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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Under Fire, by Henri Barbusse
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+Title: Under Fire
+
+Author: Henri Barbusse
+
+Release Date: August, 2003 [Etext# 4380]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on January 20, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Under Fire, by Henri Barbusse
+****This file should be named ndrfr10.txt or ndrfr10.zip****
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+
+
+
+
+
+Edited by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com
+
+
+
+
+Under Fire
+
+The Story of a Squad
+
+By Henri Barbusse
+
+(1874-1935)
+
+Translated by Fitzwater Wray
+
+To the memory of the comrades who fell by my side
+at Crouy and on Hill 119
+
+January, May, and September, 1915
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+
+
+
+The Vision
+
+In the Earth
+
+The Return
+
+Volpatte and Fouillade
+
+Sanctuary
+
+Habits
+
+Entraining
+
+On Leave
+
+The Anger of Volpatte
+
+Argoval
+
+The Dog
+
+The Doorway
+
+The Big Words
+
+Of Burdens
+
+The Egg
+
+An Idyll
+
+The Sap
+
+A Box of Matches
+
+Bombardment
+
+Under Fire
+
+The Refuge
+
+Going About
+
+The Fatigue-Party
+
+The Dawn
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+The Vision
+
+
+
+
+
+MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across at
+the bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the gallery
+of the sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on the
+first floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space and
+overlooks the world. The blankets of fine wool--red, green, brown,
+or white--from which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrude
+are quite still. No sound comes from the long couches except when
+some one coughs, or that of the pages of a book turned over at long
+and regular intervals, or the undertone of question and quiet answer
+between neighbors, or now and again the crescendo disturbance of a
+daring crow, escaped to the balcony from those flocks that seem
+threaded across the immense transparency like chaplets of black
+pearls.
+
+Silence is obligatory. Besides, the rich and high-placed who have
+come here from all the ends of the earth, smitten by the same evil,
+have lost the habit of talking. They have withdrawn into themselves,
+to think of their life and of their death.
+
+A servant appears in the balcony, dressed in white and walking
+softly. She brings newspapers and hands them about.
+
+"It's decided," says the first to unfold his paper. "War is
+declared."
+
+Expected as the news is, its effect is almost dazing, for this
+audience feels that its portent is without measure or limit. These
+men of culture and intelligence, detached from the affairs of the
+world and almost from the world itself, whose faculties are deepened
+by suffering and meditation, as far remote from their fellow men as
+if they were already of the Future--these men look deeply into the
+distance, towards the unknowable land of the living and the insane.
+
+"Austria's act is a crime," says the Austrian.
+
+"France must win," says the Englishman.
+
+"I hope Germany will be beaten," says the German.
+
+They settle down again under the blankets and on the pillows,
+looking to heaven and the high peaks. But in spite of that vast
+purity, the silence is filled with the dire disclosure of a moment
+before.
+
+War!
+
+Some of the invalids break the silence, and say the word again under
+their breath, reflecting that this is the greatest happening of the
+age, and perhaps of all ages. Even on the lucid landscape at which
+they gaze the news casts something like a vague and somber mirage.
+
+The tranquil expanses of the valley, adorned with soft and smooth
+pastures and hamlets rosy as the rose, with the sable shadow-stains
+of the majestic mountains and the black lace and white of pines and
+eternal snow, become alive with the movements of men, whose
+multitudes swarm in distinct masses. Attacks develop, wave by wave,
+across the fields and then stand still. Houses are eviscerated like
+human beings and towns like houses. Villages appear in crumpled
+whiteness as though fallen from heaven to earth. The very shape of
+the plain is changed by the frightful heaps of wounded and slain.
+
+Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearing
+from its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One's
+eyes follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River of
+Death. To north and south and west ajar there are battles on every
+side. Turn where you will, there is war in every corner of that
+vastness.
+
+One of the pale-faced clairvoyants lifts himself on his elbow,
+reckons and numbers the fighters present and to come--thirty
+millions of soldiers. Another stammers, his eyes full of slaughter,
+"Two armies at death-grips--that is one great army committing
+suicide."
+
+"It should not have been," says the deep and hollow voice of the
+first in the line. But another says, "It is the French Revolution
+beginning again." "Let thrones beware!" says another's undertone.
+
+The third adds, "Perhaps it is the last war of all." A silence
+follows, then some heads are shaken in dissent whose faces have been
+blanched anew by the stale tragedy of sleepless night--"Stop war?
+Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease."
+
+Some one coughs, and then the Vision is swallowed up in the huge
+sunlit peace of the lush meadows. In the rich colors of the glowing
+kine, the black forests, the green fields and the blue distance,
+dies the reflection of the fire where the old world burns and
+breaks. Infinite silence engulfs the uproar of hate and pain from
+the dark swarmings of mankind. They who have spoken retire one by
+one within themselves, absorbed once more in their own mysterious
+malady.
+
+But when evening is ready to descend within the valley, a storm
+breaks over the mass of Mont Blanc. One may not go forth in such
+peril, for the last waves of the storm-wind roll even to the great
+veranda, to that harbor where they have taken refuge; and these
+victims of a great internal wound encompass with their gaze the
+elemental convulsion.
+
+They watch how the explosions of thunder on the mountain upheave the
+level clouds like a stormy sea, how each one hurls a shaft of fire
+and a column of cloud together into the twilight; and they turn
+their wan and sunken faces to follow the flight of the eagles that
+wheel in the sky and look from their supreme height down through the
+wreathing mists, down to earth.
+
+"Put an end to war?" say the watchers.--"Forbid the Storm!"
+
+Cleansed from the passions of party and faction, liberated from
+prejudice and infatuation and the tyranny of tradition, these
+watchers on the threshold of another world are vaguely conscious of
+the simplicity of the present and the yawning possibilities of the
+future.
+
+The man at the end of the rank cries, "I can see crawling things
+down there"--"Yes, as though they were alive"--"Some sort of plant,
+perhaps"--"Some kind of men"--
+
+And there amid the baleful glimmers of the storm, below the dark
+disorder of the clouds that extend and unfurl over the earth like
+evil spirits, they seem to see a great livid plain unrolled, which
+to their seeing is made of mud and water, while figures appear and
+fast fix themselves to the surface of it, all blinded and borne down
+with filth, like the dreadful castaways of shipwreck. And it seems
+to them that these are soldiers.
+
+The streaming plain, seamed and seared with long parallel canals and
+scooped into water-holes, is an immensity, and these castaways who
+strive to exhume themselves from it are legion. But the thirty
+million slaves, hurled upon one another in the mud of war by guilt
+and error, uplift their human faces and reveal at last a bourgeoning
+Will. The future is in the hands of these slaves, and it is clearly
+certain that the alliance to be cemented some day by those whose
+number and whose misery alike are infinite will transform the old
+world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+In the Earth
+
+
+
+
+
+THE great pale sky is alive with thunderclaps. Each detonation
+reveals together a shaft of red falling fire in what is left of the
+night, and a column of smoke in what has dawned of the day. Up
+there--so high and so far that they are heard unseen--a flight of
+dreadful birds goes circling up with strong and palpitating cries to
+look down upon the earth.
+
+The earth! It is a vast and water-logged desert that begins to take
+shape under the long-drawn desolation of daybreak. There are pools
+and gullies where the bitter breath of earliest morning nips the
+water and sets it a-shiver; tracks traced by the troops and the
+convoys of the night in these barren fields, the lines of ruts that
+glisten in the weak light like steel rails, mud-masses with broken
+stakes protruding from them, ruined trestles, and bushes of wire in
+tangled coils. With its slime-beds and puddles, the plain might be
+an endless gray sheet that floats on the sea and has here and there
+gone under. Though no rain is falling, all is drenched, oozing,
+washed out and drowned, and even the wan light seems to flow.
+
+Now you can make out a network of long ditches where the lave of the
+night still lingers. It is the trench. It is carpeted at bottom with
+a layer of slime that liberates the foot at each step with a sticky
+sound; and by each dug-out it smells of the night's excretions. The
+holes themselves, as you stoop to peer in, are foul of breath.
+
+I see shadows coming from these sidelong pits and moving about, huge
+and misshapen lumps, bear-like, that flounder and growl. They are
+"us." We are muffled like Eskimos. Fleeces and blankets and sacking
+wrap us up, weigh us down, magnify us strangely. Some stretch
+themselves, yawning profoundly. Faces appear, ruddy or leaden,
+dirt-disfigured, pierced by the little lamps of dull and
+heavy-lidded eyes, matted with uncut beards and foul with forgotten
+hair.
+
+Crack! Crack! Boom!--rifle fire and cannonade. Above us and all
+around, it crackles and rolls, in long gusts or separate explosions.
+The flaming and melancholy storm never, never ends. For more than
+fifteen months, for five hundred days in this part of the world
+where we are, the rifles and the big guns have gone on from morning
+to night and from night to morning. We are buried deep in an
+everlasting battlefield; but like the ticking of the clocks at home
+in the days gone by--in the now almost legendary Past--you only hear
+the noise when you listen.
+
+A babyish face with puffy eyelids, and cheek-bones as lurid as if
+lozenge-shaped bits of crimson paper had been stuck on, comes out of
+the ground, opens one eye, then the other. It is Paradis. The skin
+of his fat cheeks is scored with the marks of the folds in the
+tent-cloth that has served him for night-cap. The glance of his
+little eye wanders all round me; he sees me, nods, and
+says--"Another night gone, old chap."
+
+"Yes, sonny; how many more like it still?"
+
+He raises his two plump arms skywards. He has managed to scrape out
+by the steps of the dug-out and is beside me. After stumbling over
+the dim obstacle of a man who sits in the shadows, fervently
+scratches himself and sighs hoarsely, Paradis makes off--lamely
+splashing like a penguin through the flooded picture.
+
+One by one the men appear from the depths. In the corners, heavy
+shadows are seen forming--human clouds that move and break up. One
+by one they become recognizable. There is one who comes out hooded
+with his blanket--a savage, you would say, or rather, the tent of a
+savage, which walks and sways from side to side. Near by, and
+heavily framed in knitted wool, a square face is disclosed,
+yellow-brown as though iodized, and patterned with blackish patches,
+the nose broken, the eyes of Chinese restriction and red-circled, a
+little coarse and moist mustache like a greasing-brush.
+
+"There's Volpatte. How goes it, Firmin?"
+
+"It goes, it goes, and it comes," says Volpatte. His heavy and
+drawling voice is aggravated by hoarseness. He coughs--"My number's
+up, this time. Say, did you hear it last night, the attack? My boy,
+talk about a bombardment--something very choice in the way of
+mixtures!" He sniffles and passes his sleeve under his concave nose.
+His hand gropes within his greatcoat and his jacket till it finds
+the skin, and scratches. "I've killed thirty of them in the candle,"
+he growls; "in the big dug-out by the tunnel, mon vieux, there are
+some like crumbs of metal bread. You can see them running about in
+the straw like I'm telling you."
+
+"Who's been attacking? The Boches?"
+
+"The Boches and us too--out Vimy way--a counterattack--didn't you
+hear it?"
+
+"No," the big Lamuse, the ox-man, replies on my account; "I was
+snoring; but I was on fatigue all night the night before."
