Part 9

We returned into reserve, carrying one of my corporals who was wounded in the groin by a bullet that had passed right through it. That was a difficult journey over the muddy roads! The wounded man groaned feebly, his arms passed around the necks of two of his comrades, his head swaying, his face livid. Once the men carrying him slipped and fell to their knees, and the agonized cry which broke from the sufferer echoed in my ears long after it had died to silence.

The night was like the preceding one; a silent, palpitating wait, the minutes as long drawn as hours; incessantly yearning for the dawn which never appeared. I grew gradually drowsy, and at length fell asleep in a heap on a comrade. He violently thrust me off, swearing savagely; I did my best to express my resentment. A little later, sudden anguish caused me to jump to my feet. I had upset the brazier, by this time almost extinct, and I had placed my hand on a few still glowing fragments of wood.

The rain continues to fall.

It is daylight now. We have just eaten a morsel or two of cold meat, wet and stale, as well as a few green potatoes found in one of the fields and partially cooked in patches beneath the cinders. We have been promised relief in the evening, but I am in such a condition now that I hope for nothing. Things have become very vague and ill-defined. I imagine that we must have been where we are at present for a very, very long time. We have been sent here; we have been commanded to remain here; and we have been forgotten. It is quite simple. No one will come. No one could come to replace us at the edge of this wood, in this ditch, beneath this rain. Never again shall we see snug houses with a bright fire in the grate, or well-built barns filled with hay which never gets wet. Never again shall we undress to stretch our cramped limbs and rid them of this terrible iciness. And what good would it be if we could? My clothes, stiff with mud, the puttees crushing my legs, my hardened boots, the straps of my equipment, have not all these things become part of me and of my sufferings? They are me! The water which first saturated my skin runs now in my very veins. What am I indeed but a muddied mass swamped with water, cold to the very heart, cold as the straw which covers us, cold as the trees on which each leaf rustles and shivers, cold as the very earth of the fields, which little by little is dissolving beneath the flooding rains?

Yesterday perhaps there was still time. Then we could have regained grip of ourselves, compelled our wills to resist. But to-day the evil has gone too far, has progressed beyond all hope of reparation. It is too late. It is not even worth the trouble of hoping for....

_Sunday, September 20th._

"By the way, old man, when will you have finished with the whole of the blanket?"

Since we got into bed that is the third time Porchon has passed that same remark. I ignore him, most properly, striving hard to make my feigned snores sound regular and natural.

"Here, you blockhead, here! When the deuce will you stop bagging all the blanket?"

The beast persists! He is asking for it and gets it!

"Dry up--you're a nuisance! Take your beastly blanket, roll yourself in it, swelter in it, take it all for yourself, only leave me alone to sleep in peace!"

Porchon contrives to remain silent for at least a minute; then, in a sleepy voice:

"I say!"

"Well, what is it now?"

"It is a bit better here than in the Haumont Wood, what?"

"Rather!"

"Better even than the barn at Louvemont, don't you think?"

"Naturally!... But say, old man, don't you think we had better go to sleep?"

Two minutes later and Porchon is snoring. But no longer is there sleep for me. Scenes and memories have been evoked and flit across my mind to keep me constantly wakeful. What devil of mischief prompted the idiot to mention those things? He has set the machine working and now there is no stopping it!

And so in memory I live again through bad days, nightmare days--the _réveil_ in the furious, stinging rain; the arrival at Louvemont, that indescribable village little better than a sewer. I had gone over to the quarters of the adjoining section because before their barn a little chimney-piece had been erected with some paving stones. There had been a fire of flaming logs, hissing and spluttering. We had stripped ourselves to the waist to let the grateful warmth of the flames play on our chests and backs and shoulders. Sitting on a bundle of straw we had found an old, white-bearded soldier, dreaming. I had gone up to him and said:

"Hallo, M----! So you are better! Beginning to feel alive once again, eh?"

"Oh, yes, Lieutenant. But it has been a hard pull, a very hard pull!..."

