A PoiluSee page 56
A PoiluSee page 56
The lieutenant loves a quick pace and a marching song. So at the top of his lungs he begins one of his lively songs full of expressions thatwould have startled a growler of the Empire through their shamelessness, but which do not disturb the modesty of a Colonial at all, supposing that a Colonial ever had any.
And the section leaders take up the refrain in chorus.
Some steps behind, Sub-Lieutenant Delpos stops to light his fine Egyptian cigarette. In spite of the early hour and the uncertain weather, and with no thought of the disagreeable march through the sticky mud of the communication trench, he is dressed with the greatest care. His bright tan leggings are elegantly curved; his furred gloves are of the finest quality, and the pocket of his jacket, cut in the latest English style, shows a fine cambric handkerchief, subtly scented. And arm in arm we follow the quick pace of our comrades, while he continues the interrupted story of his latest exploit.
“Yes,mon cher, picture to yourself an exquisite blonde. I met her on the Rue des Saints-Pères....”
Yesterday evening at five o’clock we received an order to take our positions in the front line to support the attack which the second battalion would make at nine-thirty.
It was raining. It has rained all the time for some months, and we have become accustomed to the mud and dampness.
We left the cantonment at Morcourt at nightfall. We went along the towpath of the canal, across the bridge at Froissy, through the ruins of Éclusier and entered the communication trench which we knew as the “120 long.”
The silent march is accomplished with little difficulty. There is no sound of cannon. Everything is quiet. We reach our positions about midnight—four dugouts camouflaged for the guns of two sections which are to play on the sector; the two other sections remain in the “Servian” trench in reserve at the disposal of the commander.
The lieutenant examines the post established for him. Farther ahead is a communication trench which has been completely overturned and destroyed, now nothing but a great hole. Below is a big tangle of barbed wire, fascines and ripped open sandbags. We can see very well through this jumble and we are installed there.
We can make out the details of the Boche lines through the glass.
“Come. I think it will be all right. But it will be hard. Fortunately, it can’t last long.”
Then we return to the positions for a final inspection.
The emplacements which our guns occupy are round excavations about three yards across and two deep. In the middle nearly on a level with the surrounding ground is a sort of pedestal for the machine gun. The barrel scarcely reaches beyond the hole and it is absolutely invisible at a short distance. The men have proceeded to make a camouflage which resembles the character of the terrain with wickerwork covered by dirt and grass. The many inventions with which they have increased the weight of the machine guns—the shield, sights and periscope—are in theirplaces. The men disdain these additions a little and even neglect to use them unless forced to do so.
“They would only have to add a little more,” they say, “to make a ‘75’ instead of a machine gun.”
“The periscope may be of use for something. You have to try half an hour before you can see anything. I like my eyes better.”
The ammunition wagons are installed and opened; the belts are ready; the gun layer, the loader, and the crew are at their stations.
The lieutenant makes the rounds of each section, inspecting the guns, testing the mechanism, trying the weight of the munitions, taking account of everything and looking each man in the face.
“We are the last company organized,” he says. “You know that the machine gunners should be the flower of the army; don’t forget it. It is our first engagement. Try to show that we’re there a little.”
This short unpretentious harangue produces its effect on the men, who smile as they listen to it. They are not nervous now, but only slightly curious. They are not sorry to put their toys to thetest at last, and to shoot their projectiles at something besides the moving figures in the training camps.
When the inspection is over and the final instructions have been given, we return to the commandant’s station, and stretch out to sleep on the reserve caissons which protect us from the mud. Rifts in the clouds reveal the stars. It will be fine to-morrow. But waiting is cold, very cold, and it is impossible to sleep under such a wind. We talk.
“You’re going to hear a concert. They haven’t massed more than three hundred guns in all, from the ‘75’ to the heavy artillery, on our fifteen hundred yard front for nothing. Have you seen the ‘150’ mortars? They have some muzzles.”
Dawn appears. A light fog rises from the ground and seems thickest at the side of the canal where the German positions are. It is the coldest hour of the day and the earth of our dugout is as hard as iron; it is frozen. Instinctively I let down the ear-flaps of my cap which until now I have kept under my helmet.
“Are you cold?”
“I’m not warm.”
“A drop of brandy?”
“Sure.”
The lieutenant passes his canteen to me and as I drink the thin stream from its mouth I feel a wave of warmth.
Light comes, but it is very pale. Around us we hear the tread of feet on the hard ground and the slapping of arms across the chest.
We wait nervously. Presently we receive an order not to fire until the blast of the whistle.
Eight o’clock! Behind us, in the limpid azure, the red disk of the sun rises.
A shell cuts through the air; then another; then still another. Our artillery is firing on the Boche lines.
