Rêve de valse, rêve d’un jour,Valse de rêve, valse d’amour.
Rêve de valse, rêve d’un jour,Valse de rêve, valse d’amour.
Rêve de valse, rêve d’un jour,
Valse de rêve, valse d’amour.
“He’s hit,” Sergeant Lace cries suddenly.
And indeed he is hit.
The wings waver, bend, warp, and abruptly fall in a spiral, while an immense burst of flame, which the speed increases immoderately, rises and marks the limpid blue of the sky with a long red thread which dissolves in the heavens in a trail of gold.
With a noise of broken iron, tearing canvas, explosions which recall fireworks, the machine smashes into the fields, right where the last bomb had destroyed the peaceful herd of cows a moment ago.
We run from all directions, but there is nothing to see. The aeroplane was completely destroyed by the fall and the fire, and ends by burning itself up.
It is impossible to get the charred body of the aviator out from the smoking ruins.
Grizard is on the scene with his gun crew, and examines his target.
“Good shot!”
We congratulate him and begin to go back. But Grizard is a comedian who knows his business and who has perhaps played a rôle in the circuitsin faraway provinces, and he is not a man to miss an effect.
He stands by the roadside in the courteous attitude of Cyrano de Bergerac pointing out the way to the Count de Guiche after amusing him for a quarter of an hour. And Grizard, who has amused us for a quarter of an hour, but in another way, points out the road and says:
“The quarter of an hour is past, Messieurs. I release you.”
The regiment is holding the first line trenches in front of the La Vache woods. When the company is in the lines, the echelons, the war train, and the clerks remain behind in the cantonment at Morcourt.
Morcourt is a delightful little village hidden in the green meadows under the poplars on the banks of the canal of the Somme. Morcourt was once a hamlet of one hundred and fifty houses and their flower gardens, but to-day it is a real village where there are crowded together a population of more than ten thousand men. More than twenty thousand horses are bivouacked in the neighboring villages of Proyart, Lamotte, Bayonvillers, which have no water, and they come to Morcourt twice a day to dry up the watering places.
Our quarters here are in the open fields. Everybody can’t have covered shelters. Themajor of the cantonment showed us the field and said,
“Try to make shift with that.”
And we did.
Less than an hour later the grass was mowed, ground down by our haltered horses, who devoured it with their sharp teeth.
Beyond, on the edge of the road, in impeccable alignment our sixteen ammunition wagons are parked.
Behind are the horses, the huts of the four sections of the echelon, and the war train.
And at the end the four large caissons of ammunition and the munition wagons.
Burette and Morin, the clerks, cannot make a simple tent do. More comfortable quarters are necessary for their work.
After a day of hunting around Burette came back to camp, radiant.
“Mon vieux, I’ve found something wonderful. We’ll live like princes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Some fine people. It’s next to the mayor’s.”
“Mince!You look well. Did they offer you the house?”
“You’ll see. It’s better than that.”
“Better than that!”
We stamped our feet in impatience. Such a windfall is worth while. If we stay here a whole month we shall be well lodged.
I was already rejoicing in the thought of being able to build a comfortable bed.
Saux, on whom devolved the delicate and most often difficult care of our getting moved, foresaw innumerable conveniences.
Morin alone remained sceptical. He is that temperamentally.
He sees no good in this north country. He has been morose ever since he left Provence, and he won’t smile again until he hears tinkle in his ravished ears the familiar evocative sonorities of Avignon, Arles, Miramas, Le Pas des Lanciers, L’Estaque. The sun, the blue sky, the blue sea!
And how right Morin is!
The sun exaggerates, but in openness and beauty. The fogs are deceitful.... Far better to be dazzled than deceived....
Morin distrusts the splendid cantonment of Morcourt. He knows those at Proyart, Chuignolles,Minacourt, Virginy ... and others besides....
Oh, for the commonest hut, the most modest cabin, ruined though it be and sordid, but haloed in the sun, flooded with clear light, bathed in the silver foliage of the olives, planted down there on the rocks of Pointe-Rouge or of L’Estaque, beside the sea, sheltered in the valleys of Camions, or perched on the hills of Allauch! How much better it is, how much better worth living in, than the most sumptuous castles buried in the damp forests where the stones are green under the moss.
High on a hill on the road to Harbonnières opens the courtyard of a farm.
Burette leads us there in triumph. It is his discovery. He crosses the court, and opens majestically a small low door, with a barrel on each side in which stunted geraniums vegetate miserably.
It is an old pig-sty!
Scraped and washed with a lot of water, it will be habitable. We’ll make something out of it. Burette borrows a long table and at once covers it with his innumerable account books. We make our beds against the walls.
Thirty ammunition caissons placed in double rows, a mattress stuffed with hay, a tent cloth, two covers—that’s our camp.