+
+"I heard it," declares the little Breton, Biquet; "I slept badly, or
+rather, didn't sleep. I've got a doss-house all to myself. Look,
+see, there it is--the damned thing." He points to a trough on the
+ground level, where on a meager mattress of muck, there is just
+body-room for one. "Talk about home in a nutshell!" he declares,
+wagging the rough and rock-hard little head that looks as if it had
+never been finished. "I hardly snoozed. I'd just got off, but was
+woke up by the relief of the 129th that went by--not by the noise,
+but the smell. Ah, all those chaps with their feet on the level with
+my nose! It woke me up, it gave me nose-ache so."
+
+I knew it. I have often been wakened in the trench myself by the
+trail of heavy smell in the wake of marching men.
+
+"It was all right, at least, if it killed the vermin," said Tirette.
+
+"On the contrary, it excites them," says Lamuse; "the worse you
+smell, the more you have of 'em."
+
+"And it's lucky," Biquet went on, "that their stink woke me up. As I
+was telling that great tub just now, I got my peepers open just in
+time to seize the tent-cloth that shut my hole up--one of those
+muck-heaps was going to pinch it off me."
+
+"Dirty devils, the 129th." The human form from which the words came
+could now be distinguished down below at our feet, where the morning
+had not yet reached it. Grasping his abundant clothing by handsful,
+he squatted and wriggled. It was Papa Blaire. His little eyes
+blinked among the dust that luxuriated on his face. Above the gap of
+his toothless mouth, his mustache made a heavy sallow lump. His
+hands were horribly black, the top of them shaggy with dirt, the
+palms plastered in gray relief. Himself, shriveled and dirtbedight,
+exhaled the scent of an ancient stewpan. Though busily scratching,
+he chatted with big Barque, who leaned towards him from a little way
+off.
+
+"I wasn't as mucky as this when I was a civvy," he said.
+
+"Well, my poor friend, it's a dirty change for the worse," said
+Barque.
+
+"Lucky for you," says Tirette, going one better; "when it comes to
+kids, you'll present madame with some little niggers!"
+
+Blaire took offense, and gathering gloom wrinkled his brow. "What
+have you got to give me lip about, you? What next? It's war-time. As
+for you, bean-face, you think perhaps the war hasn't changed your
+phizog and your manners? Look at yourself, monkey-snout,
+buttock-skin! A man must be a beast to talk as you do." He passed
+his hand over the dark deposit on his face, which the rains of those
+days had proved finally indelible, and added, "Besides, if I am as I
+am, it's my own choosing. To begin with, I have no teeth. The major
+said to me a long time ago, 'You haven't a single tooth. It's not
+enough. At your next rest,' he says, 'take a turn round to the
+estomalogical ambulance.'"
+
+"The tomatological ambulance," corrected Barque.
+
+"Stomatological," Bertrand amended.
+
+"You have all the making of an army cook--you ought to have been
+one," said Barque.
+
+"My idea, too," retorted Blaire innocently. Some one laughed. The
+black man got up at the insult. "You give me belly-ache," he said
+with scorn. "I'm off to the latrines."
+
+When his doubly dark silhouette had vanished, the others scrutinized
+once more the great truth that down here in the earth the cooks are
+the dirtiest of men.
+
+"If you see a chap with his skin and toggery so smeared and stained
+that you wouldn't touch him with a barge-pole, you can say to
+yourself, 'Probably he's a cook.' And the dirtier he is, the more
+likely to be a cook."
+
+"It's true, and true again," said Marthereau.
+
+"Tiens, there's Tirloir! Hey, Tirloir!"
+
+He comes up busily, peering this way and that, on an eager scent.
+His insignificant head, pale as chlorine, hops centrally about in
+the cushioning collar of a greatcoat that is much too heavy and big
+for him. His chin is pointed, and his upper teeth protrude. A
+wrinkle round his mouth is so deep with dirt that it looks like a
+muzzle. As usual, he is angry, and as usual, he rages aloud.
+
+"Some one cut my pouch in two last night!"
+
+"It was the relief of the 129th. Where had you put it?"
+
+He indicates a bayonet stuck in the wall of the trench close to the
+mouth of a funk-hole--"There, hanging on the toothpick there."
+
+"Ass!" comes the chorus. "Within reach of passing soldiers! Not
+dotty, are you?"
+
+"It's hard lines all the same," wails Tirloir. Then suddenly a fit
+of rage seizes him, his face crumples, his little fists clench in
+fury, he tightens them like knots in string and waves them about.
+"Alors quoi? Ah, if I had hold of the mongrel that did it! Talk
+about breaking his jaw--I'd stave in his bread-pan, I'd--there was a
+whole Camembert in there, I'll go and look for it." He massages his
+stomach with the little sharp taps of a guitar player, and plunges
+into the gray of the morning, grinning yet dignified, with his
+awkward outlines of an invalid in a dressing-gown. We hear him
+grumbling until he disappears.
+
+"Strange man, that," says Pepin; the others chuckle. "He's
+daft and crazy," declares Marthereau, who is in the habit of
+fortifying the expression of his thought by using two synonyms at
+once.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"Tiens, old man," says Tulacque, as he comes up. "Look at this."
+
+Tulacque is magnificent. He is wearing a lemon-yellow coat made out
+of an oilskin sleeping-sack. He has arranged a hole in the middle to
+get his head through, and compelled his shoulder-straps and belt to
+go over it. He is tall and bony. He holds his face in advance as he
+walks, a forceful face, with eyes that squint. He has something in
+his hand. "I found this while digging last night at the end of the
+new gallery to change the rotten gratings. It took my fancy
+off-hand, that knick-knack. It's an old pattern of hatchet."
+
+It was indeed an old pattern, a sharpened flint hafted with an old
+brown bone--quite a prehistoric tool in appearance.
+
+"Very handy," said Tulacque, fingering it. "Yes, not badly thought
+out. Better balanced than the regulation ax. That'll be useful to
+me, you'll see." As he brandishes that ax of Post-Tertiary Man, he
+would himself pass for an ape-man, decked out with rags and lurking
+in the bowels of the earth.
+
+One by one we gathered, we of Bertrand's squad and the half-section,
+at an elbow of the trench. Just here it is a little wider than in
+the straight part where when you meet another and have to pass you
+must throw yourself against the side, rub your back in the earth and
+your stomach against the stomach of the other.
+
+Our company occupies, in reserve, a second line parallel. No night
+watchman works here. At night we are ready for making earthworks in
+front, but as long as the day lasts we have nothing to do. Huddled
+up together and linked arm in arm, it only remains to await the
+evening as best we can.
+
+Daylight has at last crept into the interminable crevices that
+furrow this part of the earth, and now it finds the threshold of our
+holes. It is the melancholy light of the North Country, of a
+restricted and muddy sky, a sky which itself, one would say, is
+heavy with the smoke and smell of factories. In this leaden light,
+the uncouth array of these dwellers in the depths reveals the stark
+reality of the huge and hopeless misery that brought it into being.
+But that is like the rattle of rifles and the verberation of
+artillery. The drama in which we are actors has lasted much too long
+for us to be surprised any more, either at the stubbornness we have
+evolved or the garb we have devised against the rain that comes from
+above, against the mud that comes from beneath, and against the
+cold--that sort of infinity that is everywhere. The skins of
+animals, bundles of blankets, Balaklava helmets, woolen caps, furs,
+bulging mufflers (sometimes worn turban-wise), paddings and
+quiltings, knittings and double-knittings, coverings and roofings
+and cowls, tarred or oiled or rubbered, black or all the colors
+(once upon a time) of the rainbow--all these things mask and magnify
+the men, and wipe out their uniforms almost as effectively as their
+skins. One has fastened on his back a square of linoleum, with a big
+draught-board pattern in white and red, that he found in the middle
+of the dining-room of some temporary refuge. That is Pepin.
+We know him afar off by his harlequin placard sooner even than by
+his pale Apache face. Here is Barque's bulging chest-protector,
+carven from an eiderdown quilt, formerly pink, but now fantastically
+bleached and mottled by dust and rain. There, Lamuse the Huge rises
+like a ruined tower to which tattered posters still cling. A cuirass
+of moleskin, with the fur inside, adorns little Eudore with the
+burnished back of a beetle; while the golden corselet of Tulacque
+the Big Chief surpasses all.
+
+The "tin hat" gives a certain sameness to the highest points of the
+beings that are there, but even then the divers ways of wearing
+it--on the regulation cap like Biquet, over a Balaklava like
+Cadilhac, or on a cotton cap like Barque--produce a complicated
+diversity of appearance.
+
+And our legs! I went down just now, bent double, into our dug-out,
+the little low cave that smells musty and damp, where one stumbles
+over empty jam-pots and dirty rags, where two long lumps lay asleep,
+while in the corner a kneeling shape rummaged a pouch by
+candle-light. As I climbed out, the rectangle of entry afforded me a
+revelation of our legs. Flat on the ground, vertically in the air,
+or aslant; spread about, doubled up, or mixed together; blocking the
+fairway and cursed by passers-by, they present a collection of many
+colors and many shapes--gaiters, leggings black or yellow, long or
+short, in leather, in tawny cloth, in any sort of waterproof stuff;
+puttees in dark blue, light blue, black, sage green, khaki, and
+beige. Alone of all his kind, Volpatte has retained the modest
+gaiters of mobilization. Mesnil Andre has displayed for a
+fortnight a pair of thick woolen stockings, ribbed and green; and
+Tirette has always been known by his gray cloth puttees with white
+stripes, commandeered from a pair of civilian trousers that was
+hanging goodness knows where at the beginning of the war. As for
+Marthereau's puttees, they are not both of the same hue, for he
+failed to find two fag-ends of greatcoat equally worn and equally
+dirty, to be cut up into strips.
+
+There are legs wrapped up in rags, too, and even in newspapers,
+which are kept in place with spirals of thread or--much more
+practical--telephone wire. Pepin fascinated his friends and
+the passers-by with a pair of fawn gaiters, borrowed from a corpse.
+Barque, who poses as a resourceful man, full of ideas--and Heaven
+knows what a bore it makes of him at times!--has white calves, for
+he wrapped surgical bandages round his leg-cloths to preserve them,
+a snowy souvenir at his latter end of the cotton cap at the other,
+which protrudes below his helmet and is left behind in its turn by a
+saucy red tassel. Poterloo has been walking about for a month in the
+boots of a German soldier, nearly new, and with horseshoes on the
+heels. Caron entrusted them to Poterloo when he was sent back on
+account of his arm. Caron had taken them himself from a Bavarian
+machine-gunner, knocked out near the Pylones road. I can hear
+Caron telling about it yet--
+
+"Old man, he was there, his buttocks in a hole, doubled up, gaping
+at the sky with his legs in the air, and his pumps offered
+themselves to me with an air that meant they were worth my while. 'A
+tight fit,' says I. But you talk about a job to bring those
+beetle-crushers of his away! I worked on top of him, tugging,
+twisting and shaking, for half an hour and no lie about it. With his
+feet gone quite stiff, the patient didn't help me a bit. Then at
+last the legs of it--they'd been pulled about so--came unstuck at
+the knees, and his breeks tore away, and all the lot came, flop!
+There was me, all of a sudden, with a full boot in each fist. The
+legs and feet had to be emptied out."
+
+"You're going it a bit strong!"
+
+"Ask Euterpe the cyclist if it isn't true. I tell you he did it
+along of me, too. We shoved our arms inside the boots and pulled out
+of 'em some bones and bits of sock and bits of feet. But look if
+they weren't worth while!"
