Part 8

Before leaving, I pick up a fragment of shell over which I stumbled. It is fifty centimetres long by fifteen wide, with jagged edges like the teeth of a saw. I contemplate this terrible thing lying heavy in my hand. To what kind of a shell, swift and growling, must it have belonged? This fragment must be one of those which cleanly sweep away an arm or leg, tear off a head, or cut a man completely in two. And holding it thus in my hand, heavy and cold, I remember a poor little cyclist who was killed close to us in Septsarges Wood--one leg taken away at the hip and the lower part of his abdomen laid open.

Trees and a shimmer of green on a wide road, away to the north. Night is falling. Suddenly through the greyness we find ourselves looking upon some ruins--we have reached Erize-la-Petite.

The entrance to the village, which is indeed little more than a hamlet, was choked with carriages, with ploughs and horse-rakes, which had been drawn to one side. In silence we pass before the shattered houses. Nothing remains but the mere shells of walls and distorted chimneys still standing above the wrecked hearths. Some charred beams have rolled almost into the middle of the roadway; a large mechanical mowing-machine raises its broken shaft like a stump.

The regiment defiles through the gloomy evening; our steps resound lugubriously and violate the surrounding desolation. In a short while, when the last section will have disappeared over the summit of the hill, the cold and silent night will descend again on the village, and peace shroud the poor, dead houses.

For the last time I turn and look back, glutting my eyes with this vision of desolation. Then I resume mechanically the onward march, sad to the point of tears, with the wan chillness of death in my heart.

Another road skirting the line which links Rembercourt with Vauxmarie and Beauzée. In the ditches, hunched up or stretched at full length, are human corpses. A single corpse is a rare spectacle. As a rule they are lying huddled together as if seeking to warm each other. The failing light reveals blue coats and red trousers; Frenchmen; more Frenchmen, in fact nothing but Frenchmen! Judge my enthusiasm on finding some Boches among them! I fall out several times to make sure that these really are Boches. The foe cannot have had the time to hide away that lot!

The night becomes black and corpses are no longer visible. But they are always there, at the bottom of the ditches, on the slopes at the very edge of the road. We realize their presence even in the dark. By shielding the eyes and peering hard, it is possible to see the eerie heaps which have lost all resemblance to that of which they are made. Beyond all, one can smell them; the peculiar, indescribable stench is heavy in the still evening air. The slowly moving breeze passing over those bodies fills our noses and throats with the odour. It makes us shudder instinctively, fearful lest that welter of putrefaction should be communicated from them to us.

Not a word in the ranks; nothing but the regular tramp, tramp, before and behind me; occasionally someone coughs, a little dryly, or a man spits. That is all. It must be cold, yet my head and hands are burning, and my will struggles to subdue an uncontrollable inclination to turn to my right where the cool waters of the Aire, flowing by the roadside, are betrayed by the stagnant pools under the trees.

An unexpected halt! The men bump their noses against the packs of the file in front. Confusion and much swearing. Then quick commands:

"Quartermasters prepare rations for distribution."

It is the best of all signs. The day's march is ended. Yet for an hour we are kept waiting on the road. The stench is worse than ever. There are dead horses somewhere near here.

_Deuxnoux-devant-Beauzée._ We pass in turn before the ration-carts. By the light of swinging lanterns I catch a glimpse of a bearded face, the blade of a butcher's knife, at the end of a bare forearm, quarters of meat, and the twinkling buttons of a greatcoat. The lantern dances on its way; nothing remains but confused, restless forms.

Very soon, however, fires are leaping and glowing in the roadway outside the houses. The cooks are bending over them, their weather-hardened, highly coloured faces thrown into relief, while the gigantic shadows they cast flit along the walls.

We mess in the house of a farmer's wife whose husband is on service. This time last night she was waiting on German officers. She showed us a plate containing the remains of some pickled cabbage, and exclaims:

"See, messieurs, they left such a lot behind them!"

