appropriated it. Of course, when he discovered my identity, he flooded
me with fantastic excuses. However, we spread the bed out a little and
slept soundly beside each other for eight hours on end.
That morning we had moved on a short distance, via Douaumont, Fleury,
Eix, across a countryside covered either with mud or trees, dominated
by the forts with their grass-grown glacis and cupolas. We had crossed
the line from Verdun to Conflans, marching ankle-deep in wet
coal-dust. Before a smoke-blackened house at the barrier some enormous
girasols thrust forth their yellow and black corollæ, their colours
rendered more brilliant by the recent rain. We passed some squads of
territorials with their tools on their shoulders, artillerymen from
the big fortresses, slow-moving country wagons laden with forage,
tree-trunks and wine casks. Wooden huts had been erected along the
roadside, each of which had a name inscribed on it, such as: Happy
Villa; The Good Children's Castle; Villa Piccolo, etc. Verses adorned
some of them, not of high poetical attainment, but something after
this fashion:
"You never see us weeping here--
Often you'll see us drinking beer.
War may not be the best of fun,
But we'll stick it till we've smashed the Hun!"
Some of these cabins were constructed of logs and roofed with pine
branches, the most thickly-tufted ones, of course. The points of the
spikes were turned downwards to prevent the rain trickling through to
the layer of thatch below. The huts, erected at the owners' caprice,
were much scattered, and followed the meanderings of the rising ground
to the summit of a slight elevation dominating the road to the right.
The doors, wide opened and yawning, revealed a dark, mysterious space,
and made it appear almost as if the side of the slope was riddled with
fathomless holes, while the bundles of brushwood made irregular green
blots, clear and bright in the neighbourhood of the roadway, growing
darker and vaguer as they approached the elevation, finally to vanish
completely amid the undergrowth.
At length we arrived at Moulinville, where the quartermaster
discovered an empty house, not yet too filthy for habitation, because
the owner of it, on mobilization, had been stationed close at hand,
and came over from time to time. Indeed, he turned up while we were
dining--a huge "Meusien," with a high colour, stiff, cropped hair and
looking gigantic in his artilleryman's cloak. He personally conducted
us to a room, the floor of which creaked, and pointing to a bed
informed us with tremendous pride and dignity that:
"You are welcome to sleep there, if you wish, but I shall not be able
to supply you with sheets."
Sheets! And he was quite crestfallen, this good-hearted artilleryman,
because he could not give us any sheets! We, Porchon and myself,
certainly did not waste many regrets on such things when we climbed
into bed a few moments ago and drew the curtains! Does the absence of
sheets worry him, this hearty snorer at my side, perspiring as he is
between the ticking and an eiderdown? It is certainly warm--perhaps
even a little too warm. I am hot all over, back and front. From head
to foot am I wet. It is as if I were sleeping in a bath!
_Monday, September 21st._
The cyclist of our company awakens me by shouting in my ear:
"Do you not wish to breakfast, Lieutenant?"
He is earning two bowls of black coffee, with two slices of
golden-brown toast, most appetizing to look upon.
The hothouse kind of night we have passed has, I find, robbed me of
all force and energy. My body is languid, my tongue thick, my scalp
irritates. And as for Porchon, he cannot even open his eyes. He
wrinkles up his face; a tremendous effort and the lids part; but they
are so heavy that they close again.
Everything is slack to-day and rather depressing because of that
slackness. I wandered slowly through the muddy streets. What am I
going to do? In a couple of hours' time we are going to dine. That at
least will be something, but what to do until that time?
I go from door to door on a commandeering expedition--a fowl, jam,
wine, "it doesn't matter what, anything you have." Small success
attends my effort. I obtain only a few onions and a bottle of liqueur,
weak and oversweetened, obtained only after a struggle and at a
preposterous price.
The Adjutant whom I meet offers me a drink. A quarter of an hour
afterwards Major C---- calls for me and asks me to call at the house
where he is messing with the Ensign. Waiters are opening bottles of
preserves, and carving meat. The Major bursts in on them:
"Look sharp! Fetch a cloth, three glasses, and 'the' bottle and some
water."
One more drink! Well, I suppose so, but my heaviness increases. I go
back to my room, where I find a sleepy Porchon stretched out in a
chair looking vaguely into space.
"What are we going to do? Shall we play écarté?"