The corner at the back falls to Morin. It is the longest way of the room and he can stretch out his whole tall form at his ease, which he rarely finds it possible to do in the cantonments.
Night reserves various distractions for us.
First, the rats.
The rats descended from the dove-cote in a dense horde and made incursions on our haversacks, in mad gallops over our bed clothes—gigantic rats with interminable tails!
They used the open space between the beds as their lists and had real battles, biting, crying and moaning. The routed fugitives jumped over Morin’s body to get to shelter and he shivered in terror.
Burette decided to try extreme measures, for hunting them with shoes has no effect. So he begins to sing one of the most beautiful tunes in his repertoire called “A Montparnasse.” It must have thirty verses, all ending in an interminable “nasse ... nasse ... nasse.”
It seems that it was a triumph of the boulevards,and no true lover of songs should be ignorant of it. Very possibly.
The rats must have shared my opinion, however, for they seemed to like the great triumph of the boulevards only moderately, but they remained quiet while the song lasted.
That song had another virtue, too. It put me to sleep and Burette as well. His voice dragged more and more, and grew more feeble, when a terrible cry pierced the night.
Morin shouted in terror.
We jumped for our electric lamps.
Their dim rays brighten the darkness.
Above Morin’s head, through a hole in the mud wall which separates us from the neighboring stable, a calf—a young calf—gracious and smiling, has stuck his great red head, and has imprinted a caress on the face of our sleeping friend with his milky tongue.
“The salaud! He has bitten me,” grumbled Morin, wiping off the dribble which stuck to his face.
“Get out, animal.”
But the calf was insensible to this harsh invitation. He continued to endure the flashes fromour lights with a placid eye, and, drawn no doubt by Burette’s song, which seemed to him like familiar news, he began to bellow, waking up the whole stable, and the cows added their powerful voices to that of their offspring.... We slept no more that night.
The days which followed were not all exactly alike.
The lieutenant sent us word by a cyclist to come and see him in the lines and get the list of changes to be made among the men and horses.
We started at daylight and went in the company wagon as far as Froissy. When we got there, Morin told me that he knew a wonderful short cut which avoided the great détour by Éclusier, and led directly to the communication trench. Walking in the wet meadows where we sank in up to our ankles had little attraction for me. I preferred the hard highway and the towpath, but Morin knew the country and claimed that we would only have several hundred yards of bad walking and then we would reach a practicable path.
We walked more than an hour. The fog grewthicker and thicker, limiting our horizon to a few steps. There was never anyone in sight.
“My dear Morin,” I said, “if your short cut is as wonderful as you say, it must be known. But at the moment it seems somewhat deserted to me.”
Morin did not reply. There was no doubt that he wasn’t certain of his way, but he did not dare to admit his mistake.
The weather inclined one to melancholy.
We walked on in silence. The path was very narrow and we were obliged to walk one behind the other.
A sinister grumbling seemed to shatter the heavens above the fog.
Instinctively we hurled ourselves to the ground into the wet grass and mud.
The shell passed over us and buried itself in the ground without exploding.
“This quarter hardly seems the safest in the world, Morin.”
“They’re firing on the battery of ‘75’s’.”
“A battery of ‘75’s’? What battery?... Where have you seen a battery?”
Although he was seriously disturbed about our direction, Morin would not budge.
A sinister Grumbling Seemed to Shatter the FogSee page 110
A sinister Grumbling Seemed to Shatter the FogSee page 110
“It was there day before yesterday. It must have moved.”
“I suppose you’re sure your short cut hasn’t changed its place.”
I had scarcely spoken when a shell followed the direction of the first and exploded beside us, throwing up a mass of mud, grass and water. The ground was soft and unfavorable for deadly splinters. In any other terrain we would have been hit seriously.
This time Morin hesitated,
“I’m afraid I’m mistaken!...”
“I was sure of it a long time ago.”
“Let’s go on just the same; this must bring us out somewhere.”
“That’s my opinion, too.”
The fog was still heavy. We walked in a cloud the length of an interminable trench recently cut in the clay. The bottom was full of water. It leads us in an unknown direction. How can we find out what way we are going? Where are we? We follow its windings for half an hour and clamber over crossings. Perhaps we’re going around in a circle. The mist is about us all the time. We can see nothing. Not a landmark.
In the distance far to the north, in the English sector, a heavy gun hammers the air with loud regular shots. We started out at daybreak to go ten miles. It is ten o’clock now and we have no idea where we are.
I get impatient and begin to grumble.
The air becomes fresher, and a fairly strong breeze comes up. In a few seconds the blue sky reappears above our heads.
In front of us forms stand out—trees, shattered trees, stretching their dead branches like broken arms, and seeming to cry to heaven in entreaty for the martyred earth.
“The La Vache woods!”