She soon gets to work, and, propping a loaf against her ample bosom, cuts off thick slices of new bread (new bread, mark you!). In another moment our glasses are merry with cider brought from the cellar in a stone jug at least two feet high.

"But are you quite sure," she asks, "that they won't return?"

I reply to her in a fashion that pleases her:

"Madam, you can bet your own child's cap upon it!"

We are well abed when there sounds a heavy knocking on the door of the barn, which my men have already firmly closed.

"Pannechon! Pannechon! Come out, _mon vieux_!"

Pannechon is my orderly. I hear him emerging from the hay and stumbling over sleepers who do not scruple to tell him what they think of him.

Then the door opens creakingly. Pouf!... What a smell! It seems to be compounded of skim-milk, rats, perspiration, and other indescribable things. It is sharp and nauseous, and quite turns me. What on earth can smell so vilely? All at once the stench revives an old memory; brings back to my mind the picture of one of the Boche "assistant's" rooms at the Lakanal Lyceum. I used to go there from time to time to wile away an hour or so, and, at the same time, to acquire fluency in his language. This was in the course of a remarkably hot summer, and he used to take off his coat and vest and put himself at his ease, so that when I opened the door that same stench struck me in the face, seized me by the throat, as it were. He used to grin, half of his fatuous face hidden by tortoise-shell spectacles and greet me with his heavy, guttural tones:

"_Mon Ongle Penchamin!_ Splendeed, splendeed! And so teepigally Vrench!"

I remember I used to push my chair as far back as possible, until, in fact, my back was against the wall, and finish up by saying:

"Let us go out into the park, shall we? We shall be able to breathe better out there than here."

Ah, well! Destiny decrees that I shall now sleep amidst this oppressive smell of Germans, stretched out on the hay in which they have sheltered. Bah!... It's a dear price to pay for recovery of possession!

"Pannechon! What on earth's this?"

I seize the corner of a piece of cloth protruding from the straw. I pull it out and find it to be a greyish-green mantle with a red collar.

"Pannechon, pitch that outside!"

I stretch myself out, cover myself with my greatcoat and close my eyes. Hullo! What is this poking my side!

I thrust my hand into the hay and feel something hard with many corners. Patient investigation reveals a lacquered toilet-box with a mirror under the lid, a cheap and nasty gewgaw.

"Pannechon! Pitch that out too."

Sleep now. No, not yet! Just one more find--a tin of metal polish. Happily it is the last. I draw my greatcoat well up over my eyes and stretch myself out luxuriously. It is warm, it is good, and there is nothing at all to grumble at. Until to-morrow, and then the Boches!

_Monday, September 14th._

It is raining, of course. The march beneath this sad and watery sky is going to be a detestable one. I resign myself in advance to a day of saturation.

Resignation indeed is difficult of attainment when one knows, as we do, the increase of our sufferings the rain involves: the heavy clothes; the coldness which penetrates with the water; the hardened leather of our boots; trousers flapping against the legs and hindering each stride; the linen at the bottom of the knapsack--that precious linen, the feel of which against one's skin is a sheer delight--hopelessly stained, transformed little by little into a sodden mass on which papers and bottles of pickles have left their stain; the mud that spurts into one's face and covers one's hands; the confused arrival; the night all too short for sleep passed beneath a coat that freezes instead of warming; the whole body stiff, joints without suppleness, painful; and the departure with boots of wood which crush the feet like the torture-shoe. Hard, indeed, is resignation!

As yesterday we march between two lines of French corpses. They seem to be dressed in new clothes, so much rain has fallen on them. It is perhaps a week since they fell. Their flesh, swollen by decomposition, has attained enormous dimensions; they have legs and arms of tremendous size, yet curiously short, and their clothes are stretched to bursting over their inflated bodies. Men of line regiments, then Colonials. The dead we passed previously were lying face downward; these have been raised and propped against the slope facing the road, as though to watch us pass. Their faces are blackened, their lips large and swollen. Many of our men, taking them to be negroes, exclaim: "Hullo! These are Turcos."

