Part 14

Elbow to elbow and forehead to forehead, the six men at the table are silent. I look down upon the circle of light and the smoke of the pipes. Not a sound is to be heard. Buried in the mound, surrounded by meadows and woods, the fort is as cold and mute, as remote, desolate, and dead, as a soldier’s grave in the corner of a field.

A FRANCONIAN QUARTERMASTER

_December 4, 1914._

The “Salle du Jeu de Paume” was born, if I may use the expression, from a conjunction of coups d’état.

Day by day the quartermaster became more exasperated at the happiness of five Frenchmen. In accordance with the good German rules, they ought to have been sleeping upon the damp cement in the basement, which is really a dungeon. But since we have had palliasses, the house-surgeon, the apothecary, and their friends—Laloux, Badoy, Scherrer, Massé, and Noverraz—have been sleeping in the consulting-room, where they are masters. This first-floor casemate, adjoining the _Kommandantur_, is dry, has a boarded floor and a southern aspect. Every evening they made their beds side by side and slept the sleep of the just. M. von Stengel good-naturedly closed his eyes. The Bavarian guard, grateful for the castor oil and the cuppings of Laloux, did likewise. But Ploss, the reservist quartermaster, a Franconian stonemason who speaks of himself as a “sculptor in the building trade,” was scandalized. He is a patriot, a flaming patriot—except where his own skin is concerned. Called to the front a few weeks ago, he went to weep upon the commandant’s bosom. The weeping gained its end, and he is still at Fort Orff.

Frenchmen sleeping dry, with plenty of room! Five Frenchmen bedded in a spacious casemate! Frenchmen passing night and day in the next room to the _Kommandantur_! Ploss’ soul was desolate.

One morning he went to see Baron von Stengel, and declared that the casemate of the guard, which adjoins on the west the commandant’s casemate, was too small, and that it was essential to use the consulting-room as an overflow. The consulting-room, divided in two by a wooden partition, could serve as a sort of office for the _Feldwebel_ and for himself, the quartermaster; thus the faithful _Landwehrleute_ would have the delight of guarding their dear _Herr Major_ on both sides. The argument was irresistible. The _Herr Major_ acquiesced. Intoxicated with delight, Ploss promptly went up and down the fort announcing the news everywhere, to the guard, to the interpreters, and to the banished men. Prouder even than M. de Morny after the 2nd of December, he luxuriated in his coup d’état.

The door of the room occupied by the six French medical officers opens into the same corridor as the _Kommandantur_, but on the other side of the main entrance. Laloux and his companions promptly go to knock at the door. They explain the situation. Next minute, M. Langlois, in full dress, wearing gloves, emerges. He descends upon M. von Stengel. He has the most pressing need of a consulting-room, spacious, airy, and sunny! He is crafty, and as persistent as he is diplomatic. The baron agrees to let him have No. 46, the next room to the French officers. An obstinate defender of our rights, he demands in addition that the members of his staff, who give their services to French and Germans alike, shall have permission to sleep in their workroom. Permission is granted. He returns. Our exiles, whistling and singing joyously, hasten to remove their palliasses. Ploss watches them sourly; his coup d’état has missed fire. These French monkeys, they always fall on their feet! But what sort of a _Herr Major_ is this, who can refuse them nothing?

Downstairs, in kitchen No. 22, another turn of fortune’s wheel! The major from the Ingolstadt headquarters, who is but a Ploss with a commission, has been inspecting the fort, and has caught sight of the twin palliasses of Dutrex and Riou. Placed against the wall opposite the stoves, they have been an offence to him. “Clear out, messieurs!” What are we to do? Our places have been filled in our old casemates. We, too, visit M. Langlois. Hitting two birds with one stone, he includes us, as well as Durupt, the money-changer, d’Arnoult, the secretary, and Détry, the dentist, in his request to M. von Stengel. Thus the entire pharmaceutical staff and the whole French bureaucracy of Fort Orff are assigned to the consulting-room.

