December 4, 1914.
The “Salle du Jeu de Paume” was born, if I may use the expression, from a conjunction of coups d’état.
Day by day the quartermaster became more exasperated at the happiness of five Frenchmen. In accordance with the good German rules, they ought to have been sleeping upon the damp cement in the basement, which is really a dungeon. But since we have had palliasses, the house-surgeon, the apothecary, and their friends—Laloux, Badoy, Scherrer, Massé, and Noverraz—have been sleeping in the consulting-room, where they are masters. This first-floor casemate, adjoining theKommandantur, is dry, has a boarded floor and a southern aspect. Every evening they made their beds side by side and slept the sleep of the just. M. von Stengel good-naturedly closed his eyes. The Bavarian guard, grateful for the castor oil and the cuppings of Laloux, did likewise. But Ploss, the reservist quartermaster, a Franconian stonemason who speaks of himself as a “sculptor in the building trade,” was scandalized. He is a patriot, a flaming patriot—exceptwhere his own skin is concerned. Called to the front a few weeks ago, he went to weep upon the commandant’s bosom. The weeping gained its end, and he is still at Fort Orff.
Frenchmen sleeping dry, with plenty of room! Five Frenchmen bedded in a spacious casemate! Frenchmen passing night and day in the next room to theKommandantur! Ploss’ soul was desolate.
One morning he went to see Baron von Stengel, and declared that the casemate of the guard, which adjoins on the west the commandant’s casemate, was too small, and that it was essential to use the consulting-room as an overflow. The consulting-room, divided in two by a wooden partition, could serve as a sort of office for theFeldwebeland for himself, the quartermaster; thus the faithfulLandwehrleutewould have the delight of guarding their dearHerr Majoron both sides. The argument was irresistible. TheHerr Majoracquiesced. Intoxicated with delight, Ploss promptly went up and down the fort announcing the news everywhere, to the guard, to the interpreters, and to the banished men. Prouder even than M. de Morny after the 2nd of December, he luxuriated in his coup d’état.
The door of the room occupied by the six French medical officers opens into the same corridor as theKommandantur, but on the other side of the main entrance. Laloux and his companions promptly go to knock at the door. They explain the situation. Next minute, M. Langlois, in full dress, wearing gloves, emerges. He descends upon M. von Stengel. He hasthe most pressing need of a consulting-room, spacious, airy, and sunny! He is crafty, and as persistent as he is diplomatic. The baron agrees to let him have No. 46, the next room to the French officers. An obstinate defender of our rights, he demands in addition that the members of his staff, who give their services to French and Germans alike, shall have permission to sleep in their workroom. Permission is granted. He returns. Our exiles, whistling and singing joyously, hasten to remove their palliasses. Ploss watches them sourly; his coup d’état has missed fire. These French monkeys, they always fall on their feet! But what sort of aHerr Majoris this, who can refuse them nothing?
Downstairs, in kitchen No. 22, another turn of fortune’s wheel! The major from the Ingolstadt headquarters, who is but a Ploss with a commission, has been inspecting the fort, and has caught sight of the twin palliasses of Dutrex and Riou. Placed against the wall opposite the stoves, they have been an offence to him. “Clear out, messieurs!” What are we to do? Our places have been filled in our old casemates. We, too, visit M. Langlois. Hitting two birds with one stone, he includes us, as well as Durupt, the money-changer, d’Arnoult, the secretary, and Détry, the dentist, in his request to M. von Stengel. Thus the entire pharmaceutical staff and the whole French bureaucracy of Fort Orff are assigned to the consulting-room.
This happened ten days ago. Since then the victimsof the two coups d’état have furnished their quarters. They have adorned their windows with half curtains and have divided their casemate in two with a hanging of flowered lutestring. During the day they arrange their ten palliasses in two piles and cover them with rugs, so that in hours of despondency they have two imposing couches—thrones, as it were. At the very end of the room are the two tables, the one known as the “operating-table,” and the little table whose heavy drawers contain iodine, cupping-glasses, and blue ointment. At their request, Le Second has designed for them shades “à la ballet russe” for their two lamps. On the shelves they have arranged the vermicelli boxes which they use as lockers. The men of room 26, a centre of artistic life, have made them some additional shelves. An old herring-box plays the part of flower-vase, filled at this moment with silver thistles and a spray of barberry, magnificently red. Ploss can’t get over it! His own “büro” is a melancholy place. The old consulting-room, formerly spruce and gay, has become a mere empty loft since he took possession.Herr Gott Sakrament!Hang these Frenchmen!
After dinner the medical officers, especially MM. Langlois, Romant, and Bouvat, come to No. 46. We draw back the curtains. We stretch a string across the room to serve as net, and for an hour we give ourselves up to the joys of chamber-tennis, using our hands as rackets. It is for this reason that the new consulting-room has received the imposing name of Salle du Jeu de Paume.Sometimes, also, it is designated “la chambre des huiles,”das Oelenzimmer.
Poor Ploss. He cannot get the better of these Frenchmen. He would like to see them yielding, to see them cringe beneath his rod, to see them thoroughly miserable. And yet, whatever he can do, despite their hunger and their fits of the blues, they are cheerful. They sing, they decorate their prison. They are always finding new devices. If they have no tools, they make some. They work unceasingly in wood and stone. All the casemates have tables now, stools, chairs, lockers, water-kegs, draughts, and chessmen. Guiton d’Ancenis and Robert le Bordelais are neither smiths nor carpenters, and yet No. 26 is well furnished. They had no spoons; they “forged” some out of old “bully-beef” tins. They had no forks, but they have cut some from the birches on the slopes. To economize matches, they have made a float-light. To save their fingers from the heat of the boiling soup when it is poured into their bowls, they have fashioned wickerwork saucers. Almost all of them had been compelled to give up their knives; lengths of iron cask-hoop, patiently hammered straight and sharpened, have supplied the lack. Their windows are decorated with tiny pine-trees, planted in herring-boxes. They hope to take them home and grow them in France.
Do what he could, Ploss has not been able to stamp out this creative fervour. He knows it, and it infuriates him. Oh, if he had but been commandant! How he would have hunted down without mercy all those concernedin the underground traffic, in the great commercial enterprises by which our illicit supply of provisions has been gradually centralized. There are two such enterprises, and thanks to the competition between them we have for some weeks been securing, at stable and almost reasonable prices, supplementary rations of inestimable value. With what joy he would compel Marin and Brissard to shut up shop, two men who, with a chance armamentarium, have in kitchen No. 42 established a flourishing foundry of tin rings. And Crussol, who puts the finishing touches to the stones which are prepared for him by a whole squad of drillers and escutcheoners, and who has secured a reputation and customers even among the officers at the Ingolstadt headquarters. How promptly would he be dislodged from his niche in the northern parapet, where he works all day in any weather, squatting and mute like a second Paphnuce.
But, thank goodness, though Ploss can restrict as much as he pleases the meagre governmental rations (and he does not fail to make use of his opportunities in this respect), his jurisdiction does not pass beyond the limits of the storerooms and the kitchens. Throughout the rest of the fort the major reigns supreme, and his regime is so strictly courteous that even the most ill-conditioned among the non-commissioned officers of the guard think twice before ordering any of us strict arrest on bread and water.
Ploss is disheartened. Ploss is wounded. Ploss is sad. Ploss envies Fort A3, a German league fromFort Orff. Here a mere non-commissioned officer is in command. The fort is in truth little more than a redoubt. Two hundred and fifty Frenchmen of the 6th corps are packed into the place. Their only exercise ground consists of muddy and dark passages, a narrow ditch, and a tiny platform of about a hundred square feet. There is no upper story. In front of the windows, fifty yards away, are the iron gate and the precipitous slope. Eternal twilight reigns within. The governor is like a narrow-minded usher, a jealous and timid despot, trembling before orders from headquarters and terrible to the prisoners. If only Ploss wereVize-Feldwebelof Fort A3!