I have a particularly vivid recollection of one of those poor dead by the roadside. He was a captain of the Colonials. They had made him kneel on the grass by forcibly bending his legs beneath him; one of his legs had gradually bent back and was stretched out in front of him, giving one the impression that the man was about to throw himself forward, as if in some erratic dance. His body was turned sideways, but his head craned rigidly forward, and his eyes were fixed on the road in a vacant stare. But what struck me most was his moustache, light and curly and altogether charming. Beneath it the mouth was no more than two purple pads of flesh. That fair ladies'-love moustache on a putrefying face was a heartrending spectacle.

Come! Head erect and fists clenched! No more of that weakness that a moment ago assailed me. We must look unmoved on these poor dead and seek from them the inspiration of hate. It was the Boche in his flight who dragged these sorry things to the side of the road, who arranged this horrid spectacle for our express benefit, and we must never rest until the brute has drunk our cup of vengeance to the dregs.

Impotent and childish is the fury that only inspires us with rage and the passion for vengeance instead of fear, as our foe hopes and believes.

Besides, every step forward now presents us with eloquent testimony of the completeness of the defeat they have suffered--helmets torn and pierced by our bullets, crushed and shattered by our shells; rusty bayonets; broken cartridge-belts, still full. To the left of the road in the fields are some overturned ammunition wagons and gun-carriages in pieces, the horses lying dead in a heap. In the ditch is the carriage of a shattered machine-gun; one can see the hole made by the shell--a 75. What a state the gun on that carriage must have been in! And the machine-gunners? At the bottom of the hole! Ammunition belts of coarse white canvas lie coiled in puddles.

We pick up some boots full of rain-water. I wonder whether the men from whom we took them walked barefooted through the mud merely for pleasure? In another hole we find the men themselves. Further on again we encounter crosses bearing German inscriptions. Here then are the Ottos, the Friedrichs, the Karls, and the Hermans! Each cross bears four, five and even six names. The Germans were in a hurry; they buried their men in bunches.

A cross higher than the others attracts and holds our attention; it bears no more than three words deeply carved in big capitals:

ZWEI DEUTSCHE KRIEGER.

Is there still another challenge hidden behind this? If so, it is obscure. For who killed you, you two German soldiers?

Over the trampled roadway, newspapers, postcards and letters flutter. I pick up a photograph on the back of which a woman has written a few lines:

"My Peter, it is a long time since we received any news from you and we are naturally very anxious. I think, however, that very shortly you will be able to tell us of still further victories and that you will return in glory to Toelz. What a fête you shall have then...." And then further on: "The little one has grown and is becoming quite strong. You could never imagine what a little treasure he is. Do not be too long in returning, or he will not be able to recognize you."

Sad enough, indeed, is it not? Whose, however, is the fault? Remember our dead of a short while ago; remember the captain flung almost across the road. What has he done, of what is he capable, this Peter, this German whose photograph shows him with lowered face, cold eyes, heavy-jawed, resting his hand on the back of a chair on which his wife is seated, smiling but negligible? Pity at such a moment would shame us. Let us harden our hearts and keep them hard until the end comes.

_Saint-André._ On a hillock just beyond the village we come upon the remains of a dressing-station. The site is marked by a fine confusion. Red-haired cowhide cases scattered about, all yawning and emptied of their contents; bayonets in their black sheaths; severed cartridge-belts; helmets without their spikes; linen torn and stained with mud and blood; packages of dressings by the hundred; pieces of cotton wool saturated by the rain lying in the middle of tiny blood-stained pools. The great trees rising above the hillock seem to be contemplating this sad chaos, while the rain drips from their branches softly and unceasingly.

We pass before Souilly. A windmill for raising water spreads its giant sails fanwise over a huge grey metal armature. Some silent houses which have escaped the shells: the melancholy of deserted houses which is almost as poignant as the sadness that clings to ruins.