He unfolds a piece of newspaper and takes out a pack of greasy cards.
We sit down to play:
"The king!... Pass ... trump ... trump...."
"Ah, zut! What can you do with a game like this?"
"Again the king ... trump...."
But I fear I am not in a sociable mood. Porchon suddenly throws down
his cards and says:
"I play no longer. I have had enough. You worry me.... And, after all,
I bore myself. I think we had better go to bed early this evening!"
I am also bored with myself and think only of bed. A night such as
last night, after all our trials, is either not enough or too much.
Just one more, or more than one, and we shall have regained all our
strength and spirits. Let us be thankful for small mercies. Of
to-night at least we are certain, and although we do not know it, it
may be that others are to follow. We have been informed we may
anticipate a few days' rest in billets on the left bank of the Meuse.
Five o'clock in the evening. An order is circulated: "It is probable
that the --th Infantry Division will move on to-night. Distribute
the rations at once and be ready to leave at any moment."
So much for our night's rest! It appears that a reserve division has
been thrown into confusion near the Spada Gap. We must go up in
support. Gone is all hope of the night's rest, anticipated and almost
promised us!... Still, one more effort to accept events with
resignation, to obey implicitly any and all orders given us, no matter
what they may be; once more the contortion which hoists the pack on to
the back, an ever-present burden.
We leave at eight o'clock, with a long march through the night before
us. The villages of Chatillon-sous-les-Côtes, Watronville, Ronvaux are
passed. They are all full of soldiers, the murmur of whose voices
comes to us through the darkness. Moonlight struggles feebly through
the chinks of the old doors of barns; clear fires are burning before
the houses and gleaming on ammunition dumps, over which men are
squatting and keeping guard.
"Where are we?" ask some of our men.
"At Paname," voices reply.
"In the Meuse!"
"If anyone asks you, say you know nothing."
These and other answers we receive.
Haudiomont once again. The night is advancing; kitchen fires are going
out now, but from time to time the wind sends a tiny flame leaping out
of a brazier which flickers and dies to darkness again.
We enter the forest of Amblonville, black and immense.
The faintly-marked path winds ahead until lost to view between trees
which overhang it to right and left, and seem to be marching up as
though to descend upon us and crush us. I experience a sense of
oppression. At first we marched towards the south-west, then towards
the south-east; now we are again marching towards the south-west. And
three hours have passed since first we plunged into the wood. I feel
as if I were sinking into mud which becomes thicker and thicker each
moment. When may we hope to reach the bottom?
At last the sky can be seen between the trees, and the darkness
lightens little by little. Now I begin to breathe more freely. The
moon has disappeared; but the sky is thick with innumerable stars. A
sentinel at a cross-road stamps his feet to keep them warm. We
question him:
"Are there any Boches about here?"
"I think so," he replied. "There is a good chance of coming across
them to-morrow."
"Where are they?"
"Towards Amblonville farm."
"Is it far from here?"
"Near Mouilly, two, three miles; you have your back to it."
"And then!... (Censored)!... (Censored)!..."
The men begin to hum.
"... (Censored)!..."
"Silence behind there!" I bawl out. "Aubert, Lardin, silence! you
fools! Or that little lullaby of yours won't have a pleasant ending!"
An abrupt halt, marking time.
Here we are, at Rupt-en-Wöevre. The regiment bivouacks in a field at
one end of the village. I know nothing at all of the situation, and I
find it difficult to take my bearings. The hour is now two in the
morning.
We are chilled to the marrow. Porchon and I sit down, back to back,
tapping one foot against the other while awaiting the coming of the
day. The cold steals up our legs and stiffens them. We find it quite
impossible to maintain our position. I tramp up and down a sloping
road before some barns. From time to time a man half opens one of the
doors and creeps in. By Jove! That's a good idea! I steal into one of
the barns to find some thirty men already in occupation. An hour
passes, maybe two, during which I sit half on a sack, half on an old
hen, who ruffles herself and grumbles constantly.
Dawn cold and stark. We light a fire and endeavour to restore our
circulation.
VI
IN THE WOODS
_Tuesday, September 22nd._
I start a few letters, fingers frozen, nose wet:
"I do not know how I look; but to tell the truth, my powers of
resistance have astonished even myself. It is strange and
marvellous how every one among us appears to possess a faculty for
adapting himself to the immediate circumstances. Our hard life has
hardened us and will keep us so, for however long it may continue.
