Part 13

Two prisoners, tall men whose height was increased by their long grey cloaks and pointed helmets, came down from the plateau. The foot-soldiers accompanying them, fearing that this spectacle of death might cause their enemies too keen a delight, had blindfolded them, and led them by the hand in and out the corpses. But the Germans had recognized the smell of blood. A line of uneasiness barred their foreheads and they continually sniffed the tainted air.

_Monday, September 14_

At Attichy we spent the night in some splendid, well-closed barns in which the hay lay deep, but our rest was disturbed by horrible nightmares. I dreamt that I was rolling among mutilated corpses in rivers of blood. When I awoke it was raining.

A countryman with a drooping white moustache brought us some beer and wine in buckets. He lived in an isolated house easily visible from our barn, in a copse on the side of the hill. During the German occupation he had left his house as being too solitary and had taken up his quarters in the village. When the enemy took their departure the day before yesterday he had returned to his house accompanied by a foot-soldier. He was going on ahead when through the broken-in front door he saw, in the hall, a helmeted German in the act of aiming at him. He jumped to one side, exposing the French soldier behind him, whereupon the German at once dropped his rifle and threw up his hands. The two Frenchmen seized him and, sitting him down on a chair in the kitchen, shot him through the head. There they left him, still sitting, his head on his breast and the blood dripping from his forehead between his knees on to the tiled floor, and went off to reconnoitre the surroundings of the house and the garden. They could discover nothing suspicious, but when they returned to the kitchen they found it empty. Nothing remained of the German save a pool of blood in front of the chair. But near the door and on the stairs were red stains and they heard groans coming from the garret.

We asked the peasant:

"Well, what did you do with your Boche?"

"Oh, he's still in my garret," he answered placidly.

"But you must get him out of that. He'll soon begin to smell!"

"Yes, I'm going to dig a hole for him to-night near the dung-heap."

And, as I ventured to say that instead of killing the man treacherously they might have taken him prisoner, seeing that he had surrendered:

"Why?" asked the peasant. "Wouldn't he have killed me if I'd been all alone? And yet I'm a civilian!"

"No!" he added, "we shall never kill enough of those swine!"

* * * * *

The wind had risen and the rain ceased. Our Group advanced along the Compiègne road, which runs by the side of the river. But we had hardly gone a mile when the word was given to halt. We prepared to make our soup, but there was no water, and I searched in vain for a spring or well. Finally we decided to draw water from the Aisne. On the opposite bank a dead German was lying among the rushes, half his body submerged in the stream. Well, we would boil the water, that was all! One must eat!

As night fell a horseman arrived with orders. We set off at a trot.

Under the lee of a high wall some Spahis were resting, their burnous making red patches in the dusk. Near them their little horses stood motionless under their complicated harness. Against an apple-tree leaned an Arab with magnificently cut features, as regular as those of a statue. Under the purple, woollen hood his brown face bore an expression of that resigned melancholy, at once so pitiful and so noble, in which men of his race always languish when far from the desert. His large, apathetic black eyes, which seemed fixed upon something in the distance, had a mystic look in them. He appeared to feel cold. The gunners greeted him smiling:

"Hallo! old Sidi!"

But the Arab, without moving, only replied with a condescending blink of his eyes.

The batteries took up position, the first line of wagons halting behind a screen of acacias. The silence of the night was hardly broken by a confused murmur of the far-off battle when suddenly, as if at a given signal, more than forty French field-guns, almost in unison, fired a terrific volley across the plateau.

The vivid flashes from the muzzles cleft the twilight like red lightning. The air continued to vibrate. It was as though the atmosphere were filled with huge sound-waves dashing and splitting one against the other like the waves of the ocean in a storm. The earth quivered in response to the twanging air. Gradually the night became darker.

Our batteries were certainly firing at registered aiming-points. The enemy only replied now and again, and then at haphazard.

Suddenly a rumour began to circulate:

"The Germans are entraining! That station is being bombarded!..."

