CHAPTER IV

THE SONG OF THE MACHINE GUN

Dedouche brings me a note to sign for on the report book. It reads:

“The non-commissioned officers will assemble their sections in the courtyard of Cantonment No. 77 at 2.30. Each gun captain will present his gun. Service marching order, with masks and arms.”

I sign mechanically to please Dedouche, who thinks he is showing me a special favor by offering me the first reading of all orders and reports. But this one interests me but little, for I have neither arms nor guns to present. So it is as a spectator that I am present at the lieutenant’s inspection. This time I shall see the complete company.

I find myself at the appointed hour at Cantonment 77.

One must have lived in these remains of villages, which persist in standing, near the lines to have an exact idea of what they are. In these villages furious combats have taken place in the streets, from house to house, and for two years they have been occupied and overpopulated—a hamlet of one hundred and fifty inhabitants often serves as a cantonment for ten thousand men—by men of all arms of the service, from all regions, of all colors.

It is not ruin in all its tragic horror and majesty. It is worse.

It is something which appears to want to live, but which a latent leprosy eats away. Often there are traces of shells, the splatter of bullets, the marks of fire; the roofs may have fallen in from the recent shelling, but even yet the general effect is that the houses on the streets are still standing.

The fronts of these houses, made of straw and mud, with only a large door swinging on its hinges, are whole. Of course the mud has often been scratched in long, leprous wounds, and the straw tumbles out leaving the bare skeleton of worm-eaten wood; and, besides, the windows are without the glass, which has been broken to bits by the explosion of shells, and which is replaced by bits of paper or by calendars. But the real ruin is inside.

Here is the work of the carelessness and negligence of the wandering multitudes who pass that way, who arrive at evening, tired, muddy, wet, who fall asleep on damp straw, cut to pieces and crawling with vermin, and who go on the next day, or three days later, leaving as a mark of their passing a greater stench and a greater dilapidation.

The ruin is inside. It is not the beautiful ending of destruction by fire, but the slow death by cancer which eats away, by gangrene which mounts from the cattle sheds to the stable, from the stable to the barn, and from the barn to the hearth. And at last a day comes when the front alone is standing on the ruin of the annihilated house, and then men who are passing by, seeing that it is tottering and dangerous, cut it down with blows of the axe and chop the wood into bits for their little needs.

And so these houses die: houses which under their humble appearance had great souls palpitating with life, where lives were born and passed their years; where joys and griefs exclaimed and wept, where the peasant, the son of the soil, drew from this soil, the generatrix of strong races, the re-vivifying harvests which he stored away in the barn which to-day is dead.

Whole villages and great villages agonize in this way through months of wearing away, and their end is no less terrible, no less majestic, no less pitiful than of those villages with glorious names which the wrath of shells beats into dust.

Cantonment 77 is made up of those houses which waste away. Between the fragile walls, notched by an empty barn and a fallen shed, opens a courtyard. Filth spreads out in a vast pool on which float among the refuse a pile of garbage, boxes, the waste of cooking and greasy papers.

In the corner of a recess open to every wind, on piles of bricks held together by iron bars pulled from the window sills, the cook has set his pots and bowls in line. His fire of wood so green that the sap oozes out licks the already blackened walls with its long flames.

All that offers even a precarious shelter—a roof—is occupied by the men who crowd in there on old, filthy straw, and on the meager rations of fresh straw, often too fresh. And as the tiles and thatch let the rain filter through, they stretch above them strips of tent canvas.

Oh, blessed canvas! To what uses is it not put! It serves as a roof against bad weather, the rain and snow; a protection against dampness, mud and vermin; planted on two stakes, stretched to a door casing, it protects the fires for cooking from draughts; in the more comfortable cantonments in the rear, where the straw is clean and abundant, where the men are at last able to take off their shoes, and their muddy leggings and their trousers heavy with dampness, it serves as the bed clothes; and, finally, at the last hour it is in the tent canvas that they collect the bodies with their torn and shattered limbs. It serves as shroud and coffin. And, faithful to its rôle, it is the last shelter.

The men began to arrive by groups almost in order, at any rate as much so as the littered ground in the courtyard would permit. They assembled by sections in a half circle around the pool of filth. It was certainly a picturesque sight when, at the command “Attention,” these men mounted a faultless guard around this fetid pool, where, among papers, tossed about and dirty, and box covers, there floated, bloated and fetid, all kinds of carrion, the rats of the last hecatomb.

Near the doorway on the largest and cleanest part of the courtyard the eight machine guns were drawn up in line.

Eight machine guns, the armament of the company.

Eight guns, so small, so fine, and such bits of workmanship, that one would think to see them that they were a child’s playthings.