+
+So, until Caron returns, Poterloo continues on his behalf the
+wearing of the Bavarian machine-gunner's boots.
+
+Thus do they exercise their wits, according to their intelligence,
+their vivacity, their resources, and their boldness, in the struggle
+with the terrible discomfort. Each one seems to make the revealing
+declaration, "This is all that I knew, all I was able, all that I
+dared to do in the great misery which has befallen me."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Mesnil Joseph drowses; Blaire yawns; Marthereau smokes, "eyes
+front." Lamuse scratches himself like a gorilla, and Eudore like a
+marmoset. Volpatte coughs, and says, "I'm kicking the bucket."
+Mesnil Andre has got out his mirror and comb and is tending
+his fine chestnut beard as though it were a rare plant. The
+monotonous calm is disturbed here and there by the outbreaks of
+ferocious resentment provoked by the presence of parasites--endemic,
+chronic, and contagious.
+
+Barque, who is an observant man, sends an itinerant glance around,
+takes his pipe from his mouth, spits, winks, and says--"I say, we
+don't resemble each other much."
+
+"Why should we?" says Lamuse. "It would be a miracle if we did."
+
+* * * * *
+
+Our ages? We are of all ages. Ours is a regiment in reserve which
+successive reinforcements have renewed partly with fighting units
+and partly with Territorials. In our half-section there are
+reservists of the Territorial Army, new recruits, and demi-poils.
+Fouillade is forty; Blaire might be the father of Biquet, who is a
+gosling of Class 1913. The corporal calls Marthereau "Grandpa" or
+"Old Rubbish-heap," according as in jest or in earnest. Mesnil
+Joseph would be at the barracks if there were no war. It is a
+comical effect when we are in charge of Sergeant Vigile, a nice
+little boy, with a dab on his lip by way of mustache. When we were
+in quarters the other day, he played at skipping-rope with the
+kiddies. In our ill-assorted flock, in this family without kindred,
+this home without a hearth at which we gather, there are three
+generations side by side, living, waiting, standing still, like
+unfinished statues, like posts.
+
+Our races? We are of all races; we come from everywhere. I look at
+the two men beside me. Poterloo, the miner from the Calonne pit, is
+pink; his eyebrows are the color of straw, his eyes flax-blue. His
+great golden head involved a long search in the stores to find the
+vast steel-blue tureen that bonnets him. Fouillade, the boatman from
+Cette, rolls his wicked eyes in the long, lean face of a musketeer,
+with sunken cheeks and his skin the color of a violin. In good
+sooth, my two neighbors are as unlike as day and night.
+
+Cocon, no less, a slight and desiccated person in spectacles, whose
+tint tells of corrosion in the chemical vapors of great towns,
+contrasts with Biquet, a Breton in the rough, whose skin is gray and
+his jaw like a paving-stone; and Mesnil Andre, the
+comfortable chemist from a country town in Normandy, who has such a
+handsome and silky beard and who talks so much and so well--he has
+little in common with Lamuse, the fat peasant of Poitou, whose
+cheeks and neck are like underdone beef. The suburban accent of
+Barque, whose long legs have scoured the streets of Paris in all
+directions, alternates with the semi-Belgian cadence of those
+Northerners who came from the 8th Territorial; with the sonorous
+speech, rolling on the syllables as if over cobblestone, that the
+144th pours out upon us; with the dialect blown from those ant-like
+clusters that the Auvergnats so obstinately form among the rest. I
+remember the first words of that wag, Tirette, when he arrived--"I,
+mes enfants, I am from Clichy-la-Garenne! Can any one beat
+that?"--and the first grievance that Paradis brought to me, "They
+don't give a damn for me, because I'm from Morvan!"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Our callings? A little of all--in the lump. In those departed days
+when we had a social status, before we came to immure our destiny in
+the molehills that we must always build up again as fast as rain and
+scrap-iron beat them down, what were we? Sons of the soil and
+artisans mostly. Lamuse was a farm-servant, Paradis a carter.
+Cadilhac, whose helmet rides loosely on his pointed head, though it
+is a juvenile size--like a dome on a steeple, says Tirette--owns
+land. Papa Blaire was a small farmer in La Brie. Barque, porter and
+messenger, performed acrobatic tricks with his carrier-tricycle
+among the trains and taxis of Paris, with solemn abuse (so they say)
+for the pedestrians, fleeing like bewildered hens across the big
+streets and squares. Corporal Bertrand, who keeps himself always a
+little aloof, correct, erect, and silent, with a strong and handsome
+face and forthright gaze, was foreman in a case-factory. Tirloir
+daubed carts with paint--and without grumbling, they say. Tulacque
+was barman at the Throne Tavern in the suburbs; and Eudore of the
+pale and pleasant face kept a roadside cafe not very far from
+the front lines. It has been ill-used by the shells--naturally, for
+we all know that Eudore has no luck. Mesnil Andre, who still
+retains a trace of well-kept distinction, sold bicarbonate and
+infallible remedies at his pharmacy in a Grande Place. His brother
+Joseph was selling papers and illustrated story-books in a station
+on the State Railways at the same time that, in far-off Lyons,
+Cocon, the man of spectacles and statistics, dressed in a black
+smock, busied himself behind the counters of an ironmongery, his
+hands glittering with plumbago; while the lamps of Becuwe
+Adolphe and Poterloo, risen with the dawn, trailed about the
+coalpits of the North like weakling Will-o'-th'-wisps.
+
+And there are others amongst us whose occupations one can never
+recall, whom one confuses with one another; and the rural
+nondescripts who peddled ten trades at once in their packs, without
+counting the dubious Pepin, who can have had none at all.
+(While at the depot after sick leave, three months ago, they say, he
+got married--to secure the separation allowance.)
+
+The liberal professions are not represented among those around me.
+Some teachers are subalterns in the company or Red Cross men. In the
+regiment a Marist Brother is sergeant in the Service de
+Sante; a professional tenor is cyclist dispatch-rider to the
+Major; a "gentleman of independent means" is mess corporal to the
+C.H.R. But here there is nothing of all that. We are fighting men,
+we others, and we include hardly any intellectuals, or men of the
+arts or of wealth, who during this war will have risked their faces
+only at the loopholes, unless in passing by, or under gold-laced
+caps.
+
+Yes, we are truly and deeply different from each other. But we are
+alike all the same. In spite of this diversity of age, of country,
+of education, of position, of everything possible, in spite of the
+former gulfs that kept us apart, we are in the main alike. Under the
+same uncouth outlines we conceal and reveal the same ways and
+habits, the same simple nature of men who have reverted to the state
+primeval.
+
+The same language, compounded of dialect and the slang of workshop
+and barracks, seasoned with the latest inventions, blends us in the
+sauce of speech with the massed multitudes of men who (for seasons
+now) have emptied France and crowded together in the North-East.
+
+Here, too, linked by a fate from which there is no escape, swept
+willy-nilly by the vast adventure into one rank, we have no choice
+but to go as the weeks and months go--alike. The terrible narrowness
+of the common life binds us close, adapts us, merges us one in the
+other. It is a sort of fatal contagion. Nor need you, to see how
+alike we soldiers are, be afar off--at that distance, say, when we
+are only specks of the dust-clouds that roll across the plain.
+
+We are waiting. Weary of sitting, we get up, our joints creaking
+like warping wood or old hinges. Damp rusts men as it rusts rifles;
+more slowly, but deeper. And we begin again, but not in the same
+way, to wait. In a state of war, one is always waiting. We have
+become waiting-machines. For the moment it is food we are waiting
+for. Then it will be the post. But each in its turn. When we have
+done with dinner we will think about the letters. After that, we
+shall set ourselves to wait for something else.
+
+Hunger and thirst are urgent instincts which formidably excite the
+temper of my companions. As the meal gets later they become
+grumblesome and angry. Their need of food and drink snarls from
+their lips--"That's eight o'clock. Now, why the hell doesn't it
+come?"
+
+"Just so, and me that's been pining since noon yesterday," sulks
+Lamuse, whose eyes are moist with longing, while his cheeks seem to
+carry great daubs of wine-colored grease-paint.
+
+Discontent grows more acute every minute.
+
+"I'll bet Plumet has poured down his own gullet my wine ration that
+he's supposed to have, and others with it, and he's lying drunk over
+there somewhere."
+
+"It's sure and certain"--Marthereau seconds the proposition.
+
+"Ah, the rotters, the vermin, these fatigue men!" Tirloir bellows.
+"An abominable race--all of 'em--mucky-nosed idlers! They roll over
+each other all day long at the rear, and they'll be damned before
+they'll be in time. Ah, if I were boss, they should damn quick take
+our places in the trenches, and they'd have to work for a change. To
+begin with, I should say, 'Every man in the section will carry
+grease and soup in turns.' Those who were willing, of course--"
+
+"I'm confident," cries Cocon, "it's that Pepere that's
+keeping the others back. He does it on purpose, firstly, and then,
+too, he can't finish plucking himself in the morning, poor lad. He
+wants ten hours for his flea-hunt, he's so finicking; and if he
+can't get 'em, monsieur has the pip all day."
+
+"Be damned to him," growls Lamuse. "I'd shift him out of bed if only
+I was there! I'd wake him up with boot-toe, I'd--"
+
+"I was reckoning, the other day," Cocon went on; "it took him seven
+hours forty-seven minutes to come from thirty-one dug-out. It should
+take him five good hours, but no longer."
+
+Cocon is the Man of Figures. He has a deep affection, amounting to
+rapacity, for accuracy in recorded computation. On any subject at
+all, he goes burrowing after statistics, gathers them with the
+industry of an insect, and serves them up on any one who will
+listen. Just now, while he wields his figures like weapons, the
+sharp ridges and angles and triangles that make up the paltry face
+where perch the double discs of his glasses, are contracted with
+vexation. He climbs to the firing-step (made in the days when this
+was the first line), and raises his head angrily over the parapet.
+The light touch of a little shaft of cold sunlight that lingers on
+the land sets a-glitter both his glasses and the diamond that hangs
+from his nose.
+
+"And that Pepere, too, talk about a drinking-cup with
+the bottom out! You'd never believe the weight of stuff he can let
+drop on a single journey."
+
+With his pipe in the corner, Papa Blaire fumes in two senses. You
+can see his heavy mustache trembling. It is like a comb made of
+bone, whitish and drooping.
+
+"Do you want to know what I think? These dinner men, they're the
+dirtiest dogs of all. It's 'Blast this' and 'Blast that'--John Blast
+and Co., I call 'em."
+
+"They have all the elements of a dunghill about them," says Eudore,
+with a sigh of conviction. He is prone on the ground, with his mouth
+half-open and the air of a martyr. With one fading eye he follows
+the movements of Pepin, who prowls to and fro like a hyaena.
+
+Their spiteful exasperation with the loiterers mounts higher and
+higher. Tirloir the Grumbler takes the lead and expands. This is
+where he comes in. With his little pointed gesticulations he goads
+and spurs the anger all around him.
+
+"Ah, the devils, what? The sort of meat they threw at us yesterday!
+Talk about whetstones! Beef from an ox, that? Beef from a bicycle,
+yes rather! I said to the boys, 'Look here, you chaps, don't you
+chew it too quick, or you'll break your front teeth on the nails!'"