“Attention.” The response is instantaneous. We can still see no movement in the ranks of the infantry to our right whose rush we are to support. What are they waiting for? The men are nervous and they start to grumble.
Boom! comes the Boche’s reply.
A great mass of earth, grass and crumbled stones shoots up a hundred yards ahead of us!
Too short!
Boom! still another. Still short!
A large shell heads for us. It thunders. Where is it going to burst? The devil! It falls near our first section, to the left; then, almost at once, another, a little to the right. Are we spotted? We haven’t fired a cartridge yet, and there isn’t an aeroplane or sausage in the air.
Two “150’s,” one right after the other, burst fair on the section, right in the hole. An enormous mass of earth spurts up. Through the dust and smoke we see broken arms, sandbags ripped open, legs torn from the body, an entire body, the gun!...
The lieutenant knits his brows in dismay. A sergeant from the reserve half section, slightly pale, runs up with the details.
“Sergeant Rollé, the gun layer, and the crew are killed.”
“Occupy the emplacement with your half-section.”
“Very well, Lieutenant.”
Shells are falling in our sector without a break. All the guns are splattered with splinters and most of the crews are slightly wounded.
Durozier’s half section jump out of their dugoutin a hurry and throw themselves into the hole which has now increased in size to a vast yawning crater.
“If we could only fire on something. But there’s nothing to see. And no signal.”
The Boche artillery certainly has a grudge against our first section. The new gun is scarcely in position when a great shell falls in the same place, in the same crater.
We see distinctly a body blown high into the air, and the body still holds the mount of the machine gun which he was just setting in place. Headless, disemboweled, it falls just in front of our dugout within reach of our hands. It is Gouzé, the chief gunner.
“Thesalauds!”
An intelligence officer from the major reaches us.
“Get ready to support the wave which is going over with all your guns!”
The shells burst on our position implacably. There isn’t the slightest choice between the emplacements. Three guns are still intact and ready to fire at the blast of the whistle. But the fourth gun must be put in position, too.
“Tell the adjutant of the section to occupy the crater,” comes the order.
By means of the half-destroyed communication trench I reach the section which I find burrowing in shelters built hastily out of whatever came handiest and deliver my order.
The adjutant takes it and turns pale.
“All right, but there’s no great chance of our getting there.”
Their hearts throb, and they look at each other. It is true that it is necessary, but on the parapet between the trench and the crater, no longer the slightest protection, shells fall like hail and without a let-up. They hesitate.
As if he had foreseen this, the lieutenant had followed behind me. He reads their hesitation in their faces and is about to say something to overcome it when the blast of the major’s whistle sounds. It is the signal. The wave jumps from the parallels and dashes forward. We must fire.
Our three guns have already begun their rattle and are spraying the terrain before the enemy’s trenches close to the ground, probing the loopholes, mowing the parapets, and cutting the last of the barbed wire.
The fourth gun ought to fire too; it must. Then, quietly, with that unusual coolness which characterizes him, the lieutenant clambers over the parapet.
“Will you come with me,Margis?”
Cigarette between his lips, leaning carelessly on his curved handled cane, as though he were going for a morning walk through the fields, he advances, standing very straight, without hurrying, and without losing an inch of his great height.
The men understand. Five seconds later we are in the crater and in less time than it takes to tell it the gun begins to fire like the rest.
The enemy’s artillery has now changed its objective. It now aims its fire on the assaulting wave.
We return to our shelter. The spectacle is wonderful. Almost without losses, our waves reach the first of the enemy’s lines and clear them at a bound.
“Lengthen the fire.... On the second position.... Farther ... on the third; on the fortified emplacement; to the left of the woods.... Fire, fire, fire, nom de Dieu!”
The fire on our sector begins again more violentlythan ever. We have bothered the enemy and he wants to silence us.
Three out of four of our guns are silent. The fourth, the last one to arrive, with all the rapidity of its fire, alone sustains the attack of our infantry. The wonderful little machine devours without a skip the endless munitions which the crew have difficulty in bringing to it.
“Fire, Adjutant, fire! Don’t stop. Give it to them,” shouts the lieutenant, seized by the fever of battle.
And the adjutant fires, fires without stopping. Our wave reaches its objective, the enemy flees, whole companies surrender.
“That’s it; we are there. Fire on the reserves, farther, the length of the embankment. Cease firing, stop it, stop firing. We are there.... Cease firing!”
Just as he shouts this order a shell, the last one—the third on the same spot—falls, bursts, and buries the gun and its heroic crew.
“M ...! The swine! Can’t they see that it is finished?”