And he had repeated in a low voice, as though experiencing again hardships still recent: "Very hard!"

Poor old man! He had gone through the campaign of '70 as a volunteer, and since those days had lived outside France. For thirty years, I believe, he acted as a notary in California, until the very day, in fact, which had brought this war upon us. Then, when France was once more attacked and menaced, he had flung everything aside and had come back to shoulder his rifle. He had described himself as being robust, smart and well able to endure any hardships. They had accepted his statement and sent him up to face the Boches with the first batch of reinforcements. He had joined up with us in the woods at the very moment we were setting out for those nightmarish advance posts; those two terrible succeeding days were the first of his service. Poor old man!--and he was sixty-four years of age!

The following night Pannechon had made me up a deep and fragrant bed of hay, just before I set out for mess. Dinner ended, I returned to the barn, humming softly to myself, and enjoying in anticipation a night of warmth and slumber. I entered the barn and stumbled in the dark. Good, here's the ladder!... One, two, three steps--the bed should be here! Groping about, I felt my revolver case and linen bag; then my hands encountered not the hay bed, soft and rounded, but a firm, extended and rather rough surface. What in the name of the mysteries could this be? A voice, muffled by the hay, enlightened me with disconcerting abruptness:

"Eh, my friend! when you have quite finished exploring my back, perhaps you will tell me what it is you want!"

One of my poilus had found the bed so inviting that he had appropriated it. Of course, when he discovered my identity, he flooded me with fantastic excuses. However, we spread the bed out a little and slept soundly beside each other for eight hours on end.

That morning we had moved on a short distance, via Douaumont, Fleury, Eix, across a countryside covered either with mud or trees, dominated by the forts with their grass-grown glacis and cupolas. We had crossed the line from Verdun to Conflans, marching ankle-deep in wet coal-dust. Before a smoke-blackened house at the barrier some enormous girasols thrust forth their yellow and black corollæ, their colours rendered more brilliant by the recent rain. We passed some squads of territorials with their tools on their shoulders, artillerymen from the big fortresses, slow-moving country wagons laden with forage, tree-trunks and wine casks. Wooden huts had been erected along the roadside, each of which had a name inscribed on it, such as: Happy Villa; The Good Children's Castle; Villa Piccolo, etc. Verses adorned some of them, not of high poetical attainment, but something after this fashion:

"You never see us weeping here-- Often you'll see us drinking beer. War may not be the best of fun, But we'll stick it till we've smashed the Hun!"

Some of these cabins were constructed of logs and roofed with pine branches, the most thickly-tufted ones, of course. The points of the spikes were turned downwards to prevent the rain trickling through to the layer of thatch below. The huts, erected at the owners' caprice, were much scattered, and followed the meanderings of the rising ground to the summit of a slight elevation dominating the road to the right. The doors, wide opened and yawning, revealed a dark, mysterious space, and made it appear almost as if the side of the slope was riddled with fathomless holes, while the bundles of brushwood made irregular green blots, clear and bright in the neighbourhood of the roadway, growing darker and vaguer as they approached the elevation, finally to vanish completely amid the undergrowth.

At length we arrived at Moulinville, where the quartermaster discovered an empty house, not yet too filthy for habitation, because the owner of it, on mobilization, had been stationed close at hand, and came over from time to time. Indeed, he turned up while we were dining--a huge "Meusien," with a high colour, stiff, cropped hair and looking gigantic in his artilleryman's cloak. He personally conducted us to a room, the floor of which creaked, and pointing to a bed informed us with tremendous pride and dignity that:

"You are welcome to sleep there, if you wish, but I shall not be able to supply you with sheets."

Sheets! And he was quite crestfallen, this good-hearted artilleryman, because he could not give us any sheets! We, Porchon and myself, certainly did not waste many regrets on such things when we climbed into bed a few moments ago and drew the curtains! Does the absence of sheets worry him, this hearty snorer at my side, perspiring as he is between the ticking and an eiderdown? It is certainly warm--perhaps even a little too warm. I am hot all over, back and front. From head to foot am I wet. It is as if I were sleeping in a bath!