+
+Tirloir's harangue--he was manager of a traveling cinema, it
+seems--would have made us laugh at other times, but in the present
+temper it is only echoed by a circulating growl.
+
+"Another time, so that you won't grumble about the toughness, they
+send you something soft and flabby that passes for meat, something
+with the look and the taste of a sponge--or a poultice. When you
+chew that, it's the same as a cup of water, no more and no less."
+
+"Tout ca," says Lamuse, "has no substance; it gets no grip on
+your guts. You think you're full, but at the bottom of your tank
+you're empty. So, bit by bit, you turn your eyes up, poisoned for
+want of sustenance."
+
+"The next time," Biquet exclaims in desperation, "I shall ask to see
+the old man, and I shall say, 'Mon capitaine'--"
+
+"And I," says Barque, "shall make myself look sick, and I shall say,
+'Monsieur le major'--"
+
+"And get nix or the kick-out--they're all alike--all in a band to
+take it out of the poor private."
+
+"I tell you, they'd like to get the very skin off us!"
+
+"And the brandy, too! We have a right to get it brought to the
+trenches--as long as it's been decided somewhere--I don't know when
+or where, but I know it--and in the three days that we've been here,
+there's three days that the brandy's been dealt out to us on the end
+of a fork!"
+
+"Ah, malheur!"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"There's the grub!" announces a poilu [note 1] who was on the
+look-out at the corner.
+
+"Time, too!"
+
+And the storm of revilings ceases as if by magic. Wrath is changed
+into sudden contentment.
+
+Three breathless fatigue men, their faces streaming with tears of
+sweat, put down on the ground some large tins, a paraffin can, two
+canvas buckets, and a file of loaves, skewered on a stick. Leaning
+against the wall of the trench, they mop their faces with their
+handkerchiefs or sleeves. And I see Cocon go up to Pepere with a
+smile, and forgetful of the abuse he had been heaping on the other's
+reputation, he stretches out a cordial hand towards one of the cans
+in the collection that swells the circumference of Pepere. after the
+manner of a life-belt.
+
+"What is there to eat?"
+
+"It's there," is the evasive reply of the second fatigue man, whom
+experience has taught that a proclamation of the menu always evokes
+the bitterness of disillusion. So they set themselves to panting
+abuse of the length and the difficulties of the trip they have just
+accomplished: "Some crowds about, everywhere! It's a tough job to
+get along--got to disguise yourself as a cigarette paper,
+sometimes."--"And there are people who say they're shirkers in the
+kitchens!" As for him, he would a hundred thousand times rather be
+with the company in the trenches, to mount guard and dig, than earn
+his keep by such a job, twice a day during the night!
+
+Paradis, having lifted the lids of the jars, surveys the recipients
+and announces, "Kidney beans in oil, bully, pudding, and
+coffee--that's all."
+
+"Nom de Dieu!" bawls Tulacque. "And wine?" He summons the crowd:
+"Come and look here, all of you! That--that's the limit! We're done
+out of our wine!"
+
+Athirst and grimacing, they hurry up; and from the profoundest
+depths of their being wells up the chorus of despair and
+disappointment, "Oh, Hell!"
+
+"Then what's that in there?" says the fatigue man, still ruddily
+sweating, and using his foot to point at a bucket.
+
+"Yes," says Paradis, "my mistake, there is some."
+
+The fatigue man shrugs his shoulders, and hurls at Paradis a look of
+unspeakable scorn--"Now you're beginning! Get your gig-lamps on, if
+your sight's bad." He adds, "One cup each--rather less perhaps--some
+chucklehead bumped against me, coming through the Boyau du Bois, and
+a drop got spilled." "Ah!" he hastens to add, raising his voice, "if
+I hadn't been loaded up, talk about the boot-toe he'd have got in
+the rump! But he hopped it on his top gear, the brute!"
+
+In spite of this confident assurance, the fatigue man makes off
+himself, curses overtaking him as he goes, maledictions charged with
+offensive reflections on his honesty and temperance, imprecations
+inspired by this revelation of a ration reduced.
+
+All the same, they throw themselves on the food, and eat it
+standing, squatting, kneeling, sitting on tins, or on haversacks
+pulled out of the holes where they sleep--or even prone, their backs
+on the ground, disturbed by passers-by, cursed at and cursing. Apart
+from these fleeting insults and jests, they say nothing, the primary
+and universal interest being but to swallow, with their mouths and
+the circumference thereof as greasy as a rifle-breech. Contentment
+is theirs.
+
+At the earliest cessation of their jaw-bones' activity, they serve
+up the most ribald of raillery. They knock each other about, and
+clamor in riotous rivalry to have their say. One sees even Farfadet
+smiling, the frail municipal clerk who in the early days kept
+himself so decent and clean amongst us all that he was taken for a
+foreigner or a convalescent. One sees the tomato-like mouth of
+Lamuse dilate and divide, and his delight ooze out in tears.
+Poterloo's face, like a pink peony, opens out wider and wider. Papa
+Blaire's wrinkles flicker with frivolity as he stands up, pokes his
+head forward, and gesticulates with the abbreviated body that serves
+as a handle for his huge drooping mustache. Even the corrugations of
+Cocon's poor little face are lighted up.
+
+Becuwe goes in search of firewood to warm the coffee. While
+we wait for our drink, we roll cigarettes and fill pipes. Pouches
+are pulled out. Some of us have shop-acquired pouches in leather or
+rubber, but they are a minority. Biquet extracts his tobacco from a
+sock, of which the mouth is drawn tight with string. Most of the
+others use the bags for anti-gas pads, made of some waterproof
+material which is an excellent preservative of shag, be it coarse or
+fine; and there are those who simply fumble for it in the bottom of
+their greatcoat pockets.
+
+The smokers spit in a circle, just at the mouth of the dug-out which
+most of the half-section inhabit, and flood with tobacco-stained
+saliva the place where they put their hands and feet when they
+flatten themselves to get in or out.
+
+But who notices such a detail?
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Now, a propos of a letter to Marthereau from his wife, they
+discuss produce.
+
+"La mere Marthereau has written," he says. "That fat pig
+we've got at home, a fine specimen, guess how much she's worth now?"
+
+But the subject of domestic economy degenerates suddenly into a
+fierce altercation between Pepin and Tulacque. Words of quite
+unmistakable significance are exchanged. Then--"I don't care a what
+you say or what you don't say! Shut it up!"--"I shall shut it when I
+want, midden!"--"A seven-pound thump would shut it up quick
+enough!"--"Who from? Who'll give it me?"--"Come and find out!"
+
+They grind their teeth and approach each other in a foaming rage.
+Tulacque grasps his prehistoric ax, and his squinting eyes are
+flashing. The other is pale and his eyes have a greenish glint; you
+can see in his blackguard face that his thoughts are with his knife.
+
+But between the two, as they grip each other in looks and mangle in
+words, Lamuse intervenes with his huge pacific head, like a baby's,
+and his face of sanguinary hue: "Allons, allons! You're not going to
+cut yourselves up! Can't be allowed!"
+
+The others also interpose, and the antagonists are separated, but
+they continue to hurl murderous looks at each other across the
+barrier of their comrades. Pepin mutters a residue of slander
+in tones that quiver with malice--
+
+"The hooligan, the ruffian, the blackguard! But wait a bit! I'll see
+him later about this!"
+
+On the other side, Tulacque confides in the poilu who is beside him:
+"That crab-louse! Non, but you know what he is! You know--there's no
+more to be said. Here, we've got to rub along with a lot of people
+that we don't know from Adam. We know 'em and yet we don't know 'em;
+but that man, if he thinks he can mess me about, he'll find himself
+up the wrong street! You wait a bit. I'll smash him up one of these
+days, you'll see!"
+
+Meanwhile the general conversation is resumed, drowning the last
+twin echoes of the quarrel.
+
+"It's every day alike, alors!" says Paradis to me; "yesterday it was
+Plaisance who wanted to let Fumex have it heavy on the jaw, about
+God knows what--a matter of opium pills, I think. First it's one and
+then it's another that talks of doing some one in. Are we getting to
+be a lot of wild animals because we look like 'em?"
+
+"Mustn't take them too seriously, these men," Lamuse declares;
+"they're only kids."
+
+"True enough, seeing that they're men."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+The day matures. A little more light has trickled through the mists
+that enclose the earth. But the sky has remained overcast, and now
+it dissolves in rain; With a slowness which itself disheartens, the
+wind brings back its great wet void upon us. The rain-haze makes
+everything clammy and dull--even the Turkey red of Lamuse s cheeks,
+and even the orange armor that caparisons Tulacque. The water
+penetrates to the deep joy with which dinner endowed us, and puts it
+out. Space itself shrinks; and the sky, which is a field of
+melancholy, comes closely down upon the earth, which is a field of
+death.
+
+We are still there, implanted and idle. It will be hard to-day to
+reach the end of it, to get rid of the afternoon. We shiver in
+discomfort, and keep shifting our positions, like cattle enclosed.
+
+Cocon is explaining to his neighbor the arrangement and intricacy of
+our trenches. He has seen a military map and made some calculations.
+In the sector occupied by our regiment there are fifteen lines of
+French trenches. Some are abandoned, invaded by grass, and half
+leveled; the others solidly upkept and bristling with men. These
+parallels are joined up by innumerable galleries which hook and
+crook themselves like ancient streets. The system is much more dense
+than we believe who live inside it. On the twenty-five kilometers'
+width that form the army front, one must count on a thousand
+kilometers of hollowed lines--trenches and saps of all sorts. And
+the French Army consists of ten such armies. There are then, on the
+French side, about 10,000 kilometers [note 2] of trenches, and as
+much again on the German side. And the French front is only about
+one-eighth of the whole war-front of the world.
+
+Thus speaks Cocon, and he ends by saying to his neighbor, "In all
+that lot, you see what we are, us chaps?"
+
+Poor Barque's head droops. His face, bloodless as a slum child's, is
+underlined by a red goatee that punctuates his hair like an
+apostrophe: "Yes, it's true, when you come to think of it. What's a
+soldier, or even several soldiers?--Nothing, and less than nothing,
+in the whole crowd; and so we see ourselves lost, drowned, like the
+few drops of blood that we are among all this flood of men and
+things."
+
+Barque sighs and is silent, and the end of his discourse gives a
+chance of hearing to a bit of jingling narrative, told in an
+undertone: "He was coming along with two horses--Fs-s-s--a shell;
+and he's only one horse left."
+
+"You get fed up with it," says Volpatte.
+
+"But you stick it," growls Barque.
+
+"You've got to," says Paradis.
+
+"Why?" asks Marthereau, without conviction.
+
+"No need for a reason, as long as we've got to."
+
+"There is no reason," Lamuse avers.
+
+"Yes, there is," says Cocon. "It's--or rather, there are several."
+
+"Shut it up! Much better to have no reason, as long as we've got to
+stick it."
+
+"All the same," comes the hollow voice of Blaire, who lets no chance
+slip of airing his pet phrase--"All the same, they'd like to steal
+the very skin off us!"
+
+"At the beginning of it," says Tirette, "I used to think about a
+heap of things. I considered and calculated. Now, I don't think any
+more."
+
+"Nor me either."
+
+"Nor me."
+
+"I've never tried to."
+
+"You're not such a fool as you look, flea-face," says the shrill and
+jeering voice of Mesnil Andre. Obscurely flattered, the other
+develops his theme--
+
+"To begin with, you can't know anything about anything."
