Part 11

"_At the moment when we are about to engage upon a battle upon which will depend the safety of the country, it is necessary to remind every one that this is not the time to look back. No effort must be spared to attack and repulse the enemy. Troops which can advance no farther must at all costs hold the ground won and let themselves be killed rather than retire._"

"Do you understand?"

Yes, we had all understood perfectly. We should never have been able to express so simply and yet so completely our inmost thoughts. "Troops should let themselves be killed rather than retire." That was it!

"And now, limber up," added Bréjard. "We're off there!"

* * * * *

Just as the battery was starting, two girls, the sister and fiancée of one of the gunners, hurried up. For a moment or two they ran, flushed and panting, by the side of the horses, both speaking rapidly and at the same time. When they were quite out of breath they held out their hands, one after the other, to the gunner, who leant down from the saddle and kissed their finger-tips.

* * * * *

We passed through the suburbs and then, by the Soissons road, approached the plain of Brie. We were going to the front, and I think that each man felt that we were now passing through the gravest and most critical moments of a whole century--perhaps of a whole history.

* * * * *

Evening fell. The battery had been on the march for more than ten hours without halting. Far away in the background Montmartre reared its black silhouette against the western sky.

The fields were lit up by the stars, which were exceptionally brilliant, but the road remained dark under the vault of tall trees planted in double rows on either side, between which floated a suffocating cloud of dust. A distant searchlight was sweeping the plain. The battery broke into a trot on the paved road, and the vehicles jolted and bumped so that it was veritable torture to sit on them. Sharp internal pains made us twist as we clutched on to the limber-boxes; our aching backs seemed no longer capable of sustaining our shoulders, and the breath came in gasps from our shaken chests. Our hearts thumped against our ribs, our heads swam--we perspired with pain. Should we never stop?

Hour after hour we followed the same dark road, but the column had again slowed down to a walk. The bright headlights of an approaching automobile suddenly threw the trees into vertiginous perspectives like the columns of some cathedral, and showed up the teams and drivers as they emerged from the gloom in a grotesque procession of fantastic shadows. The motor passed.

On we lumbered ... on, on.... Should we never stop?

* * * * *

"Halt!"

At last! We parked the guns in a field and then led the horses off to be watered.

The only light in the dark little village was a lamp burning in a kitchen, in which we caught a glimpse of large copper sauce-pans.

There was no drinking-place and we had to push on to a marshy meadow through which ran a river. The banks were so steep that the horses could not drink from the current, and we gave them water out of the skin bags.

On our return we found the road crowded with horses. Other batteries had just arrived.

An eddy in the stream had just pushed me up against the garden wall of a château when a motor, showing no lights, forced its way through the herd of horses, throwing against me a confused mass of men and animals whose weight crushed me against the stone. Another car followed, then another, hundreds of them, silently and interminably.

By the light of the moon, which had now risen, I was able to recognize the oil-skin caps usually worn by taxi-drivers. Inside the cabs I caught a glimpse of soldiers sleeping, their heads thrown back.

"Wounded?" asked somebody.

"No," came the answer from a passing car. "It's the 7th Division from Paris. They're off to the front!"

_Tuesday, September 8_

"Attention!"

It was still pitch-dark. Cinders continued to smoulder on the hearths. The guns were still roaring, and the vivid jets of fire startled us like flashes of lightning. A little way off, to the east, a farm or hayrick was burning. The weather was sultry and a persistent smell of putrefying flesh permeated the air.

The battery started; we were off to the firing-line.

At daybreak we reached Dammartin, where, on the doors and closed shutters, notices and billeting directions were chalked up in German. On the front door of one house I saw two words scrawled in pointed, Gothic handwriting: "_Gute Leute_" (Good people). I wondered who it was that lived there....

We continued on our way. The dull boom of the guns seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, and continued uninterruptedly.

By the side of the road a grave had been dug and marked by a white deal cross bearing a name painted in tar and capped by a Chasseur's shako with a brass chain. The dead man had evidently not been buried soon enough, and a sickening smell rose up from the freshly turned soil, which had cracked under the hot sun.

