The AttackSee page 225
The AttackSee page 225
We walk along side by side as fast as we can,but slowly nevertheless. We can’t do anything else. We get tangled in the barbed wire; we stumble over corpses; we fall headlong into shell holes. The mud covers the mica in my mask.
A hundred yards in front of us the company reaches its objective, the hill and the Boche blockhouse.
Two sections have rushed in and are already in action.
Two more sections throw themselves into a crater more to the left opposite a clump of trees which is still held by the enemy.
Suddenly there is a terrific explosion, and the most violent clap of thunder that can be imagined sends us head over heels.
The ground trembles, the earth cracks, and through the crevices oozes a black smoke which envelops us. Everything is black. Are we entombed?
A mine has been exploded near us in the entrance. They shout; they cry. Belts of cartridges burst in the furnace. A swarm of bees seems to fly over our heads. The blockhouse has just blown up with our two sections. It was mined.
When the smoke lifts from the overturnedground, all we can see are corpses scattered about. Our comrades ... our dead!
The enemy wanted to prevent our companies capturing and organizing it.
We try to see something from the shell hole where we remain. It is certain death even to try to raise the head. The bullets glance off the ground.
Morin wants to join the lieutenant and finish his errand in spite of everything, but where is he? Was he in the blockhouse? We can’t see anyone in front of us.
Our waves of infantry have turned to the right, invested Herbècourt, and taken it. They are now fighting in the village. We judge from the columns of smoke that there are fires. The noise of the explosion of grenades reaches us.
But in front of us there is no one. It is a breach. The breach our company ought to have held firmly closed with its machine guns during the attack on the village.
The enemy knows this without a doubt. He has calculated his blow well. He has succeeded. He is going to launch out from the clump of trees and take our companies in the rear.
Indeed that is the case. Groups of gray worms crawl out of the thicket. They reach the ridge. They are a hundred yards from us. There is no one to stop them. But where are our two sections? Are they wiped out too?
“My old Morin, we’re done for.”
Our hands clasp in a fraternal farewell. In three minutes the Boches will be on us. They will kill us pitilessly. We hold our revolvers ready, fingers on the trigger. At least we won’t go alone.
They stand up now and shout. They are going to make a dash.
“Vorwaerts! Gottfordam isch!”
The harsh sound of the command and the oath comes to us clearly.
They dash forward to take the crater.
But almost at the end, at scarcely fifty yards, the four guns of our two sections, hidden in the shell holes, receive them with a withering fire.
The Boche line cracks, breaks; groups of men fall in heaps, like puppets.
Our guns fire constantly.
The Boche line wavers, hesitates, the ranks thin out. We can hear the dead sound of the falling bodies.
We laugh and laugh; we applaud, crying like fools:
“There are our two sections. Bravo!”
But behind the files that fall are others in greater numbers which advance in close ranks, one after another.
Our fire is slower. Our munitions are exhausted—the gun crew is firing all the cartridges of their carbines.
The assailants realize this. Some of the groups have already reached our emplacements. An incredibly tall and strong officer hurls himself on a gun. It is Marseille’s gun. It has been silent just a moment, but it hasn’t finished its task for all that.
Marseille tears the barrel from the tripod, and using it as a gigantic mace beats the officer to death.
A terrible hand to hand fight follows. The lieutenant, wounded, dripping with blood, on his knees on the parapet, stops the demoralized enemy with shots from his revolver.
But this heroic defense of the breach can’t last long. Most of our men have fallen and most of the rest are wounded. The enemy is still advancing,in close ranks now. He is going to get by....
Then, from the support trench, which the ... first Territorials hold, a company dashes out like a whirlwind, with an irresistible dash. It throws the mass of the enemy into disorder, and it is soon just a mob, which turns its back and flees frantically, as fast as it can go, falling under our rifle fire, and strewing the ground with corpses and innumerable wounded who drag themselves along on the ground begging for mercy.
