CHAPTER X

AN ORDINARY FATIGUE PARTY

This evening the first section has to go on the works. The men have eaten earlier than usual, and they are on the road before nightfall.

The column remains in good order to the end of the cantonment, but once across the passage by the knotty elm at Harbonnières, it breaks ranks. Each one goes along as he likes, talking or alone.

There is madness in the air. We prefer another order of things than to spend one evening out of two in the first line digging in the mud.

“Rather the trenches where we can snooze in peace,” they say.

The column trails along. Pierron, the sergeant who leads it, pays no attention. With Millazo, a tradesman from Hanoï who has arrived just recently, he talks of Indo-China, of Saigon, and their gardens.

We had scarcely arrived at the end of the sunken road which opens out on an uncovered slope on top of a ridge than a well-known whistling shatters space. Each of us throws himself on the ground, in a ditch behind a tree, and the shell passes over us in the air.

“That wasn’t meant for us.”

Then another, still another, and dozens like it; we count up to sixty.

“M ... what are they having at Proyart for dessert?”

That is all the concern they have about what is going on in the rear, or about the havoc and death the bombardment is launching at this moment on the cantonment where their comrades live. That is the egotistical indifference which long experience with danger gives, and the constant contemplation of death. The column marches along more carefully and wider awake, concealing themselves from the view of the enemy’s aerial observers which are to be seen high on the horizon in spite of the late hour and the twilight which has already begun to grow dark.

“Do you suppose they’ve forgotten the sausage?”

“Sometimes they stay out to give us a shot.”

So we wait until it is very dark before we reach our position in the works.

The place where we have to dig is in the front lines. We have to construct circular dugouts for machine guns, with their rounded platforms, and to connect them with the trench by underground trenches.

We climb over the trench carrying our tools in our hands and slip between the barbed wire, but we have scarcely gone a yard when a heavy fusillade warns us that this time we are spotted. We dig in.

“Is anyone hit?”

No reply, no groans; everyone is there, flat, stretched out. We wait flat in the grass and the mud until the star shells fall, and as soon as one has, and before the following one has scaled through space and lighted it with its dim light, we jump into the hole which the fatigue party of yesterday dug.

But the tools aren’t idle, although we guess rather than hear the blows of the pick digging in the deep rich earth and the shovelers throwing it out as far on the parapet as possible so as not to form a salient.

We dig for hours without interruption, lowering our heads in the holes as the star shells go up, and taking up our tasks as soon as it is dark again.

The enemy has discovered the time of our fatigue parties, and to-morrow it will know the exact position of our work, so that it will be somewhat uncomfortable to continue. It must be finished to-night.

A company of Territorials is stretching barbed wire on our right.

Between each star shell we can hear the hammering of the sledges against the stakes, the strain of the tension on the wire, and when the traitorous light shines again these wonderful workers don’t even hide. They remain hanging on the barbed wire, motionless and disjointed like corpses. They look so much like them that the enemy doesn’t even fire, as he feels certain that he has annihilated this gang which heroically continues its gigantic task.

“Look!... they’re like statues.”

“One would think it was a party ... there are the lights and the orchestra.”

The time for supplying the company in the lines comes. The men of the field kitchens come by groups of three or four from the trenches just behind us.

The first two have a long rod on their shoulders and rolls of bread on this. Others carry in canvas pails and kettles come from nowhere the coveted wine and the aromatic brandy. Others bend under the weight of pots which hold lumpy black bean soup, which splashes out at every jolt in the path. It is already cold and greasy. Finally, the mess corporal reaches the end of his trip and draws out of his sack the desserts bought with the mess balance and the commissions given to him the day before by the men in the trenches. The pockets of his jackets are full of letters he has just received from the officer with the mail, and which he delivers to the men who have been waiting for them hungrily.

When he gets as far as the fatigue party he stops and hesitates. He must go over a space of fifty yards, absolutely exposed, to the edge of a group of trees where there is a first-line trench taken from the Boches in the last attack and not yet connected with the communication trench.

He has reason for his hesitation, for the last two days the Boche trench on our left has been firing on it heavily.

Day before yesterday an entire fatigue party was killed. We can see there in front of us the abandoned sacks and scattered packages. Five men out of eight were killed yesterday. The others were able to get over some of the provisions and the bad news by crawling, and at the price of a thousand risks. They also took the rest of the provisions from the bodies of their comrades who carried them. To-day they advanced the time of bringing the supplies an hour in order to foil the enemy’s vigilance. This time the mess corporal accompanied the fatigue party himself to discover, if possible, a less perilous mode of communication. But the Boches must have been on the watch, or guessed or got wind of it somehow. The star shells now follow each other with no let-up, lighting up the road so that one can’t venture on it. Under this too persistent light the Territorials abandon their simulation of corpses and seek shelter in the trench to which we are getting ready to return.

It is necessary for the supplies to go on. The company in the front line has had only insufficient provisions for two days.

The mess corporal is a brave man and makes several attempts to venture outside, but each time he is received by a fusillade and only has time to throw himself backward in the trench.

The fatigue party has been watched and waited for.

