CHAPTER VIII

THE AEROPLANE

Dawn had just broken. Some of the boldest of the men in the echelon were already up, rubbing down their horses and adjusting the breast collars. At daylight we had to go a long way to exchange the pack-saddles for munition-wagons.

This has been the way from the start. The companies of machine guns, probably even more than the other branches of service, although I don’t know, are experiment stations on which they try one sort of gear one day and another the next. First it is a round shield, then a square shield, and then a periscope. We adopted the Wikers saddle, only to have it replaced with the Hotchkiss. And we had scarcely put it in service than it was withdrawn to give us ammunition wagons.

These changes are one of the slight distractions of the trade. They must distract still more the handlers of the public funds to judge by the frequency they offer them to us.

But what difference does it make to us whether we do one thing or another? While we wait time passes and the war goes on.

And then “there’s no use trying to understand.”

That is the typical expression in every army. Before the most unexpected orders, the most unusual, which seem the most useless and incoherent, we can only bow without trying to use our intelligence.

“There is no use in trying to understand.” That’s the whole secret of discipline. If one did try to understand, he would never obey—or too late.

* * * * *

We were ordered to assemble on the Place at daybreak, and at daybreak we were there. The clear sky is splendidly luminous.

“Good weather for aeroplanes,” said someone.

Indeed it was good weather for aeroplanes, for there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and no mist on the ground. A reconnaissance in such weather should be easy.

The Boche aviators are early birds. One sees them but rarely during the daytime, when ours mount guard on the lines, but their specialty is getting up early in the morning. We hear them flying over our cantonments long before daybreak, at the first rays of dawn, and see them returning rapidly to shelter as soon as the light becomes clearer and it becomes easier to fire our cannon and machine guns.

Presently, as I am giving a final inspection to the material we are to turn in, I meet Sergeant Lace in the yard of the sawmill.

“Oh, but you’re an early bird to-day.”

“I’ve just been ordered to find a good place to fire on aeroplanes and take up my position there at once. There’s going to be a section there each day. Mine starts.”

“Have you found your emplacement?”

“Not yet. But that’s not hard to find. Just a hole or a sloping place, so that we can stretch out on our backs.”

“I know just the place for you. The hole of a ‘320’ at the entrance of the village on the left, near the poplars. You’ll see it right up against the fence which borders the road from Caix.”

“Wonderful. I’ll take up my position there. It must have been dug expressly for me.”

A half hour later the cavalry of the three machine-gun companies of the regiment assembled in front of the church.

Cavalry!...

My good comrade, Roudon, a sergeant-major in the Hussars, who is now with the first company of machine guns in a position like mine, becomes furiously angry every time he hears that word “cavalry.”

“Cavalry! Cavalry!” he roars. “You ought to say an assery, a mulery. Just look at them. Not one in ten stands up on his feet. And the riders! There isn’t one who could ride a horse. They’re afraid!”

Roudon is an experienced cavalryman. For ten years he knew the mad, intoxicating dashes with the Algerian contingents in Morocco, the mysterious attractions of reconnaissances in the long reaches of the valleys of the Sahara, impetuous charges and wild triumphant pursuits among the red Spahis with their Damascus swords, amid the glistening sands which rise toward the sun in golden spangles. At the beginning of the war he was thrown into a regiment of metropolitan cavalry and fought in Lorraine and Belgium. He lived through the horrible hours of retreat, assuming the perilous mission of rearguard while the other regiments withdrew in good order. He fought on foot, in the edges of woods, to stop to the last moment the march of the enemy while the rear went on to the Marne. He endured those long, seemingly endless, waits on foot in front of his horse, the bridle on his arm, saber in scabbard, under the storm of shells and the invisible menace of bullets. There were no trenches then.

Roudon is a cavalryman in his soul and his love for the service. So, attached to an improvised service which is neither cavalry, artillery, nor infantry, he does not know what to make of it, and he rages at it through his excess of conscience and too exclusive love of duty perfectly done.