“There he is, Captain,” shouted a non-commissioned intelligence officer.
“It is necessary,” said the captain, “to take this order to the lieutenant commanding your company at once. You’ll find that it’s only a promenade. Go ahead.”
A promenade!
From the Château de Cappy where the headquarters of our brigade were all one could see that morning on the horizon was smoke and flame.
The earth trembles as though there were some sort of a fanciful, continuous earthquake.
Since the attack began and our waves crossed the first Boche lines, the enemy’s artillery planted on the heights of Cléry, Mont St. Quentin, Barleux has sent over a formidable barrage to prevent all possibility of the arrival of reinforcements.
It hopes to cut off in the rear the forces engaged in the attack, to encircle them, to exterminate or capture them. A wall of shell and fire separates them from us. Three hundred yards in front of the heights of the La Vache woods from La Vierge clear to Dompierre and Fontaine-les-Cappy, it is one uninterrupted explosion of great shells which throw to great heights enormous masses of earth and stones almost as though they were gushing from the bowels of the earth.
This waste of shells is further beautified with “tear” shells and asphyxiating shells and is designed to stop all attempts at passing the barrage.
This is the delightful place in which I have to take a “promenade.”
I adjust my mask, make sure that the straps are on, and secure my steel helmet by the chin strap.
With the order in the pocket of my revolver case, a solid boxwood baton in my hand, I start towards the fiery furnace.
The communication trench which I try to follow is impracticable. It is partly blown in and such dugouts as are still tenable are full ofwounded fleeing from the zone of combat. They crowd in pell-mell in their efforts to find a breathing place.
Then, sooner or later, after the La Vache woods are passed, one has to walk absolutely unprotected so one might as well go at once.
Few projectiles are falling here on the great quarry as yet, but only a few shots too long or too short from the great guns aimed at the ammunition depot at Froissy.
The barrage is further on....
As one approaches it, the earth and air seem to tremble even more....
One walks on a moving wave, as if tossed about on the bridge of a ship. A displacement of air throws one to the right, the next one to the left. They march swaying like drunken men.
I approach....
Some steps in front of what was the “Servian” trench is the beginning of Hell.
Men, officers, and stretcher-bearers are crouching in holes in half-blown-in saps, waiting for a lull which for several hours has not come.
The sick and wounded, haggard and frightened, do not dare to make a move outside the precariousshelters which even the smallest shell would destroy and bury them alive.
A Zouave, with a swarthy face and a profile like a medallion, gesticulates and shouts. A long gash cuts his forehead from the arch of his eyebrows to the ear; the blood flows thick and black on his cheek and runs into his beard. He waves a rag on the end of a stick.
“The noubah! the noubah! It is the noubah! They are going to dance. You’ll dance with me, won’t you?”
And he runs towards the bombs, laughing a frightful laugh which makes me shudder. Poor fool! A hole opens under his feet. He falls. Perhaps the fall will save him from a mortal wound.
Some Colonials, fatalists, accustomed to so many other storms—for two years they have been in the hottest part of all the engagements—talk coolly under a dugout which is still intact. They squat on their crossed legs and smoke peacefully. The smoke from their pipes, rising in slow easy curves, seems to set at defiance the frightful cataclysm which rages around us.
A stretcher-bearer, a priest, whom I think Irecognize, is dressing a wounded man who has escaped in some way from the furnace and who faints in his arms. Intent on his bandaging he seems to have no idea of the Hell two steps away. He gives him the same care with the same imperturbable calm that he would in the absolute security of some faraway ambulance.
A staff-officer, a captain, is observing the ground through a glass. As is my case, he is carrying an urgent order which cannot wait.
He looks at me and understands from my attitude that I, too, must go on.
“Shall we try it?”
“If you wish, Captain.”
“In case of accident, my pocketbook is in the pocket of my jacket, here ... you will take it to the officer of details of the ... first Zouaves.”
“Mine is here, Captain.”
