Towards evening, the men scatter over the fields in quest of straw to provide at least some protection against the night. They set off quickly, spreading out towards the woods over stubble fields in which piles of corn are standing to dry; they return heavy-footed, bending beneath the weight of tremendous sheaves, the stalks of which trail out behind them like a pig-tail; a soft rustling follows their steps.
But when the darkness of the night and deep silence enfold the bivouac, loud calls suddenly ring out. Sharp brief orders bring us quickly to our feet; the sections form up with some difficulty, for the men are still to some degree in the grip of their first sleep. Then the whole battalion moves down towards Mouilly, where, so we are informed, we are going to billet.
What time is it then? Ten o'clock already! We shall have to distribute rations, settle the men in the houses and barns, cook our meat and make coffee—it will be midnight before we shall be able to get to sleep again! And we must go back to the same trenches before dawn!
There is, however, some consolation in the thought that we are going to occupy a solidly-built house, to light a fire, a fire in a real grate for a change, to stretch ourselves out perhaps beneath an eiderdown. We may even be able to take off our boots—those boots of mine, those narrow boots which I have not so far been able to replace, and which torture me inexpressibly! To be warm, to sleep without one's equipment, one's toes quite free in one's socks!… It certainly won't be for long, but that is all the more reason why one should hurry up and get to sleep.
Here we are at the village. An endless buzzing fills it. Supply lorries, dark wagons besieged by the darkness which the light of flickering lanterns only serves to emphasize.
The quartermaster calls to us and leads us along a shadow-filled passage-way. The earth beneath our feet is greasy and slippery.
"To the left, turn to the left. I am holding the door," exclaims our guide.
He strikes a match and lights a bit of candle he takes from a pocket at the bottom of which a hundred other similar objects are constantly accumulating. Then, raising the light, and with a magnificent gesture:
"Here you are, gentlemen! You are at home!"
Our home for that night! That which once was a home! It is no more now than a soulless hovel, a camping-place for casual wayfarers like ourselves, who halt there for a few hours in passing to warm their frozen bodies, and then go on their way, indifferent, unregretful, leaving no trace of their hearts behind them within these old walls, old walls which enshrine the memory of hearts now still, the memory too of hearts not still, but far away in exile, who, remembering the old home, suffer!
Not long elapses before our haven is invaded. The fatigue party appears bringing up the rations for distribution. On a piece of tent canvas spread on the earth, coffee, sugar and rice are heaped in little piles. The corporal on duty, coatless, vestless, with his shirt opened to display a muscular white chest, calls up the sections one after the other. As the men approach, he indicates one of the little heaps with an almost imperceptible movement of his forefinger. Growls and reproaches move him not at all.
"That the sugar? A fat lot, isn't it? Why, you gave the third twice as much as this! It's a bit too thick!"
"There were five extra in the third," replies the corporal. "If you are not satisfied, you had better go and complain to the Ministry. That's all about it!"
During this time, Martin, a miner from the north, busies himself hacking to pieces on the table a huge quarter of beef. To assist him in this undertaking, he has no more than a pocket-knife, a pocket-knife with a safety-catch and a solid blade, which he has possessed since Vauxmarie. He tells us it was given to him by a Boche prisoner overjoyed at finding himself a prisoner, that it is a famous piece of goods, and that there is not another knife in all the company for chopping up a bit of beef to equal that Boche knife handled by him, Martin.
But Martin is a virtuoso where carving is concerned. He perches himself on top of the enormous mass of flesh, slices away at it with long straight strokes, hacks away savagely at resisting tendons, hunching his shoulders, clenching his teeth, flattening still more his polecat-like nose, handling the knife in a very frenzy, grunting, slashing and swearing. And when finally the task is achieved, a profoundly deep sigh of relief escapes Martin. He turns, screws up his eyes, widens his mouth with a smile distorted by the quid he is chewing, squirts a jet of brown saliva from the corner of his mouth on to the ground, and says in a self-satisfied tone, in the tone of a conqueror who, the fight finished, wishes to forget any asperity which may have marred it:
"Some butcher!"
In the fireplace, vine branches hiss and splutter; the flame leaps high, lighting up the chimney plaque, the lines and reliefs of which are deeply buried beneath an accumulation of soot. The fatigue party is gone; there remain with us only the messengers and orderlies. Pannechon investigates a dish, and approaches with some pieces of smoking meat on the point of his knife. Presle wipes the table with a cloth. The others, sitting on the floor, backs to the wall and knees drawn up to chins, smoke their pipes and expectorate.
