Part 7

Dominating the troop was a gigantic chasseur d’Afrique whose appearance drew the most indolent in the fort to look at him. Seen close at hand, he was simply a foot soldier of the 146th, from Toul, who had cut himself a chéchia [elongated fez] out of a red trouser-leg. Beside him was a dragoon, sporting an extremely elegant police-cap manufactured from the same cloth. A chasseur alpin partially concealed beneath his ample cloak a perfectly new pair of greenish trousers, bought from a sutler through the hospital gate at Ingolstadt. A colonial infantryman of the 6th, from Tarare, who had received a horrible wound in the shoulder, had a linesman’s coat and an artilleryman’s trousers. It was only his red-anchored képi, saved from the general wreck, which revealed him to be a marine. I regret to say that some of our warriors wore peaceful-looking civilian caps of grey cloth which would have given an unsoldierly appearance to Ney himself.

Nevertheless, this debris of broken regiments, rigged out at haphazard as it arrived from the battlefield, soiled, torn, and deplorable odds and ends collected from the abandoned slaughter-houses and thrown pell-mell into transport wagons, had now an appearance that was far from being filthy or wretched. Besides, the men were smiling.

On the other hand, the soldiers who come here direct from the battlefield are far from smiling! Their brains are filled with terrible visions. They anticipate cunning tortures. They are astonished that their throats have not yet been cut. I was struck by their aspect as of hunted beasts when the gate of the fort was opened wide to admit them.

I call to mind one of my comrades, an officer in the medical service. His red cross armlet protected him. Upon the roof of the field hospital he had with his own hands conspicuously unfurled the great neutral flag. I remember the circumstances perfectly. The cannonade had ceased. Our ears, which for three successive hours had been deafened by an infernal noise, were astonished by this sudden, palpitating, and immense silence. The men of our regiment, sent forward on a bayonet charge across the open, had been mowed down in masses. The survivors retreated in headless, incoherent, almost indifferent groups. While this was in progress I saw some of the men pause, quietly strike the plum-trees with their rifles, fill their mouths and their pockets with the unripe fruit, and continue on their way with the same careless gait as if at manœuvres. But the Prussians were in hot pursuit. We saw them advancing in regular order, close at hand, at first in open formation, and subsequently by sections. They halted, fired, bounded forward, fired again. Repeatedly they fired upon our field hospital, where the flood of bleeding flesh overflowed into the little garden behind the house. Dzing, dzing. Their bullets cannoned among our utensils, broke off limbs from the little fruit trees shading our wounded, and sometimes covered the poor hungry fellows with plum branches.

The whole of our staff was at work, and the work was overwhelming, utterly disproportionate to the equipment and the personnel. Yet it was all the better, for excessive labour blinds us to danger. When the body is utterly exhausted, this reacts upon the mind, which becomes dull and insensible, so that imagination is paralysed. No doubt when, all of a sudden, quite close to your ears, a passing bullet utters its sharp but gentle flute-like note, the mind starts and rears like a frightened horse. It is invaded by a flow of precise and positive thoughts of self-preservation. But this is for a moment only. The act upon which you are engaged is mechanically finished, and there you are at your post, just as before. Heroism? The word is too lofty. It is better to say simply that action is a vice which holds the mind in its powerful grip and prevents reflection. In actual warfare, all ordinary men are worth pretty much the same; all are, as circumstances vary, equally cowardly or equally courageous. But the leaders are different. I am now of opinion that the true leaders, those to whose troops panic is unknown, are those who never abandon their men’s minds to themselves even for a moment, who keep these minds permanently occupied, concentrated upon the immediate vision of some simple and direct action which has to be performed.

“There’s no end to them,” said the hospital orderlies. And indeed there seemed no end to them. The wounded streamed in from all directions, in Indian file, in groups, or in pairs helping one another along. When the house was full we did not know where to put them. For the time being we packed them together outside, wherever there was a patch of shade. Poor lads! already exhausted with hunger, fatigue, and loss of blood, they had used up the last ounce of energy in making for our flag. “Orderly,” they would say when reaching the door, “do what you can for me!” Then, out of breath, they would slowly sink to the ground, with little cries like those of a sick child. More than one of us, at sight of this, had to wipe his eyes furtively.

The firing had ceased. All at once some one cried: “There they are!” A Prussian cyclist had in fact ridden by the gate, followed by the first patrol. They did no more than glance at the field hospital in passing. At this moment I was about to open the surgical instrument wagon to get something I needed. While we were all so busy, the officer of whom I have spoken above was standing two paces from me, his arms hanging by his sides. When he heard the words “There they are,” he was dumbfounded. The brown hairs of his thin beard were bristling on his pale skin. His cheeks were blanched; he stared at vacancy. He swayed upon his little legs. Having his back towards the gate he had seen nothing. But he had heard the words, “There they are.” He knew that he was about to be seized, and he thought that his last hour had come. He stood for two or three seconds, mute, pale, as if thunderstruck. Then, talking to himself, he said tonelessly, “They’ll slit all our throats!”

* * * * *

While the German _Feldwebel_, with Dutrex at his elbow, conducts the convalescents to their rooms, section by section, I return to the “salon,” and bury myself in my papers. All at once the door is noisily opened, and Dutrex, with his usual shortness of manner, insistently martial, in a state of cheerful exhilaration, ushers in a tiny man, corporal of the 146th of Toul. Shepherding, hustling, dominating with his great blustering voice, he pushes the stranger into my arms.

“Here’s a man for you!” I shake the little corporal’s hand. The first downy growth of beard is appearing on his face. The _juventa intonsa_ of Euryalus. He has the callow air of a candidate for university honours. With thoughtful eyes, quietly obstinate behind glasses, he resembles my friend Bonifas.

Durupt arrives. Several others, attracted to the spot, form a circle round us. As one man, the cooks desert the “plutonic region”; Davit, the Hercules, and the painstaking Devèse seat themselves unceremoniously upon the ministerial table.

“Friend,” begins Dutrex, “we’ve brought you here before Riou because you look intelligent, restrained, judicious. Riou insists upon trustworthy news. Don’t exaggerate when you are talking to him. If you are a romancer, clear out!”

The little corporal smiles. I open the conversation with the usual commonplaces, asking him about his wound, where he was taken prisoner, his last battle, his impression of the Germans at the hospital, his name, what part of France he comes from. Then I put the great question:

“Have you any news of the war?”

His name is Lahire. He comes from Paris. He obviously has news of importance. In a quiet, rather husky voice, speaking jerkily with intervals of silence, he tells his tale simply.

“This morning,” he says, “at half-past seven, an artillery lieutenant with a wound in the leg arrived at the hospital. He still wore his sabre and his revolver, for he had been granted the honours of war. His coming made a great impression upon our little world of wounded, causing much more stir than the recent visit of the princess of Bavaria. In a trice every one knew of his advent, and he immediately secured an attentive audience.

“I must tell you that at the Ingolstadt hospital officers and men live in close association. The officers, who number about fifty, are all in the same ward; but the rest of the ward, which is just like the others, is occupied by the men.

“Thus, while the lieutenant was speaking to his brother officers, we of the small fry gathered round them in a second compact circle. He had opened one of the last numbers of the _Bulletin des Armées de la République_; he read out loud, and, above all, he made comments as he read. He was bubbling over with delight. His fort, a fort of the third class, which was expected to hold out for thirty-six hours, had held out for six days. Three thousand melinite shells had been fired into the place. They would have resisted much longer had not their guns been of such short range. The fact is that, after they had broken up a German division, they were forced to surrender, four hundred of them, including fifty killed and a great number of wounded. This happened on September 25th. Until the surrender the fort was in communication with Verdun. As you see, my news is recent.”

“But which fort was it?” I asked.

“The Camp des Romains to the south of St. Mihiel.”

“What! The Camp des Romains has fallen? But in that case the Germans must have forced the Spada gap. The Hauts-de-Meuse must have been taken!”

“Not a bit of it! The Camp des Romains was taken from the north-west, and its capture has been an empty glory for the Germans. It is the fort of Paroches which commands the bridges of the Meuse and the passage through Verdun, and they are not going to get this fort. Be easy in your minds, Spada and the Hauts-de-Meuse are all right. Better still, we have regained in the east, in Lorraine and in Upper Alsace, all the positions of the opening days of the campaign. We are at Château-Salins.”

“At Château-Salins? Are we then also at Dieuze? My corps entered the place on August 19th and had to vacate it the next day.”

“Yes, we are at Dieuze. In our batch there is a man who was wounded at Dieuze on September 13th—I think that was the date. This same day we took the town, lost it, and retook it.”

“Are we also back at Thann?”

“Yes, and at Gwebwiller too.”[13]

“What more did your lieutenant say?”

“He said that the disorder in France at the beginning of September was intense, and that Paris had almost abandoned hope at the news that the advance guard of the Boches had entered Compiègne. Then energetic measures were taken. A few days later, the Germans lost two great battles: one at Meaux, where we took 60,000 prisoners, barely half of whom were wounded; the other between Rheims and Craonne. Since then, for more than a fortnight, hand-to-hand fighting has been going on fiercely along the whole front. Their right wing has been cut off. We have occupied the line from St. Quentin through Charleroi to Namur. We have effected a junction with the Belgian army, and are closing in upon the Germans like a pair of scissors. We speak of it as ‘Japanese tactics,’ le coup de Moukden, and it seems that the coup has been successful. The two blades of the scissors draw nearer day by day. Everywhere the Boches are in retreat. Their front, which was at Rheims, has now been pushed back sixty kilometres from the town. We have entered Varennes. We have made quick work of it to spue them into Luxemburg and Prussia by way of the Moselle! Besides, our government is back in Paris, and Poincaré has been to London to visit George V.[14]

“Let me assure you that this lieutenant was in earnest. He was not orating to his inferiors in order to keep up their spirits. He was talking to officers, among whom were several captains and men of higher grade. He was absolutely confident of victory.”

Little Lahire was still talking in the quiet voice with which he had opened. But we felt that he was animated by a sombre and intense, though subdued fire. We listened, mute and solemn. There is a keen joy which, overflowing and submerging our individuality, suddenly surges out to the utmost limits of our highest affections—family, country, humanity, God. _Freude_, _Freude_, sings the sublime chorus of the 9th symphony. Joy, joy. But this joy is grave and heroic. A shiver goes through your being, you are transfigured. You suddenly feel your footing in the eternal, in the absolute. I said not a word. The little corporal of the 146th, his eyes remaining cool behind his glasses, continued his story. The circle of the audience pressed ever closer. Unable to restrain my tears, I took his hand, said “Thank you,” and hastened from the room.

Oh France, my France!

A BREAKFAST

_October 5, 1914._

Plenty!

I wake at twenty minutes to five, or, by French time, twenty minutes to four. There is a glimmer of moonlight in the casemate. The place looks like a fantastic sawmill with piles of planks lying about on the floor. The snores rise and fall rhythmically. However much divided our prisoners may be by day (as divided as men are in time of peace, and perhaps more so, for intimate association emphasizes differences and accentuates shocks), they, unknown to themselves, attain harmony in sleep.

As you know, I find this harmony distasteful. Moreover, for some time past, with the chill coming of dawn a violent rheumatic pain in the loins has rendered the recumbent position intolerable to me. I determine to rise.

Moving gently, in order to avoid waking Guido, who is an extremely light sleeper, I throw off my coat, which has been tucked round my neck, and lay it down to the right of my couch, close to my képi, which I have lately pressed into service at night as a receptacle for the miscellaneous articles from my pockets. At this moment I should have appeared to you like a mummy, torso rolled up in the French military rug, brown with a red stripe, and the rest of the body, from the waist to the feet, tightly enveloped in the Ingolstadt blanket, stamped with the royal arms.

It is quite a business to get rid of these wrappings, for my straw is now mere chaff, and Bertrand, doubly soft as a betrothed lover and as a Phocæan, has a nose extremely sensitive to dust. Still recumbent, by means of slow contortions from right to left I unswaddle the upper part of my body. Then, sitting with my back against the wall, I take off my nightcap—my ancient nightcap, thoroughly impregnated with the dirt of Lorraine and of Bavaria, as dirty as Queen Isabel’s shift. (I sleep with it pulled well down over the ears, to protect my head from the chaff.) At length I rise to my feet. The second wrapping, which confines the lower extremities, makes me look like a man about to take part in a sack race. I untie it at the hips. It falls to the ground like a skirt. Now I am dressed. I fold up my two rugs with infinite precaution and put them on the top of my knapsack. Seated on this improvised stool, I take off my night slippers and put on my heavy military boots, delightfully supple since Devèse, the cook-butcher, anointed them for me with a wonderful preparation of beef marrow. Emptying my képi of watch, pipe, tobacco, pipe-lighter, pocket-knife, purse, and handkerchief (the huge regulation handkerchief), I stuff all these things into the pockets of my trousers. It is done. Guido has not stirred; he dreams misanthropically. Bertrand has not sneezed; he dreams amorously. With catlike stealth, képi on head, coat tucked beneath my arm, and shouldering my two haversacks, respectively containing my papers and the small articles of my kit, I hasten to the kitchen. To my great surprise I find the place lighted up.

That villain Marie, pipe in mouth, sticky, greasy, smeared with blacks, alert as a fox-terrier just let out for a run, is rummaging in his stoves. While I was still dreaming he had shaken up from their slumbers two others: Lambert, most devoted of men, my good little Lambert; and a famished specimen from the 6th corps, by trade a charcoal-burner in the forest of Argonne, who would cut up an oak for you in return for a piece of rancid bacon rind. Yesterday evening there was not a scrap of wood in the kitchen. Dutrex “rowed” the cooks about it. But Marie, the wiliest of all the Normans in Normandy, rose by moonlight. Where can he have been? How, knowing not a word of German beyond _nichts_ and _ja_, did he manage to circumvent the guard? Anyhow, axe in hand, Lambert and the charcoal-burner are vigorously and noisily attacking logs of pine. I am surprised. These logs have a strong resemblance to the timber-shores of the outer ditches. What has he been up to, this Marie!

“Canaille!” Dutrex sometimes exclaims to him.

“That’s all right,” says Marie cheerfully; “that’s the only sort that knows how to live!”

In fact, he does know how to live. Always on the go, doing little services for every one in turn, swapping for chocolate the cigars which are given him, reselling this chocolate retail, buying with the money packets of tobacco and cigarettes, which he hawks for halfpennies in the dark passage outside the kitchen—he will find his way back to the valley of Auge with a nest-egg.

But I fancy he will get rid of some of it on the way. “Just think of it, you fellows,” he frequently exclaims. “‘Mézidon, fifty minutes’ stop!’ I tumble to the ground. I put away the first bottle of Calvados [cider brandy] I can get hold of. Then, ‘Lisieux, fifty minutes’ stop!’ Won’t it be splendid to get a little good Norman stuff into one’s guts, after the ditch-water of Fort Orff! One will get home to the missus thoroughly cheerful.”

This Marie is a delight to me. Our philosophies differ considerably. He has no pity, he says, for lame ducks. But he has such keen vision, he is so spirited and plain-spoken, and he is so original in his methods of expression, that he is above criticism.

While Lambert and the charcoal-burner (his name is Deschênes and he has been through two campaigns in Morocco) are apportioning for the stoves the spoils of Marie’s raid, I empty on to the table the second of my haversacks. I wash and shave. Marie pours me out half a pint of steaming coffee. “_Ja, ja_,” he says, as he adds a lump of sugar, smiling his mischievous and knowing smile. _Ja_, in his vocabulary, signifies everything that is good; _nichts_, on the other hand, denotes everything that is bad. This done, he returns to the plutonic region.

Then, in the blessed solitude of the “salon,” by the pale and smoky light of the distant lamp and of the dawn, I withdraw from the manuscript haversack the packet about which I fancy I have been dreaming all night.

You will think me very materialistic, I fear. But as you read, bear in mind that I am extremely well, that I am working as hard as usual, and that my appetite, with which you are acquainted, has to be satisfied here with a daily allowance that in Paris would barely have sufficed for a single meal.

It was Fritz Magen, the _Gefreiter_, the leading private of our Bavarian guard, who gave me this parcel yesterday evening. I had no thought of such a windfall. In the same mood as any other prisoner, I was waiting like the rest in No. 17 at the foot of my “bed” for the brisk appearance in the casemate of the men to take the roll-call.

It is half-past eight. Suddenly the door opens. “The roll-call,” bellows Dutrex, bursting in gustily, followed by the _Feldwebel_ and the lantern-bearer. Dutrex rapidly counts us. “_Zweiundzwanzig_,” he announces to the _Feldwebel_. “Twenty-two.” He shakes me by the hand, saying: “_Gute Nacht, mein Freund; schlafe wohl._” The round passes on.

But Magen, the rear-guard, about to shut the door, lays down his lantern, produces a good-sized box, and thrusts it into my hands in a manner that is almost timid. “_Da_,” he explains to me in German, “my wife sent me a hamper this morning.”—“Oh, thanks,” I reply. But he hastens off with his lantern to join the _Feldwebel_ in No. 18.

Greatly touched by this unexpected mark of friendship, I turn to Guido. We tell over the contents of the box. Five apples; two walnuts; a piece of thick pancake, smelling of the _gnädige Frau_ Magen’s frying-pan; and half a bilberry tart! What luck! Monsieur Magen, Bavarian as you are, you are a brother, _ein Bruder_, a true comrade! I love you! I give Guido his share. I put mine away in the haversack of papers. I go to sleep to the thought that to-morrow, instead of the wretched thin coffee with rye and barley bread, I shall have a succulent fruit breakfast. This thought immediately transports me to Dully, to Fontainebleau, to Lablachère. But what is there that does not transport me there, visions of longing and of hope?

Thus it is that to-day, at earliest dawn, slowly pacing the deserted “salon,” I make the first good breakfast since my imprisonment.

THE FIRST LETTER

_October 8, 1914._

Yesterday the rumour was current, derived, it was said, from the guard, that we were going to be permitted to write to our families. A similar report has stirred the fort two or three times before, but has hitherto always proved false. Consequently the pessimists and all the disciples of Heraclitus and the Porch—headed by Guido—had a fine time of it in the casemates making fun of the comrades who were jubilantly commenting on the news.

On the glacis, at three o’clock, I met Sergeant Feutrier walking with Corporal Heuyer.

“Riou,” observed the sergeant, “it’s the first fine day of our imprisonment!”

“No, no, my friend,” I said, half-heartedly aping Guido’s pessimism, “it is raining.” It was, in fact, drizzling; the sopping grass spirted as we trod. But Heuyer answered:

“Don’t tease Feutrier to-day; he is too happy.”

That evening, when I was working as usual at my side of the table, I was deluged with requests: “Riou, could you lend me your pen and ink?”—“Can you spare a sheet or two of paper?” There was a regular procession of them. The mere thought, or rather the conviction, that they would be able to write home transfigured them. Home, the fireside! The loved ones, the familiar objects, the birthplace, the motherland! From this secret universe, at ordinary times deep buried beneath the surface of their minds, but suddenly exposed by the delvings of hope, there arose a powerful incense which intoxicated them all. What will they feel like at the prospect of going home, if the still dubious possibility of writing can arouse such an outburst of cheerful excitement?

Even the cooks, more practised in criticism than the other prisoners, had lost all sense of proportion. They handled their utensils with a terrible joy. Then the tumult was stilled. A gentle atmosphere of harmony hovered over the stoves. The cooks were silent and motionless.

O memories! Sweet images in which our love of life subsists and is fulfilled. Sweet images which, at night, in the gloom and fatigue of the camp, make us weep silent tears. Sweet images which, when death threatens, rise suddenly in our minds and maintain themselves, bringing benediction, the sole realities amid the void, very angels of God!

Suddenly the plutonic region burst into melody:

“O moun païs! O moun païs! O Toulouso! O Toulouso!…”[15]

sang Pailloux in his boy’s voice; and our Bouquet, a son of Cahors, his heart filled with thoughts of his betrothed, intoned in a mellow bass:

“Vieillo villo de Cau, tan vieillo et tan fumado!…”[16]

The cooks, like every one else, were bewitched with thoughts of France. For France they forgot the most serious of their immediate duties. One was allowed an entrance into the secret universe of their thoughts, as if into a public place.