I indicate the left pocket of my tunic.
“All right.”
“Let’s go.”
He grasps my hand and we advance flat on the ground, bounding from one shell hole to another farther ahead.
We compel our bodies to take the shape of the excavation in which we burrow.
Above our heads is a continuous whistling of shells, cutting like a sword, and the constant djji-djji of the projectiles which tear up the ground.
The explosions are so frequent that we perceive only one infernal noise under a rain of fire.
We crawl through an indescribable chaos, in a field of terror, in the midst of a pungent, fetid smoke. We reach the first German trench which we conquered yesterday morning. We jump into it; we are dripping with perspiration; our clothes are in rags. Our first act is to raise our masks for we are stifling under them.
The asphyxiating shells now fall behind us, and their noxious gas blows in another direction away from us. We stop for some seconds to regain our breaths. We must go on.
As we are about to climb out on the field again, I see one of our couriers coming at full speed. I must wait for him and learn where my company is.
But he stops, leans backwards, and his hands contract and seem to try to pull something from his breast. He falls inert.
I crawl towards him. A spasm still shakes him. He looks at me.
“The company! Where is the company?”
“——Maisonnette——” he murmurs in a faraway breath, then, with an effort, his shaking hand reaches towards his jacket, but without success.
“Sergeant-Major ... there ... there ... to my mother ... in La Ciotat....”
“Yes,mon vieux, yes.”
He is dead. I am trembling but I search for his pocketbook. It is sewed in a handkerchief and in drawing it out it is spotted with blood—his blood. I shall send it to his mother just that way. It is forbidden, but what difference does that make? I have promised.
La Maisonnette! It is still three miles, perhaps more. I’ll never get there! The staff-officer leaves me; he is going to the La Chapitre woods to the left.
We grasp hands once more.
“Thanks.”
Yes, thanks! Together we have done a most difficult thing—we have passed through a barrage.
Now, I go on across that terrible plateau, alone.
Alone!
If a splinter of a shell hits me, no one will be with me during my last moments to listen to my final wishes. I continue my way under the rain of shells.
Why I have not already been blown to pieces or buried I do not know. How little one feels in the face of this formidable power!
I turn around. On both sides and behind me there is no one! I am in a desert in which a hail of fire falls. Will I get there?
At every step I cross, touch, jump over, as I run against them, formless corpses, cut to pieces, or doubled into knots.
Perhaps in a moment I shall be like them, disemboweled and my brains running out, or like those over there buried under rubbish and dirt. I can see a foot here, an arm there; they are entombed forever. I shall be listed among the missing, and my family and those who love me will cling to this shred of hope—that the missing is perhaps not dead.
I go on steadily.
Abruptly, I experience a nervous reaction. I laugh.... I become a fatalist! And after?... I shall not be alone. That’s the common lot of millions of men.
What is going to happen will happen. Forward.
And I crawl on anew, thinking of everything else—a mass of things a hundred leagues away; trifles; paltry trifles. I surprise myself by making plans which I shall realize after the war—when that is over! And, nevertheless, death hovers over me constantly, threatening, and I am much nearer to it than life.
A trench opens before me; it is not badly demolished. I enter it and find that it is an old one taken from the enemy this morning. German words indicate directions. They abandoned all their belongings. On a plank in a sentry post is a superb pair of prismatic field glasses. I pick them up—what use are they to me? I throw them down at once.
I have enough to look out for close by without trying to see what’s happening farther away.
“Nach Maisonnette.”
This direction before my eyes fascinates me.
“To Maisonnette.” Well, I’m on the right track. If the trench continues like this I have some chance of arriving there:nach Maisonnette.
I mark the directions at each turn of the trench, at each branch.
A big shell bursts on my left and utterly destroys the whole of the wall behind me.
I take another course. The devil! Suppose that should be wrong.
I reach a sort of crater made up of stones and trunks of trees blown apart and broken, in one complete tangle.