This happened ten days ago. Since then the victims of the two coups d’état have furnished their quarters. They have adorned their windows with half curtains and have divided their casemate in two with a hanging of flowered lutestring. During the day they arrange their ten palliasses in two piles and cover them with rugs, so that in hours of despondency they have two imposing couches—thrones, as it were. At the very end of the room are the two tables, the one known as the “operating-table,” and the little table whose heavy drawers contain iodine, cupping-glasses, and blue ointment. At their request, Le Second has designed for them shades “à la ballet russe” for their two lamps. On the shelves they have arranged the vermicelli boxes which they use as lockers. The men of room 26, a centre of artistic life, have made them some additional shelves. An old herring-box plays the part of flower-vase, filled at this moment with silver thistles and a spray of barberry, magnificently red. Ploss can’t get over it! His own “büro” is a melancholy place. The old consulting-room, formerly spruce and gay, has become a mere empty loft since he took possession. _Herr Gott Sakrament!_ Hang these Frenchmen!

After dinner the medical officers, especially MM. Langlois, Romant, and Bouvat, come to No. 46. We draw back the curtains. We stretch a string across the room to serve as net, and for an hour we give ourselves up to the joys of chamber-tennis, using our hands as rackets. It is for this reason that the new consulting-room has received the imposing name of Salle du Jeu de Paume. Sometimes, also, it is designated “la chambre des huiles,” _das Oelenzimmer_.

Poor Ploss. He cannot get the better of these Frenchmen. He would like to see them yielding, to see them cringe beneath his rod, to see them thoroughly miserable. And yet, whatever he can do, despite their hunger and their fits of the blues, they are cheerful. They sing, they decorate their prison. They are always finding new devices. If they have no tools, they make some. They work unceasingly in wood and stone. All the casemates have tables now, stools, chairs, lockers, water-kegs, draughts, and chessmen. Guiton d’Ancenis and Robert le Bordelais are neither smiths nor carpenters, and yet No. 26 is well furnished. They had no spoons; they “forged” some out of old “bully-beef” tins. They had no forks, but they have cut some from the birches on the slopes. To economize matches, they have made a float-light. To save their fingers from the heat of the boiling soup when it is poured into their bowls, they have fashioned wickerwork saucers. Almost all of them had been compelled to give up their knives; lengths of iron cask-hoop, patiently hammered straight and sharpened, have supplied the lack. Their windows are decorated with tiny pine-trees, planted in herring-boxes. They hope to take them home and grow them in France.

Do what he could, Ploss has not been able to stamp out this creative fervour. He knows it, and it infuriates him. Oh, if he had but been commandant! How he would have hunted down without mercy all those concerned in the underground traffic, in the great commercial enterprises by which our illicit supply of provisions has been gradually centralized. There are two such enterprises, and thanks to the competition between them we have for some weeks been securing, at stable and almost reasonable prices, supplementary rations of inestimable value. With what joy he would compel Marin and Brissard to shut up shop, two men who, with a chance armamentarium, have in kitchen No. 42 established a flourishing foundry of tin rings. And Crussol, who puts the finishing touches to the stones which are prepared for him by a whole squad of drillers and escutcheoners, and who has secured a reputation and customers even among the officers at the Ingolstadt headquarters. How promptly would he be dislodged from his niche in the northern parapet, where he works all day in any weather, squatting and mute like a second Paphnuce.

But, thank goodness, though Ploss can restrict as much as he pleases the meagre governmental rations (and he does not fail to make use of his opportunities in this respect), his jurisdiction does not pass beyond the limits of the storerooms and the kitchens. Throughout the rest of the fort the major reigns supreme, and his regime is so strictly courteous that even the most ill-conditioned among the non-commissioned officers of the guard think twice before ordering any of us strict arrest on bread and water.