We are in the La Vache woods within sight of the enemy’s lines. Thirty yards from them! We are on the further side of the trenches, where the terrific storm of shells rages daily. We have the honor of being the finest target that will ever be offered for a shot with a grenade.
We throw ourselves flat, but the embankment overhangs the lines so much that even crawling is only a moderate safeguard.
“Nom de Dieu! I’ll remember your short cut! To go to the Boches it’s the best ever!...”
We slide along on elbows, stomach and knees like snakes, which puts our clothes to a severe test. And we let ourselves fall head first into the “Servian” trench, just over the lieutenant’s sap, who cannot believe his eyes when he sees us fall as from the moon.
“Where did you come from?”
“We’ve been taking a walk in the La Vache woods. Does that mean anything to you?”
“How did you come?”
“By a short cut!... a fine short cut, you know. I recommend it to you!”
Sub-Lieutenant Delpos was making his rounds in the sector and was told of the exploit. He is nervous and in a murderous humor, for he spent a sleepless night on a special mission between the lines. So Morin caught it a hundred times worse than he deserved. Sub-Lieutenant Delpos’s moments of ill humor are, like some storms, violent but quickly over. The adventure ended with an excellent cup of coffee, flavored with XXX brandy, which he offers us in his sap, sumptuously furnished with every possible comfort, twelve yards underground.
Towards midnight I went down to Éclusierthrough an English observation trench. It is only accessible at night. In the daytime a Boche machine gun is placed on the other side of the Somme and enfilades it. It is suicide to venture there. Cut out of the rock in the hillside, its ridges are short and steep. It is a bad trench, but an important short cut.... Saux should be waiting for me with the horses in a ruined house behind the church.
Éclusier is a hamlet on the left side of the canal. There is a single street with ragged houses on each side, but they are not badly ruined. The church, protected by a bend in the cliff, still has its steeple intact through some prodigy of equilibrium, although the roof has fallen in. At the side, in what was once the presbytery, is the regimental dressing station.
Lights come and go.
Men are coming back from fatigue duty, searching for their dugouts by feeling for them. Through the air-holes, from which come odors of cooking, one can see lighted cellars.
I make my way by the aid of my electric lamp through this labyrinth which was once a street, and I find the house. I guess at it, rather, fromthe pawing of the horses, which are nervous and are pounding on the flagstones. It is an old grocery and its sign still reads: “Fine Wines—Desserts—Choice Preserves.” A ragged green cart cover takes the place of the door. I raise it.
A gust of foul air hits me in the face, and I stop on the threshold gasping for breath. I see Saux asleep, his head on my saddle, and rolled up in horse blankets. Burette is asleep beside him.
Burette, the quartermaster, spent three months in the heavy artillery. He is an enthusiast on horses, but his equestrian ability is far from equaling his love for it. His style produces many falls, but they don’t discourage him.
I wake up Saux, who gets up dizzily. Is he half drunk, I ask myself. That’s not like him at all.
“Look, Saux, what’s the matter?”
But Saux leaned against the partition, searching for the door with his haggard eyes. He dashed outside seized by nausea. The noise woke up Burette, and he too got up with difficulty.
“Say, what have you two been up to?”
“Oh,mon pauvre vieux, I don’t know, but I’m sick.”
“The fact is there is considerable of an odor here; you might have found a better....”
The horses are troubled by it, too. Kiki jumps about and paws furiously. Burette’s and Saux’s horses are sleeping heavily and their breathing is difficult and oppressive.
There’s something wrong somewhere, although the enemy hasn’t sent over any gas.
With the aid of a light we poke about in the dark. I see a pile of canvas in the corner of the room which is oozing with dampness. I raise the bottom of the canvas with my stick and a swarm of great flies comes buzzing out around us.
There are the bodies of German soldiers abandoned for no one knows how long. Weeks, perhaps; since the attack on Fries without doubt. The blue swollen flesh is spotted by bites made by the teeth of rats. They are rotting and filling the soil with purulent matter.
With their monstrous faces, sunken eyes, cheeks fallen in, and their mouths convulsed by their last struggles, they seem still to shout with the fright of their last hours. Burette and Saux have slept beside this charnel-house.
We lead out the horses in a hurry and saddlethem in the open air. We gain the hard towpath, the only practicable way, and go on at a lively pace.
The first light of dawn appears. At the bridge at Éclusier we stop a minute before climbing into the saddle. The Territorials there offer us a cup of coffee. It warms us, for the morning fog on the Somme is always cold.
“To horse!”
I decide to go at a good pace as far as the bridge at Froissy and take the lead. We must get along before the towpath is encumbered by all the loafers of the companies which are resting in the huts along the length of the canal.
A battery of “75’s” in position near the military cemetery at Cappy is firing shells.
