Part 6

These were their happy days. The gateway leading to the open was black on Sundays with a gaping crowd: townsfolk in their Sunday best, wearing cocks’ feathers in their green felt hats; rich farmers’ wives trying to look comfortable in hats; swarms of children, for the most part bare-footed; peasants in ill-fitting ready-made clothes; pathetic village dames, clad as in Dürer’s pictures, the head covered with a kerchief, a black fichu over the shoulders, a wadded corsage to fill out their figures. All these idlers, looking poverty stricken when compared with those of like class in France, would spend hour after hour staring at the “pantalons rouges,” occasionally shouting through the bars their eternal “Paris _kaput_,” the cry which had been reiterated from Dieuze to Strasburg, from Stuttgart to Ingolstadt, and with which our ears had been ringing since our capture.

This foolish jubilation exasperated Durupt. He kept quiet about it for some days. At length, however, having recovered his spirits, he threw himself heart and soul into the task of keeping up our hopes.

“It is absolutely impossible that we can be beaten,” he would say to the preachers of evil. “Agreed, their advance guards are at Rheims, Meaux, and Compiègne. But does this mean that Paris has been taken? What about the naval guns with which the Government has filled the forts? Make your minds easy; they will lose much time and much blood before they will plant their standard on the Place de la Concorde! Let us suppose the worst. Let us suppose that Paris has fallen. Does that finish the matter? Remember Chanzy’s plan. In his view, the strategic bastion of France is not Paris but the Massif Central, the Auvergne and Cévennes mountains. Let them make their way, then, to Clermont-Ferrand and Aurillac! Besides, we are not fighting single-handed. The Russian waterspout is getting ready, and will soon break over them; it will make short work of their five poor army corps. Its waters will dash on to Berlin. The floods will chase their navy out of the Kiel Canal, will force it into the North Sea—where the English dreadnoughts are awaiting it, and will swallow it at one gulp!”

The least enthusiastic among the prisoners were enraptured at these speeches. Sometimes a voice would be heard saying, “Even so, we shall be here till the spring!” To which Durupt would peremptorily reply: “All Saints’ Day will find us at home! I know Germany as I know the palm of my hand. The country is penniless. Moreover, it is not with France alone, this time, that Germany has to do; she has to fight France, Belgium, England, and Russia—that ocean of humanity. You must be mad, I tell you, if you do not feel that Germany is going to be wiped out!”

In these surroundings, Durupt is the man with a duty, a mission. Though he is a prisoner, every hour is fully occupied, each moment has its allotted task. His life is governed by a single rule: “Every day in which we fail to enlarge our own hopes and to spread discouragement among the Germans is a day lost.” Consequently, the essential matter for him is to secure news.

The instant he has finished his supervision of the distribution of our meals and his work in casemate 16, off he goes on the hunt. He accosts Max, the canteen-keeper, the mightiest beer-drinker on the Upper Danube, a light-hearted soldier, florid, paunchy, so rough that he laughs when he tells you that in the Vosges a French shrapnel has just taken off his brother’s arm, and yet, though rough, a good fellow. It is from him that Durupt learns the gossip in the _Wirtschaften_ of Hepperg, Lenting, Kösching, Wegstätten, Oberhaumstadt—in a word, in all the village taverns within reach of the fort, both on the hills and in the plain. Having finished with Max, he proceeds to pump the guard.

Here his reception is rather cold, for he is a poor diplomatist, and shows too plainly to these men of the Landwehr that at bottom he is their hereditary enemy. Still, he has a talk in the guardroom, smokes a cigar, and drinks a glass of beer with the men, exchanging _Prosits_. Sometimes he sees on the table, amid the beer-jugs and other debris of the meal, a newspaper which they have forgotten to put away when the Frenchman came in. My Durupt pounces upon it and stuffs it into his pocket. He strides across the bridge, hurries down the staircase, and bursts into the kitchen, breathless and radiant, with the air of a victorious athlete or a hero who has saved the republic, and brandishes his paper as if it were a flag taken from the enemy. Now he reads it, translates and comments, with exclamations of joy or of rage at the passages which delight or infuriate him. He actually talks, argues, and fights with this newspaper; he regards it as a flesh and blood Bavarian who is trying to deceive him, and with whom he has to join issue. Woe to the Bavarian if he does not admit defeat, or at least disquietude, for he will then learn to what lengths Durupt can go in his anger!