Heavily and mournfully we make toll of the dead. Comrades pay their last respects to theircomrades. They take their letters and keepsakes, and arrange the bodies for their last resting place as best they can.
The order to go back is given.
For two hours we make our way through the communication trench, now only a stream of mud in which we sink to our ankles.
We advance, dejected, silent, heavy with fatigue, depressed by the thought of those we have left behind, whom we shall never see again, as was our wont, even yesterday at the cantonment.
The lieutenant is in the lead, leaning on his baton, silently, chewing on his eternal cigarette.
We finally reach the end of the trench at Froissy and come out on the main road.
In spite of their long hours of fatigue and the sleepless nights, the men suddenly seem less weary.
They no longer march one on top of the other, stepping over corpses. Their horizon has broadened; they see; they breathe; they come out of their trance; they emerge from Hell, they come from death. They are coming back to life!
Two hundred yards ahead we can already see groups: our mules, our limbers, companies of Territorials who are repairing the roads, sappersfrom the engineer corps, men from the field kitchens, automobiles, dreams ... the living world at last.
The sub-lieutenant has remained at the rear of the column, assuming the difficult task of encouraging the stragglers and keeping up the spirits of the weak. Now he runs up and down the ranks. He is proud of his men; he loves their swagger and steadiness.
“Come, children, a little speed. Try to march by these people in some style.”
And as we approach the first huts he begins to sing at the top of his lungs his song, the song of the machine gun:
Mais dans le petit jour blémi,Alerte! Voici l’ennemi!Et t’éveillant soudain rageuse,Ma mitrailleuse,Avec tes tac tac réguliers,Sans t’arrêter, noire et fumeuse,Ma mitrailleuse.
Mais dans le petit jour blémi,Alerte! Voici l’ennemi!Et t’éveillant soudain rageuse,Ma mitrailleuse,Avec tes tac tac réguliers,Sans t’arrêter, noire et fumeuse,Ma mitrailleuse.
Mais dans le petit jour blémi,
Alerte! Voici l’ennemi!
Et t’éveillant soudain rageuse,
Ma mitrailleuse,
Avec tes tac tac réguliers,
Sans t’arrêter, noire et fumeuse,
Ma mitrailleuse.
Some of the men look at him in surprise, look at him and then begin to sing.
And this bruised troop, which had just lost half its effective strength, with its wounded men with their bloody bandages, their torn clothes,their arms in bits, filed by singing this heroic joyful song, expressing in their voices all their hopes and all their triumphs.
It defiled between lines of astonished men who stood respectful, stupefied at so much energy, so much fire and dash in the face of so much death.
In position before his staff, fingers together in the prescribed position of salute, a general stood with bared head, while the company marched by.
Easter—it fell on April twenty-third that year—dawned splendidly, a real day of gladsome spring.
The company was off duty. We had worked for a month on the fortifications in the front-line trenches and we deserved this fine day.
In addition the sector was quiet. There hadn’t been an engagement or a skirmish since February. This large village—more than a village, a town almost—scarcely five miles from the Boche lines, absolutely unprotected, not concealed in the slightest by a bend in the terrain, by a hill or a wood, had not received a single shell in three months.
Of course it is true that the church, town hall and some factories were injured, but not very much. They had some large shell holes, but they hadn’t fallen in or tumbled down. The church and town hall still had their roofs, and if the chimneys of the sugar refineries were cut on thebias, it was high up, almost at the top, as if they wanted to blunt them, or spare them, or preserve them.
We were now accustomed to this incomprehensible calm, in fact the officers were often heard to say,
“This quiet bodes no good to us.”
All day and nearly all night, too, we hear the shriek of French and Boche shells in the air. Batteries of heavy artillery search for their marks, but all that misses us and passes over our heads or strikes in front. We know that they aren’t aimed at us, and we take no interest in them. So with that fine carelessness of men long since accustomed to the worst dangers, we live in absolute security.
That Easter morning a musical mass was sung in an immense great hall which had been used formerly for entertainments. A crowd of soldiers of every branch of the service and from all the regiments encamped in the neighborhood packed the place. In the crowd was a goodly number of civilians, including women and girls who were wearing their best dresses for the first time in a year.
The band of the ... first Territorials played.
Someone beside me dared to murmur,
“All the same, if a Boche shell fell in that crowd, what a mess it would be!”
“Don’t think,” came from several sides at once, “about Boche shells. They fire them. They know we are here. They are afraid—”
The chaplain, assisted by two clerical stretcher bearers, began worship on the improvised altar on the stage.
Soldiers sang the psalms of the liturgy.