We pass very close to some guns as they are starting off. Coquet is frightened, jumps, and dashes into the fields, heading straight toward the hedges of some vegetable gardens.
“Attention! Burette, pull on the bits.”
“Don’t be afraid. He knows me.”
He knows him so well that Burette had scarcely spoken than Coquet stopped short before the fence. Burette went over alone, head first, andlanded in the vegetables. Fortunately, the ground is soft, but in hurdling the obstacle he bumped into some bushes, and gets an eye bruised and a cheek scratched.
“That’s nothing. That’s all right,” he says.
He remounts his horse, laughing and singing:
Ah! les p’tits pois, les p’tits pois,C’est un légume très tendre.
Ah! les p’tits pois, les p’tits pois,C’est un légume très tendre.
Ah! les p’tits pois, les p’tits pois,
C’est un légume très tendre.
He can appreciate them this time.
We meet Hémin, our comrade of the third company of machine guns, at Froissy. He came out at dawn with orders from his commandant and is going back to Morcourt, and we go along together.
Going from this bridge to that at Méricourt, the towpath is almost deserted. Hardly anything crosses our path except some English motor-cyclists.
Hémin is riding a superb charger, a great long-legged, bright chestnut, who carries his head proudly—a fine beast.
Some yards away from the branch from Neuville marines from the gunboats have planted huts along the towpath between the poplars.
The regular trot of our horses sounds clearly along the way.
A marine hears us and raises the flap of his tent to see us.
This frightens Hémin’s horse and he jumps into the canal.
Our comrade is unhorsed and disappears under the water. We jump down. But even before we jump two marines have plunged in. Others poke around with poles in the mud from a boat. In an eddy a hand appears, then a head, swollen, bloody, crushed.
Hémin got a blow from a shoe full in the face and could not swim.
The body is brought on to the bank.
A surgeon from the gunboat doubles his efforts in vain.
Hémin is dead.
We buried him in the little cemetery at Méricourt one Sunday morning.
It is the ideal cemetery of the poets, hidden in green from every sound. Each grave seems alone in a thicket of lilacs and honeysuckle. No scientific gardening here; no trees butchered byexperts; no cultivated flowers; no bombastic marbles. The grass overruns the paths; the simple flowers of the field have blossomed on the graves, thus bringing in every season the natural homage which returning life pays to the dead.
Nature is pleased to shut every sound from this field of rest.
At the end of a lane, at the foot of a willow, we lay Hémin to rest in his last sleep.
The men of the echelon come, the major, a captain, and the officers who knew him particularly well. The intelligence officers of the three companies joined in buying a wreath and came to the services together.
Hémin’s captain speaks a few words. It is not the time for a long talk, for a simple touching farewell is sufficient.
And before he goes each one throws in the grave the symbolic bit of earth.
Sad duty!
Before the grave is filled in I drop over him petals of peonies....
Poor fellow! He is not the most unfortunate. He is in that luminous land of day and knows what we are powerless to know. He has finishedwith our poor human troubles, and on him have fallen the curtains of his last resting place.
But those who are left, his wife, his child!... That is where sorrow begins. They don’t know yet, and for a long time they will know nothing and will live in anxiety.
To-day, at the very hour perhaps, when we let him down in his last resting place, his wife received the letter he wrote her yesterday morning. She read this letter to her child, this letter in which he announces his next arrival on leave, where he said to her,
“In a week or two I shall be with you without a doubt.” He never will be now, or, rather, he is there already, for the immaterial presence of loved ones accompanies us, if it is true that they are loved and are not forgotten.
And pensively, under the fine rain which is falling, we return to our cantonments.
This evening the first section has to go on the works. The men have eaten earlier than usual, and they are on the road before nightfall.
The column remains in good order to the end of the cantonment, but once across the passage by the knotty elm at Harbonnières, it breaks ranks. Each one goes along as he likes, talking or alone.
There is madness in the air. We prefer another order of things than to spend one evening out of two in the first line digging in the mud.
“Rather the trenches where we can snooze in peace,” they say.
The column trails along. Pierron, the sergeant who leads it, pays no attention. With Millazo, a tradesman from Hanoï who has arrived just recently, he talks of Indo-China, of Saigon, and their gardens.
We had scarcely arrived at the end of thesunken road which opens out on an uncovered slope on top of a ridge than a well-known whistling shatters space. Each of us throws himself on the ground, in a ditch behind a tree, and the shell passes over us in the air.
“That wasn’t meant for us.”
Then another, still another, and dozens like it; we count up to sixty.
“M ... what are they having at Proyart for dessert?”
That is all the concern they have about what is going on in the rear, or about the havoc and death the bombardment is launching at this moment on the cantonment where their comrades live. That is the egotistical indifference which long experience with danger gives, and the constant contemplation of death. The column marches along more carefully and wider awake, concealing themselves from the view of the enemy’s aerial observers which are to be seen high on the horizon in spite of the late hour and the twilight which has already begun to grow dark.