It would hardly be wise to stay here, for the crater is hammered full of shell holes.
A voice comes out of the ground between the stones, at my feet.
“Oh, good morning, Margis. Keep to the right; the first street to the left is Peronne.”
I recognize the joking voice and constant laugh of Sub-Lieutenant Delpos.
I have arrived; the company is here!
This hole is Maisonnette!
All right!...
And I jump into the protection of the bottom of the sap.
At last!!!
White wine, brandy, fine preserves. Sub-Lieutenant Delpos never lacks for anything even in the most tragic hours of his life.
He makes an elegant and comfortable dugout out of the most filthy hole.
Ten miles from the living world, six feet under ground, in the midst of the shell fire, ten feet from the enemy, he offers me, with a laugh, a meal which is prodigious under the circumstances.
Coharé makes coffee on a burner and he flavors it with brandy.
We talk of many things, of a thousand things, all a hundred leagues removed from the war. We talk about Marseilles.
Sub-Lieutenant Delpos is a lover of its picturesqueness, of its color, its sun—we are in a deep sap lighted by a smoky candle—the sun means something to us, something fairylike and superhuman. To think that at that hour there are people living under clear skies, coming and going and breathing the strong sea breeze, and drinking in with their eyes that perpetual delight—a sunset on the rocks of Frioul!
And the women of Marseilles! They are the quintessence of France, revivified by the air of the Mediterranean. Just think,mon cher, of a villa perched in the pines, facing the sea, in the valley of L’Oriol, with a brunette that I know,
...! ...!
“Oh, I forget, I must present you to the other gentlemen. Come.”
We emerge from the sap and come out in broad daylight. In a crater organized in the expectation of a probable counter attack, guarded by the strongest men of the section, twelve German prisoners are stretched out in the mud.
Some of them stand up automatically at the appearance of an officer and assume a rigid military attitude.
“Look at that rabble with their blessed faces like professors of natural history or like sacristans mumbling their prayers. Who would think to look at them that they are such cynical brutes?”
“But I forgot. You speak German!... Try and get something out of them.”
So I ask them where they come from.
No one replies. Their eyes remain hostile and timid and full of fear.
They distrust one another; informing is the common practice in their ranks.
I look at one in particular, and, taking him by the arm,
“Dü! wohen bist dü dann?”
“Aus München....”
From Munich. Munich! I passed the best days of my youth there. Its splendid life, the magic of its lakes, the first iridescent snows of the Tyrol reflecting in their dark waters, the intoxication of its music, Munich! the city of my dreams! The mystic grayish tints of the inns more smoky even than those of Auerbach but lighter, the impressive harmony of the statues, its incomparable museums, the June evenings on the Isar and the blue sunsets of the Propylées. Munich! And this man in rags, this tatterdemalion speaks to me of Munich.
“Well, Margis, are you wandering?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. As a matter of fact I was woolgathering.”
And I come back to cruel reality.
“Since you must return to the brigade at once,you can take this crowd to the provost. I’ll give you four men. That will be enough.”
“All right, Lieutenant, but I’ll not guarantee to deliver them whole. It’s a bad neighborhood. It rains shells.”
He looks at them and they are ready. All they have to do is to group themselves.
“Go ahead, au revoir,—and a safe return.”
“Nun jetz Vorwaerts!”
We go back along the road I came by this morning. The artillery fire has let up a little. As far as the crossing of the roads from Biaches to Herbècourt, we march along without much risk, but beyond there we are taken anew by a crossfire from the batteries of Barleux and Hem, and by the fire of a cursed machine gun. It seems to be hidden in the ruins of Flaucourt, but our artillery has not been able to spot it yet and silence it.
My twelve prisoners march along ahead silently with bowed shoulders. They understand that they must march along peacefully at the same pace as the four big fellows who form the escort, and that once out of this zone their lives are saved.