I know this little fort. My friend Cambessédès, house-surgeon from Paris, a doctor serving in M. Langlois’ group of stretcher-bearers, has been sent there from Fort 8 as medical officer, accompanied by M. Valois, a prosector from Montpellier. In a note, clandestine, of course, he let us know his whereabouts. Kindly, as usual, Baron von Stengel allowed the medical officers and me to pay them a visit. Thus it came to pass that last Sunday, escorted by aGefreiterand a soldier with fixed bayonet, we walked from Orff to Wegstetten. It was thawing. Tiny blue rivulets flowing through the pastures and along the furrows of the ploughs reflected the quiet sky. We met groups returning from vespers: women, children, and old men, peaceful folk who nodded to us as they passed.
When we reach the fort, which is insidiously buried in the interior of a bald eminence and is invisiblea hundred paces away, a parley is necessary. TheGefreiterhands the officer of the guard of A3 the permit issued by the commandant of Fort Orff. The sentry opens the gate. We pass in. Lining the walls, the red-trousers form an inquisitive and saluting hedge. Cambessédès runs up quite out of breath. Through long, dark, and narrow passages he conducts us to the medical officers’ quarters.
These are screened off by wooden partitions from the remainder of a gloomy casemate. Two beds, two wooden chairs, a table; no vacant space. It suggests a midshipman’s cabin on a man-of-war. The air is raw. Illustrations cut from theWocheare pinned to the wall. Upon a little shelf above my friend’s bed I see his wife’s photograph. A whiff of French perfume is wafted to my senses. I think of Paris, home, the fireside, work, peace! I say little during the visit. We sit down haphazard on the beds, the chairs, the table. A little soldier from Châlons, very quick and lively in his movements, comes in with a jug of coffee and an odd assortment of half-pint mugs. The company talks of the Geneva Convention and of medical and technical matters. Those from Orff get the others to tell of the recent happenings at Fort 8.
I pay scant attention to these petty details, swallowing my coffee mechanically amid the clash of voices and laughter. All my thoughts are in Paris. How strange seems this society of Frenchmen in the remote Bavarian redoubt. It is borne in on me of a sudden that madness rules the world.
Cambessédès and Valois, as hosts, now show us round. A crowd of soldiers follows us. Some of the adjutants post us concerning the life of the prisoners. Poor fellows, they have no von Stengel! In A3 it is impossible to procure any kind of supplement to the official rations. It is impossible to get a jug of good beer from time to time to keep up one’s spirits.
From the platform there is a fine view over the village of Wegstetten and the wood-crowned hills. M. Langlois, at least, thinks so. He looks with all his eyes. He is in ecstasy—when the sentry, a stumpy Swabian in a black greatcoat which is threadbare, weatherworn, and turning rusty-green, pounces upon him, charges bayonet, and touches the major’s tunic with the point of the steel. Our surgeon-in-chief protests: he has made no attempt to climb up the turf-covered breastwork; he has not trespassed into a forbidden region; he has merely been admiring the view. “Quite so,” barks the obstinate little bulldog, snorting angrily; “to look outside is forbidden.”
Unquestionably A3 is very different from Fort Orff! Whatever you do, baron-gaoler, do not ask for leave until we are set at liberty. Do not hand us over to a Ploss!
But even Ploss has his good hours. French lightness of heart is able from time to time to exert its charm over this hard Franconian noddle. His surly air passes off. With a brisk gesture he pushes his greasyMützeback over the nape of his neck. His brown tuft of hair makes its appearance, giving him an engagingand almost sportive air. During these calms, Davit, the Hercules cook, can with impunity seize the quartermaster, wrestle with him, and make as if to throw him head-first into a boiling cauldron. The paunchy cook of No. 42, when the herrings are being distributed, can then, under Ploss’ very eyes, sneak a good-sized “Bismarck” and stuff it into the pocket of his smock, with the tail sticking out. But beware! The quartermaster’s ordinary temper will suddenly return, and the prisoner with whom he has just been laughing will find himself sentenced to three days’ cells simply for having kept up the game for a second after the eclipse. Ploss is then capable of making allegations likely to bring a man before a firing squad. He will say, for example, “Prisoner X attempted to kill me by striking me on the head with a ladle.”
What a wonderful thing is this French light-heartedness! Heavy-witted northerners term it levity when they should speak of it as vitality. These little Frenchmen! To-day you see them sad at heart. The weather is grey; a languorous humidity prevails which seems to reduce the scale of the landscape and to make the noises draw nearer. We hear the roar of the trains in the plain, trains moving westwards, towards France. Those afoot walk as in a dream; many never leave their palliasses. The men from Provence are thinking of the sunshine; the Parisians recall the joyous meetings of Saturday evening when work is done; the Bretons listen in imagination to the heavy, rhythmicalsound of the great surges breaking at the foot of the native cliff. Every one has “the hump.”
Suddenly comes the sound of singing from the corridors. “They are singing! Have the letters come?” One and all rush to be first at the main gate, close to theKommandantur, beneath the gloomy arch. There is coming and going and much talk. “Is it true that there are lots of letters?”—“Two or three hundred, so d’Arnoult says!”—“What luck! When shall we get them?”—“Oh, the sorting will take some time.” The procession to the kitchens is animated. The hope of being about to receive a letter has eased the nervous tension.
But what, among eleven hundred men, is the handful of letters reaching the fort from time to time? For one who is made happy, there are thirty disappointed. My friend Foch, the awe-inspiring sergeant of the “vitriers” [infantry chasseurs], the most martial man in the fort, a hero, has not yet received a single line from Colroy-la-Grande, in the Vosges, near the Lubine pass. Since August the French have been fighting on this crest, advancing and retreating alternately. In the frontier villages the skirmishing never ceases. What has become of his brave wife, who, scorning bullets, leading her seven-year-old twins by the hand, used to bring dinner to her husband in the firing-line? Is she dead? Has she been interned? And his house, the little house known so well to the men of the 10th Chasseurs, where they had often received food and drink, is it still standing? Poor Foch! His energeticcountenance, with its flashing eyes, is clouded; his tongue, formerly so glib at a story, is stilled. Nor is he the only one who continues to await the first letter from home. I am among those specially favoured, and of ten letters sent to me, but one comes to hand, taking three and often four weeks on the journey.
Fortunately, money orders and parcels, exempt from the delays of the censorship, arrive regularly. Received as if they had been Father Christmas himself, with transports of delight which well-nigh make us jump for joy like children, these are the great dissipators of depression. They have completely modified our life, bringing into the fort a sort of plenty. Jerseys, woollen helmets, Russian caps, comforters, thick hand-knitted socks; every one is now wadded against the cold. Muffled in wool, men toboggan merrily down the slopes. Sometimes we have little dinner-parties. On the rickety tables knocked together by our amateur carpenters there are cups of tea and chocolate, pieces of gingerbread, sponge-cakes, jams, long twists of French tobacco. These love-feasts are not very grand, but to us they are delightful. We nibble our piece of cake, we sip from our steaming mug, noiselessly, slowly, our hearts filled with tender thoughts. We think of the hands which have made the tart, of the eyes which have watched the seething of this jam. If one of the guests should make a joke, he is wasting his wit. The laugh dies on our lips. Every one is full of memories. Our picnics are communions.
