CHAPTER XII

“WE HAVE TAKEN A PICKET POST”

(“Communique du”)

The asphyxiating shells which have been falling around us for forty-eight hours without a let-up have ceased. This morning the first rays of the sun filtered through the layers of gas and seemed to evaporate them. This lull was opportune. Our masks have long since been glued to our faces, and loosened by our heavy breathing they no longer adhere hermetically and begin to let in the toxins.

At last we are able to breathe at will and swallow our share of pure air.

Our sap opens on the side of a great quarry and commands the whole valley of the Somme. At our feet is the canal and towpath, at the right in a group of trees in the middle of the marshes are the ruins of Froissy; opposite us, behind the buttress of the La Vache woods, is the steeple of Éclusier.

The open space in front of our dugout forms a sort of terrace. Here we have laid out tables and dug seats in the chalk of the quarry. Men are descending by real scaling paths to get water from the canal, although it is against the major’s explicit orders.

The towpath is visible from the enemy’s trenches on the other side of the Somme. During the preceding days, those who tried to follow it to get back to Éclusier more easily were wounded by the fire of a machine gun which sweeps the way.

Our men come back from this expedition without accident, and we are able to proceed to our summary ablutions. We have not been able to do that for six days, and it is a real delight to feel the fresh water on our eyes and to rid the skin of its sticky moisture.

Two of our sections hold the first-line trenches twenty yards in front of us. We must relieve them presently....

The artillery is still silent, and without a doubt the enemy has given up the stroke he was preparing. He was counting on the usual morning mist of the Somme, but this morning the air is very clear without a suspicion of fog. A fresh breeze blows from the north.

As we wait for the hour of relief, we talk, and an interminable game of cards goes on.

During the dark dreary days of forced seclusion in the bottom of the sap I discovered a very fine fellow, one of our comrades whom I had not had occasion to notice until then. He was very simple, talked but little, lived by himself, and I did not know his name.

Chance placed us side by side and permitted me to engage him in conversation.

Under a rough, taciturn appearance I found a soul full of kindness, a life touched by sacrifice, kindly, modest, the heroism of the humble who live simply for their long, hard tasks without complaining and without anyone being able to pity them in their sorrow and lighten their burdens.

One night—was it night?—hermetically sealed in the deep sap, lighted only by the wavering light of scanty candles, all our hours were nocturnal. Without the irregular arrival of supply parties we would have been absolutely ignorant of the flight of time.

One night, when the bombardment seemed to reach the final height of violence, when each blow shook our dugout, and the props groaned and threatened to yield—it would have been a merciless burial—our looks crossed and I read in his eyes a deep sorrow.

In spite of my natural reserve, out of respect to his deep suffering I was unable to contain myself long.

“Comrade,” I said, “I read in your looks a great sorrow.”

He seemed to come back to reality when he heard my voice!

“Fate has placed us near each other for some days. We don’t know what to-morrow may bring. Can’t I be of some use? Aid you in any way? Tell me!”

His eyes tried to smile a thanks. I saw his lips contract and then came tears, and before I could say anything he leaned his head on my shoulder and wept deeply.

It was not weakness, despair, or fear, but the unbridling of a heart shut up too long, the great gasp of a soul heavy with mental sorrows which might at last open itself, the gentle rain which brought the stifling storm of the nerves to an end.

He confided his life history to me in a few words.

He was a simple artisan of the laboring class, and his life had been full of grief and sorrow. After some years of struggles, and cares and stress together with his beloved companion, a daughter was born. But in coming into the world she took the life of her mother. And then he found himself alone in the world with this puny frail creature, born in grief and raised in sorrow.

In addition to his great love for her as a father he added his worship of the departed one. He limited his life to his grief, and made his house a memorial chapel where every object was a votive offering to his absent beloved and a relic of the ever-present dead. He adorned the little girl with her mother’s modest jewelry, and cut her clothes from those she had worn.

Through this double love which he poured out on this child, she became his only reason for existence, his whole life.

The little girl was ten years old to-day. Brought up in the seclusion of the tabernacle, she had taken up her rôle conscientiously. She was quieter than most children of her age, and attentive to her father’s slightest wish. As she grew up she developed into the very image of her mother, and the poor man began to live again as in a dream the days of his happy past.

When war broke out the implacable mobilization tore him from the fireside he had never left before. Living alone as they did, they had no friends and knew of no relatives.

He went, trusting the house to her and all their modest property, only recommending her to the watch of a neighbor, of a concierge.