At the present moment, it would seem as if we had been born to
wage war, to sleep in the open no matter what the weather, to eat
when, where, and what we can, also as much as we can. You have a
cloth on your table? Spoons, forks, all kinds of forks--for the
oysters, the fruits, the snails, and so on? You even have a clean
plate for each course--isn't it funny? Glasses are placed before
you of all shapes and sizes, so fragile that a pressure of the
hand would break them. And you drink your coffee--I have a vague
memory that this is so--out of a fine glass which is not the same
as that from which you drink your tea, for example! But how
complicated all that is! We others have our pocket-knife, our
mugs, and our fingers! I assure you they are quite sufficient...."
An interruption. A woman appears, thin and dirty, pushing before her a
little yellow-haired girl, whose eyes are red-rimmed and tear-stained.
The doctor having been consulted, prescribes for colic.
"And what do I owe you for that, doctor?" asks the woman.
"Nothing at all, madam."
But she draws from beneath her apron a dusty bottle. "I must
'recompinse' you somehow. There is not very much in it, but what there
is tastes good. It is good: oh, but indeed it is!"
It is Toul wine, dry, thin and somewhat sharp. A brawn, turned out on
to a plate, gives us an excellent lunch.
In the afternoon we pass to the observation trench. We overtake a
group of lame men, without weapons, coats open, almost all of them
limping along with a stick. Among them I recognize a friend of pre-war
days. We shake hands and speak eagerly and with pleasure of common
memories, before approaching the inevitable regrets. As he belonged to
a regiment which was compelled to give way before the Boches, I asked
him how it had come about. He shrugged his shoulders despondently.
"Masses of infantry; an endless hail of shell; not a gun to support us
... don't let's talk about it, old man."
After the iciness of the preceding night, a day of burning sunshine. I
am wearing ridiculously thin boots, which decrease in size as my feet
swell. I give stones a wide berth.
To the right of the road the fields roll away like a great cloth,
fresh and green until they reach the heights covered with trees, whose
luxuriant foliage seems to fall from the top to the bottom of the
slopes.
"Single file through the cutting."
That is the sign that we are entering the zone of fire of the German
guns. We climb and pass through the village of Mouilly, built on the
side of a slope. Almost all the houses, with their plaster façades,
are on one side of the road, the left. On the other side meadows
stretch away to where the sun rises and where the green of the wooded
highlands begins its cascade to the plains below. Enormous shell-holes
mark the meadows, about which the upflung earth forms brown circles
which look from the distance like enormous stains.
Woods. Some shrapnel bursts ahead of us, but far away. In the cutting
we encounter a big grey motor-car, ornamented with gilt letters. One
of its wheels has been blown away and its steel sides bear the mark of
shells: it was the product of some great Leipzig firm.
We overtake a regiment of the division at the end of the wood on the
Mouilly-Saint-Rémy road. A fight has taken place, and our 75's are
still sending down a rain of shells, forming a barrage some five
hundred yards before us. We stand and watch it, Porchon and I,
together with the two officers we are going to relieve. They are both
fine soldiers and speak unaffectedly of the battle they have just
passed through. One of them, tall, bony, with tanned skin and black
eyes almost feverishly keen above a fine nose, expresses himself
shortly and precisely. The second, small, rather too affable, with a
wrinkled face, laughing eyes, fresh lips and a brown beard, entertains
us with a recital of horrors in a cheerful voice and warns us that we
are very likely to "leave our skins over there."
The thunder of the 75's almost splits our ears. Occasionally a German
shell flies past us with a shrill whistle and peppers the trees with a
volley of shrapnel. Into the midst of this tumult we march and take up
position. My section occupies about fifty yards of a trench already
full of corpses.
"Out with your tools," I say to my men, "and dig for all you are
worth."
Night falls. The cold increases. It is that hour when, the battle
ended, the wounded who have not yet been brought in, cry aloud in
their suffering and distress. And those calls, those appealings, those
moanings, awaken anguish in all those compelled to listen to them; an
anguish the crueller for the fighters who are chained to their posts
by stern duty yet who long to rush out to their gasping comrades, to
dress their wounds, to speak words of comfort to them, and to carry
them to safety where fires burn brightly and warm. Yet we must not do
so; we are chained to the spot, our hearts wrung, our nerves
quivering, shivering at the sound of soul-stricken cries brought to us
unceasingly by the night.