“Do you suppose they’ve forgotten the sausage?”
“Sometimes they stay out to give us a shot.”
So we wait until it is very dark before we reach our position in the works.
The place where we have to dig is in the front lines. We have to construct circular dugouts for machine guns, with their rounded platforms, and to connect them with the trench by underground trenches.
We climb over the trench carrying our tools in our hands and slip between the barbed wire, but we have scarcely gone a yard when a heavy fusillade warns us that this time we are spotted. We dig in.
“Is anyone hit?”
No reply, no groans; everyone is there, flat, stretched out. We wait flat in the grass and the mud until the star shells fall, and as soon as one has, and before the following one has scaled through space and lighted it with its dim light, we jump into the hole which the fatigue party of yesterday dug.
But the tools aren’t idle, although we guess rather than hear the blows of the pick digging in the deep rich earth and the shovelers throwingit out as far on the parapet as possible so as not to form a salient.
We dig for hours without interruption, lowering our heads in the holes as the star shells go up, and taking up our tasks as soon as it is dark again.
The enemy has discovered the time of our fatigue parties, and to-morrow it will know the exact position of our work, so that it will be somewhat uncomfortable to continue. It must be finished to-night.
A company of Territorials is stretching barbed wire on our right.
Between each star shell we can hear the hammering of the sledges against the stakes, the strain of the tension on the wire, and when the traitorous light shines again these wonderful workers don’t even hide. They remain hanging on the barbed wire, motionless and disjointed like corpses. They look so much like them that the enemy doesn’t even fire, as he feels certain that he has annihilated this gang which heroically continues its gigantic task.
“Look!... they’re like statues.”
“One would think it was a party ... there are the lights and the orchestra.”
The time for supplying the company in the lines comes. The men of the field kitchens come by groups of three or four from the trenches just behind us.
The first two have a long rod on their shoulders and rolls of bread on this. Others carry in canvas pails and kettles come from nowhere the coveted wine and the aromatic brandy. Others bend under the weight of pots which hold lumpy black bean soup, which splashes out at every jolt in the path. It is already cold and greasy. Finally, the mess corporal reaches the end of his trip and draws out of his sack the desserts bought with the mess balance and the commissions given to him the day before by the men in the trenches. The pockets of his jackets are full of letters he has just received from the officer with the mail, and which he delivers to the men who have been waiting for them hungrily.
When he gets as far as the fatigue party he stops and hesitates. He must go over a space of fifty yards, absolutely exposed, to the edge of a group of trees where there is a first-linetrench taken from the Boches in the last attack and not yet connected with the communication trench.
He has reason for his hesitation, for the last two days the Boche trench on our left has been firing on it heavily.
Day before yesterday an entire fatigue party was killed. We can see there in front of us the abandoned sacks and scattered packages. Five men out of eight were killed yesterday. The others were able to get over some of the provisions and the bad news by crawling, and at the price of a thousand risks. They also took the rest of the provisions from the bodies of their comrades who carried them. To-day they advanced the time of bringing the supplies an hour in order to foil the enemy’s vigilance. This time the mess corporal accompanied the fatigue party himself to discover, if possible, a less perilous mode of communication. But the Boches must have been on the watch, or guessed or got wind of it somehow. The star shells now follow each other with no let-up, lighting up the road so that one can’t venture on it. Under this too persistent light the Territorials abandon their simulation ofcorpses and seek shelter in the trench to which we are getting ready to return.
It is necessary for the supplies to go on. The company in the front line has had only insufficient provisions for two days.
The mess corporal is a brave man and makes several attempts to venture outside, but each time he is received by a fusillade and only has time to throw himself backward in the trench.
The fatigue party has been watched and waited for.
We hold a council of the non-commissioned officers and the lieutenant of the Territorials which has held the position for several weeks. Various stratagems are proposed and we weigh the chances, but after consideration all of them are vetoed. It is impossible to get by even at the greatest speed without risking the lives of several men, and perhaps of all.
Still, if we were able to draw the attention of the Boches, to occupy them with something else, to enfilade them, to shell them.
“Enfilade them ... shell them....”
“Isn’t there some place from which we can enfilade them?”
And we all considered in our minds the position of the Boche trenches.
“We can’t do anything from here,” said a sergeant who had spent various periods in these trenches for several months, and knew every corner of it; “but below there to the left, about a hundred yards from the picket post, is a ruined cabin which dominates everything. But there’s nothing doing in getting there; it’s too near; they’d see us as plain as day.”
One of our men heard all this. And while the conversation went on, I saw him climb up on the parapet and examine the position.