I was nervous, and sobs came to my throat. In order not to make a ridiculous spectacle of myself with my tears I went out. I ran to the cantonment, saddled my horse, and we galloped at random through the sunny country on paths covered with flowers. I stopped in the depths of a valley under the poplars and stretched out on the grass. My horse laid down beside me. And while he munched the grass entirely indifferent to me, I said:
“Kiki, old Kiki, if an unexpected shell fell on us now and blotted us out, that would be much less disastrous than if it fell among those who at this hour are praying in that chapel. They arepraying for their faraway firesides, their mothers, their wives.
“They are praying for the preservation of the past and for the future. They have the joy of believing, and that belief, that faith, has steeped them in a special life to which they remain attached.
“But we, old horse? If a shell annihilates us, what of it?
“We have never believed anything and we never will.
“I have impressed my brutal scepticism on the beings who are nearest and dearest to me. I have torn down the faith of their cradles ... a faith in the Beyond.
“So when we shall be under the sod sleeping our long night, before next spring has awakened its green verdure on our remains, base and nameless oblivion will already have overtaken us. On the simple white cross my hastily traced name will not even be read....
“Perhaps in passing near my abandoned grave someone will say, ‘Poor fellow!’ Perhaps someone more sentimental than the rest will throw flowers on it.
“But in disappearing, old horse, we shall harm no one.
“The tears on the beautiful eyes I know so well will at first be bitter, but they will be dried at last.”
This rather melancholy monologue was not to Kiki’s taste at all. He interrupted me by whinnying loudly. He knew it was time for oats.
So we went back to the cantonment under the fine midday sun. Before our door at the last house on the left, on the road to the sugar refinery, Burette, the quartermaster-sergeant, was going through his matutinal ablutions. He generally began them about eleven, just as they were calling dinner, which made him twenty minutes late and gave him a chance to growl about the cooking, which was not hot enough to suit him, or about his share, which, according to his appetite, was reduced to a proper allowance.
Inside, seated before an open canteen which served him equally as a seat or a writing desk, was Adjutant Dotan reading and re-reading and sighing over the letters he took from a voluminous package in front of him. In a loud voice hemused over the problem which haunted his days and nights:
“Shall I marry? Or, shall I not?”
For two years now Dotan had seen the realization of his matrimonial projects grow further and further away from week to week, from month to month.
On the first leave the Regimental Administrative Council had not acted on his request. Then, for two consecutive times, leave was stopped on the day before he was going to go. And despite the advice of the colonel, to whom he told his grievance, Dotan would not marry by proxy. This ceremonyin partibus, entrusted to a third party, seemed to him the least bit ridiculous, and he had a well-developed desire for the whole of the wedding ceremonies.
“Shall I marry? Or, shall I not?”
While he thought over his dilemma, he read for the hundredth time the letters from his gentle fiancée, who awaited him in Provence. And he occupied the monotony of the long hours in writing her two letters a day, one in the morning and another in the evening, with sometimes a supplementary postal card in addition.
“To think that if I were married I should have already been so happy!”
“Three days,” Morin let fall cynically in his innocent voice.
“Yes, I should have been happy.”
“Three days,” insisted Morin, “the second day before, the day before, and the day of your wedding until noon. And then you wouldn’t be as you are now—free, tranquil, and without a care.”
“Free, tranquil, without a care! Oh, yes, you say. You’re always the same. Free, tranquil and happy! You must have learned that by looking out of your window, you, say....”
Morin, in accordance with his parsimonious use of words, did not want to carry on this tedious discussion. He would have answered, nevertheless, had not Dedouche announced that the table was set, and that there was a wonderful menu, a real Easter menu.
Chevalier, the mess corporal, both our Vatel and cup bearer, had come back from leave the day before. Before our ravished eyes he untied his packages, spread out sumptuous, epicurean dainties, and drew from their thick straw coversgenerous bottles of wine whose very appearance made us joyful.
Morin had been a constant guest at the select restaurants of La Cannebière and at the famous inns of La Corniche, and is an expert in the art of opening a fine wine without shaking it, and he also knows how to carve roasts and chickens skilfully and symmetrically.
He was opening with suitable impressiveness an old bottle of Sauterne, whose bright golden color brought smiles to our faces, when a tremendous explosion brought us to our feet and threw down the single partition in the room.
“The gun back in the garden draws the fire,” mumbled Dedouche with his mouth full, and without letting go of his plate which he was rubbing carefully with a large bit of bread.
But as he spoke a still more violent explosion shattered all the window panes in the house to bits.
A great Boche shell had fallen thirty yards from us in the street which had been recently covered with hard flint and which it scattered into innumerable fragments. We heard the cries of the wounded and the dying outside.
“Quick! Into the cellar!”
But none of us lost our heads sufficiently to take refuge in the cellar without our munitions.