After the horror of the first two months of imprisonment,when many of us knew no other feeling than that of hunger—hunger by day and by night, the hunger that keeps a man awake and gnaws like an ulcer—now that winter has come we are having a fairly agreeable time. Our bodies have become accustomed to the regimen. The monotony of life is broken by happy events, by the arrival of parcels, money orders, and letters. The work we have had to do at Ingolstadt, Hepperg, and Wegstetten has widened the bounds of our prison. Every one has made a circle of friends. Some of the casemates, with their tables for bridge or poker, have now the aspect of clubs. We have learned how to circumvent German discipline. Our service for the supply of smuggled victuals works smoothly, so that we are at least able to provide ourselves with chocolate and tobacco. Some have purchased books; numerous French works belonging to the Fayard, Nelson, and Flammarion libraries have made their way through the gates, across the ditches, and over the walls; they pass from hand to hand until they fall to pieces. Some of the prisoners are learning German. My big dictionary is, as it were, an ever open mill, where all can make themselves at home. Every room has its writers of topical songs. Stretched on their palliasses, paper and pencil in hand, they cudgel their brains for rhymes. I cannot say that the outcome is sublime, but the verses, caustic without ill-nature, peppered with puns, and stuffed with allusions to the point of unintelligibility, amuse us all. The following stanzas dealing with the “ministerial council,” written byCormarie and sung by Saint-Lanne of Agen at the Saturday concerts in No. 7, go to the air of thePaimpolaise:
Nos deux majors veulent extraireDu beau riz si blanc et si sainUne huile pure limpide et claireQu’ils appel’ront l’huil’ de riz-sainPour avoir leRiOùs’adresseront-ils?Chambre 17 ou aux cuisines!Il écrit toute la journée!A chaque repas, drôl’ de combine!On lui sert des figaro-thés.Il porte pour la circonstanceL’habit vert d’Académicien;Les palmes en sont restées en FrancePour les canards de son quotidien;Car je les ai vuEt même àfon lupt.Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvagesCar ils s’ébattent soir et matinAvant d’être envoyés aux sagesDans une mar’ d’eau deLaubin.
Nos deux majors veulent extraireDu beau riz si blanc et si sainUne huile pure limpide et claireQu’ils appel’ront l’huil’ de riz-sainPour avoir leRiOùs’adresseront-ils?Chambre 17 ou aux cuisines!Il écrit toute la journée!A chaque repas, drôl’ de combine!On lui sert des figaro-thés.Il porte pour la circonstanceL’habit vert d’Académicien;Les palmes en sont restées en FrancePour les canards de son quotidien;Car je les ai vuEt même àfon lupt.Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvagesCar ils s’ébattent soir et matinAvant d’être envoyés aux sagesDans une mar’ d’eau deLaubin.
Nos deux majors veulent extraireDu beau riz si blanc et si sainUne huile pure limpide et claireQu’ils appel’ront l’huil’ de riz-sainPour avoir leRiOùs’adresseront-ils?Chambre 17 ou aux cuisines!Il écrit toute la journée!A chaque repas, drôl’ de combine!On lui sert des figaro-thés.
Nos deux majors veulent extraire
Du beau riz si blanc et si sain
Une huile pure limpide et claire
Qu’ils appel’ront l’huil’ de riz-sain
Pour avoir leRi
Oùs’adresseront-ils?
Chambre 17 ou aux cuisines!
Il écrit toute la journée!
A chaque repas, drôl’ de combine!
On lui sert des figaro-thés.
Il porte pour la circonstanceL’habit vert d’Académicien;Les palmes en sont restées en FrancePour les canards de son quotidien;Car je les ai vuEt même àfon lupt.Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvagesCar ils s’ébattent soir et matinAvant d’être envoyés aux sagesDans une mar’ d’eau deLaubin.
Il porte pour la circonstance
L’habit vert d’Académicien;
Les palmes en sont restées en France
Pour les canards de son quotidien;
Car je les ai vu
Et même àfon lupt.
Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvages
Car ils s’ébattent soir et matin
Avant d’être envoyés aux sages
Dans une mar’ d’eau deLaubin.
But France is a nation of prose writers; at the fort there are many more authors of memoirs than of songs. Memoirs abound.[28]Why is it that men who have never before tried to record their experiences in writing should feel impelled to recount the happenings of their campaign, and to describe their feelings of discouragementduring a lengthy imprisonment? Do they do it to relieve tedium? Have they an obscure need of confession? Or do they consider the circumstances of their life in war-time so exceptional as to deserve the honour, in their view an extraordinary one, of written record? In my opinion this last motive predominates. Rightly or wrongly, the “little soldiers of the republic” regard the present conflict in an epic light, and at bottom, notwithstanding their ingrained tendency to grumble, are not a little flattered at being among the heroes of this affair. They know that as long as men exist people will continue to talk about the great war, and that in the schools children will learn the names of the battles in which their fathers have fought and suffered. They want to be able to astonish their little ones, to be able to say: “I was there; I fought in this battle; read my account of the matter and you will see how everything happened, what my leaders did, and when I received my wound.” Men, Frenchmen above all, whatever their station, have such a hunger for fame.
Yesterday I came across Maze on the slopes, wearing his great red chéchia, which accentuates his stature, already considerable. His shirt was drying in the wind, tied to the lightning-conductor, and flapping like a flag. He was sitting behind the parapet, sheltered from the wind, and was reading. “What may you be reading?”—“My battle.”—“Can I look at it?”—“Here you are.”
In his note-book, worn and dog’s-eared, the followingaccount was pencilled on the pages he showed me. I reproduce it verbatim, with its mistakes in spelling:
It was on August 19th that our company set out from the village of Couture. We crossed the fields to rejoin the Metz road. After we had marched two kilometres along this road, we took shelter in a wood in order to avoid being seen by a German areoplane. After a short hault here, we started off once more towards Fresne-en-Saulnois. We left this village on our left to march upon Auron and Vivier. We found trenches made by the enemy and some dead horses. In the evening we were before Duron and Vivier, the Germans having left these two villages a couple of hours earlier. We, the company “146,” occupied all the exits from the villages. At about half past eight in the evening the company shoulders knapsacks and we go to the outposts before Frémery. We passed a fairly quiet night, a few shots were fired towards midnight, and we thought there was a night attack, but it was only a skirmish between patrols. Next day, August 20th, at three in the morning the captain commands us to extend in skirmishing order, for we had been warned that the enemy is in front of us. In two or three leaps we reach the crest of a little hill in front of us. At this moment we receive a few bullets which oblige us to assume the ofensive. The lieutenant orders us to fire at five hundred yards upon the enemy advancing towards the crest. At this moment our comrade Arnold, the cook, comes from the village of Frémery, the bombardment of which has just begun, he held in his hands two pales of coffee which he brings to his section, although the captain told him to go back. But, he listening only to the commands of his own courage and coolness, succeeds in joining his section which was then engaged with the enemy. On reaching the line he began to distribute the coffee, but hardly had he begun when he was hit near the left eye not seriously, which stopped him for a moment. But this did not hinder him from continuing his round, stopping from time to time to fire his rifle. It was when he had nearly reached the end of the line of skirmishers that he was hit on the right rist. At this moment he was close to the sergeant-major, who was lying at full length in a furrow and who withthe aid of his soup spoon was digging a hole for his head; at this moment we had no orders, for most of the non-coms and privates had been killed or wounded.—The sub-lieutenant gives the order to retire to those who are able, but the sergeant-major stoped where he was saying to a man who was near him and who was wounded. “No slackers here” giving him a blow with the flat of his sword.—At this moment, the Germans make their charge and come close up to us, the sergeant-major lifted his arms into the air, crying, “quarter! my wife my child.”—A little while after we were under the guard of some German soldiers, who conducted us as best they could to the hospital at Lucy. On the way the sergeant-major said to us that but for his spoon he would perhaps be a dead man?