We reach without incident the old road which cuts the Le Signal woods, and get back on the road from Herbècourt to Éclusier. An orchard here which before the attack was a signal station has not suffered much. The dugouts are whole and I stop my troop to look after my leg which has begun to bleed.
A little while ago, as I was crossing some barbed wire entanglements, I felt a tear but I thought it was of no consequence. But now the blood has soaked through the drawers and trousers. I tear off a strip from my package of dressings and put on a bandage which stops the bleeding until we reach the next dressing station.
I have hardly put my equipment on again than I hear beyond me in the road an infernal noise of scrap iron, oaths and cries.
I jump up.
It is our movable kitchen driven by Gondran. Yesterday, it went ahead to Herbècourt on premature orders. To-day, it was right in the barrage. Now that the long expected lull has come, the lieutenant is sending it back to Froissy.
On the way back Gondran met four wounded men who were getting to the rear only with thegreatest difficulty, and he took them on his rickety wagon. This torpedo, with its big sheet-iron smokestack which is full of holes and twisted, doesn’t look much like an ambulance. Instead, one might think it was some archaic engine of war of the Gauls.
Phoebe and Lidoire, the two lean hacks which drag it, are marked and cut by the harness and their legs are bent from pulling this badly balanced weight.
Suddenly, the bombardment, which seemed to have ceased, begins again. First two shots, then repeated more and more rapidly, and only in our direction. A shower of splinters beats around us, wounds the two horses and cuts the reins.
They run away at a mad pace with wild plunges through the fields. Gondran is wounded in the hands and is helpless; he clings to the smokestack; the wounded are tossed about. They shout from the pain of their re-opened wounds and hang on as best they can to the handle of the kettle.
The speed of the two horses becomes giddy. They head for the quarry at a gallop. A hundred yards more and they will inevitably fall into thecanal, a fall of more than fifty yards. That would mean their utter destruction.
I have no choice of ways in which to save the five men.
With six shots from my revolver I kill one horse and throw the other to the ground. The kitchen comes to a stop twenty yards from the cliff.
But danger is not averted by any manner of means. Shells follow us. From some faraway place an observer must have taken us for a “75” getting into position and he tries to destroy us. We abandon the kitchen which is now almost completely done for, and as fast as we can, saved by some miracle from the shells, which double in intensity, we throw ourselves into the first trench we find.
I find the Territorials and the provost at the great quarry and I hand my prisoners over to him.
It is only a step from there to headquarters. I arrive at six o’clock.
Captain Chatain is outside the door, and I give him the reply he is waiting for.
He runs it over with a smile of satisfaction.
“Everything went all right, Sergeant-Major?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Good. Didn’t I tell you that it would simply be a promenade ... but I’ll recommend you for a citation.”
Half an hour later I was snoring soundly in a dugout.
We fell back in good order—in as good order as our wounds and the enemy’s artillery fire permitted.
There is a roll call of the company, now reduced in numbers by half, in the ruins of Dompierre, now cleared out, conquered and organized.
None of the two sections surprised in the explosion of the mine came back.
There are great gaps in the ranks of the other two, especially among the non-commissioned officers. One sergeant out of four and two or three corporals are seriously wounded.
As names are called and there is no response, we look around as though to search better. Lips seem to murmur, “What, he too?” Eyes search the distance, the turn of the road at the entrance of the village, as if they still expect to see him come. But no one comes. They will never come again.
The lieutenant has to furnish all possible information about each one missing.
“Did you see him fall? Who was near him? Was he wounded? Do you think he was killed? Did he stay there motionless?”
There were as many inexact replies as there were questions. No one knew exactly or could know exactly whether the fallen was killed or wounded; appearances are deceitful. In the uproar of battle, he who seems dead is not even touched. Another may have had to stay hidden a long time to avoid being killed or made a prisoner.
Opposite the name of each absent one the quartermaster writes:
“Missing the ... presumably killed at....”