The machine guns appeared very coquettish and pretty as they rested on their bluish-gray tripod, with their steel barrels well burnished even to the mouth of their muzzles. They hardly appeared at all threatening with the polished leather of the breech, where the bronzed fist of the gun layer stood out in graceful designs, and the attenuated round and svelte circles of the radiator.

And the machine gun is a coquette, too. Under its appearance of delicacy and grace it conceals a terrible power of domination and strength. Yet it hurls pitiless death without noise, with a rapidity as furtive as a shout of laughter, with a tac-tac which is scarcely perceptible and which is no more menacing than the familiar tac-tac of the sewing-machine or the typewriter.

And the machine gun is a coquette, too! Fashioned like a work of art, the brilliancy of its polished steel and the voluptuous roundness of the brass invite caresses. Its shots come from they know not where, since they can see nothing—a bush is sufficient to conceal it; light, it is here one minute and there another; it is not visible until one is almost upon it, yet its shots are fatal at some miles.

It is delicate and costly, needing a hundred things for its adornment, skilled care for its toilet and a hundred men to serve. Is not the machine gun a coquette?

As the Company Casanova is of recent formation it received an entirely new armament of the latest model. The guns are built on the Hotchkiss system—the last word of perfection in war. They are light, scarcely fifty pounds, and they are easy to manipulate skilfully. The rapidity of their fire is extreme, more than five hundred shots a minute, and their adjustment is such that they can fire on the most varied objects. First, there is blockade fire, which concentrates all the shots on a narrow point; then the sweeping fire, which sweeps the whole of an extended field; and finally, indirect fire, which hits its designated target with mathematical precision, at the same time concealing the source.

The machine gun is the little queen of battles. One may smile to look at her, but one shudders when he thinks of her ravages.

And the men are proud of their guns.

I observe them while the lieutenant speaks to them and their eyes look alternately at the lieutenant and at their respective guns. They know their gun; they love her; possess her. They have confidence in her, and it is she who defends them.

To-day there are about one hundred and fifty men grouped in the same specialty, from all regions, all regiments, all arms, who have come after more or less lengthy stays in the instruction camps at Nice, Clermont, and La Valbonne.

Their specialty has created among them a certain sort of affinity, a family characteristic. Machine gunners are an element apart, a sort of élite. In their ranks there is a certain homogeneity which comes from the practice of the same competency which is nearly a science. They feel somewhat superior to, at least different from, the ordinary companies.

They appreciate the worth of their distinction and scarcely ever associate with other troops. The companies of infantry are swamped in a battalion, while the companies of machine guns are isolated, autonomous, directly dependent on the commanding officer, and they enjoy an absolute initiative in a battle. Finally, they are not anonymous or numbered; they are not called the fifth, seventh, or the twelfth, but the “Company Casanova,” as they once said Royal-Piémont or Prince Condé.

Then, too, there is their insignia. The insignia is the bauble, the jewel, of the soldier. It is a real satisfaction to have something on the uniform which distinguishes one from his neighbor. To such a point do they carry this that many cannot resist putting on insignia to which they haven’t the slightest right. And none of the insignia arouses greater envy than the two small intersecting cannons of the machine guns.

It takes one hundred and fifty men, two officers, ten non-commissioned officers, and sixty horses to serve, supply and transport the eight small guns, one hundred and fifty men trained and inured to hardship. There is none here who has not been in several battles and received several wounds in his active service. There is none here who has not a good record. When said of one that means little, but when said of all it is worth telling.

There are artillerymen, cavalrymen, and sailors who have become foot soldiers through their different changes; and not only are all arms represented, but all professions, all classes and all temperaments. Jacquet, a poet and musician, a dreamer with an exquisite soul, is an accurate gun layer. Finger drives milk wagons in Paris, but with his gigantic hands he manipulates with delicacy the wheelwork of his Hotchkiss. Millazo, who behind his counter at Hanoï showed gracefully the jewels of Indo-Chinese art and learned at Lure the meticulous art of watchmaking, now manages a “sweeping” fire as calmly and accurately as he used to mount a spiral spring on its microscopic pivot. Corporal Vial, who used to verify accounts in the luxurious banks on the Riviera and handle tinkling gold and checks, here shows that he knows the science of fire and his machine and leads his squad with authority. Charlet drove the heavy locomotives on the railways of the North; Gamie regulated the powerful looms in the textile factories, and they both owe to their knowledge of mechanics their duties as range takers. Imbert was a fisherman and, as he knows how to cook a savory bouillabaisse, he is assigned to the difficult rôle of cook and acquits himself conscientiously and well. However, Chevalier, an expert in geometry, who for twenty years grew pale in profound studies of logarithms and co-ordinates, here assumes the duties of mess corporal, and discusses with asperity the supplies and remarks pitilessly on the regulation cup of wine and the mathematical pounds and ounces of mutton, lard and beans.