It was on August 19th that our company set out from the village of Couture. We crossed the fields to rejoin the Metz road. After we had marched two kilometres along this road, we took shelter in a wood in order to avoid being seen by a German areoplane. After a short hault here, we started off once more towards Fresne-en-Saulnois. We left this village on our left to march upon Auron and Vivier. We found trenches made by the enemy and some dead horses. In the evening we were before Duron and Vivier, the Germans having left these two villages a couple of hours earlier. We, the company “146,” occupied all the exits from the villages. At about half past eight in the evening the company shoulders knapsacks and we go to the outposts before Frémery. We passed a fairly quiet night, a few shots were fired towards midnight, and we thought there was a night attack, but it was only a skirmish between patrols. Next day, August 20th, at three in the morning the captain commands us to extend in skirmishing order, for we had been warned that the enemy is in front of us. In two or three leaps we reach the crest of a little hill in front of us. At this moment we receive a few bullets which oblige us to assume the ofensive. The lieutenant orders us to fire at five hundred yards upon the enemy advancing towards the crest. At this moment our comrade Arnold, the cook, comes from the village of Frémery, the bombardment of which has just begun, he held in his hands two pales of coffee which he brings to his section, although the captain told him to go back. But, he listening only to the commands of his own courage and coolness, succeeds in joining his section which was then engaged with the enemy. On reaching the line he began to distribute the coffee, but hardly had he begun when he was hit near the left eye not seriously, which stopped him for a moment. But this did not hinder him from continuing his round, stopping from time to time to fire his rifle. It was when he had nearly reached the end of the line of skirmishers that he was hit on the right rist. At this moment he was close to the sergeant-major, who was lying at full length in a furrow and who withthe aid of his soup spoon was digging a hole for his head; at this moment we had no orders, for most of the non-coms and privates had been killed or wounded.—The sub-lieutenant gives the order to retire to those who are able, but the sergeant-major stoped where he was saying to a man who was near him and who was wounded. “No slackers here” giving him a blow with the flat of his sword.—At this moment, the Germans make their charge and come close up to us, the sergeant-major lifted his arms into the air, crying, “quarter! my wife my child.”—A little while after we were under the guard of some German soldiers, who conducted us as best they could to the hospital at Lucy. On the way the sergeant-major said to us that but for his spoon he would perhaps be a dead man?
I was touched by this little story. Maze thinks only of praising Arnold’s heroism. He says not a word about his own wound, although this was severe. He was struck in the neck, and the bullet is still beneath the shoulder-blade. One day he stripped in my presence and I felt the projectile. At the same time I had a good view of the sun, the stars, and the nymphs wherewith his chest is decorated, framing the great portrait of Carpentier which Maze had had tattooed while in Paris.
Speaking generally, the memoirs I have read have lacked interest. The hero speaks of the beer he has drunk, of the naps he has been able to snatch between the attacks, gives the names of his sergeant, of his comrades. We get absolutely no idea of the battle he was in. I reproduce, however, the story of Marius-Eugène G⸺, who was made prisoner on August 27th at Moyen-Moutier. It is the best I have discovered in the fort:
ACCOUNT OF WAR AND IMPRISONMENTbyMarius-Eugène G⸺Moyen-Moutier, August 27, 1914.Am alone, have lost my regiment, my company, am at Moyen-Moutier. Endeavour to join up with the 52nd or the 75th, can’t do it, stop and think, the firing begins again. The Germans are bombarding the town. What on earth shall I do? I lose my head, I am alone, I have no friend, no one to advise me. I run like a madman; I stop when I hear the whistling of the German projectiles I stretch myself at full length on the ground they fall two hundred yards from me and then come nearer. At length I give myself up for lost, I loose my head more and more however I think much of Rive-de-Gier of my dear employers of my dear love also of my brother and sister-in-law and of my dear little niece in fact of every one dear to me and it is with sorrow that I see the shells raning round me I ast myself if I shall ever see again this dear family, this idol which I carry in my heart. Having received a slight wound in the arm I went to the red cross and I have made the acquaintance of a dear friend of the 75th where we always remain brothers in misfortune since the hour when we were made prisoner, Thursday August 27 1914 at five o’clock in the evening; from there they sent us to sleep in a school, without a straw, still get through the night somehow and early next morning they make a list of the prisoners and send us to Saale which is on the frontier twenty kilometres from Moyen-Moutier, on the way the German soldiers make a long stop and gives us a bit of food a meal which I and my compatriots much enjoyed for we were getting very hungry at length we reach Saale it is about five in the evening, they make us sleep hard just like last night only instead of a school it is a church which has been transformed into a dormitory no great catch, the night is rather cold but we get through it somehow. Saturday August 29 we entrain at Saale station at nine o’clock in the morning without knowing where we are going it was a day of anguish for me and also forall my friends in the same situation as myself, we remain all day in the train all night and all Sunday August 30 when we arrive at our destination Ingolstadt at eight o’clock in the evening, they tells us that there is still 2 hours march to reach Fort Orff where I am still in prison after 4 weeks.September 24. The weather to-day is rather grey and cold we stay in the rooms, tell what has hapened to us during the campane and the poor fellows serving with the colours when the war broke out said that this was the day of their discharge however we did all that we could to enliven the dull life we have had since our imprisonment.Being quite without money to provide for my little wants, I am sorry to say that I have had to sell the ring that belonged to my dear mother the one she gave me the year before she died I was forced to sell it to buy food for they do not give us enough to eat and it is with regret that I sacrificed it in order to avoid coming to a bad end, all this is due to this cursed war from which I have been suffering for 2 months now, I hope it will soon be over and that I shall be able to resume the life of peace and happiness I led in the barracks where I had a happy time during the week and on Sunday was happy to be able to get leave to go to Rive-de-Gier where I passed such a pleasant day with my dear employers and my dear girl and that dear family of which I often think, at every moment of the day my thoughts turn to them.Now at length the day is finished and the moment has come to go and fetch the wretched pittance which they give us as food then to have some talk with my friend, companion in misfortune, bedfellow for we sleep together on one heap of straw and with one blanket, all this because of this cursed war, still never mind the suffering, it is for France.September 25. Glorious weather, one can feel the warmth of the sun, I take advantage of it to get up quickly, to have a wash, then I go to fetch the trickle of hot water they give us for coffee, I profit by the opening of this fine autumn day to take a turn or two about the fort to take my thoughts off and to proffit by this fine sunshine which has been very rare since my imprisonment in Bavaria.Then, I do like many of the comrades my fellow-prisoners, try to do some work upon Bavarian stone, to make a souvenir of the fort, but I have no patience and chuck the thing away, for it does not take my thoughts off?Good biz! a friend in the room has a pack of cards and we begin to play game after game of manilla, this turns our thoughts a bit but its not as good as the old games we used to play in the taverns of the old Couzonnais quarter. In spite of all I think of everyone I left behind me in that old town, of my dear employers, of their old parents who was so good to me and also of the dear parents of my dear girl who is never out of my thoughts and who I hope she thinks much of me.Thursday, October 1st. Having been one day without writing I hasten to quickly write these two words, these moments are so sweet for me besides to write one is obliged to be alone and that is why to-day finding myself at the top of the fort where I look over all the plane and at the end of it the fine town of Ingolstadt I see many factory chimnies which are smoking also the fields where some Bavarian peasants is working in this place one would never think, seeing the sight which is spread beneath my eyes, one would never think that canon are thundering a few(?) kilometres away. All that I have written on this page makes me feel sick at heart for outside this cursed fort there would be liberty and peace for always. For such a life as we have been living, everyone of us here, is not to be envied. After a war like that we are going through, just as much for the german people as for the French, there is ruin for the 2 countries where are killed or wounded numerous fathers of families who leaves a wife without support with one or more children! I have not yet the rite to be mourned like these fathers of families, but in spite of everything I think much of my life in the future when I hope to be able to make the girl I love happy and whom I hope will not desert me even though she gets no news of me. Here then is the month of October begining very sadly I live in hope that the end will be a little better.
ACCOUNT OF WAR AND IMPRISONMENTbyMarius-Eugène G⸺
Moyen-Moutier, August 27, 1914.