We hold a council of the non-commissioned officers and the lieutenant of the Territorials which has held the position for several weeks. Various stratagems are proposed and we weigh the chances, but after consideration all of them are vetoed. It is impossible to get by even at the greatest speed without risking the lives of several men, and perhaps of all.

Still, if we were able to draw the attention of the Boches, to occupy them with something else, to enfilade them, to shell them.

“Enfilade them ... shell them....”

“Isn’t there some place from which we can enfilade them?”

And we all considered in our minds the position of the Boche trenches.

“We can’t do anything from here,” said a sergeant who had spent various periods in these trenches for several months, and knew every corner of it; “but below there to the left, about a hundred yards from the picket post, is a ruined cabin which dominates everything. But there’s nothing doing in getting there; it’s too near; they’d see us as plain as day.”

One of our men heard all this. And while the conversation went on, I saw him climb up on the parapet and examine the position.

It was Marseille, an impetuous, headstrong type. He rebelled at all discipline, he was restive under observation, but his bravery was unfailing, and he was absolutely oblivious to danger, which he ignored with a swagger and indifference which seemed amazing. Marseille has known one hundred thousand adventures and turned one hundred thousand tricks, and has always come back absolutely unharmed.

When he was on his last leave he spent six unrestrained days in innumerable drinking bouts in all the bars at La Cannebière, where he narrated his boasted deeds of prowess, which were probably much inferior to the real ones. Then, instead of going back, he waited for them to come and get him. He was arrested on the eighth day and brought back to the Corps by the provost. Marseille was not the least upset when the officer demanded the reasons for his delay, and replied:

“I don’t like to travel alone. I like society, I do. So I have had a whole car to myself and my escort. And besides, I knew very well that the gendarmes wouldn’t come from Marseilles here without buying a drink, and they wouldn’t have the nerve to lap it all up without offering me some. I like the gendarmes. That may seem strange to you, but I do.”

Marseille is a good singer and his number appears in all the company concerts. His throat is as clear as the sunny lights of La Corniche and L’Esterel, and he can render the final trills of the Neapolitan songs with the best.

When he had finished his rapid observation he came back to our anxious group and spoke to the mess corporal:

“You’ll be all right, _mon vieux_. You’ll get there.”

And we all looked at him in open-mouthed surprise at such assurance.

“Have you any news or an idea? Explain. Tell us something about it. Let us see.”

“You’ll get there, as I told you. Don’t bother about those fellows over there. That’s my job. Watch me.”

And to the lieutenant who was getting ready to question him:

“You have a machine gun, haven’t you, Lieutenant.... Won’t you lend it to me ... just a minute? It’s a Saint Etienne. I know that.... I know them all.... They’re all the same.... And five belts with it to amuse the Boches for five minutes.... That’ll be enough for the cooks to get over.”

We understood it all, and we laughed and admired him. Marseille rolled up the barrel of the machine gun and the belts in several thicknesses of canvas, tied a rope to it and attached the other end to his wrist.

“Hold on to the package so that it won’t make trouble on the stones, and when I pull on the rope twice, let it come.”

And he crawled out of the trench and slid down towards the ruined hut.

We waited anxiously the full ten minutes. We watched the cord unroll with varying emotions. It stopped, stood still, immovable. Has he arrived?

Then we felt the two jerks, and the lieutenant let the heavy package slide, and it got mixed up in the stakes, rocks, and gullies, and made such a metallic noise that it could not help attracting the Boche’s attention. And it had an effect. The enemy believed that we were making some sort of a movement, and launched in our direction a heavy fusillade which we refrained from answering.

Again ten minutes passed ... they were interminable.

Then suddenly came the machine gun ... ours ... Marseille’s.

Slowly at first, it sent out its irregular tap-tap, then the cadence became faster, and then a steady crackle. The Boches were taken in the flank and thought that we were making an attack, and Marseille, who saw them running by the light of their star shells, shouted out,

“Forward, the cooks, run, nom de Dieu!”

The fatigue party rushed out at top speed. Soup spatters from all sides. The rations of wine and coffee will be short. The men disappear in the wood. They are over; they are safe.

Now the German bullets are raging to our left about the hut; rockets go up asking for artillery. In front of our lines close to us explosions rock the ground. Their artillery is firing in the right place. The fatigue party is over but the Boches have another prey. By this time Marseille is stewing away in the ruins of his shelter.

* * * * *

While the shelling lasts we discuss his last feat, safe in the sap, while we munch the last of our cold repast. Then, as dawn begins to appear and we have to return to the cantonment at daybreak, we begin to get ready to go. Before we go we share a bucket of wine which the overloaded fatigue party couldn’t carry in its dash and abandoned.

But a shadow stands before us in the sap.

“So they share their leavings and there is none for the hungry?”

It is Marseille, safe and sound, whole, without a scratch. Everyone crowds around him, and the officer runs up.

“And now, if you’ll pull in that string, you’ll bring back the tools. I’m sore on that machine. You know, Lieutenant, that gun wasn’t our Hotchkiss. I had to dismantle the breech; it jammed at once. I couldn’t have fired more than half a belt. Fortunately, they gave me light with their star shells; I couldn’t have done it without them.”