The road was still staked out with dead horses, swollen like wine-skins, their stiffened legs with shining shoes threatening the sky. From a gaping wound in the flank of a big chestnut mare worms were wriggling into the grass; others were swarming in her nostrils and mouth, and in a bullet-hole behind her ear.

"Trot!"

The battery became almost invisible in its own dust. We began to pass wounded, hundreds of wounded--infantry of the line, Alpine troops, and Colonial infantry white with dust, their wounds dressed with red bandages. They helped each other along.

The majority were marching in small groups. Many had stopped to rest. It was very hot, and I saw several of them round an apple-tree, shaking down the fruit in order to slake their thirst.

We had halted while the Major received orders from an A.D.C. I questioned one of the Colonials, who was wounded in the head.

"Well, how are things going down there?"

"Phew! they're falling thick!"

I did not know whether he was referring to bullets, shell, or men, but from the expression of the drawn and haggard faces it was easy to see that the fighting had been severe.

"Been fighting long here?"

"Yes."

"How many days?"

"It had begun when we came."

"And when did you come?"

"The day before yesterday."

And he repeated:

"Yes, they're falling thick!"

We restarted, again at a trot.

The clear sky, of a pure limpid blue on the northern and eastern horizon, was fleeced with the white smoke of shrapnel shell; in the distance black clouds were rising from burning buildings and high-explosive projectiles.

We were still pursued by the smell of dead flesh, which harassed and obsessed us, making us peer about in all directions for hidden corpses.

Suddenly one of the horses of my ammunition wagon foundered and refused to go any farther, stopping the whole team. He had to be unharnessed and abandoned. The other carriages had passed us, and with our five remaining horses we galloped across country in order to rejoin the column. The furrows nearly shook us off our seats and we had to hold on to the box-rails with might and main, bracing our legs against the foot-rests in order not to fall off.

We overtook the battery in a village which had been visible from afar on the flat and bare countryside. The enemy had evidently quartered there. The doors had been broken in with blows from the butt-ends of rifles; almost all the windows had been smashed, and were now mere frames bristling with jagged splinters of glass. Dirty curtains flapped through them on the outside. Torn-down shutters lay strewn on the pavement among broken bottles, shattered tiles, and empty tins of preserves. Others, hanging by one hinge, beat against the fronts of the houses.

Through the wide-open doors we could see staved-in wardrobes which had been thrown down the staircases. Empty drawers, mantelpiece ornaments, photographs, pictures and prints littered the red-tiled floors. Mud-stained sheets with the mark of hobnailed boots on them trailed to the middle of the street, giving to these unfortunate houses something of the horror of ripped-up corpses.

The pavements were a mass of furniture thrown out of the windows, perambulators, go-carts, and broken wine-casks. Wood crunched under the wheels of the wagon. A pair of pink corsets was lying in the gutter.

On one of the Michelin danger signals, at the other end of the village, I read the warning: "_Attention aux enfants--Sennevières_," and on the other side a derisive and mournful "_Merci_."[1]

* * * * *

We halted where the road traced a straight white line through a plain covered with mangel-wurzels. The desolate nakedness of the fields was only broken by a shed, three hayricks, and, farther off, some little, square-shaped copses and a long line of poplars. To the east and north the battle growled, whistled and roared like a storm at sea. One would have thought that the infernal noise came from some deep, subterranean earthquake.

We had waited a few minutes when suddenly the countryside sprang to life. Battalions, debouching from Sennevières, deployed in skirmishing order, and other soldiers--hundreds and thousands whose presence one would never have suspected--rose up from the bosom of the earth and swarmed like ants over the fields, their breeches making red patches on the sombre green of the grass. Frightened hares fled from before the oncoming lines.

Small groups of wounded again began to go by. They could be seen far off, black specks on the straight white road dazzling in the sun.