"Oh, well, I shouldn't prevent 'em taking their tickets," said an imperturbable-looking reservist. "I shouldn't interfere with 'em. Let them clear out and let us go back home. I've a wife and two kiddies. It's no joke, war!..."

It was pitch-dark when the guns, one by one, gradually became silent. In a few moments there was complete stillness, a stillness almost surprising, almost disturbing after the deafening cannonade.

We rejoined the batteries. Noiselessly, one behind the other, the carriages plunged like phantoms into the darkness, the soft field, as it yielded under the wheels, giving a strange impression of cotton-wool. The nocturnal clarity, diffused and as if floating, did not enable us to see what kind of field it was which the long column was crossing without a jolt or jangle, with only an occasional creaking of badly oiled wheels.

The whole countryside smelt of death, and this was not due to imagination. Far off a burning building stood out like a fixed point of light. The massive trees of a neighbouring park filled us with nameless fears.

The wheel of the limber passed over something soft and elastic which yielded under the weight. I felt sure that it was a dead man, and looked behind me fearfully. But I could see nothing.

We halted on the outskirts of a village called Tracy-le-Mont, where the supply-train was waiting for us. Rations were issued, the men in their cloaks standing in a black circle round the provision wagon, which was lit by a solitary lantern. Hutin and Déprez were among them. Somebody was calling out the guns:

"Third!... Fourth!..."

"First!" cried Hutin.

"You've missed your turn. You'll have to come last now."

We talked while waiting. Hutin was very tired and hungry.

"There's some good grub going," said he. "We're going to get some fresh meat."

"Yes, but fires will be forbidden."

"I suppose you haven't seen the postmaster?" he asked suddenly.

"No, why?"

"Because in the first line you see him more often than we do."

"Well, I've begun to doubt whether there is such a person."

"It's true.... The brute never turns up! Confound it all! If only we got letters sometimes the time would pass quicker. The last I had was simply to say that they hadn't any news of me. It does seem hard!"

"First gun!"

"At last," said Hutin. "Good-bye, old chap! I'm off to get my grub. Try to get back to us soon."

_Tuesday, September 15_

It was splendid weather when we awoke. During the night it had rained a little, but we had surrounded our guns with armfuls of hay gathered from some large ricks near-by. I slept under the ammunition wagon, which sheltered me as far as the knees, and I had covered my feet with a couple of sheaves. The ground was not very damp and I slept well in spite of the shower.

With the dawn the sky cleared. The air was soft and warm, and the tall trees in their infinite variety of green shades stood out in clear-cut silhouettes against the pale blue of the sky. The grass, although cut short, now that the summer was ending, had regained some of its lost freshness.

Here and there in the fields dark heaps arrested the eye. These were the bodies of fallen Germans. Once one has seen three or four one instinctively searches for them everywhere, and a forgotten wheat-sheaf in the distance looks like a corpse.

We started, the wheels of the leading carriages tracing a well-marked track across the fields. On one side lay a dead German. The vehicles had brushed by him as they passed and would have crushed his feet had the drivers not seen him in time. His face was still waxen in colour, and the eye-sockets alone had begun to turn green. The solemn, regular features were not lacking in a certain virile beauty.

The man sitting next me on the wagon looked long at the dead man's face as if trying to catch his last expression.

"Poor devil!" said he, shrugging his shoulders.

A little moved myself, I echoed:

"Yes, poor devil!"

But the wheel-driver, who had left a wife and children behind him, and was wondering how they fared, turned in his saddle:

"Dirty pig!" he growled.

* * * * *

This morning the battle started early and with unusual violence on a front which appeared to stretch from east to west. As far as one could see the sky was fleecy with shell smoke.

"There!... And they said the Germans were going--were entraining! Do you see them over there?... Brutes!"

"Yes. They were detraining!"

The men bitterly cursed their erstwhile credulity. Nevertheless I knew that this evening they would be ready to believe the news that the Russians had reached Berlin, provided that it was sufficiently vigorously affirmed.