Never shall I forget these readings of the _Ingolstädter Zeitung_. If I am ever tempted to doubt that the press exercises a terrible power, that its influence upon the public resembles that of a shell bursting in a cavalry square, I shall call to mind certain hours of imprisonment here, passed round our table, Durupt reading aloud, Dutrex and I sketching maps to clarify the news, while leaning over our shoulders, anxiously following us, are Paix, Scherrer, Badoy, Noverraz, Donel, Lagier, and a few others. When we break up in the evening we know what will be the public sentiment next day. According as Durupt is able to sing a triumphal pæan, or, on the other hand, the evidence of misfortune is overwhelming, will our thousand comrades be light-hearted or sad, will hope or despair permeate the fort from this centre, from this table, from the newspaper on this table, from the group of men who sit round it evening after evening.

Sometimes Durupt, returning to the kitchen excited by the chase, is pulled up by the notice I have posted for the protection of my work: “Please do not speak to me.” He then sits down beside me without saying a word and unfolds the newspaper he has got hold of. Elbows on table, head in hands, his whole body bent eagerly forward, Claudel would say he is engaged on the “ingurgitation” of his paper.

Look at him, dissecting the leading article, heavy fare in which the most trifling details of information are sandwiched between philosophical disquisitions. He turns the fragments over and over as a starving man turns over the contents of a dustbin. He labours to unveil hidden meanings, to detect masked avowals. He displays a truly German patience in securing here and there, _rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, the name of a town, the number of an army corps, or some other shadow of positive information.

Then he brings forth his maps, which are shabby in appearance, worn at the folds, stained by the rain and sweat of his campaign in the Upper Vosges. He takes out his pencil. He marks the places. At length, unable to restrain himself any longer, he feels that he must tell me what has happened. He turns my protective notice with its face to the wall, and starts upon his commentary.

The splendid thing is that this commentary invariably leads up to the proof of a victory. For him every French retreat is a strategic movement, while every German retreat is a rout. All good news is positively certain; all bad news is a falsehood published to restore the courage of the German populace. Guided by these principles of criticism, he arrives at a certainty of the truth; he then cons it over to himself, gives it a portable form, and hurries off to disseminate it through the fort. He bursts into No. 19, where Merlier, Charlier, and Gautin receive him as an angel of the Lord; into No. 17, where his enthusiasm breaks vainly against the obstinate and disdainful pessimism of Guido; into No. 34, where Brissot and d’Arnoult, two mischievous devils who are equally well acquainted with German and with the beer served out to the guardroom, treat him simply as a gossip. Unfortunately, in the course of his round he will encounter, now the quartermaster, now a _Gefreiter_, now one of the sentinels. Remorselessly he overwhelms them with his news, thus making himself more unpopular with them than before.

Thus he takes ample revenge for the “Paris _kaput_” of the first few days. Dutrex and I chaff him about it, saying: “You’re behaving like a Boche in being so regardless of your adversaries’ feelings!”

“Poor fellows,” he makes answer, “it is obvious that you don’t know the Germans. As far as they are concerned the proverb is absolutely true: ‘Oignez vilain, il vous poindra; poignez vilain, il vous oigndra!’”[12]

I was walking the other day with Durupt and Sergeant Foch. We were on the little footpath which runs along the parapet, and opposite to us, across the great ditch, on the road which skirts the outer slopes, there appeared two German women. They were walking slowly, wheeling bicycles, and they looked at us curiously. We mended our gait, for no one likes to look unhappy under the eyes of the enemy.

Durupt spoke to them in German.

“Have you a newspaper?”

“No.”

“What’s the latest news?”

“Things are going well in France.”

“For which side?”