It was Marseille, an impetuous, headstrong type. He rebelled at all discipline, he was restive under observation, but his bravery was unfailing, and he was absolutely oblivious to danger, which he ignored with a swagger and indifference which seemed amazing. Marseille has known one hundred thousand adventures and turned one hundred thousand tricks, and has always come back absolutely unharmed.
When he was on his last leave he spent six unrestrained days in innumerable drinking bouts in all the bars at La Cannebière, where he narratedhis boasted deeds of prowess, which were probably much inferior to the real ones. Then, instead of going back, he waited for them to come and get him. He was arrested on the eighth day and brought back to the Corps by the provost. Marseille was not the least upset when the officer demanded the reasons for his delay, and replied:
“I don’t like to travel alone. I like society, I do. So I have had a whole car to myself and my escort. And besides, I knew very well that the gendarmes wouldn’t come from Marseilles here without buying a drink, and they wouldn’t have the nerve to lap it all up without offering me some. I like the gendarmes. That may seem strange to you, but I do.”
Marseille is a good singer and his number appears in all the company concerts. His throat is as clear as the sunny lights of La Corniche and L’Esterel, and he can render the final trills of the Neapolitan songs with the best.
When he had finished his rapid observation he came back to our anxious group and spoke to the mess corporal:
“You’ll be all right,mon vieux. You’ll get there.”
And we all looked at him in open-mouthed surprise at such assurance.
“Have you any news or an idea? Explain. Tell us something about it. Let us see.”
“You’ll get there, as I told you. Don’t bother about those fellows over there. That’s my job. Watch me.”
And to the lieutenant who was getting ready to question him:
“You have a machine gun, haven’t you, Lieutenant.... Won’t you lend it to me ... just a minute? It’s a Saint Etienne. I know that.... I know them all.... They’re all the same.... And five belts with it to amuse the Boches for five minutes.... That’ll be enough for the cooks to get over.”
We understood it all, and we laughed and admired him. Marseille rolled up the barrel of the machine gun and the belts in several thicknesses of canvas, tied a rope to it and attached the other end to his wrist.
“Hold on to the package so that it won’t make trouble on the stones, and when I pull on the rope twice, let it come.”
And he crawled out of the trench and slid down towards the ruined hut.
We waited anxiously the full ten minutes. Wewatched the cord unroll with varying emotions. It stopped, stood still, immovable. Has he arrived?
Then we felt the two jerks, and the lieutenant let the heavy package slide, and it got mixed up in the stakes, rocks, and gullies, and made such a metallic noise that it could not help attracting the Boche’s attention. And it had an effect. The enemy believed that we were making some sort of a movement, and launched in our direction a heavy fusillade which we refrained from answering.
Again ten minutes passed ... they were interminable.
Then suddenly came the machine gun ... ours ... Marseille’s.
Slowly at first, it sent out its irregular tap-tap, then the cadence became faster, and then a steady crackle. The Boches were taken in the flank and thought that we were making an attack, and Marseille, who saw them running by the light of their star shells, shouted out,
“Forward, the cooks, run, nom de Dieu!”
The fatigue party rushed out at top speed. Soup spatters from all sides. The rations of wineand coffee will be short. The men disappear in the wood. They are over; they are safe.
Now the German bullets are raging to our left about the hut; rockets go up asking for artillery. In front of our lines close to us explosions rock the ground. Their artillery is firing in the right place. The fatigue party is over but the Boches have another prey. By this time Marseille is stewing away in the ruins of his shelter.
While the shelling lasts we discuss his last feat, safe in the sap, while we munch the last of our cold repast. Then, as dawn begins to appear and we have to return to the cantonment at daybreak, we begin to get ready to go. Before we go we share a bucket of wine which the overloaded fatigue party couldn’t carry in its dash and abandoned.
But a shadow stands before us in the sap.
“So they share their leavings and there is none for the hungry?”
It is Marseille, safe and sound, whole, without a scratch. Everyone crowds around him, and the officer runs up.
“And now, if you’ll pull in that string, you’llbring back the tools. I’m sore on that machine. You know, Lieutenant, that gun wasn’t our Hotchkiss. I had to dismantle the breech; it jammed at once. I couldn’t have fired more than half a belt. Fortunately, they gave me light with their star shells; I couldn’t have done it without them.”
We are in reserve cantonments at Chuignolles, and we all lodge together at the end of the village, near the church, in a large house, which isn’t injured much and which once served the servants of the presbytery. We were shaken up in our last action, and they give us comparatively generous liberty, no manœuvres, no reviews, and no drills. The section leaders have seen to the arms and ammunition and have secured an entirely new equipment from the ordnance officer.
The infantry have turned gunners over to us to fill up our ranks.
The lieutenant recommends the men to distract themselves with games, gossip and songs.