We learned the truth from some passing foot-soldiers. The Germans had entrenched themselves strongly on the wooded hills and in the quarries. The pursuit was held up, and a new battle was about to begin.

I asked a sergeant:

"But those aren't the Germans we were on the heels of yesterday and the day before, are they?"

"No," he answered, "these must be troops which were behind them in Belgium."

The first line, installed in a narrow valley, replenished every half-hour the battery which, in position near a large farm, was emptying wagonful after wagonful of shells. The German artillery swept the plain, and some six-inch Howitzers, whose objective seemed to be the bend of a neighbouring road, aiming too high, threatened to catch us in enfilading fire at any moment. On the other hand, one of their 77 mm. batteries had opened fire on a wood commanding the other end of the valley. There could be no thought of trying to get out of this uncomfortable position by way of the plain. The enemy would see us and his Howitzers would reach us with ease. The officer in charge of the train, Lieutenant Boutroux, was perplexed. Finally he decided to face the 77 mm. guns, and we began to work round the edge of the wood, shrapnel shell bursting over our heads. Soon the valley curved inwards. The danger zone was passed. Unscathed, and keeping well screened from the enemy, we took up a fresh position in another gully almost exactly similar to that we had just left.

We lacked water, and in order to find it had to follow a path leading across the field to some barns, from the roofs of which pipes ran down into a couple of water-tanks. A ladder was propped up against one of the latter, and I climbed up out of curiosity. The metal plating of the inside was covered with rust, and out of the turbid water, which was slowly sinking, emerged an old boot, a felt cap, and all sorts of shapeless objects of cloth or metal, coated with green slime. We had nevertheless to content ourselves with this water!...

* * * * *

The sound of the battle was indicative of no decision; it neither approached nor became fainter. The wounded who passed told us that since the morning the infantry had been continually launched against the strong entrenchments without being able to break through them. The gun-fire did not slacken until nightfall.

We rejoined the batteries, cutting across the plain now hidden from the enemy by the falling darkness. Somewhere a machine-gun was still crackling. A thin rain was floating in the air and we rapidly became wet through. We had to lie in the open among the mangel-wurzels, and the horses were not taken out of the vehicles.

It was almost impossible to sleep. The moment we lay still we began to shiver and our teeth chattered. I had a vague fear that the cold, which ran down my spine in long shudders, might kill me unawares if I went to sleep.

My feet resting on the wheel, I curled up on the top of the ammunition wagon, preferring the icy contact of the steel to the dampness of the ground. The rain began to fall more heavily.

_Wednesday, September 16_

Quite early this morning the dull, far-off thud of a Howitzer echoed and re-echoed, and immediately afterwards, as if fired by a train of powder, all the guns on the plateau began to roar.

Astruc came up:

"Lord!" said he, "I had a funny experience last night! Just think ... the others had bagged all the places under the wagons, and, as I was looking about, I saw a great big chap, at least six feet long, covered over with a blanket in the middle of the field. 'Well,' said I to myself, 'if there's room for one there's room for two,' and I lifted up the blanket and snuggled in beside him. But as I went to sleep I pulled it little by little to my side. Suddenly the long 'un sits up, wide awake, and starts shaking me!... At first I said nothing--pretended to be asleep. I was so tired! But he went on shaking me, and then he shouted: 'What the blazes do you think you're doing?' Finally I grunted, 'All right! No need to make such a row....' And then I rubbed my eyes, and got up.... Do you know who it was?... It was the Major! I'd pulled his blanket off him! I didn't lose my head. I told him that I felt awfully ill--fit to die--and that there wasn't any more room underneath the wagon.... Then he muttered something, I don't know what, and settled down again. I didn't hesitate an instant, but lay down beside him. Then he said: 'Well, for God's sake don't take all the blanket, at any rate!'"

The battery went off to take up position, and the first line of wagons returned to the gully where we sheltered yesterday.

My wrist was hurting me. In spite of the dressing the wound had been poisoned by the blood of the wounded and dead at Attichy.

* * * * *

The postmaster arrived with a sackful of letters.

"At home they seem to think the war will last until New Year," said somebody.

"But the Russians?"

"Oh! the Russians...."

"Well, let's see ... October, November, December.... That makes another three months and a half.... Why, we shall all be dead of exposure before then!"

* * * * *

Hardly five hundred yards away from our park some big farm buildings suddenly burst into flames, the walls surrounding the yard showing up on the bare fields like a massive square of luminous masonry. The smoke at first rose in heavy, dark spirals pierced here and there by yellow flashes and then shot straight up into the clear sky in a tall column.

We knew that there were sheep in the farm. The bombardment had ceased, and I decided to save one or two of the animals in order to supplement our ordinary rations. Two gunners of the 12th Battery, the carriages of which were lined up close to ours, had the same idea.

We set out for the farm as rapidly as possible. The field we had to cross had been ploughed up yesterday by the German Howitzers. The enemy doubtless thought that infantry lay concealed behind the buildings, and the whole day long his heavy guns had vainly mown down the mangel-wurzels.

"They've gone to work as though they wanted to plant trees in fives," remarked one of my companions. And he added:

"And they've done the job jolly well! I know something about it, for I'm a gardener."

On the edge of a shell crater two gendarmes lay stretched side by side among the scattered clods of earth. One of them, a big, red-haired man, had a great gaping wound in his chest, and his right arm, doubled up in a strange posture, looked as if it had two elbows. The body of the other, a grey-headed corporal, seemed untouched, but in one of his eye-sockets there was nothing but a clot of blood, and the eye itself was hanging on his temple at the end of a white tendon.

"Poor old chap!" said the gardener.

He leaned over the corpse with its ghastly, one-eyed face staring at the sky, and reverently covered it with the silver-badged cap which had fallen near the dead man's side.

* * * * *

Behind one of the blue-slated roofs, which was still intact, lively flames were now breaking out but were immediately stifled by the clouds of smoke. A magnificent cone-shaped fir-tree, of funereal aspect, mounted guard over the fire like a solitary sentry.

We approached the building. Near the wall of the yard were lying two gunners and a couple of horses. They had just been killed, and the blood on the ground was still red. I recognized one of the men as the orderly of one of our officers. The other had fallen face downwards, his arms crossed under him.

A shell had bored a great hole in the yard. Three ducks, despite the heat of the flames, were dabbling about in a little green pond near a square-shaped dunghill. Another, the head of which had been cut off by a shell splinter, was lying on its side at the edge of the water.

Against the background formed by the great dark curtain of smoke, which from where we were standing hid half the sky, the skeleton of a barn stood out like a fascinating framework of molten metal. Long flames darted out from the doorway and licked a plough and a harrow which had been abandoned there. Above the hay-shoot a pulley-wheel for hoisting fodder, mounted in a recess in the front of the building, was red-hot. The roar of the guns was no longer audible, being drowned by the crackling of the fire and the sharp hiss of the sparks as they fell in the pond. One of the ducks, stung by a glowing splinter, was shaking her feathers.

"We're none too soon," said the gardener. "The mutton will be half cooked already."

The sheepfold was only separated from the shed, which was now alight, by a bake-house, and was already full of smoke, through which the woolly backs of the animals loomed like even denser clouds. The door was open, but the stupid beasts had not fled, and had crowded together against the end wall under the window communicating with the bake-house, through which came the smoke which was gradually asphyxiating them. Huddling together they pushed forward as though trying to break down the wall with their foreheads.

"Come on," said the gardener. "You, Lintier, stand there ... at the door. That's how we'll work it. We'll both of us rush in and each pull out one of them, and you put a bullet through them as they come out. Understand?"

"All right!"

I had a glimpse of the shadowy forms of the two men dodging about in the smoke. Then I heard the scraping of hard hoofs on the ground and one of the gunners reappeared grasping with both hands the tail of a fat sheep which he pulled out backwards. I killed the animal on the threshold, and immediately afterwards a second. The gardener went in again to fetch a third.