After the roll call we separate silently. The most severely wounded are at the dressing stations, and several are discharged by the ambulances from the rear: Sergeant Pierron had four fingers of his right hand blown off; Sergeant Durosiers with a shoulder broken by a bit of shell; Corporal Goutelle shot through the thigh, and has lost a lot of blood.
We accompany them as far as the ambulances which take them to the casualty clearing stations.
Adjutant Dotant and Sergeant Lace take the initiative in buying a wreath and take up a collection among the men of their sections.
“Lieutenant, if you will allow us, we are going to buy a wreath at Harbonnières and this evening two of us will go and place it on our comrades.”
Too moved to answer, the lieutenant acquiesces with a nod.
Morin and I, the only two who are not wounded, offer to carry it. Our errand is not without danger; but we start off at nightfall.
The wreath is light but large, and its width makes it difficult to get through the narrow trenches.
We have to hold it at arms’ length in certain places above our heads on the parapet and slide it along.
Its ornaments catch in the stones and the twigs.
It runs serious dangers before it reaches its destination.
At Herbècourt the trench stops some yards in front of the entrance to the village. It is raining shells.
The shells rage particularly on the road which runs through the village, the only one along whichsupplies can go. There is no longer a well-marked road. The well taken care of highway no longer exists; it is full of holes and is but one yawning crevasse more than three hundred yards long. The wagons and trucks have made a chance path in the neighboring fields. They wait at the entrance of the village, some yards from the point where the barrage persists, for a lull. When it comes, they rush like a whirlwind with a mad burst of speed, and it is a miracle that they are not crushed. All one hears are oaths, cries, blows; wagons lock together, horses fall and get up at once; all this in the twinkling of an eye. Thirty wagons pass between two shells.
We, too, make a dash and reach the other end without much risk. The danger is greater from the autos which rush by us like meteors, graze us, and threaten a hundred times to cut us to pieces or to catch our clothes and drag us under the wheels. But the greatest danger is from the tottering walls, and the waving roofs which the rolling of the wagons brings falling down.
We reach the cemetery at the beginning of the country. It is still nearly intact. Graves are turned up; tombstones are thrown down on theirsides. Its walls are holed with loopholes, which served the last defenders of the village. But the grass is not even tramped down in the corners.
“Can’t we stay here five minutes to get our breath?”
“If you want to.... We deserve it.”
A battery of “75’s” held the position a few minutes ago. It has just abandoned it to get nearer the lines. The place is deserted; it is like a visit in the country at two steps from the fiery furnace. We stretch out on a mound of turf between two tombs.
It is the hour of twilight; the sky is golden; the sun on the horizon plunges into the marshes of the Somme. A fresh breeze blows through the privet hedge.
“A summer evening in the country!”
“Within the country would be more in accord with the circumstances, I think.”
As if to make my punning more emphatic, four “77’s” burst at the same time and smash the cemetery walls to bits.
“Foutre!” This expression, peculiar to Marseilles, has a significant meaning on Morin’s lips.
“You have said it; the place is no longer safe.”
“The battery changed its position because it had just been spotted. We are taking its place and are a target for the Boche artillery.”
We make our way forward as fast as we can.
The bombardment of the abandoned position behind us continues in volleys of four shells at a time. The cemetery we just left is nothing but a ruin, a chaos from which black smoke rises.
We keep on running, each holding an end of the wreath which impedes us terribly. Although it is light, it seems heavy.
Night falls and it is very dark. We are able to advance with more security now. Yawning craters open at our feet; we risk falls and sprains at every step.
It is the dead of night when we reach the place where our company was decimated.
An immense mass of humanity fills the place with a tragic tangle of intertwined corpses. Burned with powder, licked by the flames, torn and blown to pieces, the bodies cling to the wall as if they wanted to fly from the deadly fire coming from the depths of the earth.
Indeed, planted on this host of bodies, his legssinking in up to his knees, the body of Sergeant Bacque seems to point out the road to deliverance with a gesture. His hands hold the pickets of a cheval de frise. A shell decapitated him at the very moment when he jumped and death fixed him in this attitude.
