Part 7

We advanced another hundred yards or so, and at the next turn of the road stopped again. A peasant's cart, filled with bedding, upon which were sitting a woman--obviously pregnant--and an old lady, both sheltering under a large umbrella, tried to pass the column. But several of the ammunition wagons, of which the wheels had been badly secured, had slid backwards and barred the way. A girl was driving the heavy cart, which was being laboriously dragged up the hill by a mare in foal between the shafts, and a colt in front, the latter pulling in all directions. Both the girl and the animals stuck pluckily to their job.

"Now then, come up!"

The mare threw herself into the collar, and, with our aid, they eventually reached the head of the column, after which the way was clear. The girl stopped the cart for a moment and caressed the nose of the heavy animal, from whose haunches steam arose in clouds. We exchanged a few words.

"Where are you going to?"

"We don't know. At any rate we must cross the Meuse.... We're late, too. All those who had to go went this morning, when we first heard the guns. But we didn't; we thought we would wait a little longer and see what happened. But after all we had to go too. Best to go, isn't it?"

"Yes," we told them, "you'd better go."

"And the Germans are perfect savages, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"They'll burn our houses ... we shan't find anything when we come back--nothing but ashes. Oh, it's awful!... Can't you kill them all?"

"If only we could!..."

"Now then, come up, old girl!"

The cart moved on.

"Good luck!" cried the girl over her shoulder.

"Thanks--good luck!"

Near the top of the hill was a large clearing in the woods, from which the forest appeared like a magnificent mantle thrown over the shoulders of the neighbouring crests, rounding their edges and softening their outlines. From this point we could see the whole of the Woevre plain we had just crossed as well as Remoiville and the plateau of Marville, where, standing sharply out against the bare fields, was the dark line of poplars near which we had been in action in the morning.

Here, in a field where the oats were only half cut, we prepared to wait for the enemy. Our mission was to cover the retreat of the 4th Army Corps, which still continued below on the main road over which an interminable procession of Paris motor-omnibuses was now passing. The sky had become overcast, and the heavy clouds banking up behind us, to the west, threatened to shorten the daylight.

Advancing round the edge of the wood, in order not to reveal our presence, the battery finally came to a halt on the outskirts of the sloping forest, behind some clumps of trees which afforded good cover. We unharnessed and placed the horses and limbers against the background of foliage of which, from a long distance, they would seem to form part. We hoped to have a quiet evening, especially as the next day would probably be a very strenuous one. The two batteries which at present formed the Group, that is to say only seven guns, would have to hold up the enemy a sufficient time to ensure the retreat of the Army Corps. But we hardly gave any heed to the morrow, being too tired to think or reason.

We had still to take the horses to the pond in the village at the foot of the hill, and started off down a steep and narrow path through the wood. The only street of the hamlet was still crowded with troops. Through the open window of the mayor's house I saw General Boëlle. He looked grave but not worried, and I searched in vain for a sign of uneasiness in his expression.

Infantrymen had piled arms on both sides of the road in front of the houses. A flag in its case was lying across two piles. At the door of the vicarage at least two hundred men were crowded together holding out their water-bottles. The curé, it appeared, was giving them all his wine. Some Chasseurs, their reins slung over their arms, stood waiting for orders, smoking, their backs to the wall of the church. I overheard some of their talk.

"So Mortier's dead, is he?"

"Yes. Got a bullet in the stomach."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing much.... He said, 'They've got me!' and he lay down clutching his stomach with both hands. He rolled from side to side and said: 'Ah-a-a-ah! They've got me!' His horse, Balthazar, was sniffing at him. He hadn't let go of the reins ... still held 'em just like I'm holding these, over his arm. I heard him say, 'Poor old boy!' He was all doubled up, and groaned and panted 'ouf-ouf!' and then all of a sudden he stretched himself right out at full length.... One more Chasseur less! His face wasn't a pretty sight, and I shut his eyes for him. Then I broke off a branch from a tree and covered his face with it, as I should like some one to do to me if I went under.... Must cover up the dead somehow.... After that I came back with Balthazar."