The echelon of the third company arrives on the Place in good order a few seconds after us. Hémin leads it and he marches on foot beside his column, hands in his pockets, whistling.

Hémin is a type, and not the least interesting among the complex personalities of our command, for we are cavalrymen transformed into infantry, but we’re still cavalrymen just the same.

Hémin is as much a cavalryman by trade as Roudon, and perhaps even more so. He was successively a stable boy in a racing stable at Chantilly, then a jockey, and finally a trainer, after he had done his military service in a regiment of chasseurs. So he is a horseman par excellence. But he never made war as a cavalryman before. Since the beginning of the war he has been attached to various services. First, he was an infantry scout, a standard bearer for a general, a courier for a major, and he was transferred to the companies of machine guns when they were definitely established. Hémin has a style all his own. To all appearances he is neither a cavalryman nor a foot soldier. His jacket is a Colonial one with anchors and cuff-facings, but it has white stripes. He wears great yellow boots, a cavalryman’s spurs, his breeches are reinforced with olive leather, and his head is covered with a very small black cap. Another curious characteristic is that Hémin, the excellent horseman, always walks when he accompanies his detachment.

* * * * *

When we are assembled, we turn the command of the detachment over to Roudon, the senior officer, and he leads the way. Hémin and I bring up the rear some distance back.

In files of two our one hundred and fifty horses and mules form a long column, unwieldy and slow, which winds along the road.

“A fine target for an aeroplane!”

This exclamation had hardly been uttered when the well-known roar of a Boche aeroplane was heard over our heads.

“Zut! there’s one.... We ought to have expected it in such weather and started earlier. Look out, if he spots us. Don’t worry, there’s no danger, he’s too high.... At least three thousand.”

A “75” was already weaving around this scarcely visible, extremely mobile target the white tufts of its shrapnel, and threw around the machine a murderous circle which followed it in its evolutions. But the aeroplane in the air seemed to care little and it continued on its way.

We all followed the vicissitudes of the fight as we went along, heads in the air. When a shell seemed to burst very near, an exclamation came from every mouth.

“Oh!... that didn’t miss much.”

“A little more to the left; that would get him.”

“Oh, that missed.... He’s too far.”

“This is outrageous ... he’s gone ... he’s getting away.”

And as a matter of fact the aeroplane gets away ... outside the “75’s” field of fire. It guides itself no doubt by the white ribbon of the road which shows clearly against the rich green of the pastures.

He has seen us now. He has seen us crawling, winding and unrolling on the ribbon. He heads straight for us, circling around in circles of which we are without a doubt the center, and gradually comes lower.

“Look out for the bombs.”

“No ... he’s half turned ... he’s going back.”

“Going back.... You’ll see.”

He’s lower now and we can see distinctly the great black crosses under his wings.

All our men are looking. The horses seem to scent the danger, for they prick up their ears and paw the ground, while the mules neigh.

Suddenly from on high something begins to glide along some aerial rail and shatters the air above us. That lasts a second, a flash. As we listen and wait one would have said that it falls slowly and for hours. We look in the direction of the noise as if to see something, as if to see where the bombardment is going to fall. It seems like a linked chain which rolls out, clashing its links against each other.

A tremendous boom, and black smoke, greenish and red as well, blacker, denser, thicker than that from the great shells, rises in the middle of the field a hundred and fifty yards on our right.

And there is another. It bursts on our left at the same distance. He is certainly searching for the range. Will the next strike in the middle and right on the mark? We’re a fine mark, to be sure, a fine target,—one hundred and fifty horses in Indian file. If he doesn’t make a good shot he’s a duffer.

Roudon stands up in his stirrups, turns around, and shouts commands to the uneasy men:

“Close up, close up, close up, I say.... Dress up together.”