“For ours. Trainloads of wounded are coming back every day.”

“Your wounded?”

“Yes.”

“In that case, it is for our side that things are going well!”

“Possibly.”

These women had such fat bodies and short legs as to produce an impression of caricature. Sergeant Foch, Alsatian and infantry chasseur, has a malicious wit. He was cogitating a joke, but I managed to induce him to suppress it.

We walked on slowly, talking across the ditch, and the women said:

“You treat our prisoners badly, and you finish off the wounded!”

“Who told you that?”

“It’s in the papers.”

“All your papers lie, and you are stupid enough to believe them. It is just the same with the war news. You are beaten everywhere. It’s perfectly clear to any one who can read intelligently. Yet you believe yourselves to be the victors! The newspapers take their readers to be idiots. Is it possible that they are right? The real fact is that we are starved here, whilst in France, where people are rich and generous, your prisoners are fed on the fat of the land!”

“It may be so. But it was those rascals of English who caused all the trouble. If only I had them here!” (the larger woman shook her fist). “The English are the apaches of Europe (_die Lumpen Europas_)!”

Thus the conversation began. It must have lasted about half an hour. The conscientious Durupt “sowed discouragement” in the minds of his interlocutors, refusing to leave them until he felt that their confidence in victory had been undermined.

SUNDAY

_September 27, 1914._

I have been at work all the morning.

At ten o’clock, Guido came to fetch me for mass. Under his arm he carried the great missal, borrowed from the curé of Lenting, in which he likes me to follow the service. The sermon was delivered by one of his colleagues. It filled me with astonishment, so harsh, so pitiless was its tone, reeking of fire and brimstone, representing God as a cross between a satrap and a bogy. The preacher seemed a veritable priest of Saturn. His firmness of conviction, be it noted, was absolute. But—shades of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Francis of Sales, where were you?

Guido often discusses his faith with me in the evenings, when, before the roll-call, we stroll together on the deserted glacis, just after the stars have come out. He takes great pains to expound to me the beauties of the Catholic liturgy. It is, in very truth, incomparable. For those who can believe in the miracle of the host, nothing in the world can be so touching or so sublime as the daily drama of the mass. But what a pity that it has to be said in Latin, so that none but those who have had a classical education can appreciate it to the full. This morning, for instance, I doubt if there were three of the comrades able to understand the Epistle and the Gospel of the day. If it is considered essential to retain Latin as a symbol of universalism, why should not the Latin reading be instantly followed by vernacular rendering of these verses of Scripture wherein are contained the essentials of our faith, be it Roman Catholic or Protestant?

Yet how simple and how moving was the ritual, improvised, shortened, of necessity reduced to its elements—altar, candles, incense, vestments. No Saint-Sulpician imagery! Bare walls, rough and white. It was possible to fancy oneself in a catacomb, in the first ages of the church.

Quite recently this armoured keep has been deprived of its four or five ancient guns. There they were at their posts, muzzles in the loopholes, ready at the supreme moment to sweep with their fire the north of the counterscarp beyond the second encircling wall. They had been in this damp crypt for perhaps thirty years, without ever being used. Now they are on their way to the Russian front. The Germans must be hard put to it for guns, to make use of these relics!

The crowd of the faithful, French soldiers and Bavarian _Landwehrleute_, standing indiscriminately, peacefully pressed shoulder to shoulder, served to warm the casemate a trifle. I shivered, none the less, whilst Boude, with a voice grave and sweet, sang the ample strophes of the _Adoro te_ of St. Thomas. At one moment, impressed by the strong and noble simplicity of this sanctuary of exile, I called up in memory the interior of the church attended by the bathers of Trouville. The contrast was so violent that.…

* * * * *

In the curé of Lenting’s missal, I have read several times lately, lying on my heap of straw, the couplets of the _Adoro te_. What an ardent hymn it is! How sublime is its cry of passion! When it was written, the cult of the eucharist was, so to say, novel, and had numerous opponents within the church. Béranger, the Angevin, a species of early Calvin, denied the material transformation of the elements. Christianity took sides about the matter.