At his solicitation we organized a concert, several concerts, in fact. Each section has its artists which it believes in and of which it is proud.
One evening in the garden adjoining the officers’quarters we were endeavoring to draw out the meal by chatting, but conversation flagged as night drew near. So Sub-Lieutenant Delpos, who was opposed to dreaming as engendering melancholy, demanded a concert at once, immediately.
The cantonments were scattered about in the surrounding gardens.
“Croharé,” he said, “run to each section and bring back artists—all the artists in each company must be here in five minutes.”
And five minutes later they were there. All the company, too, for each section followed its artists, who were to shine in all the glory of their repertoire before the officers and the “little staff.”
We had singers, comedians and speakers, professional and amateur. Jacquet gave with exquisite artistry several delightful songs, the words of which he had composed and adapted to well-known tunes. The “Lettre à la Marriane” was really touching.
Gaix and Corporal Vail sang with real talent and gave us a full repertoire from the operas. The indefatigable Marseille gave, in a hilarious gibberish, an Italian-Marseilles thing which brought down the house with wild laughter.
“It’s too bad we haven’t a piano to play the accompaniments,” said someone.
“A piano! I’ll attend to that,” said the ever-resourceful Chevalier. “Four men in my bunch, and I’ll bring it at once.”
Some minutes later the party brought in an enormous harmonium which it had found in a room of the presbytery. That harmonium had been the silent witness of famous battles, had been taken and retaken with the village. It had played “Die Wacht am Rhein” under the German heel, the “Rêve Passe” with the artillery, “Sidi-Brahim” with our Blue Devils, and it was still in good condition and almost all the notes played.
“And now we have a piano, we must have a player.”
“Oh, there, ‘Father Music.’ You know this is your job. You played for us last summer in the church at Minaucourt.”
“Father Music” smiled gravely and pushed his way through the groups.
A candle stuck in the neck of a champagne bottle and placed on the harmonium lighted up his Christlike face with a golden light.
He seated himself, without stopping smiling,on a pile of ammunition caissons which served as a piano stool, and—honor to whom honor is due—since we are machine gunners, he begins the “Song of the Machine Gun,” with Gaix singing the first stanza.
“Father Music” stands out in the light in the middle of the dark night and this group of a hundred men who one surmises are there, rather than sees, squatting on the grass around the instrument.
Under his cap thrown back on his head the hair shows sparse and thin, his beard is large and tangled, and he smiles through his large, clear eyes. His lips move with the singer, and he sings the song with as much fervor and composure as if he were chanting a Halleluiah.
“Father Music!” ...
He is a fine figure in our society, rich in epic types.
I have seen him near us for some weeks, as much in our echelon as in the company of which he assumes the duties of infirmary orderly. I have learned to know him, and to know him is to love him.
By scraps, by fragments of phrases, for hespeaks but little—little of himself, but instead launches out in real flights of declamation about an idea, a poem, a well-known tune, the names of artists—I have been able bit by bit and through deductions almost to reconstruct his life.
He is a quiet man in all his ways, habits and ideas. He lived in the quarter of Saint-Sulpice in an old house in the quiet Rue Madame, and made his living by giving music lessons in the institutions in the neighborhood.
They knew him in the quarter as “Monsieur Placide.” On the appointed days at the same hours he went to the Nuns of the Immaculate Conception, to the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, or to special lessons in the city, without ever wandering far away from the quarter, in the old venerable houses, in the Rues d’Assas and Garancière.
On Sundays he played the organ in a small chapel of the Visitation Sisters.
The people knew little about him through social intercourse, for he never went out, or rarely. In summer he sometimes went to the Tuileries to listen to secular music—and that is all.
When in August, 1914, the notices of mobilization called all able-bodied men to arms, hisorders were to join a regiment of Colonial infantry in a fort around Paris.
This man lived a regular life apart from dangerous contingencies, and was unacquainted with worldly ambitions and political strife, but he went to war knowing nothing of it, and considering it only a little and then through a professional view-point, as a sort of great drama in which he was going to play a comparatively passive rôle.
Under the cap and great coat of the infantryman, bristling all over with equipment, he was the typical “poilu”—the poilu of tradition. His large beard covered the front of his brown coat, and this gave him the proud appearance of a veteran.
At first he was going to sacrifice this thick beard which he had spared since his liberation from his regiment, but his officers wanted him to keep it. That brought him a place at the head of the company on the march, and he drew all eyes. He was the poilu.
His reputation as a musician who played on any and all instruments was quickly known throughout the cantonments. So he was at all the ceremonies and all the merrymakings. In the morningon a harmonium carried to an open field he might accompany a military mass said by stretcher-bearers, while that evening he might play on a chance piano, perhaps on the same harmonium, at improvised concerts, accompanying jolly, broad songs sung by amateurs and playing the national hymns of the Allies, and astonishing even himself in the patriotic choruses.
