The least dangerous Passage Is the unprotected GroundSee page 185
The least dangerous Passage Is the unprotected GroundSee page 185
They were exhausted by lack of sleep, and after eating a meal hastily thrown together from thethings at hand, they started for their underground shelters.
Just then the sun rose shining brightly.
In the sky, washed by weeks of rain, it was so clear and smiling with warmth that one would have thought it was a sunrise in the South.
“Say, this morning that’s the sun of the South!”
“What’s it doing here? It’s made a mistake.”
“Beautiful sun! Indeed, there’s only you.”
And in the pure morning air, these peasants of Provence saluted the rising sun by shouting the joyous song which, a few hours before, had brightened their night.
Gran souleù de la ProuvènçoFai lusi toun blound caleù.
Gran souleù de la ProuvènçoFai lusi toun blound caleù.
Gran souleù de la Prouvènço
Fai lusi toun blound caleù.
The attack was heavy; it is over. They have come back from it. They are still alive. We must begin all over again, to-night, perhaps; possibly this evening; perhaps in an hour. Death lurks everywhere. What difference does it make? This morning the sun rose radiantly. They sing!
For several days the Germans had been at work making changes opposite our salient on the banks of the Somme. Probably it was a machine-gun emplacement to prevent any attempt at attack from that side. But as there must be no obstacle in the way of our next advance, the major, after talking with the colonel, sent for Lieutenant Delpos, who was in charge of the section in that sector and asked him what he thought of the work.
“It’s hard to say,” he answered. “If they’ve brought two or three machine guns it will be humanly impossible even to try to advance. It all depends on the importance of the work. We can’t tell from here what it is.”
“Our aeroplane observations and photographs don’t tell us anything,” said the major. “The view is partly cut off by the tops of the trees along the river.”
“Aeroplane observations aren’t everything,” answered Delpos.
“But I can’t send a patrol over such unprotected ground. It would be utterly wiped out before it discovered anything.”
“Will you give me an order,” asked Delpos, “to make a reconnaissance in whatever way I think best? In twenty-four hours, at the latest, I think I can bring you the exact details.”
“Go ahead. Do your best. I’ll send you a written order to cover it.”
When he got back to his post, Lieutenant Delpos examined the strip of terrain as thoroughly as he could by peering over the top of the parapet, and then asked for the photographs the aeroplanes had taken. Finally, he studied the map of the country which the enemy occupied opposite us. Then, he went to Éclusier, borrowed a boat, and stayed out in the current calculating its direction by bunches of grass pulled from the banks.
He came back to the company towards noon and sent me to the echelon for Gondran, whom I brought back about three o’clock. At seven Delpos had his plans made. He went to the major, who received him at once, and explainedthe project he wanted to put into execution that evening.
Delpos asked him, as it would probably be useful in distracting attention, to have the sections at the extreme north of the sector fire several heavy volleys between eleven o’clock and midnight.
When this was arranged, everything was ready for his departure and he invited me to dinner as he ordinarily did. His dinners were always good and there was excellent wine which his servant had managed to find in the ruins of Harbonnière and Villers.
As he was lighting his cigar after the dessert, he said:
“We’re going to pay a call on the Boches this evening. The chances of staying there are about even, but, in any case, even if we remain, the performance won’t be uninteresting. It will be as good as a first night at the ‘Grand-Guignol!’ Take your revolver, some grenades and come along.”
I would have been highly unappreciative to have refused such a kind invitation, although adventure, to say nothing of such a mad adventure,has never been to my taste. But Lieutenant Delpos had the reputation of always getting out, so why shouldn’t he get out this time.
Gondran was waiting for us a little ways from Éclusier, in a small creek, hidden under the trees.
Gondran and his boat!
It was one of those flat-bottomed, square-ended boats that fishermen use to cross marshes where the water is shallow. He had covered it with a camouflage of grass, weeds, and moss so that even close to it was impossible to tell it from one of the thousand little islands which obstruct the Somme at this point.