Rice soup, broiled meat with cooked rice, boiling coffee: the dinner alone is worth the march to Mouilly! And there is a bed for us! A mattress and an eiderdown! We get into it quickly. On the floor beside us our empty boots yawn wide. The dispatch-rider, ensconced in a heap of straw brought in armfuls from the barn, is sleeping heavily and fairly rocking us with his measured snoring. In our turn, we too fall asleep, well replenished, the body at ease, feet unhampered, in a dense atmosphere compounded of the fumes of burnt fat, tobacco and human beings.
Saturday, September 26th.
Beneath the big trees behind the plateau.
Another company of our battalion has taken over our position beside the road. The morning is fresh and limpid. The men are shouting, singing, or laughing. The cooks have set themselves down near us and are busy preparing the morning meal. Around each of the fires men are sitting, absorbed and grave, holding slices of bread on pointed sticks improvised as toasting-forks, before the flames.
Toast! At once the joy and delectation of the campaigning soldier. Rusked, golden and brown, it crunches deliciously between the teeth; it melts in the mouth. There is not one of us but loves it. As soon as a fire is lit, wheresoever it may be, soon a dozen or more men are sitting around it, watching with almost touching seriousness the white bread on the end of their knives or sticks gradually assuming a delightfully warm colour, as if reflecting the flames and stealing something of their golden light. Some of the men vote for those thin slices which become crisp right through; others are all for the thick slices which, between crackling surfaces, still retain some of that steaming humidity as of loaves just withdrawn from a baker's oven. But in any shape or form, one and all love toast!
The coffee circulates. We are sitting, Porchon and I, at the foot of a giant plane tree, our backs against the smooth bole of it, our hips between two moss-covered roots which rise out of the ground like the arms of an armchair. We have stolen a branch from a cherry tree and are trying to make pipes for ourselves. "Necessity is the mother of industry;" and hence our labours. The making of a pipe, however, requires some skill.
Bernadot, the cook, has carved himself one which is quite a masterpiece: stem straight and drawing well, bowl smooth and deep. He has even gone so far as to carve a comrade's face out of the wood: enormous eyes in a small head, grimacing mouth, and aggressive beard, thrust well forward like the prow of a ship.
Porchon, by sheer force of will (he is scarlet, and the veins on his forehead stand prominently forth!) has so far obtained rather indecisive, but nevertheless encouraging, results. His piece of wood is slowly shaping and deepening, and unmistakably assuming something of the appearance of a pipe.
As for me, I have already been compelled to excuse three spoilt attempts by pointing out that cherry wood is hard, my knife blunt, and my fingers sore. Undeterred by these failures, however, I am starting once more, when, without the slightest warning, three high explosives burst simultaneously close to us, but rather too short. Others follow immediately, flying high, and three plumes of black smoke rise from the shattered earth a hundred yards behind us beyond the wood; range too long! Yet again come a third batch, but this time they drop far from us, exploding away to the right, uprooting a few small pines and throwing them into the air together with tremendous lumps of earth. Before us; behind us; to the right of us! It seems almost prophetic. We rise and pass through the undergrowth without haste, away to the left.
We are now out of all danger and can even afford to enjoy ourselves. One would say that the Boche artillerymen are trying to make their last shells fall in the holes dug by the first; they must be firing without any other object than to consume the regulation amount of ammunition. All that remains for us to do is to lie low until they have finished.
There is the noise of branches being thrust violently aside, of someone running over the fallen leaves, followed by a long-drawn call which resounds through the wood:
"Hullo!…"
Someone in our ranks cries: "Here!"
The steps approach, and very shortly the face of a man emerges from the cover. He is breathless and greatly upset.
"A doctor," he says. "Where can I find a doctor? One is wanted instantly…."
"What has happened?"
The man replies hurriedly, almost incoherently:
"It is Favreau … cyclist of the 8th … a leg almost shot away about a minute since … the first three shells which fell behind the road … he is bleeding to death … his leg must be tied up … he is going out, he is certainly going out…."
The doctor whose services the man has impressed, tells us when he returns that he found the wounded man in a dying condition:
"The femoral severed, the leg almost torn away. I made a ligature and got him away on an ambulance; but he will never arrive alive at Mouilly."
It is five o'clock in the evening. We are on the way to the advance posts.
We march through a narrow clearing which is no more than a ribbon of black earth between piles of dead leaves on the one side, and all-invading moss on the other. The thickets are dense and filled with a sea-green penumbra. The sinking sun is directly behind us. Its failing light streams over the moving file of men, leaving golden reflections in the tin bowls fastened to their packs. The heads of the men rise and fall with their unequal steps, causing an undulation to pass from one end of the section to the other.
There is no talking. Our feet make no noise on that moist earth, in which each nail leaves a clear imprint. Occasionally, a timid twittering is heard amid the silence, as faint and self-effacing as the failing sun-rays gliding into the undergrowth between the leaves of the trees.