When we had climbed back up the hill and regained our clearing many of the foot-soldiers had already left, while others were strapping on their packs and unpiling arms. We were informed that only one battalion was to stay there and support us. I wondered what awful attack the next day might hold in store.

A Captain of infantry accosted Astruc, who was astride Lieutenant Hély d'Oissel's big horse.

"Hallo there, gunner!"

"Sir?"

"Well I'm shot if it isn't Tortue!"

"Tortue, sir? Who's Tortue?"

"Why, the horse I lost. That's him! There can't be any mistake. Dismount now, quick, and hand him over!"

Astruc protested:

"But, sir, this horse belongs to our Lieutenant! I must take him back to him. What would he say to me!"

"Well, I tell you to dismount. I suppose I know my own saddle, don't I? And Tortue ... why, she knows me.... There! You see there's no doubt about it. It's Tortue all right, my mare which I lost at Ethe."

"But, sir, this is a horse, not a mare."

The officer examined the animal more closely.

"Oh! ah! Why yes, it's true! Now that's odd ... most extraordinary! I could have sworn it was Tortue...."

* * * * *

Night fell, the mist enveloping the trees round the clearing. Under the black clouds passed yet another aeroplane, blacker even than they. Could the pilot see us at that hour? If so we might expect a shower of shells at daybreak. The machine pitched and tossed in the sky above the clearing, for the wind had risen and was blowing in gusts from the west.

We had strewn some cut oats round the guns, as the night was chilly, and it looked like rain. The wind, freshening into a gale, wrapped our cloaks tightly round us and almost seemed to move the men themselves. No light of any kind was to be seen on the plain over which our guns were pointing, and which soon became shrouded in the impenetrable darkness ahead. In one corner the clearing cut into the forest, and here, where the thick brushwood rose like a black wall on either side, we were allowed to light a fire. The wind blew in gusts on the flames, which it first nearly extinguished and then rekindled, making the shadows of the men flicker fantastically on the ground.

I was tired out--artillery fire creates an irresistible desire to sleep--and I was also rather hungry. Not feeling possessed of sufficient courage to wait for the meat to be cooked and the coffee brewed, I devoured my ration of beef raw and stretched myself out in the oats behind the ammunition wagon, where I was sheltered from the wind.

_Wednesday, August 26_

Réveillé came at dawn, and we woke to find a thick fog enveloping the battery. We were soaking with dew, and our benumbed and swollen limbs moved jerkily and with difficulty. The uncertain half-light awoke in us a feeling of anxiety and dread which, still heavy with sleep as we were, it was hard to throw off.

Wrapped in our cloaks and standing motionless round the guns, we had leisure to examine our situation in this clearing in the middle of the forest. On the right, according to our officers, it was not known whether there were any French troops. On this side the woods stretched uninterruptedly from the ridges we were occupying as far as Remoiville. On the left the movements of the 4th Army Corps were to be carried out. It is said that normally an army corps takes ten hours to effect a retreat along a single road. And this retreat had already been in progress for more than fifteen hours.

Our position in the clearing was difficult in itself, and might become positively perilous if the fog did not lift. Nothing could be distinguished at a distance of fifty yards from the guns, and the enemy might advance in the plain, threaten the retreating army, and take us by surprise.

On all sides of us, therefore, were the woods and their shadows, the Unknown and Unexpected. In front of us the enemy hidden in the mist; behind, the Meuse; danger everywhere.

The thought of the Meuse was especially disturbing. When it should become necessary for us to retire in our turn, the Germans, whom there would be nothing to check on the right, might reach the river before us. Possibly we should not find a single bridge left standing. We might have to sacrifice ourselves for the defence of the army.

The hours dragged by. The mists seemed to be collecting on the flank of the hills facing the Meuse, whence they were wafted by the west wind in filmy, trailing clouds which gradually curled over the crests of the hills, floated towards us, enveloping our batteries for an instant, and then slowly sank down on the plain.