I replaced my revolver in the holster, and each of us hoisted a sheep on to our shoulders. They encircled our necks like heavy furs, which we kept in place by grasping the pointed feet bunched together in front two by two. From their heads, hanging down behind, blood dripped down our backs. We started off across the mangel-wurzel field.

Suddenly the gardener cried out:

"Listen!"

We stopped.

"Down!"

"We're seen!"

We heard the scream of heavy shell approaching, and at once threw ourselves flat on the ground behind the sheep, which formed a sort of rampart. Down came the shells between us and the farm. We jumped up, and, in spite of our heavy burdens, ran till we were out of the line of fire. We passed the dead gendarmes and did not stop until we had reached a row of poplars which hid us from view. Three projectiles swooped down on the spot we had just left.

Winding our way through the copses and hollows of the plateau we regained the park in safety.

I resumed my seat on a bundle of wood near the fire, while a gunner, who was a butcher by trade, methodically cut up one of the sheep strung up by the foot to the store wagon.

As I led the horses down to drink at the tanks I took a short cut across the fields in the hope of finding some potatoes, beetroot, or perhaps some onions. We were specially in need of onions, for some of our food was most insipid and we knew of no other flavouring.

I found neither onions nor potatoes, but, on the other side of a knoll, I saw some foot-soldiers stretched out on the loose sheaves of wheat. Their red breeches were visible a long way off. Evidently some of those who had fallen in the engagements of the 12th.

In a hollow a little farther on I also came upon some German corpses. Thirteen Frenchmen and seventeen Germans had fallen there, almost side by side. And yet the Frenchmen seemed more numerous. Red patches on the yellow of the stubble-field, they caught the eye, whereas the Germans were hardly noticeable.

The arms and packs of the dead men had been taken away, and coats, tunics, and shirts had been unbuttoned so that the medals could be unpinned. Their necks, bared chests, and eyelids had already turned a greenish-grey. A little sergeant, who had fallen backwards on to some sheaves which now pillowed his head, still held his right arm starkly in the air. The stiffened fingers of his outstretched hand seemed clasped in a grip of agony. On his sleeve the gold bar shone in the sun.

As I passed on, some swallows, whose low flight announced rain, skimmed over the knoll, their pointed wings lightly touching the dead men.

_Thursday, September 17_

Our line of wagons still remains in the same hollow, nor has the battery changed position. Although during the last two days it has fired more than five hundred shells the enemy has not been able to discover its whereabouts.

Fighting continued, growing ever more violent in character, near Tracy-le-Mont, Tracy-le-Val, Carlepont in front of us, Compiègne on the west, and on the east, parallel to the Aisne, towards Soissons.

We neither advanced nor retired, and that was all we knew of the engagement. We have begun to fall into regular habits here; soup is served and the horses are watered at the same hour every day.

On my way to the water-tanks this morning I saw an odd-looking priest. Sitting astride his horse in the middle of the road he was talking to a surrounding group of gunners and foot-soldiers. He was booted and spurred, and a long waterproof cape, fastened under his chin, floated down over the crupper of his horse. A big wooden cross hung from his neck on to the varnished strap of his revolver-holster, and into his wide black belt he had stuck a German bayonet.

Standing in the stirrups he looked like some strange militant monk as he stroked the neck of his horse.

"Yes," said he, "he's a nice beast. He belonged to a Uhlan whom I found after the battle last week, near Nanteuil, where I was going to hear confessions. He had been abandoned, so I took him. It is much better than walking."

And he added:

"He saved my life yesterday.... I was going to the outposts where there had been some fighting and where I had heard that I was wanted. I was quite alone, and suddenly I met a patrol of Uhlans. They fired at me, but missed. I was angry at not being able to go where I wanted, and as I wheeled round I let them have a revolver shot. As a priest I ought not to have done that, ought I? But I couldn't help it. I saw one topple over. The others pursued me, but my horse went like the wind, and after a time they gave up the chase. So I turned round again and followed them. I found the man I had shot. He didn't understand a word of French. I was able to give him absolution before he died, but it was a near shave!"

* * * * *