CHAPTER XVI

A COMMANDER

At the beginning of June, the colonel’s report informed us that the major of Battalion C ... had been assigned to the ... first Colonials.

The battalion commandant’s post was next to ours on the ridge of the quarry.

Since the departure of Major L ... the captain adjutant-major, who was assuming the command in the interim, was quartered there. He was devoting himself to his ablutions in the open place in front of his dugout and at the same time telling Lieutenants C ... and D ..., his neighbors, an uproarious adventure of his last leave, when a man, tall and spare, with hollowed cheeks, sunburned skin, eyes deep and shining, modestly dressed,—a mechanic’s blue trousers, badly fitting and muddy boots, regulation trooper’s jacket, with no mark to show his rank,—came out of the sort of tunnel in which the La Vache trench ended, and stopped as if undecided, in front of our dugouts.

There was a mounted scout there who was occupying himself in cutting out a ring, and he asked him,

“The post of the major of the ... first battalion?”

Without stopping his work, the man indicated our group with his hand. He advanced shyly.

“The ... first battalion?”

“This is it,” said the adjutant-major, drawing his wet head from the canvas bucket in which he was plunging.

“I am Major C....”

“Oh, Major, I beg your pardon. I didn’t know....” mopping his face rapidly, and putting on his tunic which his orderly handed to him.

Without a word, the unperturbed figure, Major C ..., looked off into the distance, beyond material things, waited for him to finish his toilet, and then entered into the P. C. to take possession of his new post.

* * * * *

None of us who lived constantly in his immediate neighborhood ever knew any other expression on his firm, cold, almost mystical face. His hair was poorly cut, his beard was thin and long, and his voice was gentle, very gentle, so gentle that one might call it a sad sing-song. All in all he had none of the outward appearance of the conventional commander.

Nevertheless he was one of the best.

* * * * *

Good reputations, they say, take longest to establish. Only legends come to life spontaneously. His kindliness and honesty must have belonged to the legends, because in less than a week there was not a single man in the battalion who did not speak of him with respect and admiration.

“He’s a chic type,” they said.

“He’s a man.”

And the men, who love to see their commander among them, living their life, sharing their labors and fatigue, experiencing the same trials, knew at once that he did not belong to that distant and unknown hierarchy which transmits its orders from an ivory throne.

From the day he took over his command, he wanted to see everything for himself and all the positions in the sector.

With his knotty baton in his hand, he went through all the communication trenches, the first-line trenches, into the saps, verified the riflemen’s posts, and, it was said, spent nights in the picket posts.

* * * * *

When the battalion relieved the 38th at Méharicourt, the commandant’s post which was assigned to the major was in an immense house in the middle of a park which was not much destroyed.

Since the day before, however, the artillery had established an observation tower in a poplar and had foreseen that it would hardly be prudent to occupy the house. It would be shelled if the battery were spotted.

The commander learned this, and without saying a word established his things all the same in the salon which he used for an office and bedroom.

The first night and the next morning passed without incident—not a single shot from the Boche lines. Aeroplanes flew over at daybreak.

He had invited to lunch, as was his custom, when we were in cantonment, the doctor, his captain adjutant-major, and the engineer officer in charge of the sector.

My relations with him dated back before the war, so I was with him often, and he frequently kept me at the table with his guests. I was there that day.

We had scarcely sat down when they began to talk of Portugal’s entrance into the war. The engineer was the manager of a political paper and his remarks were so keen that we were all interested, and even the servants stopped to listen.

Just then a shell, the first in two days, burst somewhere in the neighborhood. The glasses rattled on the table; we could hear things falling, and people running by in the street.

The conversation stopped.

The major, who had been as silent as usual during the meal, spoke up in his quiet voice:

“They say that their artillery is excellent ... it comes from Creusit”—and he engaged the journalist in a historical discussion about the armament and strength of Portugal, which showed a deep knowledge of the country, in spite of its unexpected and recent entrance into the ranks of the Allies.

The journalist seemed to take a lively interest in this conversation which he had started, but he instinctively turned his eyes to the windows every time a shell burst, for now explosions far and near, the screeching of shells and the falling of walls indicated clearly that we were the center of a bombardment.

At each explosion the doctor looked at the adjutant-major, who kept on eating quietly, as if to say, “Are you going to stay here much longer?”

The explosions came nearer and all around us. We could see plainly the bits of steel which whistled by the windows, grazing the walls which they destroyed. We could hear the plaster falling down the staircase.

As the servant brought the desserts—a Camembert, crackers, fruit, and white wine—a violent explosion of a new arrival nearby tore the window, stuffed with paper, from its hinges and the draught of air half overturned the orderly who let the platter fall on the table, to the great damage of the tablecloth where the white wine ran out....

“_Bigre!_” said the major.

“I think it’s time to get into the cellar.”

The engineer was only waiting for this invitation to stop the conversation and was half out of his chair when the major took his arm and sat him down again.

“In short, Portugal owed its title of Historical Conquistador to its navy.”

And he began to relate the records of that valorous nation on the sea from the time these people on the Tagus served in the Carthaginian triremes to Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Cabral, Bartholomew Diaz. Never was conversation more polished, imaginative, and undisturbed.

A terrific explosion shook the house; part of the roof rolled down the staircase; the cook and the waiter jumped into the hall.

“Well, what is it?”

“Major, it fell in the garden, ten feet from the kitchen.”

“The gentlemen are waiting for their coffee. Bring it.”

The doctor could stand no more, alleged that perhaps there were wounded waiting for him at the dressing station, and asked permission to withdraw.

The servants brought in the boiling coffee in a hurry, and he got up to go, as the commander said:

“We’ll go along with you. We’ll see whether the shells have done much damage in the cantonment.”

“But, Commander, do you think it’s prudent to venture out in the streets just now?”

“It’s my opinion, gentlemen, that the Germans, who obviously wanted to furnish the music for our meal, should know that we’ve finished”—and he lighted his cigar and went out on the steps.

The neighborhood was badly shattered indeed. Large holes blocked the street; the artillery observatory had been hit by a well-aimed shell, had fallen on a shed and crushed it. Immense craters had appeared here and there in the garden and the whole front of the house was splashed with steel.

The enemy’s fire was letting up; it had almost ceased.

Heads now appeared at the air-holes of the cellars trying to see what had happened.

We followed the commander along the main street which led to the dressing post. An aeroplane in the azure sky, a small silver bird shining in the sun, went on its giddy way.

With our noses in the air, we watched it pass. The whistle of a shell approached with a noise like a panting locomotive.

“There’s the last.”

A frightful crash, a cloud of greenish smoke, bricks and timbers fall ... cries....

The villa we had just left re-appeared with a large yawning hole, its walls burning and fallen apart. The last shell had fallen into the dining room!

His courage and coolness were not calculated or put on; they were not an effort of the will. They were natural.

He was a fatalist like all who have lived long in Eastern countries. What he had above all was a powerful control of himself and a sovereign contempt for danger.

He had an absolutely definite conviction that he would be killed in the next attack. He had so thoroughly accustomed himself to the idea that as a result he had made all arrangements and now awaited the hour, in the meanwhile doing his duty as a commander honorably and simply.

One evening I went to greet him at his cantonment at Froissy—he was going on leave the next day—I asked him, among other things, if it would be agreeable to him, if I used his horses while he was gone.

“My horses? I have no further use for them. They can’t follow me through the trenches and barbed wire—to the front; coming back ... they’ll bring me in a canvas. They’ll serve my successor.”

It would have been perfectly useless to protest.

After a moment of silence when he seemed to be keenly interested in the ripples of the water in the canal, he went on:

“I’m going on leave to-morrow, to bid good-by to mine. That will be the last. What are you doing this evening?”

“Nothing, Commander.”

“Do you want to make a tour of the sector with me?”

“At your orders, Commander.”

By the last red rays of the sun setting on the heights to the north of the Somme, we reached the lines through the open path which passed by the camp kitchens and reached the hill of the Château de Cappy.

Twilight passed, followed by the most varied colors.

The red sun as it plunged behind the black poplars on the wide horizon flooded the sky with a great yellow light, fiery, burning yellow, like the gold of flames which gradually grew thin and pale, and became light like an immense head of hair.

A little later mauve and violet precursors of approaching clouds passed slowly from pale to dark to end in night.

The clear moon came up above the plateau of the road from Amiens. We walked on, one behind the other, in silence.

He stopped to look at the sky and I heard him murmur, “How beautiful it is.”

This twilight must have recalled to him the skies of the Orient.

“Yes, the sunsets on the sea, in the Indies, in the Red Sea. I am homesick for the light and the sea. The light, the sea, the woman; the greatest joys, the greatest sorrows!!!”

He fell into his revery again.

We reached the orchard above the great quarry, and an outlying picket warned us that the path was dangerous.

The commander did not even hear him and continued to walk on the road from Herbècourt, bordered by apple trees in blossom.

“Ta-co!”

A German bullet tore through the night, and a broken branch with its white petals fell at our feet.

He picked it up and looked at it a long time; plucked a blossom and put it in his pocket,

“Even the flowers!”

He said nothing more that evening. We went through the front lines of the sector until late at night, stopping at the loopholes to observe the enemy’s position and questioning the sentries.