Some Cuirassiers appeared to be billeted somewhere in the surroundings. One or two passed by on foot, without helmets or breast-plates, their chests covered with buff-coloured felt pads fitted with wadded rings round the armholes. They were carrying large joints of fresh beef. In the shade of three poplars to the right of the road, just outside the village, some men were slaughtering cattle and selling the meat. Near-by lay a dead horse.

Presently came the order:

"Reconnoitre!"

The battery was going into action. Once more I was unable to escape the little shiver of fear which follows this word of command.

In the firing position the battery was only masked by a hedge of brambles and some tangled shrubs, so that from several points of the horizon we must have been visible to the enemy. The position was not a good one, but it was the best the surroundings offered.

The officers had taken up their position near the first gun on a narrow path cutting across the plain. The battlefield opened out wide before us. But on the almost flat countryside which bore such an everyday aspect, and upon which we nevertheless knew the destiny of France was at stake, not a man, not a gun was to be seen. The thunder-ridden plain seemed to lie motionless under the shells.

We had covered our guns with sheaves; yellow under the yellow straw they might deceive at a distance. Besides, straw affords good protection against shrapnel bullets and shell splinters.

We at once fell asleep in the sun with the apathy of pawns who let themselves be moved, with that fatalism which is an inevitable result of the life fraught with hourly danger we had been living for a month.

I was awakened by a word of command. Behind us the sun was sinking.

"To your guns!"

Something dark, artillery possibly, was moving yonder at the foot of some wooded hills more than five thousand yards off. We opened fire. On the right, on the left, and even in front of us ·75 batteries came into action one by one. When our own guns were silent for a few seconds we heard their volleys echoing in fours.

In the distance in front of us all had become still. The Captain gave the word to cease fire. But the smoke from the powder and the dust raised from the parched field by the concussion of the rounds had hardly cleared away when some heavy shells hurtled through the hedge masking us, leaving three gaping breaches in their wake and obliterating with their smoke the whole of the eastern horizon.

"They must have seen the fire of our guns," said Bréjard.

"And they've got theirs trained to a T," added Hutin. "Six-inchers, too!"

As ill-luck would have it, just at that moment a refilling wagon from the first line, conducted by a corporal riding a big white mare, came up at a trot.

While they were still some way off we shouted:

"Dismount!"

"Dismount! You'll get us killed!"

The drivers seemed not to hear.

"Dismount, you--! Walk!... Walk!..."

They had already unhooked the full ammunition-wagon, hooked the empty one to the limber, and were off at a gallop in spite of our cries.

Shells were not long in arriving, their whistling modulated by the wind. One second passed ... two ... three....

This fear of death--the death which falls slowly from the sky--was an interminable torture. Everything trembled. The shells burst, and the wind blew their smoke down upon us.

I heard a choking groan:

"Ah.... Ah.... Ah!..."

Our battery remained intact. The refilling wagon was still galloping away in the distance. One of the numbers of the adjoining battery had fallen forward in his death agony, and his forehead, pierced by a shell splinter, was bathing the bottoms of the cartridge-cases with blood.

Hutin, still sitting on the layer's seat, suddenly cried out:

"Why, I can see the swine firing! I can see them ... long way off ... down there, about ten thousand yards ... I saw the flash.... It's coming ... it's coming ... look out!..."

Sure enough, we were shaken by fresh explosions. I shut my eyes instinctively and felt my face lashed by the cast-up earth, but I was not touched. The bottom of one of the cartridge-cases hummed loud and long, and once again the battery was smothered in smoke. I heard the clear voice of the Captain as he shouted to the senior N.C.O.:

"Daumain, get everybody under cover on the right! Major's orders. No use getting killed as long as we aren't firing."

We called each other, got clear of the smoke and hurried out of the line of fire of the Howitzers. But the enemy's shells pursued us over the field as we ran, crouching down, in scattered order.

A projectile, the flash of which blinded me for a moment, knocked down a sergeant of the 12th Battery, who was running by my side. The man picked himself up immediately. Just above his eyes a couple of splinters had drilled two horribly symmetrical red holes. He made off, bending his head so that the blood should not run into his eyes. I offered to help him, but he said:

"No, leave me.... Run! It's nothing, this ... skull isn't smashed to bits!"