One brought the fowl, another the bottles, a third the sauce, and someone the cheese and candles, and under the threat of shots which speeded us we reached our underground shelter.
The light of two candles stuck in bottles showed us the table in the darkness and we spread out our dinner things anew.
Above was the bombardment in all its intensity.
Shots landed in the road level with our air-hole, which, as a provision against such an occurrence, had long since been stuffed with sandbags.
We heard things falling!
“Mince!what are they offering us for Easter eggs?”
This ready joke made us laugh, and we forgot the tragedy of the hour. In the heady anesthesia of real Pommard, and not christened “Pommard” for use at the front, but which had a real Burgundian bouquet, we forgot that the shells were raging in all their fury above us.
The shadow of a man appeared at the entranceto the cellar. Illuminated by the wavering yellow lights of our candles, it stood out in sharp contrast in the darkness of the staircase.
“Is the margis here?... Margis, the lieutenant says you are to bring all the horses at once to the gulley in the Caix woods and shelter them from the bombardment.”
“All right, I’m coming. Go on, Dedouche, pour out another glass of Pommard. I’ll take my dessert in my pocket.”
I picked up my helmet, mask and cane and was ready to go, as I listened through the vaults and hoped for a let-up in the storm.
“It’s over. We can go.”
“When you wish, old fellow. They’ve stopped for breath.”
“You’ll find out in five minutes.”
“Bah! I’ve more time to go than I need.”
“Good luck, and if you find any Easter eggs on the way bring them back for dinner.”
The adjutant’s reiterated joke no longer had the same zest for me and it hardly made me smile.
Outside, the streets were empty, and there wasn’t a soul in sight.
The bombardment had stopped, but no one was taken in by this deceptive calm. From one moment to another we waited for a new bombardment even more violent than the first. The Boches are creatures of habit and this is not the first time they’ve played this trick. When they bombard a cantonment, they very often interrupt their bombardment some minutes so as to make us think it is over; then, when the men have ventured into the streets, they suddenly begin again and make fresh victims.
A house has fallen in the middle of the road some steps from our cantonment. Débris block the way, and we have to climb over them. Farther along, at the other end of the street, a house which was still intact this morning is now in flames.
There is no time to lose. Already several shells, advance messengers of the coming storm, begin to fall. I was about to dart across the Place when a “105” fell on the pavements and burst.
A poor little soldier carrying two enormous bags, a great bundle of linen, and some souvenirs in his hands passed just then. He was on hisway to the station at Guillaucourt to take the train, for he was going on leave.
Rejoicing in his approaching happiness he walked on without paying the slightest attention to this atmosphere where death was hovering. A shot hit him in the back and passed out the other side. I jumped to aid him. He was bathed in blood. In a gentle, caressing, almost timid voice he said to me:
“Oh, it’s not painful. I am dying.”
And then with his lips, with an expression of kindness and thankfulness which I shall never forget, he murmured, “Yvonne.” ... And his face haloed with blessedness like the religious images of the martyrs, he died.
I stood there in ecstasy, transfixed, before that beauty in death, before that strength of love which lights the final hour.
How many I have seen die in this way! In their last breaths all had the name of some woman, and their eyes lighted at the name.
In the final moment of a life which is going out physical suffering no longer counts. The name of the loved one embodies all the vanishing mirage of the future, the end of a too beautifuldream, the memories of a happy past ... of a happy past, for the bad times are forgotten.
Before the quivering body of this poor little soldier, struck down fiercely just as he was going on leave, full of hope, of plans, of dreams, a song on his lips, I forgot the threatening shells. An artilleryman went by on the run and shouted at me:
“Get out of that. You’ll get done up.” And I fled.
Our horses were bivouacked in the courtyard of a sawmill. Not an accident there. I counted them all at a glance.
The underground shelter of the men was in the back of the yard, and I went to the air-hole which was stopped up by a piece of sheet-iron which served as a screen against splinters.
“Oh, down there! Men of the echelon. All outside. To horse. We must hurry. Come on, hurry up! Your masks, helmets, forward with just the bridle!”
One by one they jumped out of their lairs, grimacing as the bright sun struck them full in the face as they came out of the darkness.
“Each one two horses, by squads of six.... One hundred yards between each squad. The other men will remain here and mobilize the pack saddles and caissons in the cellar. Take the road to the Caix station ... on the road lined with poplars.... On the gallop ... no straggling.”
Some minutes later we were already going out of the village. It was a bad passage, but the only one and the shortest one to reach our destination, but three hundred yards had to be covered on entirely unprotected ground opposite the Boches.
Boom! It was the expected. The shells began to fall again. A cloud tinted with red from the tiles of a falling house rises in the air and makes a large spot in the sky back by the church.