In spite of what one might think, this odd collection of men is as homogeneous as could be imagined. This comes from the fact that above all this different knowledge is a uniform purpose, because all these multiple alliances tend toward a common end which is incarnated in their chief, a man from the South, who is expansive and impetuous, but who curbs his temperament under the rigid calm of a man from the North, one of the common people, a son of the soil, who has risen to the rank of officer, and a commanding officer at that, solely through persistency and courage.

* * * * *

When the lieutenant had finished his rapid but close inspection, and had examined with the eye of a connoisseur the condition and repair of the guns, he took in the whole company with a look, for it is his work which he commands with firmness and which he loves. He is already going, after addressing a few remarks to the adjutant and the classic, “All right. Break ranks,” when a man steps out of the ranks and comes towards him.

“Lieutenant, the company is now completely equipped and armed, but there is, however, still something lacking.”

“Indeed,” replied the lieutenant, “and what’s that?”

“Its marching song.”

“Its marching song! Have you chosen one?”

“Chosen one! Oh, no! We have an unpublished one, as new as the company itself, composed for us and created by us. Will you do us the honor of listening to it?”

“Will I? The devil. I ask it; I demand it. I want to learn it, too. Go on. Start it!” he exclaimed.

And then Gaix turned towards his comrades and began to sing in his great deep baritone voice our marching song, “Ma Mitrailleuse,” which each section had learned secretly and which they sang together for the first time to-day.

On a rhythm taken from some war march, some one had composed simple words, which were nevertheless image-provoking and vibrant, where the alternating motet “Ma Mitrailleuse,” sung in chorus, sounds like a bugle call.

This marching song is one of those which engrave themselves at once on the memory and in the heart, which are never forgotten, for in their accents are rooted the strongest impressions of the hours lived in the simple brotherhood of arms, the memory of dangers encountered together, the pride of victories, and the pious homage to those who sang it with us and whose manly voices were silenced forever in the night of battles.

And I find in writing it the same deep stirring emotion that I experienced when I first heard it.

_MA MITRAILLEUSE_

_Sur notre front, dans ton abri,_ _Tu dors sur ton trépied bleu gris,_ _Calme dans l’ombre vaporeuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._ _Et ton canon d’acier bleui_ _Benoîtement perce la nuit._ _Que tu parais peu dangereuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._

_Si parfois en te transportant_ _Je trouve ton poids fatigant,_ _Et dis tout bas “la sacré gueuse!”_ _Ma mitrailleuse,_ _Pardonne-moi, car j’ai grand tort,_ _Sachant que tu chantes la mort_ _De l’Allemagne furieuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._

_Mais dans le petit jour blêmi,_ _Alerte! Voici l’ennemi!_ _Et t’éveillant soudain rageuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse,_ _Avec tes tac tac réguliers_ _Fauche les Boches par milliers,_ _Sans t’arrêter, noire et fumeuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._

_Et comme nous elle attendra_ _Le grand jour qui déclanchera_ _L’offensive victorieuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._ _Poursuivant le bandit germain,_ _J’entendrai sur les bords du Rhin,_ _Au grand soleil, claquer joyeuse_ _Ma mitrailleuse._

When the last accents, sung by the men at the top of their lungs, died away, there was silence and I looked at the lieutenant.

He was seated on a staircase, with his head leaning on his clenched fists. He had listened to the whole song, and now he remained for a moment as if waiting. And when he stood up his eyes were slightly red and his lips concealed under a smile the impress of intense emotion.

“It is good,” he said, “very beautiful, my friends, and I congratulate you all. Your song is admirable, it will go with us everywhere, and we will lead it to victory. But who is the author? There must be an author. The devil, there must be an author!”

There was a moment of silence as if each one hesitated to reply, but a big sergeant cried out in a stentorian voice:

“A _ban_ for the author, Lieutenant Delpos, and a couplet for him besides.”

Then the men broke all alignment, pressed around their young sub-lieutenant, joyous, proud and blushing with pleasure, weeping with joy, and burst out at the top of their lungs, with indescribable feeling, which showed all their strength, their will for victory and their unbreakable confidence:

_Et comme nous elle attendra_ _Le grand jour qui déclanchera_ _L’offensive victorieuse,_ _Ma mitrailleuse._ _Poursuivant le bandit germain,_ _J’entendrai sur les bords du Rhin,_ _Au grand soleil, claquer joyeuse_ _Ma mitrailleuse._

Then, amidst the applause and the “vivats,” the lieutenant embraced his young friend vigorously and said:

“Nom de Dieu! You didn’t tell me that you were a poet. I congratulate you.”

And taking him by the arm, he went off joyous, skipping like a gamin, taking up again the inspiring refrain:

_Ma Mitrailleuse ... Ma Mitrailleuse!_