Am alone, have lost my regiment, my company, am at Moyen-Moutier. Endeavour to join up with the 52nd or the 75th, can’t do it, stop and think, the firing begins again. The Germans are bombarding the town. What on earth shall I do? I lose my head, I am alone, I have no friend, no one to advise me. I run like a madman; I stop when I hear the whistling of the German projectiles I stretch myself at full length on the ground they fall two hundred yards from me and then come nearer. At length I give myself up for lost, I loose my head more and more however I think much of Rive-de-Gier of my dear employers of my dear love also of my brother and sister-in-law and of my dear little niece in fact of every one dear to me and it is with sorrow that I see the shells raning round me I ast myself if I shall ever see again this dear family, this idol which I carry in my heart. Having received a slight wound in the arm I went to the red cross and I have made the acquaintance of a dear friend of the 75th where we always remain brothers in misfortune since the hour when we were made prisoner, Thursday August 27 1914 at five o’clock in the evening; from there they sent us to sleep in a school, without a straw, still get through the night somehow and early next morning they make a list of the prisoners and send us to Saale which is on the frontier twenty kilometres from Moyen-Moutier, on the way the German soldiers make a long stop and gives us a bit of food a meal which I and my compatriots much enjoyed for we were getting very hungry at length we reach Saale it is about five in the evening, they make us sleep hard just like last night only instead of a school it is a church which has been transformed into a dormitory no great catch, the night is rather cold but we get through it somehow. Saturday August 29 we entrain at Saale station at nine o’clock in the morning without knowing where we are going it was a day of anguish for me and also forall my friends in the same situation as myself, we remain all day in the train all night and all Sunday August 30 when we arrive at our destination Ingolstadt at eight o’clock in the evening, they tells us that there is still 2 hours march to reach Fort Orff where I am still in prison after 4 weeks.
September 24. The weather to-day is rather grey and cold we stay in the rooms, tell what has hapened to us during the campane and the poor fellows serving with the colours when the war broke out said that this was the day of their discharge however we did all that we could to enliven the dull life we have had since our imprisonment.
Being quite without money to provide for my little wants, I am sorry to say that I have had to sell the ring that belonged to my dear mother the one she gave me the year before she died I was forced to sell it to buy food for they do not give us enough to eat and it is with regret that I sacrificed it in order to avoid coming to a bad end, all this is due to this cursed war from which I have been suffering for 2 months now, I hope it will soon be over and that I shall be able to resume the life of peace and happiness I led in the barracks where I had a happy time during the week and on Sunday was happy to be able to get leave to go to Rive-de-Gier where I passed such a pleasant day with my dear employers and my dear girl and that dear family of which I often think, at every moment of the day my thoughts turn to them.
Now at length the day is finished and the moment has come to go and fetch the wretched pittance which they give us as food then to have some talk with my friend, companion in misfortune, bedfellow for we sleep together on one heap of straw and with one blanket, all this because of this cursed war, still never mind the suffering, it is for France.
September 25. Glorious weather, one can feel the warmth of the sun, I take advantage of it to get up quickly, to have a wash, then I go to fetch the trickle of hot water they give us for coffee, I profit by the opening of this fine autumn day to take a turn or two about the fort to take my thoughts off and to proffit by this fine sunshine which has been very rare since my imprisonment in Bavaria.
Then, I do like many of the comrades my fellow-prisoners, try to do some work upon Bavarian stone, to make a souvenir of the fort, but I have no patience and chuck the thing away, for it does not take my thoughts off?
Good biz! a friend in the room has a pack of cards and we begin to play game after game of manilla, this turns our thoughts a bit but its not as good as the old games we used to play in the taverns of the old Couzonnais quarter. In spite of all I think of everyone I left behind me in that old town, of my dear employers, of their old parents who was so good to me and also of the dear parents of my dear girl who is never out of my thoughts and who I hope she thinks much of me.
Thursday, October 1st. Having been one day without writing I hasten to quickly write these two words, these moments are so sweet for me besides to write one is obliged to be alone and that is why to-day finding myself at the top of the fort where I look over all the plane and at the end of it the fine town of Ingolstadt I see many factory chimnies which are smoking also the fields where some Bavarian peasants is working in this place one would never think, seeing the sight which is spread beneath my eyes, one would never think that canon are thundering a few(?) kilometres away. All that I have written on this page makes me feel sick at heart for outside this cursed fort there would be liberty and peace for always. For such a life as we have been living, everyone of us here, is not to be envied. After a war like that we are going through, just as much for the german people as for the French, there is ruin for the 2 countries where are killed or wounded numerous fathers of families who leaves a wife without support with one or more children! I have not yet the rite to be mourned like these fathers of families, but in spite of everything I think much of my life in the future when I hope to be able to make the girl I love happy and whom I hope will not desert me even though she gets no news of me. Here then is the month of October begining very sadly I live in hope that the end will be a little better.
There, it is not very grand, but it is so sincere, andin any case this work of the pen makes the time pass less heavily. Poetizing, music, memoirs, tobogganing, little dinners, German, cards, whittling, stone-carving—some of the prisoners find the days too short. What an odd creature is man!
Tesson came to see me just now, bringing his last piece of work, a great slab of stone depicting the entrance to Fort Orff. The whole kitchen staff formed up in circle round the masterpiece. “Well I’m blowed!” said Devèse. “That’s not been done with the point of a pickaxe,” remarked Deschênes by way of praise. I also expressed my admiration. Then the master drew from his pocket a book with clasps, cut in limestone. He had carved on it the title:Les Mémoires de Victor Tesson, prisonnier de guerre, à sa méchante Louise Huber.—Dolomieu, Isère.While I was praising the dedication, he showed me his tools, saying: “Here are my cold chisel and my piercer. I made them out of my bicycle pliers. Here’s my ruler; I ‘forged’ it out of the tyre of a wheelbarrow.”—“Is that all?”—“That’s all. I have no dividers; I measure with a straw.”
Unquestionably the Frenchman is a very live animal. When I hear my fellow-prisoners applauding the artistes of No. 7, Lannessan, Grignon, Saint-Lanne, Bouquet, or the “artistes socialistes” of No. 38, the members of the audience splitting their sides with laughter at the satirical allusions and joining lustily in the choruses; when I go to No. 13 to visit Le Second, who receives me with the affected airs of a dandy as he ushers me into his domain of five feet square, incredibly elegantand quaint, fitted up à la Martine; when I contemplate the roguish gaiety of all these “Gavroches,” their indefatigable activity, the effervescence of their wit—I think of a Swiss friend of mine who is always saying, “These devils of Frenchmen!” I can even understand the stupefaction of that great barrel of a Max! One will never get the better of these fellows. One will never bend such bodies beneath the yoke of servitude. Without violence, by the simple play of their natural life, they would tame the most mulish of masters. The substance of which they are composed, ever radiating energy, is irreducible. It is evident that, by special privilege, they are born “free men.” Sovereign people!
How right is Péguy when he says that their watchword is “Hope.” Misfortune befalls them; they seem overwhelmed. From disorganization they pass to grumbling and from grumbling to revolution. Come back to look at them to-morrow; you will find them valiant, dashing, light-hearted heroes recking no longer of yesterday. They laugh at their sufferings. They sing. They defy their gollywogs of gaolers. They combine to think out some new plan. They engage in some fresh piece of work. Merely to look at them renews the savour of life.
At first everything went amiss here. Apart from eating our starvation rations, we had nothing to do. It was a terrible time. But contemplate them now; they are blithe enough. They are prisoners, and yet you would say they were in their own homes, masters,owners. Prisoners? They seem to be the guardians of their sentries; they go so far as to chide the sentries if these are slovenly in the performance of their duties. It is not that the prisoners have adapted themselves to the environment, but that they have forced the environment, willy nilly, to adapt itself to them. Like certain mosses which grow where there is no humus, they catch flying grains of dust and force these to yield the scanty soil which will enable them to live.
Moreover, events seem to favour this natural propensity to hope.
The last thing was your card with a picture of theVictory of Samothrace. You had erased the title and put a date in its place. Every one came to see this bulletin of victory which I had put up beside your portrait! I wish you could have heard the comments.