And this man to whom everything that was not classical or the Gregorian chant was strange, who for twenty years of his life had taught successive generations Méhul, Gluck, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, to whom Massenet, Delibes and Gounod seemed profane, surprised himself by pounding out on a badly-tuned piano and singing with all his might the refrains of “Viens Poupoule,” popular marches, and the ballads of the faubourg.
The soldiers had quickly named him “Father Music” and this nickname pleased him immensely.
That night an order came from the commanding officer:
“Two companies of machine guns will go with the utmost haste to Hill 174, northwest of Herbècourt,to stop the enemy which is trying to outflank our right.”
At three o’clock in the morning we were at the position indicated.
A small chapel with a cross was situated on the top of the hill. The open space in front commands the road which descends gradually toward the Méréaucourt woods where the enemy is concealed.
We fortify our position in a few minutes. On both sides of the road a gun sweeps the slope and the approaches and guards the way out of the woods. In the little belfry which is shaped like a dove-cote another gun commands the woods and can disturb evolutions in the wood itself.
We use the material at hand to fortify our emplacements—bits of benches, a door of a confessional, and the railings of the chapel.
At our right across the road a company of riflemen also establish entrenchments, so well camouflaged that the enemy cannot see them until in its zone of fire, that is to say, too late.
The officer, a young sub-lieutenant, asks us not to fire until he gives the signal. He has the idea—and a good one—to let the enemy advanceand come up the road. Here he would be unable to execute a converging movement and our gun in the belfry would sweep the right side of the road and prevent his turning aside, the company of riflemen would protect the left, and his section of Grenadiers would attack on the road.
We are confident of the strength of our positions and our means of resistance, and we wait for the launching of the attack without anxiety.
“Father Music” has organized his dressing station in the chapel in the shelter of the altar and now wanders around the building.
The church recalls familiar surroundings to him and he delights in looking at it. There are a few simple frescoes, pictures of the Crucifixion, where gigantic men stand out in relief against a background of microscopic mountains and Liliputian houses, and they interest him.
He lets his fingers wander over the keyboard of the harmonium which lies forgotten in the choir.
His comrades jeer,
“‘Father Music’ is going to play ourDe Profundis.”
But the quiet does not last long. Towards five o’clock a frightful fire begins all at once. The troops in the front-line trenches, at the bottom of the hill, are decimated and cut down by a furious fire; they retreat and take refuge behind the defense works of the village.
We make our final preparations. Evidently the enemy is going to try to take the village and has already begun its destruction. A storm of great shells falls on the trenches, very near us, some yards behind the houses. We hear terrific explosions, the falling of roofs, and fires break out everywhere.
An order from the commander of the sector reaches us, “Maintain the position and hold on until the companies of reinforcements arrive.”
The bombardment becomes more and more violent. As the sound of each shell whistles through the air we wonder if this infernal machine is going to strike in our dugout this time. And every two minutes, mathematically, the uproar comes again and this unimaginable suffering continues some hours. At the sound of each shell we close our eyes. We think of the loved ones with a calm certainty of never seeing them again. Webegin to wish that it would end at once, rather than have to endure this terrible nervous tension longer.
And the reinforcements cannot advance under the avalanche of fire and shell. Are they going to let us be massacred on the spot without defense?
The Teuton artillery imagines that they have cleared the objective and their fire dies down. Cautiously but confident of their superiority and tactics, the Germans now appear in numbers.
Suddenly, violently, like a clap of thunder the “Marseillaise” bursts on our ears—tremendously.
It rushes out through all the breaches in the church; it comes through the cracks; it goes up through the fallen roof; it traverses the shattered windows. It unites in itself all human and celestial voices. The soul of a whole nation, the spirit of ancient glories, animates the old organ which sings its last song.
With all the strength of its breath, with all the breath of its pipes, filled to bursting, with all the sonority of its bass, its horns, its flutes and violins, the organ hurls forth the sacred song.
And it is not only the hymn of triumphantLiberty and the indignation of an avenging people in the face of the invader. Magnified by the liturgical sounds on the ritualistic instrument of sacred music, it is the Hosanna of Glory, the Sursam Corda of Faith, confident in the approaching victory, the Resurexit of the triumphant Past, and the De Profundis of brutal domination.
And beside all that, all the songs of glory, all the exaltations of faith, all the clamor of Gregorian theogony vibrate in the notes of the “Marseillaise.”
Under the humble vault of a hamlet chapel the organ plays the twice-blessed music, and intones the splendid Magnificat of the Republic, the hymn of the Trinity, thrice human, thrice divine, Liberty, Fraternity and Equality.
And, dominating all the sonorities of the organ, a thousand voices unite in a sublime burst of song,