We got back to Froissy at three o’clock in the morning, and at six he went to the station at Guillaucourt and left on his leave.

* * * * *

When he got back, the attack, they said, was near; they were preparing for it seriously. He did not give up attending to the slightest details of the battalion. He showed a paternal interest in his men, knew the men of all ranks by their names, and stopped those he met and talked to them familiarly.

The battalion followed the deep path to the entrance of the “120 long” to get back to its positions. A wooden bridge had been constructed here by the artillery to get their guns across. This was useless now and made the road so narrow that the column had to dress back and form by twos. This long manœuvre compelled the men to mark time in one spot.

There is nothing especially disagreeable about marking time for we have seen many other stops for less reasons, but this evening the Boche artillery had information of the arrival of the attacking regiment in the lines and was shelling heavily all possible ways of access.

A single “77” falling into this crowd of men would make a hecatomb.

The commander was marching at the head of the column followed by the intelligence officers of the companies.

He stopped a moment in front of the bridge encircled by the explosions of the shells.

“If a shell would only destroy it!”

But as if for spite, they fell all around and missed it.

“It must be destroyed.”

There was nothing formal about this order, and the task wasn’t easy.

He took off his belts, gave his jacket to a man, and with his chest bare the commander stood up on the bridge, propped himself on the timbers of the floor, and began to tear them up.

Ten men imitated him of their own accord. They finished tearing it down amidst a storm of shells which raged about, and in the black smoke of the explosions in which they disappeared for minutes at a time.

In a quarter of an hour the way was clear; all that was left was the two laterals which were planted in the walls of the covered path.

The battalion was engulfed in the whirlpool and passed without loss.

The commander stood on the pile of materials and watched the men file past. He was the last one over.

When we reached the line, he began to walk up and down incessantly.

The fire of our batteries had been uninterrupted for three days; and this with the constant whizzing of shells as they passed over our heads put our nerves almost as much on edge as the strain of the approaching attack.

Towards eleven o’clock one night there was an intense calm all of a sudden.

The firing ceased along the whole line—on both sides. All was silence, but it was the silence which precedes the storm, the stupor of nature after the flash and before the thunder.

The men burrowed in the saps and fell asleep. The sentries who had not closed an eye for forty-eight hours continued to fight against sleep.

It was almost impossible to recognize the commander in his bizarre garb, wrapped in a canvas instead of a waterproof, his steel helmet covered with mud, as he wandered up and down the trenches, with a kind word of encouragement for each one.

In the “Servian” trench there was an exposed passage to the German lines. They had blocked this up by piles of sandbags, chevaux de frise, and rolls of barbed wire.

As a greater precaution, a sentry was stationed there night and day. He was sleeping deeply when the commander came by. He had to shake him vigorously to wake him up.

“Say, do you sleep like that when you’re sentry?”

“I ... it’s true ... I was asleep.”

“That’s not serious. Try hard, if an officer should come along, you’d not get off with advice.”

“They won’t come along; they’re all snoozing in their dugouts.”

“Oh, you never know.”

“Well, I’m going mad sooner or later. I haven’t slept a wink for three nights. If the Boches are as tired as I am they won’t come to wake us up.”

As he talked, his voice was drawn out more and more and his head nodded. He was dead with sleep....

The commander took his rifle from his hands and said:

“I’m not sleepy, and, besides, I shall sleep very well to-morrow. I’ll mount guard to-morrow. Sleep, little one, sleep. We, the old, have lost our habit of sleep.”

The sentry did not even acquiesce in this invitation. He had accepted it in advance, for he was asleep already.

At daybreak when the relief came, the sergeant who accompanied the new sentry was thunderstruck when he recognized the commander mounting guard at the loophole.

“Here’s his rifle. Wake him up when I have gone. Say nothing about it, for he was very sleepy.”

* * * * *

When the signal for the assault was given the next day, after our first two waves had gained the enemy trenches without firing a shot, the commander, who was to go with the third, had scarcely advanced on the field when the whistle of a single shell shattered the air.

A “77” burst and a cloud of smoke went up. His thigh was torn off and we saw him fall in a pool of blood.

Lieutenant Delpos was getting ready to dash across with the second section of the company and he jumped towards him.

“Go on, my friend, the end has come. I am waiting for it. Tell Captain C ... to take command of the battalion.”

And during the slow agony which lasted a half hour he did not stop following attentively the progress of his men on the conquered positions.

Stretcher-bearers carried his body to the church in Éclusier.

We buried him simply on the hill at the east of Cappy in a military cemetery near the canal.

When the news of his death was known in the battalion, I know more than a hundred who had seen their best comrades fall beside them, who wept as though they had lost their fathers....

He was with us only a month.