Boom! There’s another one now and nearer to us, near the sugar refinery.
A crash, an avalanche of bricks; this time it is the chimney of the sawmill which falls on the horses’ cantonment. It was time, five minutes sooner and we would have been under it.
“Go on, go on.... Gallop, for God’s sake. Corporals ... keep the distances.... Spreadout the squads.... Get into the fields ... behind the trees.”
We reach the deep path like a whirlwind, while the bombardment rages over the village more than ever.
“Any accident? Anyone hit? Good. Assemble, and on the trot now.”
Ten minutes later we are in the shelter of Muguet wood, completely shut off from the view of the Boche artillery.
The wood deserves its name, for it scents the air a hundred yards about with the perfume of violets and lilies of the valley, which form a carpet between the trees and which our mules, entirely insensible to the subtle beauties of nature, begin to eat as though they were common fodder.
“Corporals ... look to your sections.... Is everyone here?... All the horses too?”
I cast a rapid glance over the parked beasts.
“Look, Liniers, where is Chocolate?”
And indeed where was Chocolate?
How did it happen that Chocolate wasn’t there?
Still he had been with the rest at the sawmill.
Chocolate, as the veteran of the echelon, receivedspecial consideration from the men. As far as the dispositions of the cantonment permitted, they reserved for him a covered shelter, a feeding rack, and a manger.
This time the sawmill offered many resources. The stable walls still stood with only a few gaps, and the roof was still intact. Beside some artillery horses, who were generally absent, there was an available place and they had given it to Chocolate. And there the drivers had forgotten him.
If it had been any other animal we would have let him go, but Chocolate was an entirely different matter and we must go and find him.
“Raynal, I hand over the command of the detachment to you. Liniers, come with me, we’ll go and find Chocolate.”
We went back over the path, on foot this time, but as fast as our legs would go. As we reached the village the intensity of the bombardment seemed to decrease. Were we going to be lucky enough to strike another lull? Again there were particularly violent explosions, nearer, then nothing more.
We reached the village entirely out of breath.
As we turned into the street which led to thesawmill Liniers stopped suddenly, as if petrified, and began to wave his hands.
“M ...!”
“What?”
“The shed....”
“Well, what about the shed?”
“Demolished. Can’t you see? It’s gone.”
We ran still faster.
The shed was absolutely demolished and is now only a shapeless mass of rubbish, but there are no signs of a shell—no traces of burned timbers, no splinters. One would have thought that it had folded up and laid down on its side like a house of cards.
When we reached the shed we saw Chocolate’s great neck and shoulders and enormous head free from the rubbish which hid the rest of his body. He was stretched out full length on his side, browsing serenely on the young shoots of an apple tree, which had gone down with the building. His large eye looked us over as we stood there, overcome and absolutely stupefied with amazement, as much as to say:
“What ... you’ve come at last ... you needn’t have been in so much of a hurry.”
I ran to the air-hole of the cellar.
“Hey there, men with spades; quick, come, dig out Chocolate.”
“Dig out Chocolate!” and they all rushed out utterly surprised by the announcement of such a job.
The bricks were scattered with a few blows of the shovels, the beams raised, and the place cleared away.
With all the ease of a circus horse who has been playing dead, Chocolate stretched out his front feet, then his hind ones, balanced himself two or three times, took a spring, and without the slightest hurry stood up, shaking himself all over like a dog coming out of the water.
There were a few scratches on his hide, but it was an old hide, hard and tanned, which resists everything. Nothing broken! Brave Chocolate, come on! The men all look at him, admire him, and fondle him. He seemed somewhat surprised by such manifestations of great affection.
And without a care in the world for the bombardment which was beginning again, he went to the nearby pond and drank deeply.
Dawn had just broken. Some of the boldest of the men in the echelon were already up, rubbing down their horses and adjusting the breast collars. At daylight we had to go a long way to exchange the pack-saddles for munition-wagons.
This has been the way from the start. The companies of machine guns, probably even more than the other branches of service, although I don’t know, are experiment stations on which they try one sort of gear one day and another the next. First it is a round shield, then a square shield, and then a periscope. We adopted the Wikers saddle, only to have it replaced with the Hotchkiss. And we had scarcely put it in service than it was withdrawn to give us ammunition wagons.
These changes are one of the slight distractions of the trade. They must distract still more the handlers of the public funds to judge by the frequency they offer them to us.
But what difference does it make to us whether we do one thing or another? While we wait time passes and the war goes on.
And then “there’s no use trying to understand.”
That is the typical expression in every army. Before the most unexpected orders, the most unusual, which seem the most useless and incoherent, we can only bow without trying to use our intelligence.