"A drink!..."
"Are you going to leave me to die here?..."
"Stretcher-bearers!..."
"Drink!..."
"Ah!..."
"Stretcher-bearers!..."
I hear some of my men say:
"Where the devil are the stretcher-bearers!" ... (Censored) ...
"They are like fleas--you can never find them when you look for them."
And before us the whole plain wrapped in darkness seems to shiver from
the agony of those undressed wounds.
Voices soft, weary from having cried so long:
"... (Censored) ...
....?"
"Mother, oh, mother!"
"Jeanne, little Jeanne.... Oh! say that you hear me, my Jeanne!"
"I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty...."
Voices in anguish, panting and gasping:
"I won't die here like a rat!"
"Stretcher-bearers! Stretcher-bearers!... Stretcher-bearers!!!"
"... (Censored) ...
....?"
"You fellows, finish me off, for God's sake! Ah!..."
A German, not more than twenty yards away, cries out incessantly:
"Kamerad! Franzose! Kamerad! Kamerad! Franzose!"
And in a lower voice:
"Hilfe! Hilfe!"
His voice wavers and breaks into a wailing as of a crying child; then
his teeth snap fiercely; then he shatters the night stillness with a
beast's cry, like the howling of a dog baying at the moon.
Terrible beyond the power of words, that night. Every minute either
Porchon or myself were jumping to our feet. The whole time we were
under fire and the cold was truly cursed.
_Wednesday, September 23rd._
Relief appears at last. We depart through the woods along a pathway
from which the undergrowth has been cleared, thus permitting us to see
well ahead. During a short halt, several of the men break into
exclamations of pleasure and delight:
"Hallo! Vauthier!"
"And you, Raynaud!"
"Well, I'm damned.... Baurain!"
"It is not possible! We thought you had gone for good.... What have
you been doing?... Where do you come from?"
Three men report to me and show that they were ordered to rejoin on
this date. I am pleased, for the three men, intelligent, devoted, and
brave, are among the best under my command.
(Suppressed by the Censor.)
(Suppressed by the Censor.)
In going towards Mouilly, we repass the big grey motor-car at the side
of the road. A little further on, the ranks open a little without
command, in order not to disturb a wounded horse. It is a magnificent,
black beast, a king of its kind. Shrapnel has wounded it in the chest
and broken one of its shoulders, from which the blood streams right
down to the hoof to form a pool in the dust. Its flanks are quivering
with the agony it is enduring, while the shattered leg is violently
trembling. The sufferings of this poor, gasping, dumb brute, dying
minute by minute, and the pathetic, pain-darkened eyes with which it
watches us as we pass, stir every man among us as if we were looking
upon human agony....
The nearer we approach the village, the more numerous become the
wounded men returning from the fight. They come in groups, carefully
selecting the shorter grass to walk over, seeking the shade to avoid
the burning sun, which makes their wounds smart intolerably. There are
a few Germans mingled with our men; one big-built man, fair, ruddy and
with blue eyes, is assisting a little French infantryman, who limps
along jesting and laughing and displaying all his teeth. With a wicked
glance towards us, he cries aloud to the Boche:
"Is it not true, you pig, that you are a good pig?"
"I understand," exclaims the German gutturally. "Pig, good pig! I
understand!"
And an unctuous laugh spreads all over his greasy face, happy at this
display of camaraderie which promises so well for him, as vile and
loathsome as are all Boches when at the mercy of a conqueror.
_Mouilly._ Other roads descend from the woods, all choked with
processions of wounded, and still more wounded, moving slowly down
into the village. Dressing-stations have been set up in the barns;
about them is a litter, constantly increasing, of stained bandages and
blood-soaked pieces of cotton-wool, extending in some cases almost
into the middle of the road. From the interior of the barns emanate
sharp cries, speaking eloquently of bitter pain and endurance; the air
reeks with the pungent smell of iodoform.
About the little church, with its shell-shattered windows, lies the
cemetery, with its mossy tombstones and rust-eaten metal crosses.
Empty, newly-dug graves yawn; so many little mounds bear the fresh
marks of the pick! And towards this cemetery some stretcher-bearers
come, walking slowly and in time, carrying between them stretchers,
hurdles, step-ladders, on which still figures lie, rigid beneath the
rough cloth covering them.