I have written these notes on my knee, my back resting against the brass bottoms of the shells in the ammunition wagon, which was opened out like a wardrobe. The men were standing about smoking, waiting for orders.

* * * * *

At last, about eight o'clock, the sun shone over the top of the hill and the fog, like a kind of impenetrable gauze, began to draw away in front of us. One by one the trees reappeared, only the tops of the loftiest remaining shrouded in the mist. Nothing stirred. The road, black yesterday with men and horses now appeared absolutely white between the meadows damp with dew and vividly green under the first rays of the morning sun.

Lying flat on our chests in the grass in front of our guns, on a sort of natural terrace between the stones descending the slope, we scanned the plain. After a time everything seemed to move, and one had to make an effort to dispel the illusion.

The men are saying that we may have to stay here two days. Surely that cannot be possible? Somebody asserted that he had heard the instructions given to the Major by a General:

"You'll stay there," said he, "as long as the position is tenable. I rely on your instinct as an artilleryman."

Another man supported the first speaker.

"Yes, that's right. He said, 'Solente, I rely on your instinct as an artilleryman.' Why, I heard him myself."

We also heard that last Saturday's engagement would be known as the Battle of Ethe.

"No," said another. "It will be called the Battle of Virton."

"Ethe, Virton!... What the devil does it matter what it's called. Seeing that we've had to retreat!..."

"Oh, yes, but all the same," said the trumpeter, "we ought to know. Suppose you get back to your people and they ask you what engagements you've been in. You'll answer, 'I've been fighting in Belgium.' 'Yes,' they'll say, 'but Belgium is a big place--bigger than our commune! Were you at Liége, or Brussels, or Copenhagen?' You would look a silly fool!"

The other shrugged his shoulders.

With the help of a bayonet we opened a box of bully-beef for the four of us, and fell to. The only sound was that made by the hatchet of one of the men who was chopping down a small birch-tree which might conceivably interfere with the fire of his gun.

The silence was too intense, the immobility of the countryside too complete. The enemy was there. We neither heard him nor saw him, but that only rendered him the more sinister. The unwonted calm, when we had braced ourselves up for battle, was terrifying, and our nerves became overstrained.

I supposed that the retreat of the 4th Army Corps had by this time been accomplished. Time passed, and the French army was still falling back, while the enemy advanced cautiously, threading his way through the woods.

Suddenly, about two o'clock, a machine-gun began to crackle quite close by in the forest. A horseman galloped through the clearing and drew rein beside the Major. We at once limbered up.

Was our retreat cut off? The staccato rattle of the machine-gun was now accompanied by intermittent rifle-fire. We had to cross the clearing diagonally in order to reach a forest path. Quite calmly, and determined to save our guns, we got our rifles ready. But the column crossed the close-cropped field without our hearing a single bullet, and we gained the wood in safety. We had to hurry, for the road, even if still open, might be closed at any moment.

Leaning over the necks of the horses in order to avoid the low-hanging branches which threatened to drag them from their saddles, and gauging by eye the narrow passage between the trees, the drivers urged their teams forward with whip and spur.

The road was still open.... We arrived at Dun-sur-Meuse, where we had to cross the river. The Captain assembled the non-commissioned officers:

"The bridge is mined. Warn your drivers to take care of the sacks on each side of the bridge. They're full of melinite."

In order to let us through the sappers threw some planks across the pit they had opened up in the centre of the bridge.

The hindmost vehicles of the column had not advanced two hundred yards on the other side of the Meuse, when a loud explosion shook us on our seats. The bridge had just been blown up. Behind us a large white cloud of smoke curled up in thick volutes, masking half the town.

* * * * *

As we stood waiting for orders in a field, our guns in double column, some one called out:

"There's the postmaster!"

"At last!"

"Letters! letters! A man to each gun!"

For eight days we had been waiting for news, and each man drew a little aside in order to be alone as he read.

* * * * *

It seems certain that the battle of Saturday the 22nd will be known as the battle of Virton.