A halt under the rain and quarters at Sivry-la-Perche, in a barn with green doors like all those on the Meuse. Rifles are piled on the threshing-floor, knapsacks hung on the pegs. The granary dominates the neighbourhood and is full of hay and straw. So lofty is it, that the walls become lost to sight in the darkness before meeting the rafters.

_September 15th-17th._

Yet one more long march, this time straight across the entrenched camp of Verdun. Thierville is our nearest point to the citadel. Beneath a rainy sky, crossed by light clouds, lies Verdun, marked by its barracks with their roofs of coloured tiles, and the aviation field with its white hangars, and the towers of its cathedral rising high above trees and houses.

All the surrounding villages are alive with troops. Many questions are flung about as we pass through. Many of the men rush to the public fountains whose water flows into a stone basin, swallow a quart or so in long gulps, and fill their flasks. The weight of my own flask at my belt gives me a sense of comfort--it is a German flask which Pannechon brought me yesterday, and which I have duly appropriated.

The Meuse. Cattle in the meadows. Then Bras and afterwards Vachérauville.

Three weeks only have elapsed since I passed along this self-same road. Is it credible? It is a fact, nevertheless, although I find it difficult to convince myself of the reality of it. For what have I not experienced in the way of new and intense sensations, what a richness of impressions I have acquired, what dangers run? How altogether undreamed of has that life been! Confusion about me and within me; then habit swiftly succeeding the chaos of the early days. Three weeks only since I passed along this road, a very raw recruit, and now here am I a seasoned soldier.

We rested the night at Louvemont, a dirtier village than all the dirty villages we have come across so far. We are able to obtain milk, white cheese and a few small pots of honey. These things at least aid us to digest the anathemas Captain C---- has showered upon us since our arrival, because we have dared openly to display one or two signs of weariness.

We spend a doubtful, uncertain day at Louvemont. Some heavy batteries behind the village keep firing at regular intervals, sending their heavy shells whizzing high above our heads. The Germans do not reply.

For several hours we were in the fields--no one knew why--engaged in apparently aimless manoeuvres in open formation as if under curtain-fire. Did a cautious prudence dictate this course, or were our actions consequent upon certain information received? One thing at least is certain, and that is that in the evening, shortly after we had returned to the village, a dozen or so 'crumps' were sent over to us. One of them struck a house on the opposite side of the road at the moment we were sitting down to dinner. It smashed the roof--one could hear that distinctly--passed into the house, smashed a chair on which the regimental doctor had placed his tunic, and finally embedded itself in the wall without exploding. The doctor was not in the house at the time; but when he returned it was to find the copper fuse of a large 150 directly pointing towards his bed. He went out and sought more comfortable quarters.

We left the village this morning. In the first place we took up a position in line of sections of four among some stunted acacias covering the side of a stony ravine.

I was seated near Porchon, so exhausted and weary that from time to time I sank involuntarily against his shoulder. My brain seemed to have become pap, and my inability to think caused me almost physical pain. A single tenacious impression remained in my mind--the pursuit was ended; somewhere near here the Boches had turned, and now I must fight once more, notwithstanding this breakdown of body and mind. I felt most miserably lonely, which loneliness brought in its train a black despair I simply could not resist. Not a letter had I received from my people since the day I first set out, not a word of affection, nothing, nothing at all. And they, too, what could they know of me? Had they received the cards, scribbled in haste between the bombardments, or at the side of the road during a halt, or written in the evening in the barn, by the light of a flickering candle? They did not know in what part of the world to look for me. I had been in the battle, but they remained completely ignorant as to what had occurred to me in that battle. Anxiety would have racked them throughout these long and interminable days; and I, who would prefer death a thousand times to complete solitude, was deprived of their affectionate news so essential to my well-being.

That evening we were told off for outpost duty at the edge of a wood, and before me lay two atrocious days of suffering and discouragement; two days the memory of which I hope will fortify me against any future trials, seeing that I had sufficient strength on that occasion to hold on and not disgrace myself.