“There is no use in trying to understand.” That’s the whole secret of discipline. If one did try to understand, he would never obey—or too late.
We were ordered to assemble on the Place at daybreak, and at daybreak we were there. The clear sky is splendidly luminous.
“Good weather for aeroplanes,” said someone.
Indeed it was good weather for aeroplanes, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and no mist on the ground. A reconnaissance in such weather should be easy.
The Boche aviators are early birds. One sees them but rarely during the daytime, when ours mount guard on the lines, but their specialty isgetting up early in the morning. We hear them flying over our cantonments long before daybreak, at the first rays of dawn, and see them returning rapidly to shelter as soon as the light becomes clearer and it becomes easier to fire our cannon and machine guns.
Presently, as I am giving a final inspection to the material we are to turn in, I meet Sergeant Lace in the yard of the sawmill.
“Oh, but you’re an early bird to-day.”
“I’ve just been ordered to find a good place to fire on aeroplanes and take up my position there at once. There’s going to be a section there each day. Mine starts.”
“Have you found your emplacement?”
“Not yet. But that’s not hard to find. Just a hole or a sloping place, so that we can stretch out on our backs.”
“I know just the place for you. The hole of a ‘320’ at the entrance of the village on the left, near the poplars. You’ll see it right up against the fence which borders the road from Caix.”
“Wonderful. I’ll take up my position there. It must have been dug expressly for me.”
A half hour later the cavalry of the three machine-gun companies of the regiment assembled in front of the church.
Cavalry!...
My good comrade, Roudon, a sergeant-major in the Hussars, who is now with the first company of machine guns in a position like mine, becomes furiously angry every time he hears that word “cavalry.”
“Cavalry! Cavalry!” he roars. “You ought to say an assery, a mulery. Just look at them. Not one in ten stands up on his feet. And the riders! There isn’t one who could ride a horse. They’re afraid!”
Roudon is an experienced cavalryman. For ten years he knew the mad, intoxicating dashes with the Algerian contingents in Morocco, the mysterious attractions of reconnaissances in the long reaches of the valleys of the Sahara, impetuous charges and wild triumphant pursuits among the red Spahis with their Damascus swords, amid the glistening sands which rise toward the sun in golden spangles. At the beginning of the war he was thrown into a regiment of metropolitan cavalry and fought in Lorraine and Belgium. Helived through the horrible hours of retreat, assuming the perilous mission of rearguard while the other regiments withdrew in good order. He fought on foot, in the edges of woods, to stop to the last moment the march of the enemy while the rear went on to the Marne. He endured those long, seemingly endless, waits on foot in front of his horse, the bridle on his arm, saber in scabbard, under the storm of shells and the invisible menace of bullets. There were no trenches then.
Roudon is a cavalryman in his soul and his love for the service. So, attached to an improvised service which is neither cavalry, artillery, nor infantry, he does not know what to make of it, and he rages at it through his excess of conscience and too exclusive love of duty perfectly done.
The echelon of the third company arrives on the Place in good order a few seconds after us. Hémin leads it and he marches on foot beside his column, hands in his pockets, whistling.
Hémin is a type, and not the least interesting among the complex personalities of our command, for we are cavalrymen transformed into infantry, but we’re still cavalrymen just the same.
Hémin is as much a cavalryman by trade as Roudon, and perhaps even more so. He was successively a stable boy in a racing stable at Chantilly, then a jockey, and finally a trainer, after he had done his military service in a regiment of chasseurs. So he is a horseman par excellence. But he never made war as a cavalryman before. Since the beginning of the war he has been attached to various services. First, he was an infantry scout, a standard bearer for a general, a courier for a major, and he was transferred to the companies of machine guns when they were definitely established. Hémin has a style all his own. To all appearances he is neither a cavalryman nor a foot soldier. His jacket is a Colonial one with anchors and cuff-facings, but it has white stripes. He wears great yellow boots, a cavalryman’s spurs, his breeches are reinforced with olive leather, and his head is covered with a very small black cap. Another curious characteristic is that Hémin, the excellent horseman, always walks when he accompanies his detachment.
When we are assembled, we turn the command of the detachment over to Roudon, the seniorofficer, and he leads the way. Hémin and I bring up the rear some distance back.
In files of two our one hundred and fifty horses and mules form a long column, unwieldy and slow, which winds along the road.
“A fine target for an aeroplane!”
This exclamation had hardly been uttered when the well-known roar of a Boche aeroplane was heard over our heads.
“Zut! there’s one.... We ought to have expected it in such weather and started earlier. Look out, if he spots us. Don’t worry, there’s no danger, he’s too high.... At least three thousand.”
