Wednesday, September 9th.
Not a wink of sleep. The noise of the shells hurtling through the air is constantly in my ears, while the acrid and suffocating fumes of explosives haunt my nostrils. Scarcely yet is it midnight before I receive orders to depart. I emerge from the trusses of wheat and rye among which I had ensconced myself. Bits of stalk have slipped down my collar and up my sleeves, and tickle me all over. The night is so dark that we stumble over the stones and irregularities of the ground. We pass very close to some 120's drawn up behind us; I hear the voices of the artillerymen, but only with difficulty can I distinguish the heavy, sleeping guns.
Rations are distributed en route with no other light than that of a camp lantern which gives forth but a faint glow. The feeble yellow light stains with brown patches the portions of raw meat cut up in the dusty grass of the roadside.
A march across fields, a march of somnambulists, mechanical, legs light as down, heads heavy as lead. It seems to last for hours and hours. And we are always bearing to the left; at day-break, I assure myself, we shall have returned to our point of departure. Little by little the shadows rise, enabling me to recognize the Vauxmarie Road, the wrecked ammunition carts, the dead horses.
Hallo! The German guns are speaking early this morning! Before us shrapnel is bursting noisily and spitefully. Over the plain they have thrown a barrage. Nevertheless we have to go through it. Our first section detaches itself; in a line, long-drawn and thin, it moves across the fields towards a small wood which the captain has indicated as the objective. Rifles crackle away to the left. Bullets sing and throw up the dust about the marching section. Then shrapnel bursts right over the men. The undulating line becomes still, taking cover behind a ridge of earth shaped like a gigantic caterpillar. I have been given to understand that we are to occupy the advance post, and I await my turn to move forward. The major and the captain are before us, taking cover of some trees, watching. And the captain, seeing his men out there under the shower of shells, finds it difficult to make up his mind to throw us others forward. After a time the commander of the gendarmerie whom I had seen cycling along the road, comes up. He is crimson to the lips and his eyes are savagely glaring. Cursing and swearing violently, he utters a few breathless words.
(Censored)
The captain, turning towards me, said:
"Go!"
So the time is come!
I experience a feeling only of pleasure. I am in the same strange mental condition as when under fire for the first time at Sommaisne. My legs move without volition; I march unthinkingly, conscious only of an all-pervading joy which elevates me above myself and permits me as it were to look upon myself as another being. In five minutes we reach the pine-wood which is our destination. We deploy before it, indeed almost within it. Without waiting a minute, the men set to work with their trenching tools. At the end of a couple of hours we possess a deep and narrow trench. Behind us to the left is Rembercourt; to the right front the tiny station of Vauxmarie.
The heat is enervating and unhealthy. A few clouds drift slowly past, increasing in size little by little and growing darker and more ominous, while the edges yet remain fringed with silver. From time to time puffs of wind bring to us a stench, sickly, penetrating, intolerable. It is as though we were in a charnel house.
All around us are bodies. One there is that is most horrible to look upon. Yet look upon it I must, despite my will. It is the body of a man lying near a shell hole; the head is detached from the trunk, and the blackened entrails protrude from a terrible wound in the abdomen. Near him lies a sergeant, the stock of his rifle still in his hands—the barrel and mechanism must have been blown far away. Another man lies with both legs parallel, yet the foot of one crosses the other; that leg must be shattered. And there are so many others! Our position compels us to look upon them, to breathe that fœtid air until nightfall.
And until nightfall I smoke and smoke in an attempt to stifle the soul-sickening miasma, that smell of the poor dead, lost on the field of battle, abandoned by their own who had not the time to throw even a few lumps of earth over them to hide them from the eyes of the living.
Throughout the day aeroplanes hovered over us. Shells fell also. But 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:
"Andthat'stheir 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.
Another steep descent! I take it lying flat on my back, creating a 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!