_Thursday, August 27_

It had poured all night, and rain was still falling when we rose. The thought of all the misery such weather must inevitably cause spoiled the satisfaction we experienced at feeling fit and fresh after ten hours' delicious sleep in a well-closed barn. Our horse-cloths thrown over our heads like hoods and flapping against our calves, we silently marched in scattered order along the churned-up road, our feet squelching in the mud, and finally regained the park under the lashing rain.

The horses, motionless, glistening with water but resigned, endeavoured unceasingly to turn their tails to the rain. The stable-pickets had succeeded in lighting fires but they had had to dig new hearths, for those of the day before were swamped and black pieces of charred wood were floating in them.

The men's cloaks were streaming and hung heavily in stiff folds from their shoulders. Some of them had turned up their capes in order to protect their heads. The gunners stood round about, holding their red hands to the fire.

"Beastly rain! Two days more like this and we shall all get dysentery!"

"I'd rather die of that than be killed by a shell," said Hutin.

"No use trying to make coffee," growled Pelletier. "The fire doesn't give out any heat.... It would take hours."

"It's the wood that won't burn. It only smokes."

"Blow on it, Millon!"

We turned our boot soles to the heat in order to dry them. The rain hissed and spat in the fire.

"All the same," said the trumpeter, "if we hadn't been betrayed things wouldn't have gone like this!"

I grew annoyed.

"Betrayed! I was waiting for some one to come out with that!"

"Well, I mean it; betrayed! I heard about it yesterday.... It was a General who delivered up the army plans. I know what I'm talking about!"

"Pooh! Camp gossip!"

"I heard the same thing," affirmed another.

"Simply camp gossip! From the moment we got scratched that was bound to come sooner or later. If you're beaten it's because you've been betrayed! The French can't be the weaker! Lord, no! It's impossible, of course! But you know there are five German army corps in front of us. That makes two to one.... No ... well, all the same. Even with two to one we can't be beaten, can we? And, if we are, we at once begin to whine about betrayal! Wasn't it you who were always saying that Langle de Cary's army ought to come up and help us? Eh? Well, it's all simply because you don't feel strong enough to tackle the Boches by yourselves."

"All the same, traitors exist right enough," said the trumpeter with a sage nod of the head. "There always have been traitors, and there always will be, to sell France."

"Idiot!" said Hutin peremptorily.

* * * * *

Almost all my comrades thought as I did. A few properly equipped reinforcements would have enabled us to get the upper hand. Even alone, here behind the Meuse, we could have managed to stop the enemy.

Besides, during the days of defeat we had just been passing through, what a moving picture of our country had been revealed to us! An army immediately victorious cannot plumb the depths of patriotism. One must have fought, have suffered, and have feared--even if only for a moment--to lose her, in order to understand what one's country really means. She is the whole joy of existence, the embodiment of all our pleasures visible and invisible, and the focus of all our hopes. She alone makes life worth living. All this united and personified in a single suffering being, begotten by the will of millions of individuals--that is France!

In defending her one defends oneself, seeing that she is the sole reason for being, for living. One would prefer to fall dead on the spot rather than see France lost, for that would be worse than death. Every soldier feels this truth, either vaguely, or distinctly and clearly, according to his powers of perception and affection.

And yet, in the camp, these things are never talked of. The reason is that words which, in peace-time, too often veiled by their gross grandiloquence these deeper and finer feelings, would be insupportable now. This passion, for it is a passion, lies deep down in the heart with other sacred and inmost emotions, to give outward expression to which would be almost to profane them.

* * * * *

"Come on, now! Harness! Hook in! We're off."

The rain had soured the men's tempers.

"Now then! Be careful with your horse, can't you? You might have killed us!"

"Untie your horses so that we can get the picket-lines, will you?... All right, damn you, I'll do it myself."

"There's a silly fool! Fine place to tether a colt to--the wheel of an ammunition wagon. He's ripping up the oat-bag. Pull him off, can't you?"