We slipped into the boat and stretched out at once—it wouldn’t have held us in any other way—and waited for total darkness. When it came, Gondran began to push the boat ahead. He was used to fishing for eels with a spear in the clear waters of the canals and knew how to move silently, without a splash, almost without making a ripple on the surface of the water. If our course had not been against the current, we might have been mistaken for a pile of drifting grass.
Flat on his stomach in the stern with both arms in the water up to his elbows and a stick of woodin each hand, slowly and silently he paddled like a duck.
The officer and I were both flat also, in the bow, and we peered into the darkness. I held a string in one hand, and the other end was tied around Gondran’s arm. We had arranged that one pull meant to stop and stay where we were; two to go back.
We went on without accident for nearly two hours. Suddenly, a bump, a hard jolt, fortunately without any noise besides the rustling of the weeds. The night was so thick that it was impossible to tell what the obstacle was, whether it was the bank or an island. We tried in vain to see through the fathomless darkness. We ventured to feel about with our hands, and, in the middle of the weeds and reeds, I was gripped by something. I pulled back my arm, in a hurry, to get away. A sharp point cut the skin, then another, and I felt a scratch from my elbow to my fist.
I whispered in Delpos’s ear, “Barbed wire.”
A network of barbed wire barred the river here. The Germans had foreseen the possibilities of an approach and had taken precautions to preventit. Was the network large, or was there only a single barrier, that was the question. Or, should we go back? In any case there was no use in re-appearing before we were expected, for we had reached their lines.
Since the work under suspicion was a little in advance of their first trench, we must be nearly even with it. We had brought wire cutters, but what was the use of cutting the first net, if we were to find another beyond it, and then another, and so on for fifty or a hundred yards perhaps.
The enemy is meticulous in his defenses and spares no means of protecting himself. It was also a question whether we were in the middle of the river or near the bank. By shoving his paddle down at arm’s length Gondran touched bottom. So we were going to reach the bank, but first we must prepare for our retreat. Using the barbed wire as a guide, we put the boat out into the middle of the river, but not in the strength of the current, and then on a stick we had brought along set up a dummy dressed in the uniform of one of the Colonials. Then we went back to the bank.
Here was the most ticklish and dangerous moment of our mission. What, we asked ourselves,was the shape of the bank and would we find a sentinel? We brought the boat as near the shore as possible and in as far as we could. By feeling to the right we could touch solid ground. The time had come!... We glided from the boat like snakes and once on land remained motionless, holding our breaths. It was impossible to see anything a yard off; there was no noise except the far-off rumbling of the guns in the English sector. We went ahead.... The heavy socks we had drawn over our boots deadened our steps. The damp grass bent but did not crackle.
“Conrad! Come here. It is time.”
“What time?”
“Nearly midnight.”
“Good.”
“The lieutenant isn’t here.”
“No?”
“He is with the major and will come back.”
“Come along.”
“But there’s no one here.”
“What of it? Come along.”
This conversation in German stopped us short. The voices seemed to come from the ground two steps in front of us. Doubtless there was a sapthere.... We heard steps getting farther away. I grabbed the officer and making a megaphone of my hands whispered in his ear what I had just understood from their conversation. In the same way, he responded:
“Inviting you was an inspiration. Since they’ve gone, we can get in there.”
A few steps beyond in the open ground a feeble light filtered through sacks hung as shutters. It was the sap!... We stretched out on the ground and tried to see inside. There was no one standing, but if anyone was left he must be asleep, and we could surprise him.... We jumped in. Not a soul. Without a doubt it was a post momentarily empty during a relief. On some overturned chairs there was a platter with a candle on it and we put it out. We examined the place with our flashlight. A communication trench opened into the post and we started down.
No matter where it led or whether we could retrace our steps or not, the die was cast. The number of chances of our getting back alive which Delpos had said were even seemed to me to have grown beautifully less. The trench stopped short within ten yards. Ahead, to the right, to the left,we stuck our noses into the solid wall. But the men had got out someway....
Delpos risked another flash of his light—the way out was over our heads. It was a shaft with a ladder leading up it. We heard someone talking above. The relief was coming down....