Suddenly the surly detonation of a 75 shatters the peace; soon all the guns hidden in the wood intone a brutal chorus; the clamour envelops us; each shot seems to hurtle past with a violence sufficient to burst the gun firing it. Then a murmuring echo flies from valley to valley, gradually becoming weaker and weaker until swamped by the tremendous outburst of another salvo. To all this noise, however, we are strangely used. It seems in some curious way to mingle with the material things about us, to harmonize with them, to belong as it were to the melancholy of the dying day. We no longer jump as the guns speak; we no longer hear them; we are conscious only of the curious melody of the echoes which decrease and decrease, then sound anew with increased force, decrease again and increase again, finally to die away in a sad, tremulous murmur which spreads far away over the earth.
The evening draws on. We are approaching the edge of the wood. Beside the road lie some tattered knapsacks, some shattered bayonets; a little further on blood-stained bandages are lying on the moss, shirts, a flannel waist-band, some nameless rags, the lining of a waistcoat; further on again the body of a dead man appears stretched to his full length, face turned to the earth.
All along the edge of the clearing are shell-holes at almost regular intervals; enormous roots which have been shattered display their pale wounds. Then the shell-holes concentrate, all of them being still within the clearing, mute evidences of an admirably-directed fire. The men affirm that our artillery placed a barrage along this marked line on the evening of the 24th. They have such simple faith, these men, in the power of our guns! It may or may not have been so; personally I prefer to believe that it was so.
We halt a little before attaining the edge of the wood in a clearing surrounded by giant trees whose waving tops are lost to sight in the darkening sky.
There is a vague odour of corpses, which from time to time becomes oppressive. A few steps from our little shelter a corpse is resting against a pile of faggots in an attitude of relaxation and peace. The man was eating when killed instantaneously by a shell; he still holds in his hand a little tin fork; his waxlike face reveals no sign of pain; at his feet lie an opened tin of meat and an iron plate—an object which reminds me of those in which day-scholars at communal schools bring their dinners, and which have letters of the alphabet and figures engraved round the edge.
Flimsy and singularly draughty is our little shelter. Two pointed stakes support a branch as centre beam; other branches, cut at random and of all sizes and shapes, rest against this central beam and so make a hut. I should call it a roof without walls, decorated with disconcerting gaps, admitting the light of heaven where least expected. Someone has commenced to fill in the interstices; lumps of clay have been plastered on the framework, from the ground to halfway up; thus, when one lies down one is protected a little; we would, in fact, be quite snug if this plaster or clay covered the whole hut.
To do that will be our task to-morrow. This evening it is too late; the night is already upon us. Our last duty is to eat our cold repast, a slice of bread, a morsel of meat, which we have brought with us.
Sunday, September 27th.
I resolved this morning to go and see the adjutant whom I am due to relieve with the fall of the day. I leave the clearing towards midday, taking with me a dispatch-bearer. The weather remains the same as yesterday. The cold dawn mist has evaporated little by little; a few dewdrops still remain scintillating in the sun's rays.
A big boundary stone, covered with lichen lies in my path; two tracks branch away from this stone. My companion, who stumbles against the stone, looks at me in doubtful perplexity.
"But there are two ways! Which is ours?"
I reflect briefly. The left of our line extends until it joins the 6th. On the right we touch the 5th, which guards the road. The road is some distance away, but that must be our direction, and so I stride along the path to the right. Ah! Ah! Stop a little … it is uncomfortably open just here. I did not know we were so near the edge of the wood. From a trench, two heads have arisen, as well as a hand, waved violently. The combination has proved sufficient to induce me to moderate my gait. Stooping and half running, I come up to the line of infantrymen. A joyous voice reaches me:
"Ah! there you are, Lieutenant! It is quite all right here. Only one must be careful not to show oneself because of shrapnel … you want to see the Adjutant? He is over there with Gendre and Lebret."
"Thank you, Lormerin. Nothing has happened during the night?"
"What do you think! All they have done is to lie still. As I tell you, we are quite blissful here … you will find him ten or fifteen yards away to the right."
Of course I have to cover at least fifty, stumbling over feet, and doing the acrobat to pass the men squatting in the trench. At last I see Gendre and Lebret. Gendre, who perceives me first, points out to me a man lying down.
"Don't ask him to make room for you," he says. "He would not hear you; he is dead. You will have to step over him."
Then, stooping down, he calls along the trench:
"Adjutant, the Lieutenant is here."
From the earth rises a groan; a formless mass of straw moves and rises; the head of the Adjutant appears, his hair dishevelled and full of pieces of straw, his eyes weary from lack of sleep, his beard untrimmed and also full of dirt. The Adjutant seems very ill! The thinness of his cheeks is marked; a brown stain colours his eyelids; a dirty livid tint has spread over his face.