_Monday, September 21st._

The cyclist of our company awakens me by shouting in my ear:

"Do you not wish to breakfast, Lieutenant?"

He is earning two bowls of black coffee, with two slices of golden-brown toast, most appetizing to look upon.

The hothouse kind of night we have passed has, I find, robbed me of all force and energy. My body is languid, my tongue thick, my scalp irritates. And as for Porchon, he cannot even open his eyes. He wrinkles up his face; a tremendous effort and the lids part; but they are so heavy that they close again.

Everything is slack to-day and rather depressing because of that slackness. I wandered slowly through the muddy streets. What am I going to do? In a couple of hours' time we are going to dine. That at least will be something, but what to do until that time?

I go from door to door on a commandeering expedition--a fowl, jam, wine, "it doesn't matter what, anything you have." Small success attends my effort. I obtain only a few onions and a bottle of liqueur, weak and oversweetened, obtained only after a struggle and at a preposterous price.

The Adjutant whom I meet offers me a drink. A quarter of an hour afterwards Major C---- calls for me and asks me to call at the house where he is messing with the Ensign. Waiters are opening bottles of preserves, and carving meat. The Major bursts in on them:

"Look sharp! Fetch a cloth, three glasses, and 'the' bottle and some water."

One more drink! Well, I suppose so, but my heaviness increases. I go back to my room, where I find a sleepy Porchon stretched out in a chair looking vaguely into space.

"What are we going to do? Shall we play écarté?"

He unfolds a piece of newspaper and takes out a pack of greasy cards. We sit down to play:

"The king!... Pass ... trump ... trump...."

"Ah, zut! What can you do with a game like this?"

"Again the king ... trump...."

But I fear I am not in a sociable mood. Porchon suddenly throws down his cards and says:

"I play no longer. I have had enough. You worry me.... And, after all, I bore myself. I think we had better go to bed early this evening!"

I am also bored with myself and think only of bed. A night such as last night, after all our trials, is either not enough or too much. Just one more, or more than one, and we shall have regained all our strength and spirits. Let us be thankful for small mercies. Of to-night at least we are certain, and although we do not know it, it may be that others are to follow. We have been informed we may anticipate a few days' rest in billets on the left bank of the Meuse.

Five o'clock in the evening. An order is circulated: "It is probable that the --th Infantry Division will move on to-night. Distribute the rations at once and be ready to leave at any moment."

So much for our night's rest! It appears that a reserve division has been thrown into confusion near the Spada Gap. We must go up in support. Gone is all hope of the night's rest, anticipated and almost promised us!... Still, one more effort to accept events with resignation, to obey implicitly any and all orders given us, no matter what they may be; once more the contortion which hoists the pack on to the back, an ever-present burden.

We leave at eight o'clock, with a long march through the night before us. The villages of Chatillon-sous-les-Côtes, Watronville, Ronvaux are passed. They are all full of soldiers, the murmur of whose voices comes to us through the darkness. Moonlight struggles feebly through the chinks of the old doors of barns; clear fires are burning before the houses and gleaming on ammunition dumps, over which men are squatting and keeping guard.

"Where are we?" ask some of our men.

"At Paname," voices reply.

"In the Meuse!"

"If anyone asks you, say you know nothing."

These and other answers we receive.

Haudiomont once again. The night is advancing; kitchen fires are going out now, but from time to time the wind sends a tiny flame leaping out of a brazier which flickers and dies to darkness again.

We enter the forest of Amblonville, black and immense.

The faintly-marked path winds ahead until lost to view between trees which overhang it to right and left, and seem to be marching up as though to descend upon us and crush us. I experience a sense of oppression. At first we marched towards the south-west, then towards the south-east; now we are again marching towards the south-west. And three hours have passed since first we plunged into the wood. I feel as if I were sinking into mud which becomes thicker and thicker each moment. When may we hope to reach the bottom?