Just then the noise of firing came from our own lines. The sections were firing as had been arranged. This wise precaution served beyond our utmost expectations, for above us began at once the rapid tac-tac of the machine guns and we heard commands.
So the shaft led into the machine-gun emplacement. That was just what we wanted to know; our reconnaissance was at an end.
Delpos drove a cheddite bomb into the wall beneath the ladder, and I tied a slow fuse to it. We jumped towards the river. I lighted the fuse as I jumped from the sap, just as an immense body appeared in the opening and blocked the way.
“Wer da?”
“‘Wer da?’ you’ll find out who is there,” Delpos muttered, and with a blow full on thechest, while I threw myself on his legs, we got the colossus down, as he shouted for help.
But the firing drowned his cries.
Then, to deprive him of all interest in keeping on, I applied my revolver to his forehead, and Delpos kicked him under the chin. We left him senseless and voiceless for at least a quarter of an hour.
We jumped into our boat and slid under the camouflage. Whether we had made too much noise or a sentinel had heard us, I don’t know, but we were hardly there, and were just pushing off, when shots came in our direction, star shells lighted the river, and men ran up and down the bank.
We heard them cry, “There he is ... there....” They had seen our dummy in the middle of the river and were firing at him with rifles and bombarding him with grenades. We did not move. By stretching out an arm we could almost have touched the legs of the men who came down to the water’s edge to hurl their grenades. None of them dreamed we were so near.
The alarm lasted about twenty seconds; it seemed like a century.
We knew that the blockhouse was going to blow up and we wanted to be far away for the débris were likely to reach us and crush us.
Suddenly, terribly, came the explosion.
It was fortunate for us that the alarm had held us close to the bank. Whole blocks of granite were hurled into the middle of the river just where we would have been. We were too near and too low and everything went over us.
The violence of the waves tore us from the bank and drove us into the strength of the current, and we weren’t fired on once. The whole garrison had been blown up.
At daybreak, three o’clock in the morning, Lieutenant Delpos woke up the major.
“Major,” he said, “it was a machine-gun emplacement. But it is no more. If you will allow me, I’m going to bed. I couldn’t get any sleep over there; there was too much noise.”
At the beginning of June, the colonel’s report informed us that the major of Battalion C ... had been assigned to the ... first Colonials.
The battalion commandant’s post was next to ours on the ridge of the quarry.
Since the departure of Major L ... the captain adjutant-major, who was assuming the command in the interim, was quartered there. He was devoting himself to his ablutions in the open place in front of his dugout and at the same time telling Lieutenants C ... and D ..., his neighbors, an uproarious adventure of his last leave, when a man, tall and spare, with hollowed cheeks, sunburned skin, eyes deep and shining, modestly dressed,—a mechanic’s blue trousers, badly fitting and muddy boots, regulation trooper’s jacket, with no mark to show his rank,—came out of the sort of tunnel in which the La Vachetrench ended, and stopped as if undecided, in front of our dugouts.
There was a mounted scout there who was occupying himself in cutting out a ring, and he asked him,
“The post of the major of the ... first battalion?”
Without stopping his work, the man indicated our group with his hand. He advanced shyly.
“The ... first battalion?”
“This is it,” said the adjutant-major, drawing his wet head from the canvas bucket in which he was plunging.
“I am Major C....”
“Oh, Major, I beg your pardon. I didn’t know....” mopping his face rapidly, and putting on his tunic which his orderly handed to him.
Without a word, the unperturbed figure, Major C ..., looked off into the distance, beyond material things, waited for him to finish his toilet, and then entered into the P. C. to take possession of his new post.
None of us who lived constantly in his immediate neighborhood ever knew any other expressionon his firm, cold, almost mystical face. His hair was poorly cut, his beard was thin and long, and his voice was gentle, very gentle, so gentle that one might call it a sad sing-song. All in all he had none of the outward appearance of the conventional commander.
Nevertheless he was one of the best.
Good reputations, they say, take longest to establish. Only legends come to life spontaneously. His kindliness and honesty must have belonged to the legends, because in less than a week there was not a single man in the battalion who did not speak of him with respect and admiration.