_Saturday, September 19th._

Forty hours we pass in a ditch full of water. The improvised roof of branches and straw soon lets all the rain through. Since then we live in the midst of a torrent.

Motionless, and packed tight together in cramped and painful attitudes, we shiver in silence. Our sodden clothes freeze our skin; our saturated caps bear down on our temples with slow and painful pressure. We raise our feet as high as we can before us, but often it occurs that our frozen fingers give way, letting our feet slip down into the muddy torrent rushing along the bottom of the trench. Already our knapsacks have slipped into the water, while the tails of our greatcoats trail in it.

The slightest movement causes pain. I couldn't get up if I wanted to. A short while ago the adjutant attempted to do so; the effort wrung a cry from him, so keen were the pains in his knees and back; and then he sank down on top of us before slipping back into the hole in the mud his body had made, and resuming his former huddled attitude, which had caused his ankles to stiffen.

Nowadays I find it difficult to recall all that befell in the course of those two days; memory is veiled and dim. It is as though I had lived in an atmosphere of numbness in which all light and beauty were but dead things. An intense pain about my heart, never moving, rendered me almost delirious.

I remember that we remained for a long time hidden in a large thicket. My section was stationed near the battalion horses, which had been picketed together. Every time they moved, branches broke and fell. And most certainly it was raining, there could be no doubt of that; for long afterwards the eternal pitter-patter of rain on the leaves remained in my ears. Afterwards, I do not know how long, we set out on the march.

Almost insensibly a depressing evening settled down over fields and woods. Before us were extended the columns of infantry, clinging like ants on the side of the bare slope. Above us, the smoke balls of shrapnel, soft and pale, hung in the air. This shrapnel gave no warning of its approach, and shells burst with an abrupt snap which found no echo over the dull countryside. A deserted farm to the left had been stripped of its reddish tiles, which lay smashed to pieces on the earth. A horseman was moving slowly towards this farm, his head covered by the hood of his cloak; his horse seemed merely to glide onwards, strangely silent. The stillness was portentous, almost tangible.

We passed a night in another trench in reserve, where we are at present. Five or six of us in a bunch hung over a few damp pieces of wood we had collected in the hope of being able to make a fire; the sticks smoked but refused to burst into flame. I recollect that I was obsessed by a feverish and loquacious gaiety; I scorned my own sad condition and laboured tremendously to prevent myself giving way to the fever running riot in my veins. This lasted some time, and so nervous was I, so disordered was my speech, that those about me watched me queerly and significantly. The moment came when my ill-timed jests became an insult to the general depression. I fell silent then, and resignedly delivered myself up to that dumb despair which had been dogging my heels for days, waiting only the opportunity to enter into its kingdom.

The monotonous, incessant tapping of the rain on the leaves of the trees was in itself maddening. The sticks in the brazier hissed and spluttered. There was a single spark, a faint glow among the cinders, which I watched desperately.

In the morning firing was heard in the direction of the outposts. The Captain sent me with two sections to reinforce them. We marched in single file, slipping on the greasy clay, falling every few steps; laboriously climbing on hands and knees a little ascent which, but for the mud, I could have taken in a couple of strides.

Arriving at our destination, we were compelled to seek shelter behind the trunks of trees, for all along the edge of the wood bullets were whistling. There were no trenches and the men were lining a ditch, standing in the water with their knapsacks before them.

The rain did not cease. It flooded the vast ploughed lands, where here and there groups of walnut trees seemed to huddle shiveringly together. Two German vedettes posted before a wood facing ours seemed like two stone statues. Shortly afterwards infantry emerged from the wood and advanced over open ground, as dark as the soil itself, and scarcely visible. We killed several of them and they went back hastily, abandoning their dead.

Still the bullets continued to whistle. From time to time a cry burst from one of the men in the ditch, and he would come into the wood towards us, both hands pressed against his chest or staring at the blood dripping from his fingertips with wide, terrified eyes. At last the firing ceased and calmness reigned.