But fortified by example, she suddenly grew up through the grief of this weighty separation, and the girl was already sufficient for the rôle as guardian of the hearth.

Ever since he had left she had written each week the letter which he waited for impatiently and which he read and re-read during the following days.

* * * * *

This morning he seemed more cheerful. It was not only the joy of finding himself in the open air again, of having finished with the constant danger of being buried alive, but also because now the bombardment had died down the officer with the mail would be able to bring to-day the letters which we had not received for six days.

The child had not failed to write a single time on the promised date and he knew that back in the rear a letter from his daughter was waiting for him and would come to-day. This thought made him cheerful.

* * * * *

At the relief I went with him into the front line trench. It was riddled with shell holes. Our barbed wire entanglements were almost destroyed, but the trench was not entirely ruined, and sandbags quickly put it in good shape again. An immense heap of bricks and smoking ruins cut off our view in front.

It was all that was left of a farmhouse called “La Maison Rose.” It had been sharply disputed in terrible combats and had passed in succession from the enemy into our hands and then from ours to the enemy, to remain finally between the lines.

Our artillery was riddling this pile with shells to prevent the Germans fortifying it and making it a point of support commanding our trenches. But the mass of ruins stayed there and formed a ridge which, if it was not dangerous, was at least annoying.

Sub-Lieutenant Delpos demonstrated to me by means of a periscope the use they might make of that pile of stones. He was a daring but prudent tactician and went on the principle that everything ought to be used to spare the men’s lives, and that we should not neglect to take advantage of any incident in the terrain.

“Lieutenant, here’s an order.”

The battalion intelligence officer handed him a paper written in pencil:

“Chief of battalion of the company of machine guns. A reconnaissance of aeroplanes signals that the enemy are installing gas-throwing or liquid fire machines behind the pile of stones in front of your lines. Blow it up with several bombs on the ends to scatter it. Ask for volunteers.”

“See what I told you. The Germans lose no time in utilizing the advantages of the terrain. See, behind that pile of stones they are installing their gas machines. They think they’re sheltered, but nothing is from our aeroplanes. Oh, the aeroplanes!”

A man from the engineers, who have received a similar order, comes with the explosives. He looks at the emplacement through a loophole, and turns to us whistling and shaking his head:

“_Mince!_ That’s not going to be easy. One might be able to manage it at night, but by day ... that’s going to be a real bird trap.”

“What! What! What’s to stop your sticking your melinite sausage in that doghouse? Lend me your peephole. I’m going to see how it stands.”

It was Grizard mixing in the conversation; he had already taken the two bombs from the engineer’s hands, which he let go with evident satisfaction.

“We ought to put one in each end of the buffet. Don’t worry, Lieutenant. That’s a fine job and will be well done.”

Grizard turns to his companion Marseille who is draining his two litre canteen without trouble.

“Oh, there, you. This will be a fine chance for a ballad. We’re going to play a trick on our neighbor opposite.”

And then, as Marseille gave his opinion only by a look without letting go the neck of his canteen:

“Come, leave some until we get back. We’ll be thirsty.”

The two volunteers got ready for their expedition at once. They each took a bomb and put it in their jacket pockets; protected their heads by a shield which they pushed ahead, and climbed up the bank, crawled under the barbed wire, and disappeared in the shell holes.

They had covered their heads with muddy canvas. If they remained motionless, three yards away one could not tell them from the ground.

Through periscopes we watched them advance. The lookouts in the enemy trench had not seen them yet. Not a shot. Absolute quiet.

The “doghouse” is thirty yards from our lines. Sliding along carefully as they must, ten minutes are necessary to get there. The time will seem long; longer for us than for them.

I am sure that while they are giving their whole attention to getting on in their adventurous spirits, entirely ignorant of the first feeling of fear, that they have no other idea in their heads than to play a good joke on the Boches. They are fine jokers! They have never been known to draw back from what offers, but when their lives are at stake....

There is still nothing. Not a shot!

But how could the enemy lookouts see them? We ourselves who know their goal, who follow their trail, lose sight of them momentarily. Brown grass and burned shrubbery covers the ground at that spot; they must be there inside.

The ten minutes have gone now. Still nothing!!!

Have they seen a danger we cannot see as they neared the goal, and have they burrowed themselves in the ground? Nevertheless, their mission is extremely urgent, and they know it.

Lieutenant Delpos nervously frets about and stamps his foot,

“I ought to have gone myself....”

“Wait, there they are.”

Marseille and Grizard are coming back; they are only ten feet from the trench.