"Hullo! What is this then, Roux! Are things not going well with you?"
"I? I am about done, that is clear. Aches all over, chest stove in, a horse fever … it won't be long before I am sent down."
He rises to his feet, groaning again, his hands pressed to the small of his back, his chest huddled together, and seats himself on the edge of the trench at a spot which is protected by a bush.
"Sit here beside me," he says, "and I will point things out to you."
Before us extends an untilled plain bounded on the further side of the valley by steep heights. Without doubt the village lies at the bottom of the valley, but from where I am sitting it is not possible to see the houses; only one or two isolated farms. To the left, the wood forms a pronounced salient which attracts the eye. A dense cluster of pines has thrust its way right into the middle of the plain, where it forms a splash of sombre colour, opaquely green, but astonishingly fresh and distinct against the seared yellows of the surroundings.
"It is not occupied," says the Adjutant. "A patrol beat it out last night; it is quite quiet this side. From here I should say it is about six or seven hundred yards distant. The Boches must be just at the edge of the valley. I should say they are a thousand yards away, so there's plenty of time to see them coming if they should take it into their heads to attack…. That's nothing—I am more worried about that clump of pines. I don't think it would be a bad idea to send out a few men every night to prevent the Germans stealing up in the darkness and falling right on top of us one morning. That, at least, is what I think."
He raises his forefinger as a rifle shot rings out from the enemy's lines, followed a moment later by a second and fainter detonation, echoing the first.
"Ping…. Pang!" he says. "That is some idiot who has been amusing himself since day-break. Every ten minutes he sends four bullets to four different points in our line. The second should come over here."
And sure enough the Boche's rifle speaks again. The faint crack echoes while the leaden messenger flies high and whistling through the still air.
"You see what sort of a fool he is," comments the Adjutant. "He must be firing at the larks! But there is something more serious I must point out to you. Follow me closely. That corner of the pines to the right there … you see it? … Good! Now three fingers still to the right, there is a large bush in a hollow with some brambles before it and two solitary trees behind it. You see it?… Good! Well, raise your glasses and watch for a few moments. You will probably learn something."
I level my glasses and cover the bushes as directed. I see the under part of the leaves, bright and brilliant; the upper surface, sombre and dead. The upper ones are clear-cut and distinct against a sky, almost white; below there are open spaces which permit the light to filter through, but lower down, nearer the earth, the leaves are incredibly thick, presenting an impenetrable curtain.
The Adjutant continues: "You will see to the left of the bush a kind of natural screen; it is there he waits."
Scarcely had he finished speaking when I saw at the precise spot indicated by him, a head surmounted by a flat helmet. It rose swiftly and disappeared even more quickly, plunging down behind the leaves. I turn towards the Adjutant, who is silently laughing.
"So you have seen them!" he exclaims. "Or rather you have seen one of them … there are two of them hidden there. Since I first marked them this morning, they have become almost like old acquaintances; at any rate, I have been able to gather what their little plan is. The man who just showed himself is the spy. His companion is squatting on the earth beside a field telephone. All the spy can ferret out with his eyes, is transmittedillico. When evening comes, the telephonist will pack his little box, tuck it under his arm, wind the wire on to its bobbin and the day's work will be done. You can send men out to the nest during the night, but you won't find those cunning blackbirds there."
"But why," I ask, "do you not clear out the bush? Isn't it rather thick to let those brutes play their dirty game right under your nose?"
"Why? It is a case for consideration, you understand. If I fire upon those two Boches, within five minutes shrapnel will be hailing down upon us, and I am certain to have wounded and killed upon my hands. I prefer to keep my men well hidden and undisturbed while the Boche twists his neck out of joint, running the risk always of picking up a bullet, without discovering more than the tail of a blue coat. But all the same, if you are here to-morrow and the bush is still occupied, you can fire if you will, and perhaps you will be right. To-day, however, I am ill, and, with your permission, I vote for tranquillity."
"We'll let it go at that, on the understanding that not one of your men shows himself while it is still light. You are not permitting smoking, of course?"
"I do know at least a little about the business," answered the Adjutant with melancholy. "If I could only scotch one or two of them to cure them I would be content. Ping! Pang! do you hear it, there's my brother idiot recommenced! Ah, well, let it pass. Peace until to-night, anyhow! I am going to crawl into my straw again."
A shell bursting in the clearing heralds my return to the little shelter. The Quartermaster calls out from the interior:
"At least, Lieutenant, no one can say you don't announce yourself! Something like a gong that!"
He turns his back to a veritable volley of shells which falls into the open space. The fracas is terrific, fragments of metal fly in all directions before the opening to the shelter with a remarkably unpleasant "frrt."