It is only periods of combat which are fruitful. To-day the altar is too peaceable. Too many questions are considered closed. I doubt if a St. Thomas or a St. Bonaventura would now vie with one another in love and genius to sing, as sincerely as did these saints of old, the flesh and the blood of Christ in the host.

Mass said, we hastened to the ordinary. It consisted of soup and a morsel of pork. The distribution of the meal lasted until two. Then Dutrex, Durupt, the cooks, and I sat round the ministerial table to dine in our turn. It was late, and we were hungry. I furnished some cigars, smuggled goods. Dutrex provided tea, likewise smuggled. As there were eight of us and we had but four half-pint mugs, it was necessary to use four enamelled iron bowls—basins belonging to Fort Orff. The tea was lost in the bottom of these; one might have imagined it had been dispensed with a medicine-dropper. But how good it was! With our half-pint mugs and our bowls we clinked three times, drinking to France, to the destruction of autocracy and militarism in Europe, to those at home. Our meagre love-feast had quite a family air. Cooks and “ministers” alike, we all felt that we were truly brothers.

After dinner, Dutrex, Durupt, and I went for a walk. There was a high wind as we strolled along the parapets. In shady corners, I was able to pluck some dwarf gentians, mosses, and lichens. I even discovered a tuft of dwarf heather from which the flowers had almost all fallen. I have arranged this posy in my campaigner’s mug. There it is, beside your portrait. If only we could hope to get away from here before it fades!

Durupt left us to attend vespers, whilst I went on walking with Dutrex. At ordinary times he is a man of extreme reserve, fencing off his intimate soul, and all the more unapproachable in proportion as he becomes gayer; but to-day, as if in spite of himself, he was a little expansive.

There had been a silence, and then he said:

“Just at this hour, coming from his office, my father has doubtless been greeted by the words, ‘Still no news of the little one?’ I’m afraid I shall find them greatly aged.”

“But, my dear fellow, they’ll get young again fast enough when they see you!”

“I have a presentiment,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Look out at the view before us, this dead countryside. No smoke rises from Ingolstadt. There is not a soul in the fields. Does not this suggest defeat? Last Sunday there were still some men among the idlers at the gate who came to stare at the French. To-day there were only women and children. All their men are at the front. And this wind from France! I am sure that it is sweeping back their armies. I am confident that just now, when we were drinking our toasts, we were unwittingly celebrating a French victory.”

He went on to speak of his family and of his studies. The cold breeze stung our faces. A chill vapour was floating across the melancholy plain, so that it seemed as if all that we looked down upon was covered with mysterious veils of crêpe. How sweet it was to me to listen, in exile, to the delicately simple confidences of this son of France.

When I re-entered the “salon,” Durupt, back from vespers, was reading the German translation of a novel by Sienkiewicz, _Mit Feuer und Schwert_. He turned towards me with a dazed and yet decisive air: “Old Riou, I have a presentiment of victory!”

THE VICTORY OF THE MARNE

_September 28, 1914._

A batch of eighty-two convalescent wounded arrived at the fort on the stroke of five. We thought at first that they were ordinary prisoners sent here direct from the last battle. We were already running to meet them on the bridge, eager for trustworthy news, ready to throw a fire of questions at the unexpected messengers across the curtain of Bavarian bayonets. Then we noticed that several of them were limping, while others, though not limping, were leaning upon sticks after the manner of old men, and we perceived that they had all lost the bronzing of trench and camp life. We were disappointed. These white-faced men came from the hospitals of Ingolstadt, and such drafts, as a rule, bring but little news.

While the transfer was being effected, and while the two German non-commissioned officers, the one belonging to the fort and the one belonging to the town, paper and pencil in hand, ticked off their men as sheep are counted at a market, we studied our comrades’ appearance. They were not very ragged. They had almost completely repaired the terrible havoc of battle.