We come to a halt near the Amblonville Farm, whose spacious and
strongly-built walls look down over wide and rolling grass-lands,
moist and verdant. The Mouilly Road terminates there: it stretches
away before us, crossing a stream over a little stone bridge, passes a
silver-surfaced lake, which acts as a mirror to the superb trees about
it, to become winding and narrow near some sombre woods, amid which a
half-hidden windmill arises, and finally scales the abrupt heights
behind which lies the village.
Behind the summit some 75's are firing steadily and slowly. Lower
down, guns, horses and their drivers, and ammunition wagons, appearing
as though sighted through the wrong end of a telescope, flow almost
imperceptibly this way and that, like weeds slowly waving in the
depths of a river.
We make a fire, and soon potatoes begin to glaze and blacken among the
glowing cinders. As a matter of sheer habit we eat them, defying such
inconveniences as dyspepsia or enteritis or dysentery, from one or the
other of which almost all of us have suffered for a month past.
German aeroplanes come circling above us in the course of the
afternoon. Our shells hurtle towards them like gigantic rockets minus
their tail of sparks. Puffs of smoke, shot through for an instant by a
golden glow, follow the aircraft, describing drifting circles about
them, white as driven snow. They continue their flight, however,
wheeling through space like birds of prey, watching always. A few
bombs are dropped, burying themselves in the earth about us. One of
them explodes violently, rather uncomfortably close at hand. The
cyclist, who was lying down, jumped hastily to his feet and examined
his foot.
"Not a scratch!" he exclaimed. "It only cut open my shoe!"
Down into the grass where he had been dozing he sank again, waving his
hand towards the whistling shells:
"You up there! Let us have no more of your impertinence."
Having carefully arranged his handkerchief over his face, to shield
his eyes from the sun, he continued to grumble under cover of it:
"A good pair of bath-pumps gone for nothing! I have a good mind to
give up marching altogether!"
An hour later a few smoke-wreathed whizz-bangs pass over the top of
the hill and fall alongside our batteries. One or two burst directly
above the medley of traffic in the roadway, causing the microscopical
horses (as they appeared to us), to rear and kick, and sending men,
who looked to be no more than big insects, running this way and that;
finally the whole concourse, like a long-drawn ribbon, moves away to
vanish beneath the trees to the left. The guns remain in position.
The sunset this evening over the valley is limpid and indescribably
beautiful. The sky pales to the zenith as the sinking sun glides from
transparent emerald to its bed of many golds, which deepen to the
crimson of leaping flames on the skyline.
_Thursday, September 24th._
One half the company is quartered at the farm. A stroke of luck
enabled me to snatch a good four hours' sleep in the hay. Of course
there was bound to be one fly in the amber. Our barn, big and lofty,
was a veritable trap for draughts. Moreover, the noise of a continual
coming and going, quarrels among the men regarding their respective
berths, or a lost water-bottle, or a rifle that had been substituted
for another one, created an unceasing din hardly propitious to sleep.
With the dawn we march back to our meadow. Once more we wait and wait,
with nothing to do, knowing nothing.
Ten o'clock! An order comes to hand: "The men must get their food now
or not at all, and be ready to move at a moment's notice."
The cooks are in a very bad temper because the haricot beans, defying
all efforts and coaxings, remain obdurately hard.
"Not worth while making oneself ill with such stuff! They would blow
out a wooden horse!"
"Of course if the men don't mind chewing shrapnel!"
I advise my men to cook what meat they have, so that, if necessary, it
can be eaten on the road as we go along.
It appears I was wise in my generation, for very shortly the "Fall
in!" sounds, and we set off at once, evidently in the direction of
Mouilly.
It is odd, but we cannot hear the faintest sound of fighting, not even
the snap of a rifle or the boom of a gun. Yet over the hilltop there
comes at a trot towards us a non-commissioned officer of mounted
chasseurs, his head swathed in blood-stained bandages. Although rather
pale, he sits erect in his saddle and smiles cheerfully.
"Hit?" someone calls out.
"Nothing to talk about. A shell splinter shaved my head."
Questions follow him along the road.
"Is it very unhealthy over there?"
"A little, my son. Just wait five minutes and you will have something
to show as good as anything you will find at Mouilly!"
Down in the village Red Cross officers are fussing about. We meet two
motor-cars travelling at full speed and raising a suffocating cloud of
dust.