abruptly as to leave one
puzzled and mystified. A second before they were visible; they are no
longer so now; and there remains only the drenched plain on which our
straw huts appear like strange unhealthy excrescences.
Between two showers, Porchon appears before me. He carries in his hand
a can in which there is something smoking and steaming. He offers it
to me with a plainly self-satisfied grin.
"A fine company, mine, what? Everything in stock you can possibly
want. Smell that, old man, and fill your nostrils well before drinking
it."