He leads the column rapidly, now closed up into a compact group like a flock of sheep, towards the road from Harbonnières, which is lined with trees that will conceal us from the aeroplane.

Two other bombs burst behind us one after another.

“That makes four. He can’t have many left. He didn’t bring a truck!”

Some hundred yards away near a pond cows graze absolutely indifferent to the battle in the air. The “75” again begins to fire. Its bursts of shrapnel come close to the aeroplane but do not hit it.

Another bomb. I stop. It looks as though it were going to fall in front of us. I’m not going to put my head under the knife. So I start to draw my horse back under the trees.

There it is. It has fallen in the fields again. But its explosion throws up dismal fragments, large and bloody ones. It fell squarely on the herd of cows and annihilated it.

“The bungler! He’s wasting the milk,” comes in the accent of the faubourgs nearly under my horse’s feet.

Hard by, in the hole of the “320,” Lace’s half-section has placed its battery. I had approached it without seeing it as I drew back under the threat of the bomb.

“Say, how long are you going to let him do that?” I ask.

“Let him do it!... You don’t mean that, Margis. He won’t blow on his sauerkraut this evening.”

“Wait and see what sort of a menu we’re going to serve that ace.”

It was Grizard, an actor in the suburban theaters, speaking. He looks like the best natured and quietest of men, but he is a pitiless pointer who never lets his prey escape.

“Let me play a little, Margis. See how pretty he is, how fine, and how well he flies. It is too bad, a pretty little canary like that.”

“Ah! Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Two turns, and at three we will commence. You’ll see what you will see.”

“On with the music.”

And the music begins the dance. First, come slow shots, rhythmic and irregular tac-tacs, spaced like the prelude to a slow waltz. Grizard is searching for the tune; then, gradually, he accelerates the time, and the tac-tac becomes faster.

Now he has the aeroplane in his field of fire ... the bullets dance around him in a ring of fire, without a break ... the dance of death!

And the circle grows narrower and narrower, infernal, pitiless.

Everyone looks; there is nothing to see up there; bullets are elusive and invisible, but we make out the drama.

From his rapid evolutions, his sharp darts back and forth, his irregular and hurried spirals, we understand that the aviator has already been reached but is trying to baffle the fire which pursues him.

The tac-tac continues. It is incessant, implacable, ferocious. The silence of death hovers over men and things. All Nature seems to await the issue of the combat which is no longer doubtful.

I look at Grizard. Hand on the handle of the gun, he follows the evolutions of the aeroplane; his eyes shine as at a good trick he is playing on the acrobat up there, and softly, with all the desired expressions, as if he were before his audience at Belleville or at the Gaîté-Montparnasse, he hums:

_Rêve de valse, rêve d’un jour,_ _Valse de rêve, valse d’amour._

“He’s hit,” Sergeant Lace cries suddenly.

And indeed he is hit.

The wings waver, bend, warp, and abruptly fall in a spiral, while an immense burst of flame, which the speed increases immoderately, rises and marks the limpid blue of the sky with a long red thread which dissolves in the heavens in a trail of gold.

With a noise of broken iron, tearing canvas, explosions which recall fireworks, the machine smashes into the fields, right where the last bomb had destroyed the peaceful herd of cows a moment ago.

We run from all directions, but there is nothing to see. The aeroplane was completely destroyed by the fall and the fire, and ends by burning itself up.

It is impossible to get the charred body of the aviator out from the smoking ruins.

Grizard is on the scene with his gun crew, and examines his target.

“Good shot!”

We congratulate him and begin to go back. But Grizard is a comedian who knows his business and who has perhaps played a rôle in the circuits in faraway provinces, and he is not a man to miss an effect.

He stands by the roadside in the courteous attitude of Cyrano de Bergerac pointing out the way to the Count de Guiche after amusing him for a quarter of an hour. And Grizard, who has amused us for a quarter of an hour, but in another way, points out the road and says:

“The quarter of an hour is past, Messieurs. I release you.”