+
+Says Corporal Bertrand, "There's only one thing you need know, and
+it's this; that the Boches are here in front of us, deep dug in, and
+we've got to see that they don't get through, and we've got to put
+'em out, one day or another--as soon as possible."
+
+"Oui, oui, they've got to leg it, and no mistake about it. What else
+is there? Not worth while to worry your head thinking about anything
+else. But it's a long job."
+
+An explosion of profane assent comes from Fouillade, and he adds,
+"That's what it is!"
+
+"I've given up grousing," says Barque. "At the beginning of it, I
+played hell with everybody--with the people at the rear, with the
+civilians, with the natives, with the shirkers. Yes, I played hell;
+but that was at the beginning of the war--I was young. Now, I take
+things better."
+
+"There's only one way of taking 'em--as they come!"
+
+"Of course! Otherwise, you'd go crazy. We're dotty enough already,
+eh, Firmin?"
+
+Volpatte assents with a nod of profound conviction. He spits, and
+then contemplates his missile with a fixed and unseeing eye.
+
+"You were saying?" insists Barque.
+
+"Here, you haven't got to look too far in front. You must live from
+day to day and from hour to hour, as well as you can."
+
+"Certain sure, monkey-face. We've got to do what they tell us to do,
+until they tell us to go away."
+
+"That's all," yawns Mesnil Joseph.
+
+Silence follows the recorded opinions that proceed from these dried
+and tanned faces, inlaid with dust. This, evidently, is the credo of
+the men who, a year and a half ago, left all the corners of the land
+to mass themselves on the frontier: Give up trying to understand,
+and give up trying to be yourself. Hope that you will not die, and
+fight for life as well as you can.
+
+"Do what you've got to do, oui, but get out of your own messes
+yourself," says Barque, as he slowly stirs the mud to and fro.
+
+"No choice"--Tulacque backs him up. "If you don't get out of 'em
+yourself, no one'll do it for you."
+
+"He's not yet quite extinct, the man that bothers about the other
+fellow."
+
+"Every man for himself, in war!"
+
+"That's so, that's so."
+
+Silence. Then from the depth of their destitution, these men summon
+sweet souvenirs--"All that," Barque goes on, "isn't worth much,
+compared with the good times we had at Soissons."
+
+"Ah, the Devil!"
+
+A gleam of Paradise lost lights up their eyes and seems even to
+redden their cold faces.
+
+"Talk about a festival!" sighs Tirloir, as he leaves off scratching
+himself, and looks pensively far away over Trenchland.
+
+"Ah, nom de Dieu! All that town, nearly abandoned, that used to be
+ours! The houses and the beds--"
+
+"And the cupboards!"
+
+"And the cellars!"
+
+Lamuse's eyes are wet, his face like a nosegay, his heart full.
+
+"Were you there long?" asks Cadilhac, who came here later, with the
+drafts from Auvergne.
+
+"Several months."
+
+The conversation had almost died out, but it flames up again
+fiercely at this vision of the days of plenty.
+
+"We used to see," said Paradis dreamily, "the poilus pouring along
+and behind the houses on the way back to camp with fowls hung round
+their middles, and a rabbit under each arm, borrowed from some good
+fellow or woman that they hadn't seen and won't ever see again."
+
+We reflect on the far-off flavor of chicken and rabbit. "There were
+things that we paid for, too. The spondu-licks just danced about. We
+held all the aces in those days."
+
+"A hundred thousand francs went rolling round the shops."
+
+"Millions, oui. All the day, just a squandering that you've no idea
+of, a sort of devil's delight."
+
+"Believe me or not," said Blaire to Cadilhac, "but in the middle of
+it all, what we had the least of was fires, just like here and
+everywhere else you go. You had to chase it and find it and stick to
+it. Ah, mon vieux, how we did run after the kindlings!"
+
+"Well, we were in the camp of the C.H.R. The cook there was the
+great Martin Cesar. He was the man for finding wood!"
+
+"Ah, oui, oui! He was the ace of trumps! He got what he wanted
+without twisting himself."
+
+"Always some fire in his kitchen, young fellow. You saw cooks
+chasing and gabbling about the streets in all directions, blubbering
+because they had no coal or wood. But he'd got a fire. When he
+hadn't any, he said, 'Don't worry, I'll see you through.' And he
+wasn't long about it, either."
+
+"He went a bit too far, even. The first time I saw him in his
+kitchen, you'd never guess what he'd got the stew going with! With a
+violin that he'd found in the house!"
+
+"Rotten, all the same," says Mesnil Andre. "One knows well
+enough that a violin isn't worth much when it comes to utility, but
+all the same--"
+
+"Other times, he used billiard cues. Zizi just succeeded in pinching
+one for a cane, but the rest--into the fire! Then the arm-chairs in
+the drawing-room went by degrees--mahogany, they were. He did 'em in
+and cut them up by night, case some N.C.O. had something to say
+about it."
+
+"He knew his way about," said Pepin. "As for us, we got busy
+with an old suite of furniture that lasted us a fortnight."
+
+"And what for should we be without? You've got to make dinner, and
+there's no wood or coal. After the grub's served out, there you are
+with your jaws empty, with a pile of meat in front of you, and in
+the middle of a lot of pals that chaff and bullyrag you!"
+
+"It's the War Office's doing, it isn't ours."
+
+"Hadn't the officers a lot to say about the pinching?"
+
+"They damn well did it themselves, I give you my word! Desmaisons,
+do you remember Lieutenant Virvin's trick, breaking down a cellar
+door with an ax? And when a poilu saw him at it, he gave him the
+door for firewood, so that he wouldn't spread it about."
+
+"And poor old Saladin, the transport officer. He was found coming
+out of a basement in the dusk with two bottles of white wine in each
+arm, the sport, like a nurse with two pairs of twins. When he was
+spotted, they made him go back down to the wine-cellar, and serve
+out bottles for everybody. But Corporal Bertrand, who is a man of
+scruples, wouldn't have any. Ah, you remember that, do you,
+sausage-foot!"
+
+"Where's that cook now that always found wood?" asks Cadilhac.
+
+"He's dead. A bomb fell in his stove. He didn't get it, but he's
+dead all the same--died of shock when he saw his macaroni with its
+legs in the air. Heart seizure, so the doc' said. His heart was
+weak--he was only strong on wood. They gave him a proper
+funeral--made him a coffin out of the bedroom floor, and got the
+picture nails out of the walls to fasten 'em together, and used
+bricks to drive 'em in. While they were carrying him off, I thought
+to myself, 'Good thing for him he's dead. If he saw that, he'd never
+be able to forgive himself for not having thought of the bedroom
+floor for his fire.'--Ah, what the devil are you doing, son of a
+pig?"
+
+Volpatte offers philosophy on the rude intrusion of a passing
+fatigue party: "The private gets along on the back of his pals. When
+you spin your yarns in front of a fatigue gang, or when you take the
+best bit or the best place, it's the others that suffer."
+
+"I've often," says Lamuse, "put up dodges so as not to go into the
+trenches, and it's come off no end of times. I own up to that. But
+when my pals are in danger, I'm not a dodger any more. I forget
+discipline and everything else. I see men, and I go. But otherwise,
+my boy, I look after my little self."
+
+Lamuse's claims are not idle words. He is an admitted expert at
+loafing, but all the same he has brought wounded in under fire and
+saved their lives. Without any brag, he relates the deed--
+
+"We were all lying on the grass, and having a hot time. Crack,
+crack! Whizz, whizz! When I saw them downed, I got up, though they
+yelled at me, 'Get down!' Couldn't leave 'em like that. Nothing to
+make a song about, seeing I couldn't do anything else,"
+
+Nearly all the boys of the squad have some high deed of arms to
+their credit, and the Croix de Guerre has been successively set upon
+their breasts.
+
+"I haven't saved any Frenchmen," says Biquet, "but I've given some
+Boches the bitter pill." In the May attacks, he ran off in advance
+and was seen to disappear in the distance, but came back with four
+fine fellows in helmets.
+
+"I, too," says Tulacque, "I've killed some." Two months ago, with
+quaint vanity, he laid out nine in a straight row, in front of the
+taken trench. "But," he adds, "it's always the Boche officer that
+I'm after."
+
+"Ah, the beasts!" The curse comes from several men at once and from
+the bottom of their hearts.
+
+"Ah, mon vieux," says Tirloir, "we talk about the dirty Boche race;
+but as for the common soldier, I don't know if it's true or whether
+we're codded about that as well, and if at bottom they're not men
+pretty much like us."
+
+"Probably they're men like us," says Eudore.
+
+"Perhaps!" cries Cocon, "and perhaps not."
+
+"Anyway," Tirloir goes on, "we've not got a dead set on the men, but
+on the German officers; non, non, non, they're not men, they're
+monsters. I tell you, they're really a specially filthy sort o'
+vermin. One might say that they're the microbes of the war. You
+ought to see them close to--the infernal great stiff-backs, thin as
+nails, though they've got calf-heads."
+
+"And snouts like snakes."
+
+Tirloir continues: "I saw one once, a prisoner, as I came back from
+liaison. The beastly bastard! A Prussian colonel, that wore a
+prince's crown, so they told me, and a gold coat-of-arms. He was mad
+because we took leave to graze against him when they were bringing
+him back along the communication trench, and he looked down on
+everybody--like that. I said to myself, 'Wait a bit, old cock, I'll
+make you rattle directly!' I took my time and squared up behind him,
+and kicked into his tailpiece with all my might. I tell you, he fell
+down half-strangled."
+
+"Strangled?"
+
+"Yes, with rage, when it dawned on him that the rump of an officer
+and nobleman had been bust in by the hobnailed socks of a poor
+private! He went off chattering like a woman and wriggling like an
+epileptic--"
+
+"I'm not spiteful myself," says Blaire, "I've got kiddies. And it
+worries me, too, at home, when I've got to kill a pig that I
+know--but those, I shall run 'em through--Bing!--full in the
+linen-cupboard."
+
+"I, too."
+
+"Not to mention," says Pepin, "that they've got silver hats,
+and pistols that you can get four quid for whenever you like, and
+field-glasses that simply haven't got a price. Ah, bad luck, what a
+lot of chances I let slip in the early part of the campaign! I was
+too much of a beginner then, and it serves me right. But don't
+worry, I shall get a silver hat. Mark my words, I swear I'll have
+one. I must have not only the skin of one of Wilhelm's red-tabs, but
+his togs as well. Don't fret yourself; I'll fasten on to that before
+the war ends."
+
+"You think it'll have an end, then?" asks some one.
+
+"Don't worry!" replies the other.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Meanwhile, a hubbub has arisen to the right of us, and suddenly a
+moving and buzzing group appears, in which dark and bright forms
+mingle.
+
+"What's all that?"
+
+Biquet has ventured on a reconnaissance, and returns contemptuously
+pointing with his thumb towards the motley mass: "Eh, boys! Come and
+have a squint at them! Some people!"
+
+"Some people?"
+
+"Oui, some gentlemen, look you. Civvies, with Staff officers."
+
+"Civilians! Let's hope they'll stick it!" [note 3]
+
+It is the sacramental saying and evokes laughter, although we have
+heard it a hundred times, and although the soldier has rightly or
+wrongly perverted the original meaning and regards it as an ironical
+reflection on his life of privations and peril.