“He’s a chic type,” they said.
“He’s a man.”
And the men, who love to see their commander among them, living their life, sharing their labors and fatigue, experiencing the same trials, knew at once that he did not belong to that distant and unknown hierarchy which transmits its orders from an ivory throne.
From the day he took over his command, he wanted to see everything for himself and all the positions in the sector.
With his knotty baton in his hand, he went through all the communication trenches, the first-line trenches, into the saps, verified the riflemen’s posts, and, it was said, spent nights in the picket posts.
When the battalion relieved the 38th at Méharicourt, the commandant’s post which was assigned to the major was in an immense house in the middle of a park which was not much destroyed.
Since the day before, however, the artillery had established an observation tower in a poplar and had foreseen that it would hardly be prudent to occupy the house. It would be shelled if the battery were spotted.
The commander learned this, and without saying a word established his things all the same in the salon which he used for an office and bedroom.
The first night and the next morning passed without incident—not a single shot from the Boche lines. Aeroplanes flew over at daybreak.
He had invited to lunch, as was his custom, when we were in cantonment, the doctor, his captainadjutant-major, and the engineer officer in charge of the sector.
My relations with him dated back before the war, so I was with him often, and he frequently kept me at the table with his guests. I was there that day.
We had scarcely sat down when they began to talk of Portugal’s entrance into the war. The engineer was the manager of a political paper and his remarks were so keen that we were all interested, and even the servants stopped to listen.
Just then a shell, the first in two days, burst somewhere in the neighborhood. The glasses rattled on the table; we could hear things falling, and people running by in the street.
The conversation stopped.
The major, who had been as silent as usual during the meal, spoke up in his quiet voice:
“They say that their artillery is excellent ... it comes from Creusit”—and he engaged the journalist in a historical discussion about the armament and strength of Portugal, which showed a deep knowledge of the country, in spite of its unexpected and recent entrance into the ranks of the Allies.
The journalist seemed to take a lively interest in this conversation which he had started, but he instinctively turned his eyes to the windows every time a shell burst, for now explosions far and near, the screeching of shells and the falling of walls indicated clearly that we were the center of a bombardment.
At each explosion the doctor looked at the adjutant-major, who kept on eating quietly, as if to say, “Are you going to stay here much longer?”
The explosions came nearer and all around us. We could see plainly the bits of steel which whistled by the windows, grazing the walls which they destroyed. We could hear the plaster falling down the staircase.
As the servant brought the desserts—a Camembert, crackers, fruit, and white wine—a violent explosion of a new arrival nearby tore the window, stuffed with paper, from its hinges and the draught of air half overturned the orderly who let the platter fall on the table, to the great damage of the tablecloth where the white wine ran out....
“Bigre!” said the major.
“I think it’s time to get into the cellar.”
The engineer was only waiting for this invitation to stop the conversation and was half out of his chair when the major took his arm and sat him down again.
“In short, Portugal owed its title of Historical Conquistador to its navy.”
And he began to relate the records of that valorous nation on the sea from the time these people on the Tagus served in the Carthaginian triremes to Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Cabral, Bartholomew Diaz. Never was conversation more polished, imaginative, and undisturbed.
A terrific explosion shook the house; part of the roof rolled down the staircase; the cook and the waiter jumped into the hall.
“Well, what is it?”
“Major, it fell in the garden, ten feet from the kitchen.”
“The gentlemen are waiting for their coffee. Bring it.”
The doctor could stand no more, alleged that perhaps there were wounded waiting for him at the dressing station, and asked permission to withdraw.
The servants brought in the boiling coffee in a hurry, and he got up to go, as the commander said:
“We’ll go along with you. We’ll see whether the shells have done much damage in the cantonment.”
“But, Commander, do you think it’s prudent to venture out in the streets just now?”
“It’s my opinion, gentlemen, that the Germans, who obviously wanted to furnish the music for our meal, should know that we’ve finished”—and he lighted his cigar and went out on the steps.