We took cover behind some large hayricks and waited for orders.

The roll was called:

"Eleventh?"

"Eleventh!"

"Hutin?"

"Here!"

"Not wounded?"

"No, and you?"

"No."

The four detachments were complete.

"And the Captain?"

"Still down there at the observation-post. Look ... you can see his elbow sticking out behind that tree. He's all right!"

Two more volleys of shell burst close to our guns, which still appeared to have escaped damage.

How long the night seemed in coming! How we cursed the sun which, its blood-red disk almost touching the horizon, seemed as though it would never sink down behind the mangel-wurzel field! It looked absolutely motionless, stationary.

Hutin swore and shook his fist at the crimson sphere.

The Captain signalled for us to come up.

Behind the hayricks the cry was repeated: "To the guns!"

We thought we were going to fire, but found that other orders had arrived.

"Limbers!"

A mist, rising from the hollows of the plain, blotted out distant objects one by one. The far-off hills occupied by the Howitzer battery were lost in a purple haze, but quite possibly we could still be seen thence as we stood silhouetted against the clear western sky.

We limbered up and rolled off. The Howitzers kept silent.

The rifle-fire now began to grow fitful, and the guns were hushed in their turn. A death-like stillness settled down on the plain, which, as the sun sank, became illuminated by burning buildings, the flare of which blazed ever more brightly as the night crept on.

The day of severe fighting which was just drawing to a close had decided nothing. Each of the adversaries slept in his own positions.

_Wednesday, September 9_

In a field near Sennevières, in position of readiness, we brewed our coffee. The weather was very hot. This morning the battle had been slow in opening, but now to the east and north-east the guns were roaring as incessantly as yesterday.

Suddenly, about midday, the firing-line on our left opened out and became slightly curved. We were occupying the extreme wing of the French army, and were at once seized with misgivings. Was the enemy outflanking us again?

We questioned the Captain, who was also intently observing the woods which yesterday had been out of the enemy's range, and which were now being heavily shelled.

"What does that mean, sir?"

"I don't know any more than you, I'm afraid. I only obey, you know.... I go where I am told to go.... That's all!"

But Déprez insisted:

"They're turning our left again!"

The Captain's finely chiselled face was puckered with anxiety.

"Well," said he, "they're certainly bombarding woods which they weren't bombarding yesterday. But that at any rate proves that they haven't reached them. On the contrary, perhaps they've been threatened on that side by an enveloping movement of our troops.... Who knows?... Besides, if they do outflank us we aren't alone here.... We'll face them!"

He gave us a searching look with his intelligent hazel eyes, and repeated:

"We'll face them, won't we?"

"Of course we will, sir!"

Coffee was ready. The Captain pulled his aluminium cup out of his pocket and dipped it into the black beverage smoking in the kettle. The gunners stood round him, their drinking-tins in their hands, waiting their turn, and when he had filled his cup helped themselves one after the other. Conversation ceased, and the men sipped their coffee.

After a while the cook said:

"There's some more!"

"How much?" asked the Captain, anxious not to deprive any one.

"A good half-pint each."

The Captain helped himself and the men followed suit. Then, as there still remained a little coffee mixed with grounds the operation was repeated.

With that startling rapidity which we had observed each time we had had to retire on the Meuse, the country became alive with lines of infantry. Companies and battalions were emerging from the woods and from behind the hedges, and overspread the stubble-fields, massing in the hollows.

"Hallo! what does that mean?" asked Bréjard.

"Are those swine turning tail?" exclaimed Millon, crossing his arms.

The Captain anxiously observed the movements of the infantry.

"No," said he. "Those are reserve troops advancing towards the north in order to face the enemy if he outflanks us."

Orders came for us to go and take up position between Sennevières and Nanteuil-le-Haudoin.

There could be no doubt about it. The enemy was turning our lines.