+
+Two Somebodies come up; two Somebodies with overcoats and canes.
+Another is dressed in a sporting suit, adorned with a plush hat and
+binoculars. Pale blue tunics, with shining belts of fawn color or
+patent leather, follow and steer the civilians.
+
+With an arm where a brassard glitters in gold-edged silk and golden
+ornament, a captain indicates the firing-step in front of an old
+emplacement and invites the visitors to get up and try it. The
+gentleman in the touring suit clambers up with the aid of his
+umbrella.
+
+Says Barque, "You've seen the station-master at the Gare du Nord,
+all in his Sunday best, and opening the door of a first-class
+compartment for a rich sportsman on the first day of the shooting?
+With his 'Montez, monsieur le Propritaire!'--you know, when the
+toffs are all togged up in brand-new outfits and leathers and
+ironmongery, and showing off with all their paraphernalia for
+killing poor little animals!"
+
+Three or four poilus who were quite without their accouterments have
+disappeared underground. The others sit as though paralyzed. Even
+the pipes go out, and nothing is heard but the babble of talk
+exchanged by the officers and their guests.
+
+"Trench tourists," says Barque in an undertone, and then
+louder--"This way, mesdames et messieurs"--in the manner of the
+moment.
+
+"Chuck it!" whispers Farfadet, fearing that Barque's malicious
+tongue will draw the attention of the potent personages.
+
+Some heads in the group are now turned our way. One gentleman who
+detaches himself and comes up wears a soft hat and a loose tie. He
+has a white billy-goat beard, and might be an artiste. Another
+follows him, wearing a black overcoat, a black bowler hat, a black
+beard, a white tie and an eyeglass.
+
+"Ah, ah! There are some poilus," says the first gentleman. "These
+are real poilus, indeed."
+
+He comes up to our party a little timidly, as though in the
+Zoological Gardens, and offers his hand to the one who is nearest to
+him--not without awkwardness, as one offers a piece of bread to the
+elephant.
+
+"He, he! They are drinking coffee," he remarks.
+
+"They call it 'the juice,'" corrects the magpie-man.
+
+"Is it good, my friends?" The soldier, abashed in his turn by this
+alien and unusual visitation, grunts, giggles, and reddens, and the
+gentleman says, "He, he!" Then, with a slight motion of the head,
+he withdraws backwards.
+
+The assemblage, with its neutral shades of civilian cloth and its
+sprinkling of bright military hues--like geraniums and hortensias in
+the dark soil of a flowerbed--oscillates, then passes, and moves off
+the opposite way it came. One of the officers was heard to say, "We
+have yet much to see, messieurs les journalistes."
+
+When the radiant spectacle has faded away, we look at each other.
+Those who had fled into the funk-holes now gradually and head first
+disinter themselves. The group recovers itself and shrugs its
+shoulders.
+
+"They're journalists," says Tirette.
+
+"Journalists?"
+
+"Why, yes, the individuals that lay the newspapers. You don't seem
+to catch on, fathead. Newspapers must have chaps to write 'em."
+
+"Then it's those that stuff up our craniums?" says Marthereau.
+
+Barque assumes a shrill treble, and pretending that he has a
+newspaper in front of his nose, recites--"'The Crown Prince is mad,
+after having been killed at the beginning of the campaign, and
+meanwhile he has all the diseases you can name. William will die
+this evening, and again to-morrow. The Germans have no more
+munitions and are chewing wood. They cannot hold out, according to
+the most authoritative calculations, beyond the end of the week. We
+can have them when we like, with their rifles slung. If one can wait
+a few days longer, there will be no desire to forsake the life of
+the trenches. One is so comfortable there, with water and gas laid
+on, and shower-baths at every step. The only drawback is that it is
+rather too hot in winter. As for the Austrians, they gave in a long
+time since and are only pretending.' For fifteen months now it's
+been like that, and you can hear the editor saying to his scribes,
+'Now, boys, get into it! Find some way of brushing that up again for
+me in five secs, and make it spin out all over those four damned
+white sheets that we've got to mucky.'"
+
+"Ah, yes!" says Fouillade.
+
+"Look here, corporal; you're making fun of it--isn't it true what I
+said?"
+
+"There's a little truth in it, but you're too slashing on the poor
+boys, and you'd be the first to make a song about it if you had to
+go without papers. Oui, when the paper-man's going by, why do you
+all shout, 'Here, here'?"
+
+"And what good can you get out of them all?" cries Papa Blaire.
+"Read 'em by the tubful if you like, but do the same as me--don't
+believe 'em!"
+
+"Oui, oui, that's enough about them. Turn the page over,
+donkey-nose."
+
+The conversation is breaking up; interest in it follows suit and is
+scattered. Four poilus join in a game of manille, that will last
+until night blacks out the cards. Volpatte is trying to catch a leaf
+of cigarette paper that has escaped his fingers and goes hopping and
+dodging in the wind along the wall of the trench like a fragile
+butterfly.
+
+Cocon and Tirette are recalling their memories of barrack-life. The
+impressions left upon their minds by those years of military
+training are ineffaceable. Into that fund of abundant souvenirs, of
+abiding color and instant service, they have been wont to dip for
+their subjects of conversation for ten, fifteen, or twenty years. So
+that they still frequent it, even after a year and a half of actual
+war in all its forms.
+
+I can hear some of the talk and guess the rest of it. For it is
+everlastingly the same sort of tale that they get out of their
+military past;--the narrator once shut up a bad-tempered N.C.O. with
+words of extreme appropriateness and daring. He wasn't afraid, he
+spoke out loud and strong! Some scraps of it reach my ears--
+
+"Alors, d'you think I flinched when Nenoeil said that to me? Not a
+bit, my boy. All the pals kept their jaws shut but me; I spoke up,
+'Mon adjudant,' I says, 'it's possible, but--'" A sentence follows
+that I cannot secure--"Oh, tu sais, just like that, I said it. He
+didn't get shirty; 'Good, that's good,' he says as he hops it, and
+afterwards he was as good as all that, with me."
+
+"Just like me, with Dodore, 'jutant of the 13th, when I was on
+leave--a mongrel. Now he's at the Pantheon, as caretaker.
+He'd got it in for me, so--"
+
+So each unpacks his own little load of historical anecdote. They are
+all alike, and not one of them but says, "As for me, I am not like
+the others."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+The post-orderly! He is a tall and broad man with fat calves;
+comfortable looking, and as neat and tidy as a policeman. He is in a
+bad temper. There are new orders, and now he has to go every day as
+far as Battalion Headquarters. He abuses the order as if it had been
+directed exclusively against himself; and he continues to complain
+even while he calls up the corporals for the post and maintains his
+customary chat en passant with this man and that. And in spite of
+his spleen he does not keep to himself all the information with
+which he comes provided. While removing the string from the
+letter-packets he dispenses his verbal news, and announces first,
+that according to rumor, there is a very explicit ban on the wearing
+of hoods.
+
+"Hear that?" says Tirette to Tirloir. "Got to chuck your fine hood
+away!"
+
+"Not likely! I'm not on. That's nothing to do with me," replies the
+hooded one, whose pride no less than his comfort is at stake.
+
+"Order of the General Commanding the Army."
+
+"Then let the General give an order that it's not to rain any more.
+I want to know nothing about it."
+
+The majority of Orders, even when less peculiar than this one, are
+always received in this way--and then carried out.
+
+"There's a reported order as well," says the man of letters, "that
+beards have got to be trimmed and hair got to be clipped close."
+
+"Talk on, my lad," says Barque, on whose head the threatened order
+directly falls; "you didn't see me! You can draw the curtains!"
+
+"I'm telling you. Do it or don't do it--doesn't matter a damn to
+me."
+
+Besides what is real and written, there is bigger news, but still
+more dubious and imaginative--the division is going to be relieved,
+and sent either to rest--real rest, for six weeks--or to Morocco, or
+perhaps to Egypt.
+
+Divers exclamations. They listen, and let themselves be tempted by
+the fascination of the new, the wonderful.
+
+But some one questions the post-orderly: "Who told you that?"
+
+"The adjutant commanding the Territorial detachment that fatigues
+for the H.Q. of the A.C."
+
+"For the what?"
+
+"For Headquarters of the Army Corps, and he's not the only one that
+says it. There's--you know him--I've forgotten his name--he's like
+Galle, but he isn't Galle--there's some one in his family who is
+Some One. Anyway, he knows all about it."
+
+"Then what?" With hungry eyes they form a circle around the
+story-teller.
+
+"Egypt, you say, we shall go to? Don't know it. I know there were
+Pharaohs there at the time when I was a kid and went to school, but
+since--"
+
+"To Egypt!" The idea finds unconscious anchorage in their minds.
+
+"Ah, non," says Blaire, "for I get sea-sick. Still, it doesn't last,
+sea-sickness. Oui, but what would my good lady say?"
+
+"What about it? She'll get used to it. You see niggers, and streets
+full of big birds, like we see sparrows here."
+
+"But haven't we to go to Alsace?"
+
+"Yes," says the post-orderly, "there are some who think so at the
+Pay-office."
+
+"That'd do me well enough."
+
+But common sense and acquired experience regain the upper hand and
+put the visions to flight. We have been told so often that we were
+going a long way off, so often have we believed it, so often been
+undeceived! So, as if at a moment arranged, we wake up.
+
+"It's all my eye--they've done it on us too often. Wait before
+believing--and don't count a crumb's worth on it."
+
+We reoccupy our corner. Here and there a man bears in his hand the
+light momentous burden of a letter.
+
+"Ah," says Tirloir, "I must be writing. Can't go eight days without
+writing."
+
+"Me too," says Eudore, "I must write to my p'tit' femme."
+
+"Is she all right, Mariette?"
+
+"Oui, oui, don't fret about Mariette."
+
+A few have already settled themselves for correspondence. Barque is
+standing up. He stoops over a sheet of paper flattened on a
+note-book upon a jutting crag in the trench wall. Apparently in the
+grip of an inspiration, he writes on and on, with his eyes in
+bondage and the concentrated expression of a horseman at full
+gallop.
+
+When once Lamuse--who lacks imagination--has sat down, placed his
+little writing-block on the padded summit of his knees, and
+moistened his copying-ink pencil, he passes the time in reading
+again the last letters received, in wondering what he can say that
+he has not already said, and in fostering a grim determination to
+say something else.
+
+A sentimental gentleness seems to have overspread little Eudore, who
+is curled up in a sort of niche in the ground. He is lost in
+meditation, pencil in hand, eyes on paper. Dreaming, he looks and
+stares and sees. It is another sky that lends him light, another to
+which his vision reaches. He has gone home.
+
+In this time of letter-writing, the men reveal the most and the best
+that they ever were. Several others surrender to the past, and its
+first expression is to talk once more of fleshly comforts.
+
+Through their outer crust of coarseness and concealment, other
+hearts venture upon murmured memories, and the rekindling of bygone
+brightness: the summer morning, when the green freshness of the
+garden steals in upon the purity of the country bedroom; or when the
+wind in the wheat of the level lands sets it slowly stirring or
+deeply waving, and shakes the square of oats hard by into quick
+little feminine tremors; or the winter evening, with women and their
+gentleness around the shaded luster of the lamp.