The neighborhood was badly shattered indeed. Large holes blocked the street; the artillery observatory had been hit by a well-aimed shell, had fallen on a shed and crushed it. Immense craters had appeared here and there in the garden and the whole front of the house was splashed with steel.
The enemy’s fire was letting up; it had almost ceased.
Heads now appeared at the air-holes of the cellars trying to see what had happened.
We followed the commander along the mainstreet which led to the dressing post. An aeroplane in the azure sky, a small silver bird shining in the sun, went on its giddy way.
With our noses in the air, we watched it pass. The whistle of a shell approached with a noise like a panting locomotive.
“There’s the last.”
A frightful crash, a cloud of greenish smoke, bricks and timbers fall ... cries....
The villa we had just left re-appeared with a large yawning hole, its walls burning and fallen apart. The last shell had fallen into the dining room!
His courage and coolness were not calculated or put on; they were not an effort of the will. They were natural.
He was a fatalist like all who have lived long in Eastern countries. What he had above all was a powerful control of himself and a sovereign contempt for danger.
He had an absolutely definite conviction that he would be killed in the next attack. He had so thoroughly accustomed himself to the idea that as a result he had made all arrangements and now awaited the hour, in the meanwhiledoing his duty as a commander honorably and simply.
One evening I went to greet him at his cantonment at Froissy—he was going on leave the next day—I asked him, among other things, if it would be agreeable to him, if I used his horses while he was gone.
“My horses? I have no further use for them. They can’t follow me through the trenches and barbed wire—to the front; coming back ... they’ll bring me in a canvas. They’ll serve my successor.”
It would have been perfectly useless to protest.
After a moment of silence when he seemed to be keenly interested in the ripples of the water in the canal, he went on:
“I’m going on leave to-morrow, to bid good-by to mine. That will be the last. What are you doing this evening?”
“Nothing, Commander.”
“Do you want to make a tour of the sector with me?”
“At your orders, Commander.”
By the last red rays of the sun setting on the heights to the north of the Somme, we reached thelines through the open path which passed by the camp kitchens and reached the hill of the Château de Cappy.
Twilight passed, followed by the most varied colors.
The red sun as it plunged behind the black poplars on the wide horizon flooded the sky with a great yellow light, fiery, burning yellow, like the gold of flames which gradually grew thin and pale, and became light like an immense head of hair.
A little later mauve and violet precursors of approaching clouds passed slowly from pale to dark to end in night.
The clear moon came up above the plateau of the road from Amiens. We walked on, one behind the other, in silence.
He stopped to look at the sky and I heard him murmur, “How beautiful it is.”
This twilight must have recalled to him the skies of the Orient.
“Yes, the sunsets on the sea, in the Indies, in the Red Sea. I am homesick for the light and the sea. The light, the sea, the woman; the greatest joys, the greatest sorrows!!!”
He fell into his revery again.
We reached the orchard above the great quarry, and an outlying picket warned us that the path was dangerous.
The commander did not even hear him and continued to walk on the road from Herbècourt, bordered by apple trees in blossom.
“Ta-co!”
A German bullet tore through the night, and a broken branch with its white petals fell at our feet.
He picked it up and looked at it a long time; plucked a blossom and put it in his pocket,
“Even the flowers!”
He said nothing more that evening. We went through the front lines of the sector until late at night, stopping at the loopholes to observe the enemy’s position and questioning the sentries.
We got back to Froissy at three o’clock in the morning, and at six he went to the station at Guillaucourt and left on his leave.
When he got back, the attack, they said, was near; they were preparing for it seriously. He did not give up attending to the slightest detailsof the battalion. He showed a paternal interest in his men, knew the men of all ranks by their names, and stopped those he met and talked to them familiarly.
The battalion followed the deep path to the entrance of the “120 long” to get back to its positions. A wooden bridge had been constructed here by the artillery to get their guns across. This was useless now and made the road so narrow that the column had to dress back and form by twos. This long manœuvre compelled the men to mark time in one spot.