Cramone, threatening his team with his whip, repeated for the twentieth time:

"I'll teach you how to behave, you brutes!"

"There's another dish lost," shouted Millon. "Who's the idiot who didn't pick it up yesterday?"

"Can't you pull your infernal mules back a bit?... We can't limber up.... Never seen such a fool!..."

The men pushed and tugged at their horses, which, face to the wind, continued pulling this way and that in a vain attempt to prevent the rain stinging their ears. Bréjard lost his temper.

"Lord, what a set! Can't you keep your horses straight?... Look at that off-leader!... Can't you see he's got entangled?..."

"Thought we were going to have a rest to-day!"

"I suppose the Germans are resting, aren't they?"

The start was difficult. During the night the wheels of the vehicles had sunk deeper and deeper into the softening soil, and the horses' hoofs kept slipping on the slope.

Once on the road the battery broke into a trot, the mud splashing in sprays from under the feet of the horses. Some of the gunners, attacked by colic, stopped in the ditches, and then, still doing up their breeches, ran along by the side of the column in order to overtake their vehicles.

We were going to extend a strong artillery position on the heights of the Meuse valley. From the hills near Stenay the sound of the guns reached us in gusts, and, some distance off, above the woods, we could see the shrapnel shells bursting. The rain had stopped, and the sky, dark a moment previously, suddenly cleared and assumed a uniformly light grey tint.

In a meadow by the roadside some peasants, fleeing before the tide of invasion, had set up their nightly camp. A large green awning sheltered their cart and formed a tent at the same time. Two shafts projected from the front end, pointing skywards. An old man and two women--both pregnant--with half a dozen children clinging to their skirts, watched us go by.

The road rose stiffly upwards, and the column slackened its pace to a walk. I heard one of the women say to the old man, as she gave him a nudge with her elbow:

"Go on, father!"

The old man hesitated, but she insisted:

"You must!"

He seemed to make up his mind, and approached us, shifting from one leg to another. Then, with a red face, he muttered:

"No! Can't ask for that at my time of life!"

He was about to go, but we stopped him.

"Ask for what, old fellow?"

"For a bit of bread, if you've got any over. It's for the children!"

"Yes, of course we have! We never eat it all!"

As a matter of fact we seldom get enough bread. The loaves have to be sorted out, and, when the mouldy parts have been thrown away, the ration is usually more than halved. The old man walked by the side of the limber while the men searched in their bags.

"Here you are!"

Two loaves, almost fresh, were held out to him.

"With an onion and a good set of teeth they're eatable!"

"Thanks.... Thank you so much.... But I'm afraid you'll be short yourselves!"

"Oh, no! That's all right, old chap! Why, we get a wagonful of those every day!"

He made off, a loaf under each arm. I saw him hunch his shoulders and dry his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

A shower of shrapnel shells suddenly burst in the distance, over the dark woods.

"Swine!" growled Millon between his teeth. He had given up his bread.

He shook his fist towards the enemy.

Once in position to sweep the uplands on the right bank of the Meuse, we dried ourselves in the sun.

In the afternoon a few horsemen, Uhlans presumably, appeared on the edge of a distant wood. A broadside of shells quickly made them seek cover again.

_Friday, August 28_

"Alarm!"

"What?"

"Come on, up you get!"

"What's the time?"

"Don't know.... It's still dark."

"All right, then, we'll get up. Hutin, come on, get up!"

I shook Hutin, who growled in answer:

"All right! Oh, Lord, I was so comfortable there!"

The noise of shuffling straw filled the barn.

"What's the time?" repeated somebody.

"Look out there! There's a rung missing in the ladder."

Noises of feet scraping against the ladder. An oath.

"Get the lantern!"

"Where is it?"

"Hanging behind the door."

The men groped about for their belongings.

"My képi!"

"Dashed if I can find the lantern! Come and help, can't you?"

"Sure it can't be two o'clock yet."

"Come along now, hurry up," cried a sergeant, opening the door. "Anybody else still asleep?"