"Oh! Oh!" cries Porchon. "Those are 105's. They are serving us well!"
"If they continue," jokes the Quartermaster, "they are going to demolish our little house. This roof is only proof against 77's. Look out!"
Yet another avalanche behind us. A volley of fragments strikes the branches sharply, followed immediately by an immense creaking and cracking, a violent agitation of high branches, and the reverberating crash of a tree falling.
We are about to be called upon to endure a scientifically regulated bombardment. The men are not pleased. I put my head outside to see them lying upon the moss, scattered in widely-separated groups of two or three. They all have their kit on their back and await unmoved the end of this sprinkling.
The shells in their fury shatter the undergrowth, laying bare the black soil beneath. They create an ear-splitting din, flying across the clearing, now growing distant, now returning to burst directly over our heads, tearing down entire trees, hurling roots into the air, scattering the thicket to the four winds. But they strike blindly and unseeing like maddened, unintelligent brutes; their fury, which should be terrible, becomes simply grotesque, a mere impotent frenzy.
When the inferno about us dies down a little, one can hear the shrapnel mewing over the first line of our section. And when I remember the Adjutant and his extravagant precautions, I feel an almost irresistible desire to laugh.
The moment comes when, the last shell having sent its leaden charge over us, complete silence again falls over the woods. There follow several seconds of inaction, during which one becomes conscious of muscles still instinctively shrinking, of the throbbing of the blood in the arteries. Then here and there heads pop up. Soon the men are sitting up ridding themselves anew of their equipment, rising to their feet, and stretching themselves. That little interlude is ended!
Night overtook me in the cutting while I was leading my poilus to relieve the Adjutant. Beneath the trees darkness reigns supreme, a blackness that seems almost palpable, which our eyes strive vainly to pierce. It is as if a wall surrounds us which advances with each step forward we take; it amazes us that we do not strike either feet or face against it; we thrust forth an arm to touch it, but we never succeed in touching it, for it recedes and vanishes before our very finger-tips. Always beyond our reach, yet always there before us, imprisoning us.
I halt my men at the edge of the wood. The shadows here are less dense. Immediately before us is the unpeopled space of the open. As one by one we pick out the vague forms of the bushes, it almost seems as if they had moved to look at us before recomposing themselves to slumber.
I jump down into the trench where I detect a man lying down and grasp his shoulder, but he does not move. I shake him, more and more violently, and all unprotestingly he permits me to do so. How the fellow sleeps! Then I bring my face so close that I touch his. Ugh!… A skin clammy and cold, over a deadly soft flesh. This is a corpse! The ghastliness of the encounter sends a clutching to my heart. Carefully I step over the body and advance a few paces, calling softly. After a time a voice replies. I walk towards it, my feet rustling the straw; near me I hear invisible movements—now at least I am in the midst of the living!
"What section is this?" I ask.
"The third section, Lieutenant."
"I require a man to lead me to the Adjutant."
"Present! Letertre."
"Good! Let us get out of the trench or we'll never make progress. I will follow you."
While we march along, whipped by clusters of leaves, torn by embracing thorns, Letertre questions me:
"You did not stumble over a dead body before you chanced on us, did you?… Yes! Ah, well! That is number one point they have marked. There are plenty of other bodies further along between the 6th and us; but coming from the clearing and descending into the trench, you fall directly on top of that one, who is the last of our file. You should then turn carefully to the right. Count thirty or thirty-five steps…. Having done so, you will find a shirt we have spread on the ground. That represents the second marked point and means that you should take a half-turn to the left. Just there the line advances a little. Walking straight ahead from that point, you would enter the wood and lose yourself. Hallo! Here is the shirt."
A faint white blot lay at our feet; had the blackness been less opaque, it might have been a ray of veiled moonlight filtering through the trees. Letertre continued:
"You are following me, are you not, Lieutenant? Now twenty-five more steps bring us to a second body. The journey is almost ended then, provided one does not stray away to the right. Ten yards or so alone separate us from the second section. By daylight, of course, it is all very simple, and one can walk boldly ahead; but if these little precautions are neglected by night, one may lose oneself a hundred times over in the cursed forest…. Now where is that body? It is impossible to pass it without knowing. You understand?… It is difficult to see. Ah, there it is! This way a little or you will tread right on it—he is lying all over the place. All right?… Good! We must keep well to the right here or we shall find ourselves up to the eyes in those brambles, which appear to be nothing from here, but which, nevertheless, rise higher than your head. And now, Lieutenant, we have reached our destination. I will go back again if you have no further need of me…. Good night!"
I find the Adjutant still buried in the straw. Faithful Lebret, who cooks for him and never leaves his side, has thrown over him a covering found at the bottom of a cupboard back in Mouilly. I can distinguish the vague whiteness of it in the trench.