Ploss is disheartened. Ploss is wounded. Ploss is sad. Ploss envies Fort A3, a German league from Fort Orff. Here a mere non-commissioned officer is in command. The fort is in truth little more than a redoubt. Two hundred and fifty Frenchmen of the 6th corps are packed into the place. Their only exercise ground consists of muddy and dark passages, a narrow ditch, and a tiny platform of about a hundred square feet. There is no upper story. In front of the windows, fifty yards away, are the iron gate and the precipitous slope. Eternal twilight reigns within. The governor is like a narrow-minded usher, a jealous and timid despot, trembling before orders from headquarters and terrible to the prisoners. If only Ploss were _Vize-Feldwebel_ of Fort A3!

I know this little fort. My friend Cambessédès, house-surgeon from Paris, a doctor serving in M. Langlois’ group of stretcher-bearers, has been sent there from Fort 8 as medical officer, accompanied by M. Valois, a prosector from Montpellier. In a note, clandestine, of course, he let us know his whereabouts. Kindly, as usual, Baron von Stengel allowed the medical officers and me to pay them a visit. Thus it came to pass that last Sunday, escorted by a _Gefreiter_ and a soldier with fixed bayonet, we walked from Orff to Wegstetten. It was thawing. Tiny blue rivulets flowing through the pastures and along the furrows of the ploughs reflected the quiet sky. We met groups returning from vespers: women, children, and old men, peaceful folk who nodded to us as they passed.

When we reach the fort, which is insidiously buried in the interior of a bald eminence and is invisible a hundred paces away, a parley is necessary. The _Gefreiter_ hands the officer of the guard of A3 the permit issued by the commandant of Fort Orff. The sentry opens the gate. We pass in. Lining the walls, the red-trousers form an inquisitive and saluting hedge. Cambessédès runs up quite out of breath. Through long, dark, and narrow passages he conducts us to the medical officers’ quarters.

These are screened off by wooden partitions from the remainder of a gloomy casemate. Two beds, two wooden chairs, a table; no vacant space. It suggests a midshipman’s cabin on a man-of-war. The air is raw. Illustrations cut from the _Woche_ are pinned to the wall. Upon a little shelf above my friend’s bed I see his wife’s photograph. A whiff of French perfume is wafted to my senses. I think of Paris, home, the fireside, work, peace! I say little during the visit. We sit down haphazard on the beds, the chairs, the table. A little soldier from Châlons, very quick and lively in his movements, comes in with a jug of coffee and an odd assortment of half-pint mugs. The company talks of the Geneva Convention and of medical and technical matters. Those from Orff get the others to tell of the recent happenings at Fort 8.

I pay scant attention to these petty details, swallowing my coffee mechanically amid the clash of voices and laughter. All my thoughts are in Paris. How strange seems this society of Frenchmen in the remote Bavarian redoubt. It is borne in on me of a sudden that madness rules the world.

Cambessédès and Valois, as hosts, now show us round. A crowd of soldiers follows us. Some of the adjutants post us concerning the life of the prisoners. Poor fellows, they have no von Stengel! In A3 it is impossible to procure any kind of supplement to the official rations. It is impossible to get a jug of good beer from time to time to keep up one’s spirits.

From the platform there is a fine view over the village of Wegstetten and the wood-crowned hills. M. Langlois, at least, thinks so. He looks with all his eyes. He is in ecstasy—when the sentry, a stumpy Swabian in a black greatcoat which is threadbare, weatherworn, and turning rusty-green, pounces upon him, charges bayonet, and touches the major’s tunic with the point of the steel. Our surgeon-in-chief protests: he has made no attempt to climb up the turf-covered breastwork; he has not trespassed into a forbidden region; he has merely been admiring the view. “Quite so,” barks the obstinate little bulldog, snorting angrily; “to look outside is forbidden.”

Unquestionably A3 is very different from Fort Orff! Whatever you do, baron-gaoler, do not ask for leave until we are set at liberty. Do not hand us over to a Ploss!