But rash to madness, in their absolute unconsciousness of danger now that their mission is accomplished, they take no thought of themselves, and instead of sliding under the barbed wire, as they went, to get into the dugout Grizard stands up and shouts,

“Let the balloon go up.”

At the same moment, a shower of bullets!

Grizard rebounded, twisted himself in a final contortion, and fell on his back while Marseille jumped into the trench shouting to his comrade,

“Haven’t you finished playing the man-serpent?”

Then, when he saw that his comrade was absolutely dead, he burst out in wild anger:

“Nom de Dieu ... Nom de Dieu ... de nom de Dieu.... If that isn’t too bad.... He needn’t stay there, the rascal. I’m going to get him.”

The explosion came, a frightful one; the bombs had just exploded.

“To the sap ... to the sap. It’s going to rain stones.”

The pile of stones is thrown up with tremendous violence. Blocks are thrown into the trench.

The smoke blows away and behind the scattered ruins we see two machine guns in position with their gun crews killed beside them, and all their material for fortifications and gas-making apparatus.

The sub-lieutenant jumps on the parapet,

“To the bayonet, forward, enfants, get the tools.”

And before the enemy had recovered from his stupefaction, our men are on the guns, which they get and bring back in a hurry under a storm of bullets and grenades.

When we are back from this sudden attack, we call the roll. Several fail to answer, and among them my friend of the day before.

I suffer as though he had been my own brother.

That night, when the storm of fire has ceased, we try to search carefully through the darkness of the terrain where our missing men have fallen. Groans tells us that they are there, but in their fever and pain no one answers our calls.

At daybreak, at the risk of the bullets which still whistle above the trench, we are able to see them.

There he was scarcely twenty yards away, his large eyes open and looking towards us ... beyond us ... very far. But I know where!!!

The day begins quietly. Doubtless the enemy is meditating a revenge for yesterday’s surprise; not a shot on our side or on the other. It is the silence after the storm. I begin to hope for a sudden attack which will let us go out and bring back our wounded.

A man brings the letters with our morning coffee. There was one for him and I call and tell him. He answers with a sigh. I guess rather than hear what he wants.

“Read me the letter, very loud so I can hear it.” And in a voice which I force myself to make firm and almost joyous, while sobs choke me, I read this letter:

“My darling Papa:

“You did not expect a letter from me to-day for it’s not my usual day. I wanted to surprise you. To-morrow is mamma’s birthday. With the economies I made out of the allowance, I had my picture taken. I put on for the occasion her beautiful necklace and pretty red silk blouse which is so becoming to me. The neighbors already see how much I look like her.

“And that my little souvenir might be still more precious, I have copied on the back of the picture the song which you taught me when I was very small so that I could sing it before mamma’s portrait.

“This song, now that you are no longer here, tells all that my heart would say to you on this day I long for you, mamma’s birthday. It has become my evening prayer.

“‘_Oh! si tu savais, loin de foi,_ _Combien les heures sont amères,_ _Pleines d’attristantes chimères,_ _Et comme désert est le toit,_ _Va, j’ai beau remplir par l’étude_ _Et par le travail, tous mes jours,_ _C’est toi que je cherche toujours_ _Tout au fond de ma solitude._’”

Then, before I finished my reading, his voice continued the song of the child as he lay there on the point of death. In the hour of death his grave voice had a celestial accent; the simple song went up like a superhuman song, a seraphic song, above men, beyond all things. It penetrated to the bottom of our souls and probed our hearts and brought tears.

The barbarians on the other side of the trench, themselves fathers, husbands, brothers, understand that a father is dying calling to his child; that a past common to us all lives again in that last agony. And their arms rest inert, their guns are lowered, and all the fierce warriors remain motionless, dreaming, lost in the contemplation of their inner dreams. Alone, their hearts beat and bleed.

* * * * *

Suddenly someone shouts an oath from the German trench. A brute blasphemes,

“_Halt dein Maul_.”

A shot sounds. A bullet puts an end to that beatific agony.

Then, there was no need of a signal or an order. Tears dried spontaneously; rage bit our lips and lighted our eyes.

With a bound, with a single bound, sudden, violent, unanimous, we jumped the parapet, and without the enemy’s firing a shot in his utter surprise, we bounded into the German trench. Five minutes later, there was none left alive.

Bowing my head over the body of my friend, I placed the picture of his child on his still moist lips.

* * * * *

The Communique will say:

“South of the Somme we took a picket post by surprise, captured two machine guns and considerable material for making asphyxiating gas. Our losses are insignificant.”

* * * * *

And the public will think that very simple—a picket post ... two machine guns ... and no losses.