We were seized with a fit of wild rage. Would they manage to pass us, and get to Paris? To Paris ... to our homes ... to kill, sack, rape?...

"Ah," growled Hutin, "what wouldn't I give to murder some of those savages!"

"Trot!" commanded the Captain.

Bending down over their horses' necks the drivers urged the teams forward with voice, knees, whip, and spur.

The same gust of wind seemed to carry with it men, horses, and guns--all this artillery let loose like a tide on the barren fields, over whose furrows it billowed and surged.

We took up position with our guns pointing north-east. Behind us the sun, already low in the western sky, lit up the railway-line and the road from Nanteuil to Paris, flanked with tall trees.

Sections of infantry began to fall back.

"You see?" repeated Millon. "They can't stick it, the beasts! Haven't they read the Army Order then?"

Suddenly, almost behind us, rifle-fire broke out. We had been outflanked.

On the main road to Paris, and between the road and the railway, dense masses of infantry were debouching from behind Nanteuil. We were encircled by a huge hostile horseshoe, and it now seemed as if the only means of retreat open to the 4th Army Corps was the narrow road running south-east between Sennevières and Silly.

An officer wearing an aviator's cap arrived in a motor-car and hurried up to the observation-post. Shortly afterwards the Major ordered us to turn the guns right round.

At any moment we might be caught between two fires, for, to the north-west of Nanteuil, on the hills commanding the road, there could be no doubt that the enemy's artillery was taking up position in order to support the infantry attack.

Our batteries opened fire.

The same wild frenzy immediately gained possession of men and guns. The latter became roaring monsters--raging dragons, which from their gaping mouths belched fire at the sun as it sank to rest in the soft summer twilight. Piles of smoking cartridges-cases mounted up behind the guns. In the stricken zone in front of us we could see men waver, turn tail, run, and fall in heaps. From the heights above Nanteuil, from which our guns could have been counted, came no answering roar of artillery.

For a long time the slaughter continued.

"Ah! _That_ lot will never get to Paris!"

Night fell. The infantry regiments began to retire in order down the hollow of which we were occupying one of the slopes. Some mounted Chasseurs passed by at a trot, followed by a whole brigade of Cuirassiers. It was the retreat!

We were beaten!... beaten!...

The enemy was marching on Paris!

The sun was now but a red crescent on the horizon. The horsemen advancing towards Silly disappeared in their own dust. We still continued firing, lavishing shrapnel on the plain where men still moved here and there.

"Cease firing!"

The gunners either had not heard, or did not want to hear.... Three guns still barked. Shouting at the top of his voice the Major repeated the command.

Perspiring and brick-red with heat the gunners sponged themselves over and then, with folded arms, stood silently behind their guns, contemplating the fields of which not one square inch had been spared.

We were expecting orders to retire in our turn, but eventually received instructions to pass the night here. A battalion of infantry had been sent to support us, and the men deployed in skirmishing order and took up positions about two hundred yards from the park, which we had had to form on the spot.

We heard that in front of us not a single French unit remained. We were at the mercy of a cavalry night attack.

_Thursday, September 10_

After yesterday's engagement we had expected a furious cannonade to begin at dawn. But not a sound was heard. The sun illuminated the plain and the slopes upon which we were waiting for the enemy in firing position. Not a single gun was fired, and we began to grow surprised and uneasy.

A Lieutenant-Colonel at the head of a passing column recognized the Major and hailed him.

"Hallo! Solente!"

"Hallo!"

"How are you?"

"I'm all right, thanks."

"What's your Group doing there?"

"Guarding the Nanteuil road."

"Then you don't know what's happened?"

"No, what?"

"The enemy retired during the night."

"No!"

"Yes, it's quite true! We've got orders to advance.... The Germans are retiring all along the line."

The two officers looked at each other and smiled.

"Then in that case...."

"It's victory!"

The news passed rapidly from gun to gun and nearly set the men dancing with joy. Victory, victory! And just when we were not expecting it!

Towards midday we also received orders to advance.