But even Ploss has his good hours. French lightness of heart is able from time to time to exert its charm over this hard Franconian noddle. His surly air passes off. With a brisk gesture he pushes his greasy _Mütze_ back over the nape of his neck. His brown tuft of hair makes its appearance, giving him an engaging and almost sportive air. During these calms, Davit, the Hercules cook, can with impunity seize the quartermaster, wrestle with him, and make as if to throw him head-first into a boiling cauldron. The paunchy cook of No. 42, when the herrings are being distributed, can then, under Ploss’ very eyes, sneak a good-sized “Bismarck” and stuff it into the pocket of his smock, with the tail sticking out. But beware! The quartermaster’s ordinary temper will suddenly return, and the prisoner with whom he has just been laughing will find himself sentenced to three days’ cells simply for having kept up the game for a second after the eclipse. Ploss is then capable of making allegations likely to bring a man before a firing squad. He will say, for example, “Prisoner X attempted to kill me by striking me on the head with a ladle.”

* * * * *

What a wonderful thing is this French light-heartedness! Heavy-witted northerners term it levity when they should speak of it as vitality. These little Frenchmen! To-day you see them sad at heart. The weather is grey; a languorous humidity prevails which seems to reduce the scale of the landscape and to make the noises draw nearer. We hear the roar of the trains in the plain, trains moving westwards, towards France. Those afoot walk as in a dream; many never leave their palliasses. The men from Provence are thinking of the sunshine; the Parisians recall the joyous meetings of Saturday evening when work is done; the Bretons listen in imagination to the heavy, rhythmical sound of the great surges breaking at the foot of the native cliff. Every one has “the hump.”

Suddenly comes the sound of singing from the corridors. “They are singing! Have the letters come?” One and all rush to be first at the main gate, close to the _Kommandantur_, beneath the gloomy arch. There is coming and going and much talk. “Is it true that there are lots of letters?”—“Two or three hundred, so d’Arnoult says!”—“What luck! When shall we get them?”—“Oh, the sorting will take some time.” The procession to the kitchens is animated. The hope of being about to receive a letter has eased the nervous tension.

But what, among eleven hundred men, is the handful of letters reaching the fort from time to time? For one who is made happy, there are thirty disappointed. My friend Foch, the awe-inspiring sergeant of the “vitriers” [infantry chasseurs], the most martial man in the fort, a hero, has not yet received a single line from Colroy-la-Grande, in the Vosges, near the Lubine pass. Since August the French have been fighting on this crest, advancing and retreating alternately. In the frontier villages the skirmishing never ceases. What has become of his brave wife, who, scorning bullets, leading her seven-year-old twins by the hand, used to bring dinner to her husband in the firing-line? Is she dead? Has she been interned? And his house, the little house known so well to the men of the 10th Chasseurs, where they had often received food and drink, is it still standing? Poor Foch! His energetic countenance, with its flashing eyes, is clouded; his tongue, formerly so glib at a story, is stilled. Nor is he the only one who continues to await the first letter from home. I am among those specially favoured, and of ten letters sent to me, but one comes to hand, taking three and often four weeks on the journey.

Fortunately, money orders and parcels, exempt from the delays of the censorship, arrive regularly. Received as if they had been Father Christmas himself, with transports of delight which well-nigh make us jump for joy like children, these are the great dissipators of depression. They have completely modified our life, bringing into the fort a sort of plenty. Jerseys, woollen helmets, Russian caps, comforters, thick hand-knitted socks; every one is now wadded against the cold. Muffled in wool, men toboggan merrily down the slopes. Sometimes we have little dinner-parties. On the rickety tables knocked together by our amateur carpenters there are cups of tea and chocolate, pieces of gingerbread, sponge-cakes, jams, long twists of French tobacco. These love-feasts are not very grand, but to us they are delightful. We nibble our piece of cake, we sip from our steaming mug, noiselessly, slowly, our hearts filled with tender thoughts. We think of the hands which have made the tart, of the eyes which have watched the seething of this jam. If one of the guests should make a joke, he is wasting his wit. The laugh dies on our lips. Every one is full of memories. Our picnics are communions.