“Then we shall not have suffered for nothing,” said a lad from Montmédy. “I was two days in the forest with five comrades. We made holes in the trees to suck the sap. We had hallucinations. Two of them killed themselves.” Louis Ludes, a baker from Pouzolles, wounded in Morocco, and wounded again at Lunéville, the worst of wounds, a shell in the abdomen (his recovery astonished all the surgeons), exclaimed: “I too, tonnerre, I am in this victory!”
And while they were looking at the beautiful Greek with the mighty wings, Dutrex, who was reading theBurgraves, declaimed to us in his grating bass voice, full of cruel irony, the mendicant’s apostrophe:
Les Vandales ont pris Berlin! Ah! quel tableau!Les païens à Dantzig! Les Mogols à Breslau!Tout cela dans l’esprit en même temps me montePêle-mêle, au hasard; mais c’est horrible!… ô honte!…Allemagne, Allemagne, Allemagne.… Hélas![29]
Les Vandales ont pris Berlin! Ah! quel tableau!Les païens à Dantzig! Les Mogols à Breslau!Tout cela dans l’esprit en même temps me montePêle-mêle, au hasard; mais c’est horrible!… ô honte!…Allemagne, Allemagne, Allemagne.… Hélas![29]
Les Vandales ont pris Berlin! Ah! quel tableau!Les païens à Dantzig! Les Mogols à Breslau!Tout cela dans l’esprit en même temps me montePêle-mêle, au hasard; mais c’est horrible!… ô honte!…Allemagne, Allemagne, Allemagne.… Hélas![29]
Les Vandales ont pris Berlin! Ah! quel tableau!
Les païens à Dantzig! Les Mogols à Breslau!
Tout cela dans l’esprit en même temps me monte
Pêle-mêle, au hasard; mais c’est horrible!… ô honte!…
Allemagne, Allemagne, Allemagne.… Hélas![29]
December 8, 1914.
Half awake, I stretch out my hand to see whether Dutrex is there. His palliasse is deserted, his rug folded up. I raise myself on my elbow. All the others are still asleep, lying like long mute mummies. I draw on my shoes. At the main entrance, the sentries, hands in pockets, heads between their shoulders, are stamping their feet, their eyes white with cold. “Guten Morgen!”—“Guten Morgen!” I grope my way down the stair and along the passage. The lamps have gone out. There is a light in No. 22. I go in. Dutrex is shaving; his little mirror is perched on the vice. In front of him stands a smoky lamp. All around is darkness. Bouquet passes from one cauldron to another, singing softly and sentimentally:
La petite FrançaiseQui m’attend là-basA les yeux de braiseLe cœur de lilas.…[30]
La petite FrançaiseQui m’attend là-basA les yeux de braiseLe cœur de lilas.…[30]
La petite FrançaiseQui m’attend là-basA les yeux de braiseLe cœur de lilas.…[30]
La petite Française
Qui m’attend là-bas
A les yeux de braise
Le cœur de lilas.…[30]
The kitchen is full of sulphurous fumes. “What time is it?”—“Five o’clock.” Dutrex has finished shaving. I take his place before the mirror and the lamp with the broken chimney. Some one knocks at the door. A little man comes in. He wears a fatigue-cap; his head is bowed, his face is tied up in a handkerchief, he holds his left cheek with both hands. He looks at us like a whipped dog. “I’m in such pain!”—“What’s the matter?” asks Bouquet, who is tender-hearted. The poor fellow is unable to speak plainly. “I have been walking up and down the corridors for a long time. I can’t keep still. My wound is gnawing at me. It seems to be screaming there, just under the ear!”—“Poor chap, you must see Laloux, but he is still asleep. Sit down there between the stoves. There’s a stool for you. Drink a mug of coffee while you’re waiting. That’ll warm you.”—“Yes, I’m perished with cold.”
Instead of a cheek he has a great violet crevasse with lines of scar tissue radiating from it. He was struck by a bullet which passed in obliquely through the nose and on its way out shattered half the left side of the face, including the articulation of the jaw. He has an abscess forming in the internal ear, which is pretty sure to kill him. While I shave, I look at this reservist.
He arrived with the last batch of convalescent wounded. Most of them were but half cured. They were sent away from Ingolstadt to make room for refugees from Pomerania, children, women, and old men, broken down through privation. The Russianwave is washing these refugees by thousands into the southern hutments.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Not quite so much.”
“Where are you from?”
“From a village near Mans.”
“Do you think that your missus will be able to love you with that hole in your cheek and your hanging jaw?”
“I hope so.”
“Where were you in barracks?”
“At Saint-Mihiel.”
“Where did you get your wound?”
“At Marville, near Virton, in Belgium.”
“Long ago?”
“August 24th.”
“Here’s another mug of coffee for you.”
The man, Vouvard by name, puts his hand behind the ear, closes his eyes, and rocks to and fro, saying: “I don’t know what to do, it hurts so.”
The cooks come in. With great hooks they take down the boiling cauldrons. Dutrex goes out for the roll-call. Steam fills the casemate, stifling us, and I open the window. Day is breaking; tiny clouds of a pale silver tint are floating at a great altitude. Deschênes, the woodman from the forest of Argonne, catching sight of the white frost on the slope, says with conviction: “This sort of weather gives one the hump here. Think how jolly it would be to be at work. Think how there are people perishing of hunger while we are shut uphere doing nothing. And when we get home we shall have to work ourselves to death to pay off the debts our wives have made while we have been away. A lot of good one gets out of war!”
Dutrex enters with a martial stride. “I say, Riou, here are the latest orders from headquarters: ‘The purveyors and the workmen employed at the fort must be accompanied by a soldier of the guard; the prisoners are forbidden to approach them. The sale of food and drink to prisoners is strictly forbidden. The commandants are responsible for seeing that these orders are carried out.’”
“Very well, the slopes are also forbidden. I will immediately go for a walk there.”
I linger on the ramparts. The sun is about to rise. The air is pure, like that of the high mountains. Beyond the huge Danubian plain I catch sight for the first time of the blue serrations of the Tyrolese Alps, crowning the delicate lines of the middle distance. To-day is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The air is filled with the sound of bells. The deep notes of those of Ingolstadt mingle with the brighter chimes of Hepperg, Wegstetten, and Lenting. The cocks are crowing. The crows are flying at a great height, and the harmonious silence is broken from time to time by their croakings. Everything glistens. The sky is superb. The earth rejoices. The soul finds refreshment and delight in the elysian dawn.
Over there, towards the rising sun, upon the Warthe and in the Carpathian defiles, men are killing oneanother. In the opposite quarter, beyond the gentle undulations dotted with white farms and beyond the magnificent barrier of the Swabian Jura, men are killing one another in Alsace, in Lorraine, and in Flanders. The villages of Europe are filled with truncated limbs, wooden legs, broken lives. Poor world of men!
December 13, 1914.
He leaves this evening. Every one is sad. Who will replace him? If only it is not a man belonging to the school of theMünchener Neueste Nachrichten,[31]which has been summoning the government to take reprisals against the French prisoners. “Geduld genug!” exclaimed the official journalist; “We have been patient long enough!” He demanded the head of Colonel Grey, Sir Edward Grey’s brother, and also that of Delcassé’s son, both of whom had been wounded and taken prisoner. TheIngolstädter Zeitunghas been even more drastic than the Munich journal.
Yesterday passed gloomily. The men of the guard, like all those who have not been at the front, were spiteful and meddlesome. The patrol refused to allow us to set foot upon the slopes, even insisting that we must remain in the mud and puddles of the lowercourts. Brissot and I contended that they did not know the regulations, and that the great track half-way up which dominates the two courts was certainly within bounds. Anyhow, taking advantage of the mist, I had before sunrise walked as usual on the forbidden escarp. Then, having a slight cold, and feeling poorly, I lay down upon a pile of palliasses in the Salle du Jeu de Paume, and spent the day in re-readingEugénie Grandet, which Corporal Henriot had just received from Paris.