A “75” was already weaving around this scarcely visible, extremely mobile target the white tufts of its shrapnel, and threw around the machine a murderous circle which followed it in its evolutions. But the aeroplane in the air seemed to care little and it continued on its way.
We all followed the vicissitudes of the fight as we went along, heads in the air. When a shell seemed to burst very near, an exclamation came from every mouth.
“Oh!... that didn’t miss much.”
“A little more to the left; that would get him.”
“Oh, that missed.... He’s too far.”
“This is outrageous ... he’s gone ... he’s getting away.”
And as a matter of fact the aeroplane gets away ... outside the “75’s” field of fire. It guides itself no doubt by the white ribbon of the road which shows clearly against the rich green of the pastures.
He has seen us now. He has seen us crawling, winding and unrolling on the ribbon. He heads straight for us, circling around in circles of which we are without a doubt the center, and gradually comes lower.
“Look out for the bombs.”
“No ... he’s half turned ... he’s going back.”
“Going back.... You’ll see.”
He’s lower now and we can see distinctly the great black crosses under his wings.
All our men are looking. The horses seem to scent the danger, for they prick up their ears and paw the ground, while the mules neigh.
Suddenly from on high something begins toglide along some aerial rail and shatters the air above us. That lasts a second, a flash. As we listen and wait one would have said that it falls slowly and for hours. We look in the direction of the noise as if to see something, as if to see where the bombardment is going to fall. It seems like a linked chain which rolls out, clashing its links against each other.
A tremendous boom, and black smoke, greenish and red as well, blacker, denser, thicker than that from the great shells, rises in the middle of the field a hundred and fifty yards on our right.
And there is another. It bursts on our left at the same distance. He is certainly searching for the range. Will the next strike in the middle and right on the mark? We’re a fine mark, to be sure, a fine target,—one hundred and fifty horses in Indian file. If he doesn’t make a good shot he’s a duffer.
Roudon stands up in his stirrups, turns around, and shouts commands to the uneasy men:
“Close up, close up, close up, I say.... Dress up together.”
He leads the column rapidly, now closed up into a compact group like a flock of sheep, towardsthe road from Harbonnières, which is lined with trees that will conceal us from the aeroplane.
Two other bombs burst behind us one after another.
“That makes four. He can’t have many left. He didn’t bring a truck!”
Some hundred yards away near a pond cows graze absolutely indifferent to the battle in the air. The “75” again begins to fire. Its bursts of shrapnel come close to the aeroplane but do not hit it.
Another bomb. I stop. It looks as though it were going to fall in front of us. I’m not going to put my head under the knife. So I start to draw my horse back under the trees.
There it is. It has fallen in the fields again. But its explosion throws up dismal fragments, large and bloody ones. It fell squarely on the herd of cows and annihilated it.
“The bungler! He’s wasting the milk,” comes in the accent of the faubourgs nearly under my horse’s feet.
Hard by, in the hole of the “320,” Lace’s half-section has placed its battery. I had approached it without seeing it as I drew back under the threat of the bomb.
“Say, how long are you going to let him do that?” I ask.
“Let him do it!... You don’t mean that, Margis. He won’t blow on his sauerkraut this evening.”
“Wait and see what sort of a menu we’re going to serve that ace.”
It was Grizard, an actor in the suburban theaters, speaking. He looks like the best natured and quietest of men, but he is a pitiless pointer who never lets his prey escape.
“Let me play a little, Margis. See how pretty he is, how fine, and how well he flies. It is too bad, a pretty little canary like that.”
“Ah! Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Two turns, and at three we will commence. You’ll see what you will see.”
“On with the music.”
And the music begins the dance. First, come slow shots, rhythmic and irregular tac-tacs, spaced like the prelude to a slow waltz. Grizard is searching for the tune; then, gradually, he accelerates the time, and the tac-tac becomes faster.
Now he has the aeroplane in his field of fire... the bullets dance around him in a ring of fire, without a break ... the dance of death!
And the circle grows narrower and narrower, infernal, pitiless.
Everyone looks; there is nothing to see up there; bullets are elusive and invisible, but we make out the drama.
From his rapid evolutions, his sharp darts back and forth, his irregular and hurried spirals, we understand that the aviator has already been reached but is trying to baffle the fire which pursues him.
The tac-tac continues. It is incessant, implacable, ferocious. The silence of death hovers over men and things. All Nature seems to await the issue of the combat which is no longer doubtful.
I look at Grizard. Hand on the handle of the gun, he follows the evolutions of the aeroplane; his eyes shine as at a good trick he is playing on the acrobat up there, and softly, with all the desired expressions, as if he were before his audience at Belleville or at the Gaîté-Montparnasse, he hums: