CHAPTER XIX

A WREATH

We fell back in good order—in as good order as our wounds and the enemy’s artillery fire permitted.

There is a roll call of the company, now reduced in numbers by half, in the ruins of Dompierre, now cleared out, conquered and organized.

None of the two sections surprised in the explosion of the mine came back.

There are great gaps in the ranks of the other two, especially among the non-commissioned officers. One sergeant out of four and two or three corporals are seriously wounded.

As names are called and there is no response, we look around as though to search better. Lips seem to murmur, “What, he too?” Eyes search the distance, the turn of the road at the entrance of the village, as if they still expect to see him come. But no one comes. They will never come again.

The lieutenant has to furnish all possible information about each one missing.

“Did you see him fall? Who was near him? Was he wounded? Do you think he was killed? Did he stay there motionless?”

There were as many inexact replies as there were questions. No one knew exactly or could know exactly whether the fallen was killed or wounded; appearances are deceitful. In the uproar of battle, he who seems dead is not even touched. Another may have had to stay hidden a long time to avoid being killed or made a prisoner.

Opposite the name of each absent one the quartermaster writes:

“Missing the ... presumably killed at....”

After the roll call we separate silently. The most severely wounded are at the dressing stations, and several are discharged by the ambulances from the rear: Sergeant Pierron had four fingers of his right hand blown off; Sergeant Durosiers with a shoulder broken by a bit of shell; Corporal Goutelle shot through the thigh, and has lost a lot of blood.

We accompany them as far as the ambulances which take them to the casualty clearing stations.

Adjutant Dotant and Sergeant Lace take the initiative in buying a wreath and take up a collection among the men of their sections.

“Lieutenant, if you will allow us, we are going to buy a wreath at Harbonnières and this evening two of us will go and place it on our comrades.”

Too moved to answer, the lieutenant acquiesces with a nod.

Morin and I, the only two who are not wounded, offer to carry it. Our errand is not without danger; but we start off at nightfall.

The wreath is light but large, and its width makes it difficult to get through the narrow trenches.

We have to hold it at arms’ length in certain places above our heads on the parapet and slide it along.

Its ornaments catch in the stones and the twigs.

It runs serious dangers before it reaches its destination.

At Herbècourt the trench stops some yards in front of the entrance to the village. It is raining shells.

The shells rage particularly on the road which runs through the village, the only one along which supplies can go. There is no longer a well-marked road. The well taken care of highway no longer exists; it is full of holes and is but one yawning crevasse more than three hundred yards long. The wagons and trucks have made a chance path in the neighboring fields. They wait at the entrance of the village, some yards from the point where the barrage persists, for a lull. When it comes, they rush like a whirlwind with a mad burst of speed, and it is a miracle that they are not crushed. All one hears are oaths, cries, blows; wagons lock together, horses fall and get up at once; all this in the twinkling of an eye. Thirty wagons pass between two shells.

We, too, make a dash and reach the other end without much risk. The danger is greater from the autos which rush by us like meteors, graze us, and threaten a hundred times to cut us to pieces or to catch our clothes and drag us under the wheels. But the greatest danger is from the tottering walls, and the waving roofs which the rolling of the wagons brings falling down.

We reach the cemetery at the beginning of the country. It is still nearly intact. Graves are turned up; tombstones are thrown down on their sides. Its walls are holed with loopholes, which served the last defenders of the village. But the grass is not even tramped down in the corners.

“Can’t we stay here five minutes to get our breath?”

“If you want to.... We deserve it.”

A battery of “75’s” held the position a few minutes ago. It has just abandoned it to get nearer the lines. The place is deserted; it is like a visit in the country at two steps from the fiery furnace. We stretch out on a mound of turf between two tombs.

It is the hour of twilight; the sky is golden; the sun on the horizon plunges into the marshes of the Somme. A fresh breeze blows through the privet hedge.

“A summer evening in the country!”

“Within the country would be more in accord with the circumstances, I think.”

As if to make my punning more emphatic, four “77’s” burst at the same time and smash the cemetery walls to bits.

“_Foutre!_” This expression, peculiar to Marseilles, has a significant meaning on Morin’s lips.

“You have said it; the place is no longer safe.”

“The battery changed its position because it had just been spotted. We are taking its place and are a target for the Boche artillery.”

We make our way forward as fast as we can.

The bombardment of the abandoned position behind us continues in volleys of four shells at a time. The cemetery we just left is nothing but a ruin, a chaos from which black smoke rises.

We keep on running, each holding an end of the wreath which impedes us terribly. Although it is light, it seems heavy.

Night falls and it is very dark. We are able to advance with more security now. Yawning craters open at our feet; we risk falls and sprains at every step.

* * * * *

It is the dead of night when we reach the place where our company was decimated.

An immense mass of humanity fills the place with a tragic tangle of intertwined corpses. Burned with powder, licked by the flames, torn and blown to pieces, the bodies cling to the wall as if they wanted to fly from the deadly fire coming from the depths of the earth.

Indeed, planted on this host of bodies, his legs sinking in up to his knees, the body of Sergeant Bacque seems to point out the road to deliverance with a gesture. His hands hold the pickets of a cheval de frise. A shell decapitated him at the very moment when he jumped and death fixed him in this attitude.

Thin smoke still comes from the bottom of this sinister vat! It is Hell in all its horror. The men saw death coming and tried to flee, but death was victor and fixed them to the spot.

The burial of our friends would be a titanic task for our exhausted strength. We gather into a single pile the scattered bodies which the explosion hurled to a distance. With some barbed wire we hang the company’s wreath on the cheval de frise which commands the great grave. It faces the Boches.

To-morrow at sunrise they can see it from their nearest trench and read on its tricolored ribbon the inscription, “To our comrades, to our brothers, from the survivors of the second company of machine guns.” They will see how we pay homage to our heroes even under the threat of their shells.

The drone of a cannon sounds in the English sector in the distance. One might think that there was a tacit truce on our side to let the dead sleep more peacefully in their last sleep.

We remain there kneeling before the hecatomb. Our lips search for the prayers of our childhood to lay our dead at rest, but they have lost the habit of prayer and our memories fail at the first words. We wish a prayer which shall give their final blessing to the bodies stretched out there, but above all we want a prayer which shall give a kindly consolation in the approaching hour of anguish to those who wait—to the mothers, wives, sweethearts, who do not know, who hope and live in the dream of their joyous return. And our scepticism makes us unable to pray.

The darkness of the night is absolute.

The charnel-house of our comrades is only a dark mass in the shadows. A pungent, pestilential odor already rises; we sense the sinister rustling of the rats which slip between the bodies.

Groans rise on all sides in the darkness. Some shriek horribly in their agony; there are long wails; plaintive sing-songs call beloved names, childish words.

Death, with its accomplice, Darkness, gleans the last rebellious one who clings desperately to life.

* * * * *

Behind us mounts the heavy rolling of the convoys. It is the hour for the nightly supplies. The autos dash along on the torn up roads in the endeavor to accomplish their difficult mission before the probable barrage fire begins again.

On the top of the ridge where the enemy maintains his lines for the moment, a searchlight throws its light on the ground and in the sky, in all directions, watching for aeroplanes and searching for the passing of convoys on the road. Its light passes back and forth over us several times, hitting us in the face and dazzling us. It passes back and forth, flooding the plain with its moving brilliant light. In its light we see moving forms: stretcher-bearers saving the wounded and plunderers of the dead.

Suddenly, the whizz of a shell comes our way, and a light bursts high in the air. Shrapnel launch their rain of fire and shell on the plain.

“Let’s go....”

We had scarcely time to throw ourselves flat on the ground when there was a tremendous explosion. A “380” perhaps bursts on the middle of the mound of corpses and scatters it. One would think that maddened by its orgy of murder, the enemy horde wants to kill our dead anew. A geyser of blood spouts up and boils from the mound.

We try to flee but our limbs fail us. An invincible force rivets us to the spot, as we try to jump ahead.

Morin utters a hoarse cry, a cry like an animal that is being slaughtered. A corpse was thrown up in the air and falls squarely on him and throws him to the ground. He is underneath, hemmed in by its shrivelled arms; streams of blood deluge him.

I try to get him out, but I can’t. My hands feel around on the mangled body. I feel the shattered limbs come apart under the clothes. I pull Morin out from underneath by his arms. He remains motionless for a moment. He is stupid from the shock and fright. I shake him. The arrival of a new engine of death which explodes beside us brings him back to reality and the imminence of danger.

This time we run as fast as we can, stumbling over the débris, tripping over the dead, rolling into shell holes, tearing our clothes, hands, and faces on the barbed wire.

We flee, absolutely breathless, across old trenches which we see only when their depths yawn before our steps.

We flee haggard, in a mad delirium, terrified, pursued by the vision of our dead, of their dim faces, their torn brows, their glassy eyes, their twisted mouths, which the shells still mangle ... which the enemy kill again in their sleep of death.

We flee encircled by the rattle of the fire which pursues us, and which with us draws near the road which we wish to reach and it to bar.

A more violent puff, and close by, grazes our heads.

“Attention!... Stop.... To earth!”

A violent shock, a heavy blow between the shoulders, a hard vice grips my body and throws me on the ground.

I fall.

I fall, and then I remember nothing more.