There is nothing especially disagreeable about marking time for we have seen many other stops for less reasons, but this evening the Boche artillery had information of the arrival of the attacking regiment in the lines and was shelling heavily all possible ways of access.
A single “77” falling into this crowd of men would make a hecatomb.
The commander was marching at the head of the column followed by the intelligence officers of the companies.
He stopped a moment in front of the bridge encircled by the explosions of the shells.
“If a shell would only destroy it!”
But as if for spite, they fell all around and missed it.
“It must be destroyed.”
There was nothing formal about this order, and the task wasn’t easy.
He took off his belts, gave his jacket to a man, and with his chest bare the commander stood up on the bridge, propped himself on the timbers of the floor, and began to tear them up.
Ten men imitated him of their own accord. They finished tearing it down amidst a storm of shells which raged about, and in the black smoke of the explosions in which they disappeared for minutes at a time.
In a quarter of an hour the way was clear; all that was left was the two laterals which were planted in the walls of the covered path.
The battalion was engulfed in the whirlpool and passed without loss.
The commander stood on the pile of materials and watched the men file past. He was the last one over.
When we reached the line, he began to walk up and down incessantly.
The fire of our batteries had been uninterrupted for three days; and this with the constant whizzing of shells as they passed over our heads put our nerves almost as much on edge as the strain of the approaching attack.
Towards eleven o’clock one night there was an intense calm all of a sudden.
The firing ceased along the whole line—on both sides. All was silence, but it was the silence which precedes the storm, the stupor of nature after the flash and before the thunder.
The men burrowed in the saps and fell asleep. The sentries who had not closed an eye for forty-eight hours continued to fight against sleep.
It was almost impossible to recognize the commander in his bizarre garb, wrapped in a canvas instead of a waterproof, his steel helmet covered with mud, as he wandered up and down the trenches, with a kind word of encouragement for each one.
In the “Servian” trench there was an exposed passage to the German lines. They had blocked this up by piles of sandbags, chevaux de frise, and rolls of barbed wire.
As a greater precaution, a sentry was stationedthere night and day. He was sleeping deeply when the commander came by. He had to shake him vigorously to wake him up.
“Say, do you sleep like that when you’re sentry?”
“I ... it’s true ... I was asleep.”
“That’s not serious. Try hard, if an officer should come along, you’d not get off with advice.”
“They won’t come along; they’re all snoozing in their dugouts.”
“Oh, you never know.”
“Well, I’m going mad sooner or later. I haven’t slept a wink for three nights. If the Boches are as tired as I am they won’t come to wake us up.”
As he talked, his voice was drawn out more and more and his head nodded. He was dead with sleep....
The commander took his rifle from his hands and said:
“I’m not sleepy, and, besides, I shall sleep very well to-morrow. I’ll mount guard to-morrow. Sleep, little one, sleep. We, the old, have lost our habit of sleep.”
The sentry did not even acquiesce in this invitation.He had accepted it in advance, for he was asleep already.
At daybreak when the relief came, the sergeant who accompanied the new sentry was thunderstruck when he recognized the commander mounting guard at the loophole.
“Here’s his rifle. Wake him up when I have gone. Say nothing about it, for he was very sleepy.”
When the signal for the assault was given the next day, after our first two waves had gained the enemy trenches without firing a shot, the commander, who was to go with the third, had scarcely advanced on the field when the whistle of a single shell shattered the air.
A “77” burst and a cloud of smoke went up. His thigh was torn off and we saw him fall in a pool of blood.
Lieutenant Delpos was getting ready to dash across with the second section of the company and he jumped towards him.
“Go on, my friend, the end has come. I am waiting for it. Tell Captain C ... to take command of the battalion.”
And during the slow agony which lasted a half hour he did not stop following attentively the progress of his men on the conquered positions.
Stretcher-bearers carried his body to the church in Éclusier.
We buried him simply on the hill at the east of Cappy in a military cemetery near the canal.
When the news of his death was known in the battalion, I know more than a hundred who had seen their best comrades fall beside them, who wept as though they had lost their fathers....
He was with us only a month.
We had been talking about it for months. The hour of the great attack has finally come.