But I was thinking more about the baron’s departure than about old Grandet. The others were playing chess. “What a fine chap he is!” exclaimed Détry. “Riou, old boy, we ought to make him a grand speech when he leaves. Did you see the farewell note he sent round the casemates? He thanks his ‘fellow-workers.’ He courteously congratulates every one. He wishes us good luck. There’s a man for you, one who has never failed to treat us as men. Nothing of the Ploss about him!”
Lying with my head beneath the rug, my book closed, and my eyes shut, it suddenly seemed to me that the recent weeks had been almost enjoyable. I forgot the long nights of the first month or so, when my stomach was continually gnawing, and when the memories of meals eaten before the war, their steam, their odour, were so vivid as to constitute a veritable torture ofTantalus. Forgetting home-sickness and tedium, I found myself looking back wistfully to that which in actual experience had appeared horrible.
It seemed to me that with the transfer of von Stengel a fresh imprisonment was about to begin, harassing, with no security, and inhuman; that henceforward I should be truly in prison.
An end, I said to myself, to our evening walks on the roads adjoining the fort. An end to those pleasant saunters in the twilight, a little band of five or six, almost as good as a tête-à-tête after the life of the herd. Our new master, just married, will devote his leisure to his wife. Possibly, moreover, as the baron has suggested, the recent escape of four English officers from Fort Hartmann will make the new commandant very strict.…
All at once it was borne in on me that the last few weeks had been at the same time melancholy and pleasing.…
Farewell to my hop-garden, in which I had gleaned dried hops wherewith to spice the insipid German tobacco. Farewell to my bushes of blackthorn and barberry, where I plucked red berries, where I cut such fine switches—der Stock des Gelehrten, as Stengel said. Farewell to my farm at Hepperg, my great country seat which has fallen to the female line, whose fortress-like walls, amid the straw stacks and the noisy populaceof ganders, geese, hens, and guinea-fowl, spoke to me of my birthplace grieving for the two sons at the war, spoke to me of the country house haloed in memories, dozing beneath the winter sun in the light shade of the olives and the sad cypresses, blue-girdled by the shining hills of Vivarais. Farewell to the disused quarry, the silent undergrowth, filled with shafts of light and with gossamer; the carpet of dead leaves white with hoar-frost, which crackles beneath the feet. Farewell to my royal Danubian plain, where the setting sun throws into relief the huge and gentle undulations, dotted with smoking villages. Farewell to my evening skies, my grand Bavarian twilights, infinitely variable, which will remain the most splendid memory of my imprisonment.
I was above all grateful to Baron von Stengel for having asked me to join him in his afternoon walks with the French medical officers. As you know, I have more taste for the beauties of nature than for the doings of my kind. In thus presenting me with the freedom of the fields, my gaoler gave me the thing I like best in the world, barring your company and that of a few intimates.
He extended me this invitation one morning when I was in the throes of despondency. It was late in September. At dawn there had been an iridescent haze. On the escarp, great drops of water had formed on the birch and willow branches, and werefalling thence to the ground. The weather was splendid; the sun was gradually dispersing the transparent vapours; and yet one could imagine that all nature was weeping. I was tired out. To secure oblivion, I had been working too assiduously for several days. I was at the end of my resources; the sordidness of the surroundings sickened me and hunger gnawed at my vitals. I was unutterably miserable. I had no strength to do anything but to yearn for you, to dream of flowers, of fresh springs, space, freedom. France! France! Brissot, hoping to cure me, had brought me George Sand’sMaîtres sonneurs, a greasy volume which had found its way here God knows how, perhaps stolen from the municipal school by a soldier quartered in the fort. Said Brissot: “It is redolent of nature; I am bringing you the very bouquet of the French countryside!” Such was my condition when the major came by. “Hallo, monsieur Riou,” he exclaimed, “you don’t look as cheerful as usual.”—“I’m home-sick, mon commandant.”—“Would you care to take a walk with me in the country this evening?”—“Should I care to!”
My memory of this first excursion is of a joy which was perfect though uneventful. The great black gate with its heraldic lions was opened by the sentry for the egress of the major and his companions; to the left lay the avenue, the thicket of acacias masking the ditch of retreat; below us, between the shivering, gold-capped birches, the gentle and unending undulations of the plain; to the right, seen obliquely, the yellow out-buildings, the tall hop-poles, the military road cut upby artillery fire, running straight in the direction of the sombre crest of the Franconian Jura, and crossing the huge chessboard of ploughed fields; further on, the little strategic wood, a magnificent growth of fir-trees, larches, and beeches, encircled by stone-pines and oaks, a sort of sacred grove, with an undergrowth of the most varied nature.
I was walking in the rear of our little company, going quietly along, avoiding conversation, filled with delight.
“Are you still sad, M. Riou?” said the baron.
“Oh, no, I am perfectly happy.”
The wide sky covering the wide landscape; the delicate lines of the horizon; the purity of the light; the brilliancy of the September tints; the fragrance of the fields; the herds of oxen; the ploughs at work, guided by boys whistling melancholy airs—it was a Virgilian scene. Poor wreckage from the battles of Lorraine that I was, this energy of nature, of peaceful and robust nature, flooded my heart with great waves of mute pleasure far more intense than the intoxication of the senses. After the blood-stained fields of Dieuze, after the fetid prison-house, after qualms, suffocation, base and monotonous wretchedness, it seemed to me that I was coming back to life.
The wood was swarming with mushrooms. My companions, especially Lœbre, were mycologists. They scattered among the undergrowth. “Here’s a real nest oftricholoma personatum,” cried Bouvat in sonorous tones. “Come and make sure, Lœbre.” Lœbre saunters up. The young man smiles good-naturedly.“Pooh! that’s not the lilac stem! That’samanita muscaria. That’s no good to us. But you have overlooked those finerussulæbehind you on the roots of the pine-trees.” “Herr Lœbre, here’s a prize!” called out M. Cavaillé, in Languedoc German. “Here are somelactarii deliciosi; come and look, a regular fairy-ring of them.” Their mouths watering, they all crowd round this epicure’s fare. “What a feast we shall have this evening!” Now comes Jeandidier, of Longwy in Lorraine, walking up with long, deliberate strides, carrying very carefully, as a man carries a candle in a procession, beneath his fiery beard and his long Bavarian pipe, two great parasol mushrooms, which of all the mushrooms have the longest stems, have the most delicate flavour, and are the most fragile. Bouvat bore away the spoils. Each one made his contribution ofrussula cyanoxantha,clitocybe, meadow agaric, and liver fungus. The baron was amused by these schoolboy antics. From time to time a covey of partridges was put up, and flew noisily away; or a hare, awakened with a start, fled in terror. Night was falling. We made our way back, skirting the glacis. I culled a bouquet of autumn leaves. We crossed a field from which the potatoes had just been lifted. A few of the tubers had been overlooked. I put them in my pocket with great care, under the baron’s very eyes. Bouquet, the head cook, made a fry of them that evening. Eight of us enjoyed them.
This morning a deputation of the comrades came to me when I was at work, to commission me to write a farewell address. It had to be very short, since the baron could spare us but a few minutes. In pencil (ink is forbidden) I quickly compose what is needed. I read it to the deputation, which approves the wording. I give a hasty polish to my shoes, and we set out for theKommandantur. The baron shakes hands. We arrange ourselves in a semicircle. I am at the right wing, close to the commandant. His successor is there, a stiff-mannered little man, quite inscrutable. He wears a yager’s cap, green in colour, pulled down to the ears; the collar of his tunic stands up so as almost to hide his head, but we can see his drooping features and cold eyes. While I am speaking he stands at attention.
“Mon commandant, to every one of us your departure is a matter of personal regret. You are an enemy, but never has any one had a more courteous enemy.
“You have treated us as soldiers, with perfect frankness; we have treated you as the true gentleman that you are.
“We, the French prisoners at Fort Orff, differ upon many points. But there is one matter upon which, when we return to France, we shall all agree, namely, that Commandant Major Baron von Stengel deserved and gained the affection and admiration of those towards whom for three months he had to fill the position of gaoler.