+
+But Papa Blaire resumes work upon the ring he has begun. He has
+threaded the still formless disc of aluminium over a bit of rounded
+wood, and rubs it with the file. As he applies himself to the job,
+two wrinkles of mighty meditation deepen upon his forehead. Anon he
+stops, straightens himself, and looks tenderly at the trifle, as
+though she also were looking at it.
+
+"You know," he said to me once, speaking of another ring, "it's not
+a question of doing it well or not well. The point is that I've done
+it for my wife, d'you see? When I had nothing to do but scratch
+myself, I used to have a look at this photo"--he showed me a
+photograph of a big, chubby-faced woman--"and then it was quite easy
+to set about this damned ring. You might say that we've made it
+together, see? The proof of that is that it was company for me, and
+that I said Adieu to it when I sent it off to Mother Blaire."
+
+He is making another just now, and this one will have copper in it,
+too. He works eagerly. His heart would fain express itself to the
+best advantage in this the sort of penmanship upon which he is so
+tenaciously bent.
+
+As they stoop reverently, in their naked earth-holes, over the
+slender rudimentary trinkets--so tiny that the great hide-bound
+hands hold them with difficulty or let them fall--these men seem
+still more wild, more primitive, and more human, than at all other
+times.
+
+You are set thinking of the first inventor, the father of all
+craftsmen, who sought to invest enduring materials with the shapes
+of what he saw and the spirit of what he felt.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"People coming along," announces Biquet the mobile, who acts as
+hall-porter to our section of the trench--"buckets of 'em."
+Immediately an adjutant appears, with straps round his belly and his
+chin, and brandishing his sword-scabbard.
+
+"Out of the way, you! Out of the way, I tell you! You loafers there,
+out of it! Let me see you quit, hey!" We make way indolently. Those
+at the sides push back into the earth by slow degrees.
+
+It is a company of Territorials, deputed to our sector for the
+fortification of the second line and the upkeep of its communication
+trenches. They come into view--miserable bundles of implements, and
+dragging their feet.
+
+We watch them, one by one, as they come up, pass, and disappear.
+They are stunted and elderly, with dusty faces, or big and
+broken-winded, tightly enfolded in greatcoats stained and over-worn,
+that yawn at the toothless gaps where the buttons are missing.
+
+Tirette and Barque, the twin wags, leaning close together against
+the wall, stare at them, at first in silence. Then they begin to
+smile.
+
+"March past of the Broom Brigade," says Tirette.
+
+"We'll have a bit of fun for three minutes," announces Barque.
+
+Some of the old toilers are comical. This one whom the file brings
+up has bottle-shaped shoulders. Although extremely narrow-chested
+and spindle-shanked, he is big-bellied. He is too much for Barque.
+"Hullo, Sir Canteen!" he says.
+
+When a more outrageously patched-up greatcoat appears than all the
+others can show, Tirette questions the veteran recruit. "Hey, Father
+Samples! Hey, you there!" he insists.
+
+The other turns and looks at him, open-mouthed.
+
+"Say there, papa, if you will be so kind as to give me the address
+of your tailor in London!"
+
+A chuckle comes from the antiquated and wrinkle-scrawled face, and
+then the poilu, checked for an instant by Barque's command, is
+jostled by the following flood and swept away.
+
+When some less striking figures have gone past, a new victim is
+provided for the jokers. On his red and wrinkled neck luxuriates
+some dirty sheep's-wool. With knees bent, his body forward, his back
+bowed, this Territorial's carriage is the worst.
+
+"Tiens!" bawls Tirette, with pointed finger, "the famous
+concertina-man! It would cost you something to see him at the
+fair--here, he's free gratis!"
+
+The victim stammers responsive insults amid the scattered laughter
+that arises.
+
+No more than that laughter is required to excite the two comrades.
+It is the ambition to have their jests voted funny by their easy
+audience that stimulates them to mock the peculiarities of their old
+comrades-in-arms, of those who toil night and day on the brink of
+the great war to make ready and make good the fields of battle.
+
+And even the other watchers join in. Miserable themselves, they
+scoff at the still more miserable.
+
+"Look at that one! And that, look!"
+
+"Non, but take me a snapshot of that little rump-end! Hey,
+earth-worm!"
+
+"And that one that has no ending! Talk about a sky-scratcher! Tiens,
+la, he takes the biscuit. Yes, you take it, old chap!"
+
+This man goes with little steps, and holds his pickax up in front
+like a candle; his face is withered, and his body borne down by the
+blows of lumbago.
+
+"Like a penny, gran'pa?" Barque asks him, as he passes within reach
+of a tap on the shoulder.
+
+The broken-down poilu replies with a great oath of annoyance, and
+provokes the harsh rejoinder of Barque: "Come now, you might be
+polite, filthy-face, old muck-mill!"
+
+Turning right round in fury, the old one defies his tormentor.
+
+"Hullo!" cries Barque, laughing, "He's showing fight; the ruin! He's
+warlike, look you, and he might be mischievous if only he were sixty
+years younger!"
+
+"And if he wasn't alone," wantonly adds Pepin, whose eye is
+in quest of other targets among the flow of new arrivals.
+
+The hollow chest of the last straggler appears, and then his
+distorted back disappears.
+
+The march past of the worn-out and trench-foul veterans comes to an
+end among the ironical and almost malevolent faces of these sinister
+troglodytes, whom their caverns of mud but half reveal.
+
+Meanwhile, the hours slip away, and evening begins to veil the sky
+and darken the things of earth. It comes to blend itself at once
+with the blind fate and the ignorant dark minds of the multitude
+there enshrouded.
+
+Through the twilight comes the rolling hum of tramping men, and
+another throng. rubs its way through.
+
+"Africans!"
+
+They march past with faces red-brown, yellow or chestnut, their
+beards scanty and fine or thick and frizzled, their greatcoats
+yellowish-green, and their muddy helmets sporting the crescent in
+place of our grenade. Their eyes are like balls of ivory or onyx,
+that shine from faces like new pennies, flattened or angular. Now
+and again comes swaying along above the line the coal-black mask of
+a Senegalese sharpshooter. Behind the company goes a red flag with a
+green hand in the center.
+
+We watch them in silence. These are asked no questions. They command
+respect, and even a little fear.
+
+All the same, these Africans seem jolly and in high spirits. They
+are going, of course, to the first line. That is their place, and
+their passing is the sign of an imminent attack. They are made for
+the offensive.
+
+"Those and the 75 gun we can take our hats off to. They're
+everywhere sent ahead at big moments, the Moroccan Division."
+
+"They can't quite fit in with us. They go too fast--and there's no
+way of stopping them."
+
+Some of these diabolical images in yellow wood or bronze or ebony
+are serious of mien, uneasy, and taciturn. Their faces have the
+disquieting and secret look of the snare suddenly discovered. The
+others laugh with a laugh that jangles like fantastic foreign
+instruments of music, a laugh that bares the teeth.
+
+We talk over the characteristics of these Africans; their ferocity
+in attack, their devouring passion to be in with the bayonet, their
+predilection for "no quarter." We recall those tales that they
+themselves willingly tell, all in much the same words and with the
+same gestures. They raise their arms over their heads--"Kam'rad,
+Kam'rad!" "Non, pas Kam'rad!" And in pantomime they drive a bayonet
+forward, at belly-height, drawing it back then with the help of a
+foot.
+
+One of the sharpshooters overhears our talk as he passes. He looks
+upon us, laughs abundantly in his helmeted turban, and repeats our
+words with significant shakes of his head: "Pas Kam'rad, non pas
+Kam'rad, never! Cut head off!"
+
+"No doubt they're a different race from us, with their tent-cloth
+skin," Barque confesses, though he does not know himself what "cold
+feet" are. "It worries them to rest, you know; they only live for
+the minute when the officer puts his watch back in his pocket and
+says, 'Off you go!'"
+
+"In fact, they're real soldiers."
+
+"We are not soldiers," says big Lamuse, "we're men." Though the
+evening has grown darker now, that plain true saying sheds something
+like a glimmering light on the men who are waiting here, waiting
+since the morning. waiting since months ago.
+
+They are men, good fellows of all kinds, rudely torn away from the
+joy of life. Like any other men whom you take in the mass, they are
+ignorant and of narrow outlook, full of a sound common sense--which
+some-times gets off the rails--disposed to be led and to do as they
+are bid, enduring under hardships, long-suffering.
+
+They are simple men further simplified, in whom the merely primitive
+instincts have been accentuated by the force of circumstances--the
+instinct of self-preservation, the hard-gripped hope of living
+through, the joy of food, of drink, and of sleep. And at intervals
+they are cries and dark shudders of humanity that issue from the
+silence and the shadows of their great human hearts.
+
+When we can no longer see clearly, we hear down there the murmur of
+a command, which comes nearer and rings loud--"Second half-section!
+Muster!" We fall in; it is the call.
+
+"Gee up!" says the corporal. We are set in motion. In front of the
+tool-depot there is a halt and trampling. To each is given a spade
+or pickax. An N.C.O. presents the handles in the gloom: "You, a
+spade; there, hop it! You a spade, too; you a pick. Allons, hurry up
+and get off."
+
+We leave by the communication trench at right angles to our own, and
+straight ahead towards the changeful frontier, now alive and
+terrible.
+
+Up in the somber sky, the strong staccato panting of an invisible
+aeroplane circles in wide descending coils and fills infinity. In
+front, to right and left, everywhere, thunderclaps roll with great
+glimpses of short-lived light in the dark-blue sky.
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] The popular and international name for a French soldier.
+Its literal meaning is "hairy, shaggy," but the word has conveyed
+for over a century the idea of the virility of a Samson, whose
+strength lay in his locks.--Tr.
+
+[note 2:] 6250 miles.
+
+[note 3:] Pourvu que les civils tiennent. In the early days of the
+war it was a common French saying that victory was certain--"if the
+civilians hold out."--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+The Return
+
+
+
+
+
+RELUCTANTLY the ashen dawn is bleaching the still dark and formless
+landscape. Between the declining road on the right that falls into
+the gloom, and the black cloud of the Alleux Wood--where we hear the
+convoy teams assembling and getting under way--a field extends. We
+have reached it, we of the 6th Battalion, at the end of the night.
+We have piled arms, and now, in the center of this circle of
+uncertain light, our feet in the mist and mud, we stand in dark
+clusters (that yet are hardly blue), or as solitary phantoms; and
+the heads of all are turned towards the road that comes from "down
+there." We are waiting for the rest of the regiment, the 5th
+Battalion, who were in the first line and left the trenches after
+us.
+
+Noises; "There they are!" A long and shapeless mass appears in the
+west and comes down out of the night upon the dawning road.
+
+At last! It is ended, the accursed shift that began at six o'clock
+yesterday evening and has lasted all night, and now the last man has
+stepped from the last communication trench.
+
+This time it has been an awful sojourn in the trenches. The 18th
+company was foremost and has been cut up, eighteen killed and fifty
+wounded--one in three less in four days. And this without attack--by
+bombardment alone.
+
+This is known to us, and as the mutilated battalion approaches down
+there, and we join them in trampling the muddy field and exchanging
+nods of recognition, we cry, "What about the 18th?" We are thinking
+as we put the question, "If it goes on like this, what is to become
+of all of us? What will become of me?"
+
+The 17th, the 19th, and the 20th arrive in turn and pile arms.
+"There's the 18th!" It arrives after all the others; having held the
+first trench, it has been last relieved.