They have been preparing for it ever since we were transformed into diggers and sappers who dug trenches, parallels, communication trenches, and saps, day and night.
It’s going to succeed at last.
This time the artillery preparation won’t be insufficient.
We have guns, little and big, of every kind, of every caliber, from the little howitzers set low on their plates with their large muzzles like those we used to see on the terrace of the Invalides up to the great naval guns, long, lean and sharp, like a cigar, monumental guns of unheard-of size mounted on gigantic platforms, with covered turrets, new and odd foreign cannon, long as a train and mounted on rails.
And there are projectiles such as the wildest imagination could not dream of. Whole fields of shells of every caliber from the small “75” which now seem like playthings to the enormous “400’s” which can be moved only by gigantic jacks.
And over this immense sea of shells they have stretched a green colored tarpaulin, dotted with great yellow spots, with great chalky streaks which in the distance give them the appearance of a field furrowed by tracks.
We have been encamped in a wood for three days under tents beside batteries of heavy artillery waiting for the order to take up our positions for the attack.
And for these three days our constant occupation has been to strengthen and set up our huts again, for every shot from the great neighboring gun drags them from the ground by the tremendous displacement of air.
That is all right in the daytime. This Penelope-like work relieves the monotony and serves as a counter irritant to nervousness. But the occupation is less interesting at night.
Finally, about nine o’clock one evening, a greatuproar arose in the companies on the other side from us and by degrees, like a rising sea, reached us—we are in our usual place at the extreme wing of the battalion.
The adjutant had advanced to meet the news and he came back on the run.
“It’s come this time. They are distributing the playthings to clear the trenches and they’re going to give out an additional cup of brandy.”
“Do you believe it will be before to-morrow morning?”
“Do I believe it. It’s sure, by God! Perhaps you want them to wait until next winter!”
“No, but you know. There have been so many orders and counter-orders that one can never be sure. It ought to rain.”
“Do you think it will rain?”
“Good God! I wish it would. The sooner we finish the performance, the sooner we’ll get to bed.”
The colonel’s orderly arrives with the orders:
“The Casanova company of machine guns will support the second battalion and will take the designated objective (Hill 707) directly after the third wave.”
“The third wave! Hum! That’s not good. The first wave is a promenade, nothing in front. The second goes over then, but the third has all the shells, for it’s right in the barrage.”
“And after?”
“After?”
“Say, you must think you’re in a café at La Cannebière. Perhaps you’d like to order an ice. This is war, you know.”
“I see it now.”
The distributions are finished at ten o’clock and we move towards our positions behind the second battalion.
The men have taken off their belts and all their useless equipment and are in jackets with their tent canvas crosswise.
The diluvial rain which has been falling for some days has stopped this evening. The sky is as black as ink and we can’t see a yard in front of us.
The paths were already muddy, but now they have disappeared after whole regiments have gone towards the lines without interruption for some hours. When we reach the communication trench it is no longer a trench at all, but a stream of fluidmud, where we sink over our leggings. We have to use our hands to pull out our legs when they get stuck.
“Well,mon vieux, if we have to go clear to Berlin at this pace, we won’t get there before to-morrow morning!...”
It is so dark that we can scarcely see the back of the comrade in front of us. We march in silence, with our hands on the sheaths of the bayonet and our mask case to prevent the metal striking against the sides of the trench.
It is after two o’clock when we reach the lines. We take our places as best we can, where we can, and with what we can find.
The saps are filled with companies in reserve who will guard the trench while we fight.
We find places against the sides of the trench, in chance dugouts gashed in the parapet. We have to be careful to keep our feet underneath us to avoid having our toes crushed in the incessant coming and going to and fro.
Rifts in the clouds show us that the sky is clearing. It will be fine.
We talk. We weigh optimistically our chances of success. But we have to shout into each other’sears or we couldn’t hear anything. Above us is the infernal roar of an incessant bombardment.
Our guns have fired some days without interruption. And the men never cease praising the heavy artillery. We have never been supported in this way. How far we are from the days in Champagne! We have confidence, absolute confidence.