At last the sky can be seen between the trees, and the darkness lightens little by little. Now I begin to breathe more freely. The moon has disappeared; but the sky is thick with innumerable stars. A sentinel at a cross-road stamps his feet to keep them warm. We question him:

"Are there any Boches about here?"

"I think so," he replied. "There is a good chance of coming across them to-morrow."

"Where are they?"

"Towards Amblonville farm."

"Is it far from here?"

"Near Mouilly, two, three miles; you have your back to it."

"And then!... (Censored)!... (Censored)!..."

The men begin to hum.

"... (Censored)!..."

"Silence behind there!" I bawl out. "Aubert, Lardin, silence! you fools! Or that little lullaby of yours won't have a pleasant ending!"

An abrupt halt, marking time.

Here we are, at Rupt-en-Wöevre. The regiment bivouacks in a field at one end of the village. I know nothing at all of the situation, and I find it difficult to take my bearings. The hour is now two in the morning.

We are chilled to the marrow. Porchon and I sit down, back to back, tapping one foot against the other while awaiting the coming of the day. The cold steals up our legs and stiffens them. We find it quite impossible to maintain our position. I tramp up and down a sloping road before some barns. From time to time a man half opens one of the doors and creeps in. By Jove! That's a good idea! I steal into one of the barns to find some thirty men already in occupation. An hour passes, maybe two, during which I sit half on a sack, half on an old hen, who ruffles herself and grumbles constantly.

Dawn cold and stark. We light a fire and endeavour to restore our circulation.

VI

IN THE WOODS

_Tuesday, September 22nd._

I start a few letters, fingers frozen, nose wet:

"I do not know how I look; but to tell the truth, my powers of resistance have astonished even myself. It is strange and marvellous how every one among us appears to possess a faculty for adapting himself to the immediate circumstances. Our hard life has hardened us and will keep us so, for however long it may continue. At the present moment, it would seem as if we had been born to wage war, to sleep in the open no matter what the weather, to eat when, where, and what we can, also as much as we can. You have a cloth on your table? Spoons, forks, all kinds of forks--for the oysters, the fruits, the snails, and so on? You even have a clean plate for each course--isn't it funny? Glasses are placed before you of all shapes and sizes, so fragile that a pressure of the hand would break them. And you drink your coffee--I have a vague memory that this is so--out of a fine glass which is not the same as that from which you drink your tea, for example! But how complicated all that is! We others have our pocket-knife, our mugs, and our fingers! I assure you they are quite sufficient...."

An interruption. A woman appears, thin and dirty, pushing before her a little yellow-haired girl, whose eyes are red-rimmed and tear-stained. The doctor having been consulted, prescribes for colic.

"And what do I owe you for that, doctor?" asks the woman.

"Nothing at all, madam."

But she draws from beneath her apron a dusty bottle. "I must 'recompinse' you somehow. There is not very much in it, but what there is tastes good. It is good: oh, but indeed it is!"

It is Toul wine, dry, thin and somewhat sharp. A brawn, turned out on to a plate, gives us an excellent lunch.

In the afternoon we pass to the observation trench. We overtake a group of lame men, without weapons, coats open, almost all of them limping along with a stick. Among them I recognize a friend of pre-war days. We shake hands and speak eagerly and with pleasure of common memories, before approaching the inevitable regrets. As he belonged to a regiment which was compelled to give way before the Boches, I asked him how it had come about. He shrugged his shoulders despondently.

"Masses of infantry; an endless hail of shell; not a gun to support us ... don't let's talk about it, old man."

After the iciness of the preceding night, a day of burning sunshine. I am wearing ridiculously thin boots, which decrease in size as my feet swell. I give stones a wide berth.

To the right of the road the fields roll away like a great cloth, fresh and green until they reach the heights covered with trees, whose luxuriant foliage seems to fall from the top to the bottom of the slopes.

"Single file through the cutting."

That is the sign that we are entering the zone of fire of the German guns. We climb and pass through the village of Mouilly, built on the side of a slope. Almost all the houses, with their plaster façades, are on one side of the road, the left. On the other side meadows stretch away to where the sun rises and where the green of the wooded highlands begins its cascade to the plains below. Enormous shell-holes mark the meadows, about which the upflung earth forms brown circles which look from the distance like enormous stains.