"I am sorry you should have come all the way up to relieve me," says the Adjutant. "It was careless of me not to explain to you the marks and signs to keep you on the proper road when you were here earlier. But I was in such a rotten condition, I did not think of it. Moreover, you know, I was no longer expecting you."
While addressing me, he is shivering with fever and the cold. All the time he talks his teeth chatter audibly.
"Just get your men ready," I reply. "I am going to fetch mine up immediately. With the best will in the world, however, I can't place them in five minutes."
"Listen!" he says, in the same shaky voice. "I would much prefer you to wait for daybreak. The night is drawing on; I have made all dispositions, and, after all, one place is about as good as another. I would rather remain here a few hours longer than go through the muddle and upset which it will be impossible to avoid if we arrange the relief now. And I am sure my men are one with me in this."
"I agree most willingly. But it is your turn to pass into reserve, you know!"
"Bah! Everything is quiet. The Boches won't come out of their holes. Pristi! What a night! Darker than the throat of a wolf…. Until the morning then, Lieutenant?"
"I shall be back shortly before daybreak, Roux."
Monday, September 28th.
Before the dawn this morning, the whole battalion was relieved. We retired to the second line a mile to the rear. We are still close to the Boches, however, so close in fact that this cannot be regarded as a real rest; in case of attack we must sustain the shock together with the first line. Although, however, it cannot justly be described as more than a half-rest, it is, none the less, not to be despised. Hidden deep in the forest, we are invisible even to reconnoitring aeroplanes; we can come and go freely, lounge outside the trench, return to it only in case of an alarm.
Whistling, my hands in my pockets, I stroll as far as a neighbouring cross-road. I find the Captain there, smoking his eternal cigarettes rolled in extraordinarily long cigarette-papers. He points out to me a dead German stretched out lower down the slope. Someone has covered the man's face with a handkerchief, neatly folded his great-coat and placed it beside him. The man's unbuttoned waistcoat reveals a bloodstained shirt. His hands, very white now, still seem to be supple and living: they have but just relaxed after the final death struggle; they are not the stiff and rigid hands of those who have been dead many hours and are already turning to dust.
"He has just died?" I ask.
"Five minutes ago! He was found in the woods and brought here just as we arrived. He fell in an assault three days ago, and his men were unable to take him back with them. Three days and three nights lying between the lines! He was dying as much from cold and exhaustion as from his wounds when one of our patrols found him at daybreak. A fine, big fellow, isn't he?"
He was indeed, and well groomed, too. I had not noticed that at first. His uniform was a shade darker than that of an ordinary private; his trousers were fastened at the knees; his high, soft leather boots revealed a pair of muscular legs.
"An officer?" I ventured.
"Lieutenant of reserve, and probably commanding a company. But I hadn't either the time or inclination to question him. He had asked in French for an officer speaking German. They brought me. When I came up, he was lying beside the trench, eyes filming, lips blue, dying then but perfectly clear in his mind. He entrusted to my care some personal papers and letters which he requested me to forward to his people, advising them of his death through the intermediary of the Red Cross. He dictated their address and thanked me; then he let his head fall and was dead without even a sigh. A real man, that!"
I regained my trench sunk in melancholy thought. No longer did I see the forest about me, beautiful in its last and most splendid garb. Here is the trench, a narrow ditch between two vertical walls of earth. A few scattered men are fast asleep at the bottom of it. The night will see it peopled from end to end. And away beyond the edge of the wood there are more and still more trenches like this, one and all filled with soldiers. Further away, over the plain, are other trenches, but they are filled with soldiers who are not like ours. We dig, but over there, where the men in the spiked helmets teem, they too dig, and more and better than we do. I have watched them at work, these human moles. Along the Cuisy valley, I one day watched them through my glasses for hours, and saw them handling pick and shovel with a vigour that knew no pause or slackening. As soon as they can safely call a halt, the Boches instantly dig their holes and take refuge in them. If they advance, they entrench themselves, to ensure continued possession of the ground they have won. If they retreat, yet again they entrench in order the better to repulse the assaults hurled against them. And day by day I see, facing our lines, these entrenchments grow and extend, escalating hills, plunging into valleys, crossing plains; deep trenches with their parapets stark and clear against the sun, with their meshed miles of barbed wire rising high before the machine-gun emplacements.
First we checked them, then we rolled them back. In the ensuing pause, both armies are now regaining their breath. Panting from their recent exertions, too weary yet once again to hurl themselves against the barrier we present and pass onwards over our bodies, they have set themselves down on the soil of France, which they still occupy.