The havoc of battle! These words have no meaning to a fire-eater past the age for active service who fights his battles among women. He speaks of the beauty of the assault, of the heroism of a bayonet charge. All that his imagination conceives is the richly dressed shop-front of war. It would be different if he knew the reality that lies behind! One must have been over several battlefields immediately after the fighting in order to understand the meaning of the phrase, “the havoc of battle.”

“They throw away their shakos, their muskets, even their colours,” writes Victor Hugo. Alas, dropping with fatigue, some of them will even throw away their coats. You see them in shirtsleeves, running across the stubble. The firing gets hotter; suddenly a shell bursts, and a man is wounded in three places—hit in the back, scratched on the thigh, and deeply torn in the arm. He falls. To make matters worse it begins to rain. The ground soon becomes a slough. The battle passes off into the distance. Rain continues. Night comes. Our man, half drowned, and almost buried in a furrow, no longer hears a sound. He tries to rise, but finds it impossible. He strains his eyes to see something. The effort is useless. He is glued to the ground; he can see nothing beyond the tuft of grass where his head is resting, nothing unless it be, close at hand, the mist-wraiths which gradually surround him and hide him. In anguish he cries: “Maman, maman!” He believes himself lost. “Maman!” He screams this with all his might. It is an appeal, a complaint, a prayer. He is in pain. He is parched with thirst. “Maman, maman!”

The stretcher-bearers have heard the cry. “The ambulance!” they shout to reassure him, making a speaking-trumpet of their hands. Here they are with their red lamps knocking against their legs. A red cross man takes our soldier on his back. The wounded man groans. What can be done? They let him groan. On the road is waiting a forage cart with straw on the bottom. It creeks and jolts; it is a bed of torture. It is packed with wounded. The rain never ceases. Our man feels that he is dying of cold, but he has the good luck to faint. The cart reaches a dilapidated farm. Beside the entrance are two lanterns, one white and the other red; it is the field hospital.

As soon as its turn comes the blood-stained bundle is smartly brought in and placed upon a truss of fresh straw. Amid the horrible concert of lamentations the man gradually returns to consciousness. What pain! The chief hospital orderly comes by with his dark-lantern. He examines the newcomer. “Here’s another of them hit in the back,” he says with a growl. He summons assistance, and two or three men painfully turn the poor devil on to his face.

“Have you the scissors?”

“No, they are in use.”

“Have you a knife?”

“Here you are.”

Rip, rip. With two slashes the orderly removes the back of the shirt. Rip, rip. He does the same with the rest. But this is sticking to the wound. “Oh, oh,” groans the patient. It is finished. The skin is free.

“He has blood-stains on his trousers, too.” Rip, rip. “Hullo! what a nasty tear in his thigh.” Rip, rip. “Gently—how it sticks!” Half of the trousers, stiff and black with blood, is thrown into the alley way to join the other rags.

At last comes the turn of the shirtsleeve. This is an easier job. Rip, rip.

“Monsieur le Major.”

“Yes,” answers the medical officer, at work at the other end of the barn. “Have you exposed the wounds?”

“Yes, Monsieur le Major.”

Oh yes, they are fully exposed. So is the wounded man! He had nothing on when he was brought in beyond a shirt and trousers. Now his shirt lacks an arm and most of the back, while his trousers have but one leg! Poor devils, whom the panic of retreat and the orderly’s knife have reduced to this condition. Such men as these may well speak of “havoc.”

And if the field hospital is in the hands of the enemy, the patients in this condition will have to endure two or three days of railway travelling, slowly jolted along in the foreigner’s cattle trucks.

Just now I was talking about our new comrades. They had known the extremity of wretchedness. Two or three weeks had passed. There they were, behind the curtain of Bavarian bayonets, standing on their own feet, their clothing a little worn; but they were full of pluck, and, considering everything, almost gay. Doubtless a Frenchman might see reason for surprise at their equipment, for this was somewhat unusual. But no German could find anything to laugh at; he could not but feel that he was looking at true French soldiers. I was grateful to our comrades for the spirit and ingenuity which had enabled them, by the use of chance expedients, to assume a military, a French aspect, under the eyes of the enemy. In certain conditions, coquetry is heroic.