Thin smoke still comes from the bottom of this sinister vat! It is Hell in all its horror. The men saw death coming and tried to flee, but death was victor and fixed them to the spot.
The burial of our friends would be a titanic task for our exhausted strength. We gather into a single pile the scattered bodies which the explosion hurled to a distance. With some barbed wire we hang the company’s wreath on the cheval de frise which commands the great grave. It faces the Boches.
To-morrow at sunrise they can see it from their nearest trench and read on its tricolored ribbon the inscription, “To our comrades, to our brothers, from the survivors of the second company of machine guns.” They will see how we pay homage to our heroes even under the threat of their shells.
The drone of a cannon sounds in the Englishsector in the distance. One might think that there was a tacit truce on our side to let the dead sleep more peacefully in their last sleep.
We remain there kneeling before the hecatomb. Our lips search for the prayers of our childhood to lay our dead at rest, but they have lost the habit of prayer and our memories fail at the first words. We wish a prayer which shall give their final blessing to the bodies stretched out there, but above all we want a prayer which shall give a kindly consolation in the approaching hour of anguish to those who wait—to the mothers, wives, sweethearts, who do not know, who hope and live in the dream of their joyous return. And our scepticism makes us unable to pray.
The darkness of the night is absolute.
The charnel-house of our comrades is only a dark mass in the shadows. A pungent, pestilential odor already rises; we sense the sinister rustling of the rats which slip between the bodies.
Groans rise on all sides in the darkness. Some shriek horribly in their agony; there are long wails; plaintive sing-songs call beloved names, childish words.
Death, with its accomplice, Darkness, gleansthe last rebellious one who clings desperately to life.
Behind us mounts the heavy rolling of the convoys. It is the hour for the nightly supplies. The autos dash along on the torn up roads in the endeavor to accomplish their difficult mission before the probable barrage fire begins again.
On the top of the ridge where the enemy maintains his lines for the moment, a searchlight throws its light on the ground and in the sky, in all directions, watching for aeroplanes and searching for the passing of convoys on the road. Its light passes back and forth over us several times, hitting us in the face and dazzling us. It passes back and forth, flooding the plain with its moving brilliant light. In its light we see moving forms: stretcher-bearers saving the wounded and plunderers of the dead.
Suddenly, the whizz of a shell comes our way, and a light bursts high in the air. Shrapnel launch their rain of fire and shell on the plain.
“Let’s go....”
We had scarcely time to throw ourselves flat on the ground when there was a tremendous explosion.A “380” perhaps bursts on the middle of the mound of corpses and scatters it. One would think that maddened by its orgy of murder, the enemy horde wants to kill our dead anew. A geyser of blood spouts up and boils from the mound.
We try to flee but our limbs fail us. An invincible force rivets us to the spot, as we try to jump ahead.
Morin utters a hoarse cry, a cry like an animal that is being slaughtered. A corpse was thrown up in the air and falls squarely on him and throws him to the ground. He is underneath, hemmed in by its shrivelled arms; streams of blood deluge him.
I try to get him out, but I can’t. My hands feel around on the mangled body. I feel the shattered limbs come apart under the clothes. I pull Morin out from underneath by his arms. He remains motionless for a moment. He is stupid from the shock and fright. I shake him. The arrival of a new engine of death which explodes beside us brings him back to reality and the imminence of danger.
This time we run as fast as we can, stumblingover the débris, tripping over the dead, rolling into shell holes, tearing our clothes, hands, and faces on the barbed wire.
We flee, absolutely breathless, across old trenches which we see only when their depths yawn before our steps.
We flee haggard, in a mad delirium, terrified, pursued by the vision of our dead, of their dim faces, their torn brows, their glassy eyes, their twisted mouths, which the shells still mangle ... which the enemy kill again in their sleep of death.
We flee encircled by the rattle of the fire which pursues us, and which with us draws near the road which we wish to reach and it to bar.
A more violent puff, and close by, grazes our heads.
“Attention!... Stop.... To earth!”
A violent shock, a heavy blow between the shoulders, a hard vice grips my body and throws me on the ground.
I fall.
I fall, and then I remember nothing more.
“Come,mon vieux, swallow this; it will set you up.”
A sergeant of the 88th Territorials is speaking. I see his white number as he bends over me. I swallow the contents of the cup at one draught. Ouf! it’s strong; it burns, but I feel my strength coming back.
Where am I?
I am behind a bank in a dugout cut in the side of the trench. How I got there I don’t know. I have lost all idea of things.
I am anxious about Morin. They don’t know, but they say that they saw stretcher-bearers pick him up.
I have received my reckoning, but I shall recover. I feel my trousers and boots heavy with a tepid dampness. I feel a shooting pain in the groin and something like a warm stream flows drop by drop.
The stretcher-bearer, Bertrand, an old college friend, now a Dominican, stops a second beside me, hurrying on to more pressing cares, to the more seriously wounded. He speaks kindly simple words, but what they are I know not. He speaks of country, the sun, my wife.
My wife, the sun, the country, the return to life, the walks as of old in the woods, in the hills, the dreams at twilight, the cherished plans, the talk of love. Life is beginning again. Yes, we will begin all that again. And it will be finer now ... after the test.
A great relaxation comes; tears flow. I hardly suffer, but I am weak. I want to sleep.
The stretcher-bearers will come presently, as I know, at nightfall. And through the roof of boughs I see the sun die away and the stars come out.
The bombardment rolls in distant thunder; they say that it is increasing, coming nearer.
Does that mean a counter attack?
The sinister heavy blow of a great Boche shell shakes the earth of my dugout, and the leaves of my roof fall in torrents on my covering.
I already feel anxious to get away. I am afraidnow. I dread the final wound which will tear me, shatter me, kill me.
It is dark night. Great drops begin to fall. It is going to rain very hard. The stretcher-bearers have come. I have to move so that they can place me on the stretcher. I feel the warm stream gush out; it is very strong this time.
And I fainted.
At the casualty clearing station at Villers an old major with a white beard gives me an injection of antitetanic serum.
Another examines my gaping wound.
“Iodine dressing, H. O. E.[2]Discharge to private life.”
And an automobile takes me speedily to the station where the sanitary train waits with steam up.
The sanitary train!... For two days each roll of the wheels sounds in my head like a great bell; and the belt which binds me seems tightened into the most atrocious notch; at each turn of the wheels, at every movement it seems to me that the stream will begin to flow again, and that thistime it will all flow out until it is exhausted ... with my life.
Then, one evening, the rolling ceased; my stretcher was unhooked and they gave me something to drink.... I woke up in the hospital.
A white bed, lights, nurses in white, who speak, who smile, who glide over the floors without making a noise.
Can it be true? I no longer hear the noise, the hammering of cannon, and the infernal rolling of autos and caissons. It is strange.
“Take No. 7 to the operating room,” says the head doctor.
I am No. 7.
The operating room.... It is all bright and white; through haggard eyes I look at the shining knives, the reflection of the glass, but a sharp odor seizes me, sickens me, stifles me.
I am stifling.... My breath stops in my chest and no longer reaches my throat.... I am stifling.... No, I hear the bells.... I hear the bells.... How good they sound!
Is it a dream?
An anxious face, shining eyes, lips tremblingwith a kiss, the beautiful loved hair with its familiar perfume.
And the gentle caress on my forehead.
Both arms close about it feverishly, as if never to let it go, on this dear being who brings with her kiss: love, life, the future.
“Oh! you! you! at last! forever!”
“Yes, Georges, yes, forever. I am here.”
And the nurse standing at the foot of the little brass bed smiles with tears in her eyes.