CHAPTER III

THE ECHELON

From Proyart to Morcourt is five miles by a crossroad which in its many curves and windings cuts across trenches, communication trenches and barbed wire.

The snow had stopped, but it still covered the ground, the trees and the farms with its regular white covering. The communication trenches showed black on this vast screen.

The crows circled in innumerable flights and sought in vain for the carrion which had been so abundant for months and which, to-day, was buried.

We went along, boot to boot, slowly, for the roads were slippery. Kiki wanted to dance about, for the keen air made him lively. But Zèbre’s sedateness dismayed him, and Kiki wisely ranged alongside and regulated the pace by his.

The lieutenant talked but little—a few detached words, chopped phrases, about the company, an observation on the weather, a reflection on the horses.

The road was almost deserted save for a few Territorials, muffled in their sheepskins, who dragged along their heavy wooden shoes which were made even higher by a thick sole of snow. From time to time a company wagon, driven like an express train, grazed us with its wheels and splashed us with mud.

Then, abruptly, without having had to climb the slightest hill, we saw Morcourt, as one sees suddenly from the top of a cliff the sea at his feet, in the midst of the thousand windings of the Somme, of the canal and the turf-pits. Morcourt is a village scarcely as large as Proyart, and like it hidden in a gully sheltered from the winds on all sides, and also like it, hidden under the snow.

A blacksmith had set up his forge in the open air against the walls of a tottering tile-kiln. All around the snow had melted in great black puddles where the waiting horses had pawed the ground. The smoke from his fire rose red-tinted and dark in the heavy air which seemed to muffle the ring of the hammers on the anvil.

We come to a stop before a house nearly in ruins, whose tottering remains are a constant menace. A corporal rushes out—nimble, short and thick-set, a small Basque cap binding his sunburned forehead—and then some men come from the neighboring stables.

The houses in the country which were invaded for a short time and in which troops have had their cantonments for long weary months all look alike. Their doors and windows are gone, but these are replaced by tent canvas.

The drivers of the echelon and the war train in the machine-gun companies are nearly always sailors, the older classes of the Territorials, who after many changes have been assigned to the Colonial regiments. No one knows why, but it is probably because the bureaucratic, stay-at-home mental worker finds some relationship between the Colonials and the sea. And so they make these men, accustomed to the management of ships, infantrymen, or drivers, or even cavalrymen. But with the unfailing readiness and the ingenuity of their kind they make up so much for all that, that far from appearing unready and badly placed, one would say that they were veterans already broken to all the tricks of the trade.

Their long ship voyages and the necessities of critical hours have taught them to replace with the means at hand most things in material existence. From an old preserve box and a branch of a tree, squared and split with a hatchet, they make a strong and convenient table. With a scantling and a bit of wire lattice taken from a fence, they make an elastic mattress which, covered with straw and canvas, becomes a very comfortable bed.

The sailor is carpenter: the hatchet in his hand takes the place of the most ingenious tools of the joiner; painter: he has painted and refitted his boat from its tarry keel to the scroll work of the bulwarks and the figures and the beloved words they put on the stern; mender: he mends his sails and nets artistically; cook: during the long days at sea on his frail craft with its limited accommodations, he makes the most savory dishes from the fruits of his fishing and a few simple spices. His qualities and his knowledge are numerous and wide: astronomer and healer, and, as well, singer of beautiful songs which cradle his thought at the will of the rhythms, as the sea rocks his boat at the will of the waves.

But in this multiplicity of talents he lacks that of a driver, and what is more, a driver of a machine gun. That is a job which combines the heavy and the mountain artillery. A machine-gun driver should be able to drive in the saddle the leading team of horses and put the heavy caisson of ammunition through the most difficult evolutions. Again, he should be able to drive on foot the mule loaded with his pack-saddle and through the most impossible and sometimes the most dangerous paths.

We had scarcely begun to swallow a cup of thick, smoking, regulation coffee in a room of the cantonment, furnished with special skill, when Sub-Lieutenant Delpos—smart, carefree, smiling, a cap on the back of his head and a song on his lips—arrived.