After the horror of the first two months of imprisonment, when many of us knew no other feeling than that of hunger—hunger by day and by night, the hunger that keeps a man awake and gnaws like an ulcer—now that winter has come we are having a fairly agreeable time. Our bodies have become accustomed to the regimen. The monotony of life is broken by happy events, by the arrival of parcels, money orders, and letters. The work we have had to do at Ingolstadt, Hepperg, and Wegstetten has widened the bounds of our prison. Every one has made a circle of friends. Some of the casemates, with their tables for bridge or poker, have now the aspect of clubs. We have learned how to circumvent German discipline. Our service for the supply of smuggled victuals works smoothly, so that we are at least able to provide ourselves with chocolate and tobacco. Some have purchased books; numerous French works belonging to the Fayard, Nelson, and Flammarion libraries have made their way through the gates, across the ditches, and over the walls; they pass from hand to hand until they fall to pieces. Some of the prisoners are learning German. My big dictionary is, as it were, an ever open mill, where all can make themselves at home. Every room has its writers of topical songs. Stretched on their palliasses, paper and pencil in hand, they cudgel their brains for rhymes. I cannot say that the outcome is sublime, but the verses, caustic without ill-nature, peppered with puns, and stuffed with allusions to the point of unintelligibility, amuse us all. The following stanzas dealing with the “ministerial council,” written by Cormarie and sung by Saint-Lanne of Agen at the Saturday concerts in No. 7, go to the air of the _Paimpolaise_:

Nos deux majors veulent extraire Du beau riz si blanc et si sain Une huile pure limpide et claire Qu’ils appel’ront l’huil’ de riz-sain Pour avoir le _Ri_ _Où_ s’adresseront-ils? Chambre 17 ou aux cuisines! Il écrit toute la journée! A chaque repas, drôl’ de combine! On lui sert des figaro-thés.

Il porte pour la circonstance L’habit vert d’Académicien; Les palmes en sont restées en France Pour les canards de son quotidien; Car je les ai vu Et même à _fon lupt_. Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvages Car ils s’ébattent soir et matin Avant d’être envoyés aux sages Dans une mar’ d’eau de _Laubin_.

But France is a nation of prose writers; at the fort there are many more authors of memoirs than of songs. Memoirs abound.[28] Why is it that men who have never before tried to record their experiences in writing should feel impelled to recount the happenings of their campaign, and to describe their feelings of discouragement during a lengthy imprisonment? Do they do it to relieve tedium? Have they an obscure need of confession? Or do they consider the circumstances of their life in war-time so exceptional as to deserve the honour, in their view an extraordinary one, of written record? In my opinion this last motive predominates. Rightly or wrongly, the “little soldiers of the republic” regard the present conflict in an epic light, and at bottom, notwithstanding their ingrained tendency to grumble, are not a little flattered at being among the heroes of this affair. They know that as long as men exist people will continue to talk about the great war, and that in the schools children will learn the names of the battles in which their fathers have fought and suffered. They want to be able to astonish their little ones, to be able to say: “I was there; I fought in this battle; read my account of the matter and you will see how everything happened, what my leaders did, and when I received my wound.” Men, Frenchmen above all, whatever their station, have such a hunger for fame.

Yesterday I came across Maze on the slopes, wearing his great red chéchia, which accentuates his stature, already considerable. His shirt was drying in the wind, tied to the lightning-conductor, and flapping like a flag. He was sitting behind the parapet, sheltered from the wind, and was reading. “What may you be reading?”—“My battle.”—“Can I look at it?”—“Here you are.”

In his note-book, worn and dog’s-eared, the following account was pencilled on the pages he showed me. I reproduce it verbatim, with its mistakes in spelling: