Part 1

Chapter 14,094 wordsPublic domain

WAR THE CREATOR

WAR~THE CREATOR BY~GELETT BURGESS~~~

New York B. W. HUEBSCH 1916

WAR THE CREATOR was first printed in _Collier’s_. Acknowledgment is made to that weekly for permission to publish the story in volume form.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

WAR THE CREATOR

Because he was my friend, because he was so lovable, because he suffered much, I want to try to tell the story of a boy who, in two months, became a man. My hero is Georges Cucurou, the son of a shoe-maker of Toulouse. I happened to see him first just before the war began, and not again until after he had been wounded; and the change in him was then so great that I could not rest until I had learned how it had been brought about. Georges is but one of the thousands who have gone into that furnace of patriotism; in France such experiences as his are commonplace now, but when I heard his story I got a glimpse of war in a new aspect. Before, I had thought of it only as stupid, destructive, dire; now, in his illumined face, I saw the work of War the Creator.

His narrative is concerned with only the first six weeks of the fighting, and mostly with that terrible retreat from Belgium, so bitter in its disappointments, so trying to the flamboyant courage of the French. Hardly had they rallied along the Marne and begun to pursue the enemy when Georges was wounded and invalided home. It was there in the hospital that I got his history; and from those talks, and his notebook, and his letters to his aunt, I have reconstructed the trials and emotions of this lad of twenty.

Georges, having commenced his regular three years’ military service in October, 1913, got leave to visit his aunt who was keeping a _pension_ in Paris.

How shy and confused he was when I came down to the dining-room that day and surprised him while he was examining his too-faint mustache with great seriousness before the mirror! Charming, I thought him, instantly; a clean, jolly sort of boy, quite too young for that ridiculous soldier’s uniform.

His aunt introduced him (with her arm about his shoulder and a tweak of his ear) by his nickname, “Coco”; and, after he got used to my being a foreigner, he began to talk, using his big brown eyes and his free, expressive hands quite as much as his tongue. Knowing a little of the Midi, I attempted an imitation of the _patois_. Coco threw back his head and laughed with abandon. That broke the ice, and we became great friends.

He was so curious about everything American that I took him up to my salon to see my typewriter; also my neckties and fancy socks.

“But what’s this?” asked Coco, reading with his funny French pronunciation, “A-mer-i-cain Pencil Compagnie.” It was a novelty, a “perpetual” pencil of the self-sharpening sort, with a magazine filled with little points like cartridges. When I gave it to him, it pleased Coco immensely.

“Just like a rifle!” he exclaimed, as he amused himself by pressing the end and ejecting the bits of lead. He went through the manual of arms with it, laughing; he did a mock bayonet thrust or two, and then aimed it at me in fun, like a child. “_Pan!_” he cried; “_that’s_ the way we shoot Germans!” The contrast of his red pantaloons and blue coat with the round, innocent face and lips parted like a girl’s was absurd. Why, he was more like those doll soldiers you see at toyshops with curly hair! With his fresh pink cheeks and big brown eyes he seemed no more than sixteen years old.

In the evening we all went out on the crowded Boulevard, where, it being a fête day, they were dancing in front of the open-air band stands. It was a long time before I ceased to think of Coco as jolly, flushed, exuberant, dancing the Tango on the corner by the Sorbonne with his pretty young aunt, as excited and happy as only a lad can be who has come up from a provincial town to see the metropolis for the first time on a holiday.

That was on the 14th of July of 1914. Next day he went back to his caserne at Montauban.

In two weeks war was declared!

Coco, our own blithe Coco, would have to go to the front—oh, his aunt’s white face that day!—and Coco would be in the first line! It seemed like some hideous mistake. But already Coco, pink-cheeked, laughing, shy, his mother’s only boy, was well on his way toward the German shells and machine guns!

III

The French do nothing without a flavoring of sentiment. Rhetoric flowers in the official proclamations; it makes one laugh even to read the textbooks for soldiers, they are so strewn with fine, resounding phrases; and so, of course, it was quite impossible for Coco’s regiment to get away without one of those stirring, gesticulative speeches by the colonel.

It was at the Toulouse railway station—parents in tears. The girls gazed admiringly. Gossipy veterans of ’70, seeing themselves reincarnated in these fresh young soldiers, patronized them egregiously with advice. Coco and the other lads listened, but did not hear; they were smiling at the girls sticking bouquets in their rifle barrels.

“Look back for the last time at your homes and your loved ones,” cried the colonel, with all his badges on his breast, “and shed the tear without which our high sacrifice would not have its price. Lift up your hearts, and so forth, and so forth, my children—_en avant!_”

Children indeed they were, overflowing with the emotion of the south, these soldiers, and our Coco, with a gulp in his throat, seemed even more young than most. The war! How often had he heard it predicted for that year, or the next, or the next—the inevitable war that was to give France her long-hoped-for revenge. Now, it was actually here! No more blank cartridges, no more sham battles—_War!_

But Coco’s tears soon dried. They were a merry lot, those twenty-year-old “_pioupious_,” even on that tiresome trip to the front. The youngsters had the worst of it during the mobilization. They sat all that journey on rough-board temporary benches in the luggage vans. Starting and stopping, side-tracking and backing—munching the emergency rations (hard tack and canned beef), for mother’s cheese and chocolate didn’t last long—waving and yelling to the patriotic spectators along the line, it took them almost three days to reach Châlons.

At the military camp two more days were spent in concentration, exercises, and inspection. The last orders were received. Then, at five o’clock in the morning of the sixth of August, the column started for the frontier.

Coco was a private in the Tenth Company of the Twentieth Regiment of Infantry. His army corps, the Seventeenth, formed the left wing of the Fourth Army. On their left, paralleling their march, was, first, General Ruffey’s cavalry division, and beyond that the Fifth Army, under General Lanrezac. On the extreme left wing of the advance were the British. Meanwhile, marching on Lorraine and Alsace, were the Sixth and Seventh Armies. With all these columns hurrying to the front, filling all the roads, railway transportation was impossible. It was a march of some seventy miles to the frontier.

So, through the lovely forest of Argonne, the boys set out, singing and joking as they strode along. It was pleasant enough at first, a romantic adventure; but with his heavy rifle, his heavy cartridge belt and bayonet, and his musette full of food slung over his shoulder, it was not long before poor Coco began to get weary. On his back, with his knapsack, and his rolled overcoat and his tin _bidon_ and tin _gamelle_, with the intrenching tool and his share of the company’s baggage, he carried fully sixty pounds. They marched on one side of the road. Along the other side automobiles whirled incessantly back and forth, motor busses filled with provisions rumbled along, dispatch bearers on motorcycles, officers on horseback—raising dust a-plenty.

Coco’s chum—his “_copain_”—was François Foulot, the son of a cabinetmaker in Toulouse, a big, athletic, kind-hearted chap with a bushy black pompadour. Coco had told me about him in Paris. The two boys were members of a little musical and dramatic club in Toulouse, and had been friends from childhood. You should hear Coco tell how, on that long march, François took care of him, carrying his rifle when Coco was tired, carrying even Coco’s knapsack for him, helping him grease his boots at night when Coco’s feet began to blister. François was like a big brother.

At the nightly bivouacs along the road the two boys always slept side by side; that is, when they slept at all. The excitement (and the hard ground) for the first few nights kept them wide awake, in spite of their fatigue.

“_Mon Dieu_, how will this all end?” they asked each other. Coco didn’t know, François didn’t know; but neither thought the war could possibly last more than a few months.

Yet there was a terrible earnestness about it all that sobered them. There was something still more terribly earnest ahead! Every automobile that whizzed past them, coming in hot haste from the front, announced it. Every galloping supply wagon, every crouching motorcyclist in uniform flashing by told the same frantic story: “Hurry! Hurry! _Hurry!_ The Germans are almost here! France is in danger!”

On those first nights, when Coco’s turn came to stand on sentry duty by the lonely corner of a wood, his eyes strained into the darkness, listening for every sound, the sight of a bush waving in the wind often brought his gun to his shoulder with a quick, excited “_Halte-là!_”

For Coco, sensitive, earnest, and not a little fearful, was in a high nervous tension. Already the Germans were fighting in Belgium—the killing had commenced. From one of the villages they passed the boy wrote a brave little letter to his mother on a post card: “If anything should happen ... well, one knows one’s duty, and God will do the rest. Lovingly, Coco.”

On, on, through the hilly forests of Argonne they marched, making about twenty-five miles a day. And on that dusty march food was scarce. Poor Coco’s feet, despite the tallow in his socks, were too sore for him to chase chickens, but François succeeded in capturing seven. Not much, however, when their necks were wrung, for a company of 250 men. Even the bread began to run out. But on they went, singing by day and shivering by night—on, on toward Belgium. Coco says that their chief worry was lest they shouldn’t find enough straw to sleep on, or at least enough to tie up their feet in bundles to keep them warm.

At Mouzon they crossed the Meuse, and here Coco slept more comfortably than he had for a week, on a sack full of straw at a farm. After a day’s wait for orders—and no meat even here—they set out again, passed through Carignan, and soon reached the last village in France—Florenville. “Don’t send me any more French money,” Coco here wrote to his mother. “It won’t be any use to me now!” Poor Coco! How little did he know how soon he was to return!

On the morning of August 21 they crossed the boundary. Hurrahs from the men—they were going forward to conquer! They were going to deliver this brave little country from the barbaric invader who had laid it waste. Coco was thrilled with the nobility of their mission. “_Vive la France!_” he shouted with all the rest; but alas, the approaching thunderstorm soon damped his spirits. The rain poured down in torrents, down the back of his neck and into his shoes. Coming to a halt, they bivouacked in a wide field. It thundered and it lightened. Soaked and cheerless, the regiment tried to sleep. The fires wouldn’t burn. One couldn’t even smoke a cigarette. As Coco turned on his side the water oozed under him sloshily.

He dozed off, however, after a while, only to be awakened by a punch in the ribs. “Listen!” François was saying. “What’s _that_?”

“Thunder, of course!” Coco, irritated, rolled over again, opened his eyes after a while, and saw François still sitting up, alert.

“That’s not thunder!” he exclaimed. “Listen! it’s cannonading!”

Coco sat up now quickly enough. Others woke up to swear at them—and then they listened, too.

“Look!” cried François. Galloping down the road came a dispatch rider. He halted, was challenged by the sentry, and turned in at the colonel’s headquarters. Then he was off again, splattering, clattering through the mud. Then a bugle call: “_Fall in!_” All over the field the wet men jumped up, slung on their belts, grabbed their rifles and formed dismally in the rain. As they stood waiting, word ran down the column—François passed it to Coco—“_The enemy!_” An ammunition wagon drove up—boxes of cartridges were distributed. “Load!” ordered the captains. The ranks were fairly buzzing now, everyone asking questions, nobody answering. A whistle blew. “_Forward, march!_” Coco had no thought of the rain now! The guns grew louder, but still no enemy was visible. The cannonading slackened, grew faint, thundered off in another direction, died, began again far away. But the rumbling was always ahead—the regiment was marching nearer and nearer the fighting. And so on to Bertrix, fifteen miles from the frontier. Coco rather liked Bertrix. Bertrix rather more than liked Coco. The pretty little Luxemburg town welcomed him and all the other young “_piou-pious_” as its saviors. Nothing was too good for the French soldier boys who had come to deliver them from the Huns. What do you want—cigarettes? beer? bacon? It was quite a jolly affair, with the streets full of smiling women and young girls smiling too, bringing fruit and eggs and preserves, and good, fresh butter.

Coco was already a hero—and, after eight days without meat, that bacon was certainly good! How they all laughed and chattered! But the old men stood apart and listened anxiously; for, through all that rejoicing there came steadily the distant sound of guns. Surely the Germans were coming nearer! If they ever got to Bertrix—The old men shook their heads with foreboding.

Again the whistle blew—_Forward!_ The enemy was only a few miles away now; it was getting exciting. The boys, proud, patriotic, confident, started “_La Marseillaise_” and the song was taken up by the whole column—“_Marchons! Marchons!_” they sang—but Coco was singing, he admits, to keep up his courage, as he tramped on through the mud to be shot at. He tried to keep in mind that he was marching on gloriously to fight for his country; but he couldn’t help thinking of what he had heard of those terrible machine guns at Liége and Namur.

_Halt!_ The captain whipped out his field glasses—everybody gazed eagerly ahead. There it was, _there!_ coming steadily nearer, flying low—a German aeroplane—a “_Taube_” reconnoitering. There was a quick order. As the whir of the motor grew nearer the lieutenant of Coco’s platoon pointed. “_Aim!_” Fifteen rifles were thrown up, covering the monoplane. “Steady, now, men—wait till she comes near enough—now, _Fire!_”

Coco fired, jammed down the lever of his gun, shot again, again. Almost over their heads the flyer seemed to stop, turned, volplaned swiftly down—it was too good to be true—swept lower in a wide curve. Then men, shouting, ran for it as it swooped into the field beside the road. Coco ran for his first sight of a German.

Two officers in khaki, limp and pale, were strapped to the seats. One was unconscious, with a red hole in his neck. The other painfully unfastened his strap, and came forward, staggering. He saluted the captain stiffly, a queer smile on his blond German face. Coco heard him say in perfect French:

“I am badly wounded, monsieur. This is my last trip, I’m afraid. Ah, well; you are going to beat us in the end, no doubt. With all your allies there’s little hope for us. But you’ll have to shed a good deal of blood before you win!” Then he suddenly collapsed. Coco saw him fall on the ground in a faint.

“It gave me a mighty queer feeling,” Coco told me, “to look at that dark spot of blood gradually growing bigger and bigger over that officer’s breast. I remember that I wondered if it had been my rifle ball that had wounded him. And that other German, too—I wondered if I had already killed a man. If I had, why wasn’t it murder? What was the difference between war and murder, anyway? Of course these barbarians were invading my country, but—yes, it was my duty to protect France, but—well, I had to give it up. You know there are priests fighting in the ranks, too, in this war, m’sieur! _They_ must know. It’s all right, I suppose—and yet there is always that ‘_but_’ when you see a thing like that. Well, it was too exciting then for much philosophy. You see, the cannons were getting louder all the time, and the whistle blew and we marched on again. But somehow we didn’t feel much like singing any more!”

Near rising ground they halted. The officers hurried forward, and with field glasses inspected the country ahead; then called the column on. Now they were actually in the danger zone—a wide expanse of fields, dotted with farms here and there, and across, a mile away, were woods, dark, sinister. It was a sunny afternoon; the odor of the damp, warm earth was clean and pungent. There were wide stretches of yellow stubble fields, where the wheat had been lately cut. Some sheaves were still standing, as if the war had interrupted the harvest, half done.

As they advanced cautiously the cannonading ceased. Somehow to Coco the silence was more dreadful even than that incessant muffled reverberation. But those woods yonder—what dangers were _they_ hiding? Every eye was strained in that direction.

Deploying to the left of the road, Coco’s company made for a whitewashed farmhouse half a mile away, across the fields. The other companies fanned out to either side.

No one seemed to know just what was going to happen. Coco’s lieutenant, a jolly, talkative young fellow who had always used to keep his platoon roaring at his jokes, was now unwontedly serious and silent. Coco watched him. He marched on with his field glasses held constantly to his eyes, tripping over roots and bushes and stones and swearing as he went.

On and on toward that dark, mysterious wood through beet fields, across ditches, over hedges they went, till they came to a cross-road leading into the farm. Here they halted.

Coco, nervous, apprehensive, jumped at hearing his name called out. “_Cucurou!_ _Bracques!_ _Lemaitre!_ Go forward and reconnoiter! Careful, now, men!”

Coco wondered why they had to call on _him_; but, well, it had to be done, his duty, and he did it. With a man on either side of him he walked forward gingerly through a field where cows were grazing, nearer and nearer that horrible wood. He didn’t dare look at the ground; as he stumbled on his eyes never left that wood, so deathly still and mysterious. _Were_ there Germans hidden in those trees? It was his duty to find out. Bracques and Lemaitre didn’t falter; so Coco didn’t falter. He kept right on, nearer and nearer. His one idea was the importance of first seeing the enemy.

Then, suddenly, he heard a high, sharp whistling through the air, and the bullet spattered the earth viciously in front of him. A report cracked lazily out from the trees. Another whistle, another, and the pattering grew nearer. Coco dropped flat on the ground, and crawled cautiously up to a big rock and looked over the top, watching. Still nothing was visible. The balls came faster now; but he crawled warily forward, dragging himself along the ground a little further.

Lemaitre yelled, “Come on back! we’ve drawn their fire—that’s enough,” and Coco, with his heart thumping, was glad enough to return, running for all he was worth till he had reached his company. The men were fretful and restless with excitement, nervous, exclamatory. With a high, snoring drone, a German shell came driving through the air—a boom from the woods—then a sudden, terrifying crash as of thunder let loose as it burst in the rear. Coco turned to see a volcano of black smoke and earth behind him. “_Lie down!_” shouted the officers, and the men only too willingly dropped flat in the road. “At first,” said Coco, “the men lay looking up into the air trying to see the shells—imagining that they really could! But when the things dropped closer, they began to dodge—as if one could escape them _that_ way!” More shells came, and more, buzzing through the air in a screeching crescendo, bursting with appalling smashes nearer and nearer the line. Then a whistle blew. _Forward!_ All along the front men jumped up, ran ahead, dropped, then rose and ran further in a long, irregular skirmish line, toward that vicious wood. As they advanced, the cannonading burst into a double, triple fury, and the harsh barking of machine guns began—and never once stopped. A hundred yards from the trees the whistle blew again to halt, and then the din grew unbearable, a crashing thunder with shells bursting here, there, in front, behind, in continual explosion. Swept by that murderous tornado, they had to lie down and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait....

A scream of agony! Coco saw on his left a geyser of débris—clods of earth, stones, dust, and smoke, and two men thrown bodily upward. Another crash—_nearer_—he saw men’s heads and torn-off limbs flying past him. Coco himself, when he rose on one knee to fire (for he was emptying his rifle madly into the wood now), was thrown down again and again by the concussion of the air. He saw sudden upheavals appear—dirt, maimed bodies, rocks, knapsacks, rifles, thrown every way—and a hole would be left big enough for half a dozen men to take refuge in. Once he himself was buried up to his waist with flying dirt, his eyes were filled with dust and he could hardly breathe—the noxious fumes of the lyddite choked him. And always in his ears the incessant crash, bang, crash of the devastating, bursting shells till he couldn’t think. “_Lie down! Lie down!_” the officers shouted continually, but the men were now frenzied with the slaughter; they were on their knees, on their feet, shooting insanely into that secret, hellish wood, screaming curses.

And, all the time, where was the enemy? Nobody knew. Oh, if it had only come to a reckless charge against no matter what force, it would at least have been a chance for revenge; they would have gone forward like mad dogs. But instead, they had to wait—wait—wait to be killed! Coco saw his friends wounded one by one. Coco said: “Each man when he was hit would throw his arms up over his head—always, it was that same gesture—and then he would fall, bleeding.”

VII

The nerve-racking, deafening din went on and on without a respite. Bracques was hit in the head—he was a living, breathing horror, his whole jaw gone—one hand plucking at his coat. He lay grotesquely uncomfortable on his back, rolling this way and rolling that way on his knapsack and his tin gamelle and the dozen other accouterments he couldn’t get rid of. A dozen lads he had gone to school with in Toulouse were screaming. One called for his mother again and again, “_Maman! Maman! Maman!_” Most of the wounded lay still in their blood, or moaned and writhed in their agony. On Coco’s left, he said, was a body without a head. Coco, he confessed, thought more than once of running. What was the use of staying only to be butchered? They could do no good that way. But still the regiment held its place; yes, but the regiment was getting strangely thin. It could not last long.