Dedouche’s description seemed to me to be exact. He was indeed a very young man, very quick, very blond and very gay. He was already an officer when others of his age had scarcely left college; he was already a hero counting in his active service a thousand feats of prowess when his rather sceptical contemporaries were content to read about them in books. Open merriment shone in his eyes. He had gained his promotion in the field far from the stifling atmosphere of study halls. Yesterday he was still a sergeant in Madagascar, Senegal, and Morocco; to-day he is an officer who has fought since the beginning of the Great War; to-morrow he will be a trainer of men. He knows them all; many are his old bedfellows or companions of the column. His remarks are keen and unrhetorical and they please the men. They love him and fear him; they are free with him and respect him. They know that he understands his trade perfectly and that they can deceive him in nothing.

Our introduction was short and unceremonious. A man brought on the table a bottle of very sweet Moselle wine, which is christened at the front “Champagne.” It was one of those wines which make up for their qualities by such pompous appellations and well-intentioned labels as “Champagne de la Victory,” “Champagne de la Revenge,” “of the Allies,” “of the Poilu,” “of Glory.” They are all equally bad, but they make a loud noise when the cork is drawn and most of the wine flows away in sparkling foam.

We drained our cups to the common health, and to the success and certain glory of the company.

Then the lieutenant, who has memories of the drama, said in a voice which recalled the tones of the already classic Carbon de Casteljaloux, his neighbor,

“Since my company has, I believe, reached its full number, shall we not show it to the _logis_, if you please?”

Under the rays of an anemic sun which had waited until the hour of sunset before it deigned to appear, we made a brief visit to the echelon.

First the roll; five corporal muleteers or drivers: Raynal, the owner of a vineyard in Gironde; Liniers, a salesman of wines and spirits and a great elector in the Twelfth Arrondissement; Glanais, Bonecase, Glorieu, carpenter, vine-grower, and farmer—and none of them had ever managed a horse in his life.

And the men—one in fifty is a cavalryman—but that one is perfect. He was trained at the cavalry school at Saumur; trained horses and bred them, so they at once turned him over to the echelon, where he had to lead a mule by the bridle. That, of course, was a reproach to his old trade, so in default of any other satisfaction it taught him the philosophy of resignation and peaceful blessedness.

The cavalry!

“Oh, the cavalry, that’s been posing five minutes,” said Sub-Lieutenant Delpos—he was extremely fond of that expression.

There were horses and mules varying in age from five to seventeen. They were all sensible, settled down, their legs somewhat worn out, and more accustomed to the hearse than to a caisson, and more familiar with the song of the worker than with the roar of cannon. They were all gentle, only demanding oats and straw; some with their bones sticking out of their hides, while others were still sleek and shiny from their warm stables and fresh straw; all unconscious of what awaited them on the morrow.

One of the mules was a veteran, an enormous, cunning animal. His hair was short and rough, and in places there were great patches where the hide showed. His skin was hung on a projecting framework of bones, and, although he was well fed, he was very thin—with a thinness so unyielding to rations that it was impossible to get him fat. His head was that of an epicurean philosopher with deep mocking eyes. This was Chocolate.

Chocolate is beyond the time when he has an age. The oldest soldiers in the regiment have always known him, even at Marrakech and Rabbat in Morocco.

Chocolate has made many campaigns during his active service and he has received several wounds as well.

The story goes that one day in Morocco Chocolate got loose from the bivouac, and started browsing on the grass and wild oats in an ambuscade—between two fires. Absolutely indifferent to the crackling of bullets which he had known from infancy, he continued to lop off the plants until the pernicious bullets began to graze his skin. Then he stretched out at full length in a hollow in the sand and browsed on the grass within reach of his teeth, while he waited the end of the adventure. Then he went back to the bivouac in search of a pail of water and a bag of oats.

Now Chocolate is the file leader. He indicates by his example to the horses whom the pack-saddle galls that the best way of carrying it is to avoid romping to the right and the left, shifting about, and trotting, in fact, all movements which misplace the saddle or wrinkle the skin beneath. The secret is to work soberly, slowly and at an even pace.

Chocolate belongs to a family of mules which ranks high in history. The broad, rounded backs of his ancestors have borne debonnair sovereigns, preacher monks, magnificent Sultans and Sancho Panzas, baskets of vegetables and cans of milk. To-day Chocolate, their descendant, carries an infernal instrument—a machine gun. But what matters that to him? The road rolls on before him and he follows it. There are oats at the end, to-night or to-morrow, what difference does it make?

“He is cool,” the drivers say. Coolness is the great secret of the Colonials.

Coolness, indifference to danger, bad weather, adversity, obstacles, death—no nervousness, no useless bursts of anger, no dangerous hurrying, no false starts. It is necessary to go—they will go—they arrive. That is all.