And that they may remain in greater security and comfort, they have set up their barriers against us. Ingeniously, methodically, they accumulate and multiply the obstacles. Nothing is left to chance; every yard of ground they hold will have its guard of rifles; behind each hilltop there will be big guns. There is no gap, no weak point. From Flanders to Alsace, from the North Sea to the frontiers of Switzerland, one immense, stupendous fort is being created, which we must shatter before we can pass.
When may we hope to pass it? October is already here; very shortly now we shall have the storms, the snows, the rains, all those elements that combine to discount mobility. If we are to hold on, we must dig as they do; must learn to construct shelters of branches with sand-bagged roofs. We must teach ourselves to wait without weariness through the long, grey days and the black, cold, endless nights. It is going to be a hard business! When one is hungry, one can tighten one's belt; when idle, write letters or dream; when cold, light a fire, or stamp one's feet, or thrust hands into pockets, or breathe on one's fingers. But when the heart, growing heavy, begins to sink into one of those unfathomable seas of despondency and despair; when one's sufferings arise not from things physical but from oneself, where may one look for succour then? How escape those black hours? The close of a lugubrious day represents the last word in depression. Is not the dying away of a day, of one more day, always sad, with the light fading regretfully as though pregnant with memory of so many long hours of light?
Pondering these things, I forget the Boches dug in opposite us, the watch we should keep, the bloody struggle that must inevitably ensue sooner or later when we shall have acquired both the will and the strength to overthrow them and trample them to the dust. For a great trial is descending upon me, and it is one I cannot escape—the tremendous struggle against the perils and lurking evils of idleness. On the very threshold, I already tremble at what lies ahead. May I always be on my guard against the insidious ambushes before my footsteps, and find myself on the return of the hour of action with all my strength and courage undiminished!
Two shells falling shatter my reflections. A man drops on to his back crying: "M——!" There is something for me to do here, and no mistake. Towards the cross-roads some horses burst into shrill neighs of fear, their drivers swearing and loudly cracking their whips. Then two grey wagons appear, tilting on to two wheels as they swing towards the trench, the drivers lashing the spume-whitened horses with all their might. Into the woods they plunge, wheels thundering, creaking, rattling. They are the supply wagons, galloping madly for safety. The fatigue party will have several miles further to walk to-night!
"Everyone take cover in the trench!"
These shells descend upon us without warning. I was watching one of my men ramming the tobacco into his pipe at a moment when two more burst right on top of us: the hissing shell, the grimace of the man and the plunge he made, the hail of bullets amid the branches, combined to create a single impression of an attack evil and unforeseen. It is too swift; the instinctive reflex action one's body makes to protect itself occurs too late. The shell which comes with a shriek to herald its approach is a very different thing; that which explodes immediately over your head without the faintest sign of warning is both more dangerous and nerve-shaking; for a long time following these unexpected explosions the hands continue to tremble.
There they go again! Is the visitation going to endure the whole day? Every ten minutes or so we are being sprinkled with shrapnel, followed by high-explosive shells, which make the earth tremble and quiver. And they are all 77's. The firing too is direct, as a rifle is aimed, and therefore almost unbearable. Judging by the tremendous speed at which their shells arrive, they must be fired from very close at hand; the Boches must have brought a couple of guns up into their first line and are operating beneath our very noses as it were. I would not mind betting, indeed, that they have planted the two ugly little beasts right in Saint Rémy itself! Our outposts will have marked and ranged them at the very first shot, however. And so, thanks to a superb and perfected system of communication, it will not be long before they are either demolished or muzzled. Meanwhile, I know quite well their savage barking will continue until the Boche gunners become tired of the game. That is a thorn in our flesh of which we cannot for the moment rid ourselves, and so we must remain until nightfall, huddled up in the trench, our knees up to our chins, denied the liberty and freedom that lie beneath the trees.
When night does arrive at last, it finds us completely exhausted—backs aching, legs incredibly stiff. Porchon and I have been tightly jammed together at the bottom of the trench—a place not remarkable for spaciousness, and made more uncomfortable by the sharp stones littering the ground. My revolver stuck in my ribs; my flask in my hip; one of Porchon's knees was in my stomach. To sleep on the hard ground, good! We have been well broken in to that. But here the accumulation of discomforts becomes almost unendurable. An involuntary movement and Porchon groans woefully, for now he has both my knees in his stomach. What a posture to be in! What a hole to find oneself in! As soon as one moves, one crushes one's neighbour; as soon as he moves, he crushes you. Leave the trench and lie down on the dead leaves? But there are the shells, and there is the cold to penetrate to your very marrow, and keep you always conscious of your own misery!