Day comes. The sun rises, the bright clear sun, which will be warm soon, rises over the ridge behind us. On the broad, many-colored screen of the sky with its rays of dawning day, the chimney of the distillery at Frameville, still intact and standing as though hurling defiance at the Germans, stands out monumental and black like a gigantic obelisk.
The countryside never stood out so clearly. I note the slightest details with a feeling which can never be effaced. I continue to look persistently to overcome my nervousness and to have something else to think about.
I look....
Below, in advance, are light lines of freshly turned earth. They are the German trenches, and I think I can see among the apparent ruins the invisibleloopholes ready to belch forth death. A little further to the left, a few yards from the sides of the cliff is a small clump of woods which seems quiet and deserted. Our shells have started fires, but the fortified positions which conceal the machine guns are still there.
I look....
The ground and slope in front of me, close to the parapet, is empty, bare, torn full of shell holes. Young trees have been cut down, and the fallen trees are rotting in the earth under the growing moss. But daisies, buttercups, wild poppies, and cornflowers have sprung up and blossomed, opening out to nature, the sun, and life.
All the fires will shortly rage on these flowers. The blood of men will flow on them, and to-morrow their sweetness will be mingled with the charnel-house of corpses ... our corpses.
Nature has never seemed to me so moving. Tears come to my eyes. It is not fear. No, it is not that. There are times when one may be afraid. Here we realize that fear is a reflex impression, ridiculous, and above all useless; that the minutes which are left are perhaps too numbered to waste in vain sentiments.
But while I look through the mirage of nature, I have seen a small shriveled figure with trembling lips, and eyes hollowed with pain and fright; I have seen small hands—long, pale, emaciated hands—clasped before a photograph; I have heard the expression so many times, read it so many times in the letters on my breast, on my heart: “Tell me that you will come back. You are my all, father, mother, brother, child, husband; tell me that you will be careful, that you will come back to me,” and a slight uncontrollable, nervous trembling takes hold of me; but no one can see it.
The blast of the whistle—the final order—rings out. I find myself on the slope without knowing how I came there, in the midst of the others, beside the lieutenant, at my post.
Under a protecting storm of our “75’s” we advance towards our objective. The battalion has already crossed the first line of the Boche trenches without resistance.
All nervousness is gone now. I am very cool. The third wave advances in front of us in good order, in step, without heavy losses. We march in their wake.
There, thirty yards away, on the right is a knoll. That is our objective which we must occupy to prevent the enemy’s reserves coming up.
We draw nearer; my heart begins to beat violently. It is nervousness. It is the beginning of the end.
Suddenly a sharp noise stops me; then another beside my ear. Instinctively I throw myself on the hill. A sergeant falls near me without a word. He is dead, a bullet in the middle of his forehead.
We are under the fire of a machine gun which defends the approach to our objective.
The bullets whistle in a continuous buzz around us. A sharp burning pain, like a sting; a cry stops in my throat, on my very lips. I fall.
The fusillade rages. To the right, to the left, around me everywhere, bullets bury themselves in the ground. I am wounded, but where? All my limbs are numb.
I feel a hand take mine and grasp it. It is the lieutenant, who has already come running to me.
“Good-by for the present.”
“For the present.”
It is nothing. A stone hurled violently by the bursting of a shell has hit me in the back. It hasjust missed killing me. I remain there a moment without being able to get my breath back or to get up.
All around there is an incessant rain of bullets and shrapnel.
However, I can’t remain there right in the barrage. I make an effort to catch up with the company. My fall which took only a few seconds has put considerable distance between the wave and me. More than three hundred yards separate us.
I want to run after it, but I can’t.
A greenish cloud rolls like a flood over the plain. The enemy is launching gas.
Some one out of breath joins me. It is Morin who took a message to the major. He is now carrying an order to the lieutenant.
“This is dangerous.”
“One might think so.”
“Commandant Courier was just killed getting out of the parallel.”
“No?”
“A ‘155’ square in the chest. It killed two officers and five men. I’ve a splinter in my thigh and one in my shoulder.”