Woods. Some shrapnel bursts ahead of us, but far away. In the cutting we encounter a big grey motor-car, ornamented with gilt letters. One of its wheels has been blown away and its steel sides bear the mark of shells: it was the product of some great Leipzig firm.

We overtake a regiment of the division at the end of the wood on the Mouilly-Saint-Rémy road. A fight has taken place, and our 75's are still sending down a rain of shells, forming a barrage some five hundred yards before us. We stand and watch it, Porchon and I, together with the two officers we are going to relieve. They are both fine soldiers and speak unaffectedly of the battle they have just passed through. One of them, tall, bony, with tanned skin and black eyes almost feverishly keen above a fine nose, expresses himself shortly and precisely. The second, small, rather too affable, with a wrinkled face, laughing eyes, fresh lips and a brown beard, entertains us with a recital of horrors in a cheerful voice and warns us that we are very likely to "leave our skins over there."

The thunder of the 75's almost splits our ears. Occasionally a German shell flies past us with a shrill whistle and peppers the trees with a volley of shrapnel. Into the midst of this tumult we march and take up position. My section occupies about fifty yards of a trench already full of corpses.

"Out with your tools," I say to my men, "and dig for all you are worth."

Night falls. The cold increases. It is that hour when, the battle ended, the wounded who have not yet been brought in, cry aloud in their suffering and distress. And those calls, those appealings, those moanings, awaken anguish in all those compelled to listen to them; an anguish the crueller for the fighters who are chained to their posts by stern duty yet who long to rush out to their gasping comrades, to dress their wounds, to speak words of comfort to them, and to carry them to safety where fires burn brightly and warm. Yet we must not do so; we are chained to the spot, our hearts wrung, our nerves quivering, shivering at the sound of soul-stricken cries brought to us unceasingly by the night.

"A drink!..."

"Are you going to leave me to die here?..."

"Stretcher-bearers!..."

"Drink!..."

"Ah!..."

"Stretcher-bearers!..."

I hear some of my men say:

"Where the devil are the stretcher-bearers!" ... (Censored) ...

"They are like fleas--you can never find them when you look for them."

And before us the whole plain wrapped in darkness seems to shiver from the agony of those undressed wounds.

Voices soft, weary from having cried so long:

"... (Censored) ...

....?"

"Mother, oh, mother!"

"Jeanne, little Jeanne.... Oh! say that you hear me, my Jeanne!"

"I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty...."

Voices in anguish, panting and gasping:

"I won't die here like a rat!"

"Stretcher-bearers! Stretcher-bearers!... Stretcher-bearers!!!"

"... (Censored) ...

....?"

"You fellows, finish me off, for God's sake! Ah!..."

A German, not more than twenty yards away, cries out incessantly:

"Kamerad! Franzose! Kamerad! Kamerad! Franzose!"

And in a lower voice:

"Hilfe! Hilfe!"

His voice wavers and breaks into a wailing as of a crying child; then his teeth snap fiercely; then he shatters the night stillness with a beast's cry, like the howling of a dog baying at the moon.

Terrible beyond the power of words, that night. Every minute either Porchon or myself were jumping to our feet. The whole time we were under fire and the cold was truly cursed.

_Wednesday, September 23rd._

Relief appears at last. We depart through the woods along a pathway from which the undergrowth has been cleared, thus permitting us to see well ahead. During a short halt, several of the men break into exclamations of pleasure and delight:

"Hallo! Vauthier!"

"And you, Raynaud!"

"Well, I'm damned.... Baurain!"

"It is not possible! We thought you had gone for good.... What have you been doing?... Where do you come from?"

Three men report to me and show that they were ordered to rejoin on this date. I am pleased, for the three men, intelligent, devoted, and brave, are among the best under my command.

(Suppressed by the Censor.)

(Suppressed by the Censor.)