“Accept our thanks, mon commandant. God have you in his keeping.”
With moist eyes, M. von Stengel introduces us to his successor, each one by name, detailing our qualities, our services, the incidents of our career. Stiff as ever, theOberleutnantbows to each in turn, to the infantry of the line, to the chasseurs à pied, to the chasseurs alpins, to the artillery, to the engineers, to the hussars. They are tall, handsome fellows, of the same type as the grand old von Stengel. We can hardly believe that we are in Germany. We are sincerely affected, quite free from self-consciousness. The baron speaks to us as friends. At his age, when the events that one can look forward to are numbered, everything seems of importance. This separation is painful to him. None of us can fail to recognize it; there is no pretence about his distress. He presses us by the hand. He tells me that he will have our address translated, and that he is going to send on his carriage with the luggage. “I want to take a last walk with my friends,” he said. “God guard you, my fine fellows.”
The walk, just now, was a melancholy affair. To avoid the mud on the road we strolled along the edge of the fields towards Hepperg, crowding round the baron as round a dear friend who is taking leave for ever. Great bands of red striated the dark sky. Smokelike vapours lowered over the earth. Night came on, gloomy and solemn. The baron spoke to me of Ingolstadt, whose massive steeples could be seen in the distance through the mist rising from the Danube. He told me that apart from Germelsheim in the Palatinate, this was the only fortress in Bavaria; thatTilly and Wallenstein had lived there; that the little town of twenty thousand inhabitants had been a capital in its day. When we reached the gate, he said with a smile, “I count my friends’ heads; all of them are here.” We shook hands lingeringly and in silence at the door of theKommandantur.
Farewell now to the fields; farewell, even, to the footpath of the escarp. I have been warned that I shall be fired on if I am seen there. I must be content henceforward with the muddy track overlooking the poor amphitheatre of the courts, filthier than a pigsty. I still have your little acacias, leafless, lugubrious, shivering in the bitter wind.
December 17, 1914.
Our new gaoler has introduced a fresh method of taking the roll-call. We have all to line up in two ranks in the sticky mud of the ditches, and to wait there while we are counted. This ridiculous enumeration interferes with the digestion of our poor midday meal, and serves more than any other petty formality to remind us that we are prisoners. Just now, when the gloomy ceremony was finished, I went to see theFeldwebel.
He is a wealthy horse-dealer from Ratisbon, cunning, short, with a receding forehead, fresh-coloured, laughing eyes, well padded with fat, a typical German Jew. Recently emerged from poverty, moderately patriotic, secretly thinking that people are very stupid to get their skins perforated for theVaterlandand other fine words, he takes for his own motto in all circumstances that a living dog is better than a dead lion. He has managed to arrange that his part in the campaign shall be a safe one, played where he will be close to his faithful spouse and to his business, far from the deadly bullets. He is quite a good fellow, with nodesire to play the persecutor; but since his chief dread is to be caught in a dereliction of duty and sent to the front, he is extremely strict. Twice a day, at two and at seven, we exchange language lessons. This does not merely secure me some new words of German, but also from time to time I am given a handful of nuts and two or three apples.
I hasten off to fetch my parcel. I imagine that it contains something to eat—chocolate, sausage—and I am hungry. TheFeldwebelgiggles like a child. He takes the key of No. 72, the terrible casemate which is as damp as a drain; and, flanked by d’Arnoult and myself, he reaches the “parcels office” at the end of the gloomy passage. I walk confidently, for I have already, by clandestine methods, scrutinized your consignment, and weighed it in my hand. It was compact, as heavy as one could wish, and felt like a ten-pound box of Menier chocolate. I was cocksure. Here we are; we light the lantern. I lay the packet on the table. Keenly expectant, I cut open the oilcloth wrapping. Books! Montaigne, Voltaire. An indulgent glance from theFeldwebelat this consignment. I take my leave. Brissot awaits me at the turn of the stairs. “Well?”—“Books, old chap.”—“Capital! The smallest grain of millet would have suited you better!”
Not even a letter, a little smuggled letter! How punctilious you are! Do you know that your letter of November 2nd did not come to hand till yesterday, having taken forty-four days to travel from Paris to Fort Orff?
February 26, 1915.
The first warm, sunny day. The grey grass of last autumn is showing in patches here and there through the melting snow; it is slightly tinged with green. The sky is blue. A huge cloud, white and shining, rolls towards the north.
Why do I feel so lightsome this morning? Is it possible that I am once more what I was before the war?
If only the end were nearing, the end of the long miseries of winter in the lousy, stinking, and chattering casemate! If an end were nearing to the sterile cackle, the disquisitions on strategy, the disputes, and the lamentations, to all that a discontented crowd exhales, through the empty hours, in the way of physical boredom and of melancholy! Oh the gnawing ache of these two months in an ant-hill encompassed by snow, filth, and bitter winds! Two months of purgatory. I know now that to live among men, nothing but men, day by day and night by night, in intimate contact, without activity, without solitude, without thecompany of women (that other solitude), is to live in purgatory.
Take men who have nothing in common but the flag. They differ in traditions, education, and temperament; their habits of life are fixed. They are in the full vigour of manhood. They are strong and spirited. They are familiar with violence and struggle. Throw these soldiers pell-mell into a cellar, where they hunger and are cut off from news. Subject them to meddlesome regulations. Compel them, in this wretchedness, to live always in close proximity, and far from everything which they have hitherto known as life. Doubtless they will have their good hours. At times, when their minds are filled with thoughts of those they love and of their motherland, their words and their silences will be no less pure and sweet than is a long summer twilight. Or when some newspaper, concealed in a parcel from France, has brought them tidings of victory and wafted to them all the hope of their free brothers, they will experience a sublime unison of joy. But at other times.… No, I wish to forget. After all, the heroes of the great epic are but men. Why should we expect of them, during months and months, a patience and a self-command of which many men in good society, men esteemed well-bred, are incapable when a caller stays too long?
Everything has changed since Baron von Stengel’s departure. The new commandant, M. Schwappach,of the department of streams and forests, possesses all the virtues of the German bureaucrat. He is active, precise, orderly, meticulous. He has also the infatuation of his caste, for he believes that the world gravitates round it. He admires and fears his chiefs, and he applies to the very letter everyBefehlfrom headquarters. Everything is now forbidden. Daily theFeldwebelreads the orders to the sentries: the slopes are forbidden; without challenge, they must fire upon any one who is seen there.
I have suffered greatly at being thus cut off from the view to be obtained from the ramparts, and this has affected me hardly less than the short commons. The number of sentries has been tripled. We are forbidden to wear civilian clothing unless it has been dyed red. Headquarters has even compelled the chasseurs alpins and the colonial infantrymen to paint red stripes on their uniforms under the pretext that these were too much like civilian clothing. It has become impossible to get the most trifling supplement to the official rations. M. Schwappach had aLandwehrmanncourt-martialled because he had sold some chocolate to the prisoners. The guard is terrorized. The loaf which used to last three days must now last five, so that our daily allowance of bread is 7½ oz. This would mean sheer starvation if we received nothing from France. No more coffee, nomore roasted barley: roasted acorns merely. Those who get more parcels than the others have a regular train of dependents—famished men. My own dependents are chiefly soldiers from the invaded regions.
Having written a strongly worded letter which was sent back to me from Ingolstadt (I am in extremely bad odour at headquarters), I am threatened, should the offence be repeated, with being completely deprived of the right to receive or send letters. I have already been punished with three weeks of this measure.
I have had some very remarkable discussions with the commandant. These people want us to love them. They demand, filled with indignation, our reasons for not loving them. If we give them our reasons in plain terms, and support our assertions with facts and dates, lo! ten days’ prison, on bread and water!
M. von Stengel, where are you? Anyhow, we now know what German discipline is. We know it in all its purity and all its splendour. There is no longer any one to temper its severities.