I have never before, however, encountered any trench quite as bad as this one. The time draws on; I woo sleep and call myself a fool for my pains. Still, of many evils choose the least and pay the shot as cheerfully as possible. So I wedge all my equipment, including my revolver, flask, glasses, map-case, between my stomach and my thighs, and in this way relieve the strain on my back. Afterwards I extract the stones which project unreasonably and fling them carefully over the parapet. Things are slightly improved by these manœuvres, and, affectionately clasping my miscellaneous collection to my bosom, I fall into a doze.
Tuesday, September 29th.
The aforesaid two filthy little guns have been harassing us nearly all day. This evening, however, we evacuated that shell-riddled and particularly undesirable corner of the landscape. Already Mouilly is behind us, and here is Moulin-Bas, the stream filled with rushes, the sea of slender trees, the large farmhouse with the tiled roof near the cross-roads. A sunset crimson, but cold, marking the end of a glorious winter's day. The lines of the heights are cut stark and clear against a soft sky, darkening little by little, as though under protest. At the end of the road a spire uplifts its delicate silhouette; in a field are some 75's, which, in contrast with the houses, seem no more dangerous than pretty little playthings.
Halt at the approach to the village, while commands pass down the lines.
"Dress by the right!… Ground arms!…"
Some of the men sneer a little. At the end of the section preceding us, a fair little man with crimson cheeks, whose puttees, very badly rolled, sag over his boots, taps his pipe lightly against the stock of his rifle, places it in his pocket, spits a last time, and growls:
"There you are! We are certainly going to sign peace to-morrow! We might be re-entering barracks after a march. Tighten straps! Heads erect! Fasten your eyes on the clock tower! All, but joking apart … we are at war!"
The corps commander in person appears on horseback, and he is not well pleased with things:
"No smartness about them … slovenly … nothing military…."
With arms ported and marching as if on parade we enter at last into the promised land. As we pass each corner of a road, a company debouches and hurries off to its quarter. The 7th turns to the left and goes off towards Rupt.
The men are pleased with their billets, and say so. The barns are spacious and warm and full of hay. The pork-butcher's wife who sells the pig's-head brawns, those brawns covered with a golden jelly which positively glide down one's throat, has her shop in the middle of our domain. And twenty yards beyond the last house, the stream spreads out to form a peaceful pond, preserved and kept clean by a mere trickle. Could one ask for anything better in which to wash one's linen?
We are already installed, rifles racked along the sides of the barn, when the battalion adjutant thrusts his face and pipe around our door. I shall not attempt to set down the language that ensued; but, briefly, we had to un-install ourselves. Farewell, thou golden-jellied brawn, farewell!
We are set down for duty in the vicinity of a sawmill. Logs of timber of equal lengths, planks already sawn, are piled outside the sheds. We have to set a sentry, bayonet fixed, to help the cooks preserve the timber from the depredations of those frail mortals who might be tempted to help themselves and merrily burn the mill's stock. A temptation not difficult to understand!
"And now," says Porchon to me, "we have got to fit ourselves out again! There must surely be some precious things about here; but perhaps in an hour or so they will carry them off."
There ensues the usual chase for rations. For that business one should possess the scent of a hound to worry out obscure corners; and diplomacy, to reach the hearts of these peasants and overcome their hesitation—for they always hesitate, never freely parting with whatever they may have for sale, hoping that another purchaser may come along and offer more than you are offering.
A freemasonry which tends to mutual benefit exists among campaigning comrades:
"Look here! Down that lane, the third house to the left, the one with the green shutters, there is an old woman who sells eggs…."
Let us go and investigate! The old woman, horrible to look upon, dry as the seared vine, toothless, filthy, untidy strands of grey hair hanging about her face, raises her arm to the sky and calls upon the Holy Virgin to witness that she has nothing, nothing at all…. We mention a price, a ridiculous, extortionate figure. It is plain magic; the arm drops instantly; her voice descends an octave; and then the old miser glides along a passage-way thick with fowl-droppings, bends her body to pass through a low doorway, emerges with caution, carrying something in her apron. And when she approaches again, half a dozen eggs are clutched in her claw-like hands—they are white as milk in contrast with her dirty, lined palms. They are still warm when she drops them into our pockets. In a lowered voice, with lips stiffly drawn over her bare gums, she says:
"Do not tell anyone about it. Perhaps I shall have some more for you when my hens have laid. But don't breathe a word about it. Mind, not a word!"
Porchon has discovered some plum jam. Jam?—it is rather a compound of quinces scarcely sweetened.
"I paid seven sous a quarter for this mixture," he informs me. "The pigs who sold it to me had two enormous copper cans full of it on their counter, and they emptied them in half an hour at the same price."
The robbers! Before the war, these quinces were left to ferment in hogsheads. Each hogshead gave a few pints of brandy at forty sous, and the pulp of the fruit was then thrown into the fire. It is not an augury of good times ahead!