+
+The light is a little cleaner, and the world is paling. We can make
+out, as he comes down the road, the company's captain, ahead of his
+men and alone. He helps himself along with a stick, and walks with
+difficulty, by reason of his old wound of the Marne battle that
+rheumatism is troubling; and there are other pangs, too. He lowers
+his hooded head, and might be attending a funeral. We can see that
+in his mind he is indeed following the dead, and his thoughts are
+with them.
+
+Here is the company, debouching in dire disorder, and our hearts are
+heavy. It is obviously shorter than the other three, in the march
+past of the battalion.
+
+I reach the road, and confront the descending mass of the 18th. The
+uniforms of these survivors are all earth-yellowed alike, so that
+they appear to be clad in khaki. The cloth is stiff with the
+ochreous mud that has dried underneath. The skirts of their
+greatcoats are like lumps of wood, jumping about on the yellow crust
+that reaches to their knees. Their faces are drawn and blackened;
+dust and dirt have wrinkled them anew; their eyes are big and
+fevered. And from these soldiers whom the depths of horror have
+given back there rises a deafening din. They talk all at once, and
+loudly; they gesticulate, they laugh and sing. You would think, to
+see them, that it was a holiday crowd pouring over the road!
+
+These are the second section and its big sub-lieutenant, whose
+greatcoat is tightened and strapped around a body as stiff as a
+rolled umbrella. I elbow my way along the marching crowd as far as
+Marchal's squad, the most sorely tried of all. Out of eleven
+comrades that they were, and had been without a break for a year and
+a half, there were three men only with Corporal Marchal.
+
+He sees me--with a glad exclamation and a broad smile. He lets go
+his rifle-sling and offers me his hands, from one of which hangs his
+trench stick--"Eh, vieux frere, still going strong? What's
+become of you lately?"
+
+I turn my head away and say, almost under my breath, "So, old chap,
+it's happened badly."
+
+His smile dies at once, and he is serious: "Eh, oui, old man; it
+can't be helped; it was awful this time. Barbier is killed."
+
+"They told us--Barbier!"
+
+"Saturday night it was, at eleven o'clock. He had the top of his
+back taken away by a shell," says Marchal, "cut off like a razor.
+Besse got a bit of shell that went clean through his belly and
+stomach. Barthlemy and Baubex got it in the head and neck. We passed
+the night skedaddling up and down the trench at full speed, to dodge
+the showers. And little Godefroy--did you know him?--middle of his
+body blown away. He was emptied of blood on the spot in an instant,
+like a bucket kicked over. Little as he was, it was remarkable how
+much blood he had, it made a stream at least fifty meters long.
+Gougnard got his legs cut up by one explosion. They picked him up
+not quite dead. That was at the listening post. I was there on duty
+with them. But when that shell fell I had gone into the trench to
+ask the time. I found my rifle, that I'd left in my place, bent
+double, as if some one had folded it in his hands, the barrel like a
+corkscrew, and half of the stock in sawdust. The smell of fresh
+blood was enough to bring your heart up."
+
+"And Mondain--him, too?"
+
+"Mondain--that was the day after, yesterday in fact, in a dug-out
+that a shell smashed in. He was lying down, and his chest was
+crushed. Have they told you about Franco, who was alongside Mondain?
+The fall of earth broke his spine. He spoke again after they'd got
+him out and set him down. He said, with his head falling to one
+side, 'I'm dying,' and he was gone. Vigile was with them, too; his
+body wasn't touched, but they found him with his head completely
+flattened out, flat as a pancake, and huge-as big as that. To see it
+spread out on the ground, black and distorted, it made you think of
+his shadow--the shadow one gets on the ground sometimes when one
+walks with a lantern at night."
+
+"Vigile--only Class 1913--a child! And Mondain and Franco--such good
+sorts, in spite of their stripes. We're so many old special pals the
+less, mon vieux Marchal."
+
+"Yes," says Marchal. But he is swallowed up in a crowd of his
+friends, who worry and catechise him. He bandies jests with them,
+and answers their raillery, and all hustle each other, and laugh.
+
+I look from face to face. They are merry, and in spite of the
+contractions of weariness, and the earth-stains, they look
+triumphant.
+
+What does it mean? If wine had been possible during their stay in
+the first line, I should have said, "All these men are drunk."
+
+I single out one of the survivors, who hums as he goes, and steps in
+time with it flippantly, as hussars of the stage do. It is
+Vanderborn, the drummer.
+
+"Hullo, Vanderborn, you look pleased with yourself!" Vanderborn, who
+is sedate in the ordinary, cries, "It's not me yet, you see! Here I
+am!" With a mad gesticulation he serves me a thump on the shoulder.
+I understand.
+
+If these men are happy in spite of all, as they come out of hell, it
+is because they are coming out of it. They are returning, they are
+spared. Once again the Death that was there has passed them over.
+Each company in its turn goes to the front once in six weeks. Six
+weeks! In both great and minor matters, fighting soldiers manifest
+the philosophy of the child. They never look afar, either ahead or
+around. Their thought strays hardly farther than from day to day.
+To-day, every one of those men is confident that he will live yet a
+little while.
+
+And that is why, in spite of the weariness that weighs them down and
+the new slaughter with which they are still bespattered, though each
+has seen his brothers torn away from his side, in spite of all and
+in spite of themselves, they are celebrating the Feast of the
+Survivors. The boundless glory in which they rejoice is this--they
+still stand straight.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+Volpatte and Fouillade
+
+
+
+
+
+AS we reached quarters again, some one cried: "But where's
+Volpatte?"--"And Fouillade, where's he?"
+
+They had been requisitioned and taken off to the front line by the
+5th Battalion. No doubt we should find them somewhere in quarters.
+No success. Two men of the squad lost!
+
+"That's what comes of lending men," said the sergeant with a great
+oath. The captain, when apprised of the loss, also cursed and swore
+and said, "I must have those men. Let them be found at once. Allez!"
+
+Farfadet and I are summoned by Corporal Bertrand from the barn where
+at full length we have already immobilized ourselves, and are
+growing torpid: "You must go and look for Volpatte and Fouillade."
+
+Quickly we got up, and set off with a shiver of uneasiness. Our two
+comrades have been taken by the 5th and carried off to that infernal
+shift. Who knows where they are and what they may be by now!
+
+We climb up the hill again. Again we begin, but in the opposite
+direction, the journey done since the dawn and the night. Though we
+are without our heavy stuff, and only carry rifles and
+accouterments, we feel idle, sleepy, and stiff; and the country is
+sad, and the sky all wisped with mist. Farfadet is soon panting. He
+talked a little at first, till fatigue enforced silence on him. He
+is brave enough, but frail, and during all his prewar life, shut up
+in the Town Hall office where he scribbled since the days of his
+"first sacrament" between a stove and some ageing cardboard files,
+he hardly learned the use of his legs.
+
+Just as we emerge from the wood, slipping and floundering, to
+penetrate the region of communication trenches, two faint shadows
+are outlined in front. Two soldiers are coming up. We can see the
+protuberance of their burdens and the sharp lines of their rifles.
+The swaying double shape becomes distinct--"It's them!"
+
+One of the shadows has a great white head, all swathed--"One of
+them's wounded! It's Volpatte!"
+
+We run up to the specters, our feet making the sounds of sinking in
+sponge and of sticky withdrawal, and our shaken cartridges rattle in
+their pouches. They stand still and wait for us. When we are close
+up, "It's about time!" cries Volpatte.
+
+"You're wounded, old chap?"--"What?" he says; the manifold bandages
+all round his head make him deaf, and we must shout to get through
+them. So we go close and shout. Then he replies, "That's nothing;
+we're coming from the hole where the 5th Battalion put us on
+Thursday."
+
+"You've stayed there--ever since?" yells Farfadet, whose shrill and
+almost feminine voice goes easily through the quilting that protects
+Volpatte's ears.
+
+"Of course we stayed there, you blithering idiot!" says Fouillade.
+"You don't suppose we'd got wings to fly away with, and still less
+that we should have legged it without orders?"
+
+Both of them let themselves drop to a sitting position on the
+ground. Volpatte's head--enveloped in rags with a big knot on the
+top and the same dark yellowish stains as his face--looks like a
+bundle of dirty linen.
+
+"They forgot you, then, poor devils?"
+
+"Rather!" cries Fouillade, "I should say they did. Four days and
+four nights in a shell-hole, with bullets raining down, a hole that
+stunk like a cesspool."
+
+"That's right," says Volpatte. "It wasn't an ordinary listening-post
+hole, where one comes and goes regularly. It was just a shell-hole,
+like any other old shell-hole, neither more nor less. They said to
+us on Thursday, 'Station yourselves in there and keep on firing,'
+they said. Next day, a liaison chap of the 5th Battalion came and
+showed his neb: 'What the hell are you doing there?'--'Why, we're
+firing. They told us to fire, so we're firing,' I says. 'If they
+told us to do it, there must be some reason at the back of it. We're
+wanting for them to tell us to do something else.' The chap made
+tracks. He looked a bit uneasy, and suffering from the effects of
+being bombed. 'It's 22,' he says."
+
+"To us two," says Fouillade, "there was a loaf of bread and a bucket
+of wine that the 18th gave us when they planted us there, and a
+whole case of cartridges, my boy. We fired off the cartridges and
+drank the booze, but we had sense to keep a few cartridges and a
+hunch of bread, though we didn't keep any wine."
+
+"That's where we went wrong," says Volpatte, "seeing that it was a
+thirsty job. Say, boys, you haven't got any gargle?"
+
+"I've still nearly half a pint of wine," replies Farfadet. "Give it
+to him," says Fouillade, pointing to Volpatte, "seeing that he's
+been losing blood. I'm only thirsty."
+
+Volpatte was shivering, and his little strapped-up eyes burned with
+fever in the enormous dump of rags set upon his shoulders. "That's
+good," he says, drinking.
+
+"Ah! And then, too," he added, emptying--as politeness requires--the
+drop of wine that remained at the bottom of Farfadet's cup, "we got
+two Boches. They were crawling about outside, and fell into our
+holes, as blindly as moles into a spring snare, those chaps did. We
+tied 'em up. And see us then--after firing for thirty-six hours,
+we'd no more ammunition. So we filled our magazines with the last,
+and waited, in front of the parcels of Boche. The liaison chap
+forgot to tell his people that we were there. You, the 6th, forgot
+to ask for us; the 18th forgot us, too; and as we weren't in a
+listening-post where you're relieved as regular as if at H.Q., I
+could almost see us staying there till the regiment came back. In
+the long run, it was the loafers of the 204th, come to skulk about
+looking for fuses, that mentioned us. So then we got the order to
+fall back--immediately, they said. That 'immediately' was a good
+joke, and we got into harness at once. We untied the legs of the
+Boches, led them off and handed them over to the 204th, and here we
+are."
+
+"We even fished out, in passing, a sergeant who was piled up in a
+hole and didn't dare come out, seeing he was shell-shocked. We
+slanged him, and that set him up a bit, and he thanked us. Sergeant
+Sacerdote he called himself."
+
+"But your wound, old chap?"
+
+"It's my ears. Two shells, a little one and a big one, my lad--went
+off while you're saying it. My head came between the two bursts, as
+you might say, but only just; a very close shave, and my lugs got
+it."
+
+"You should have seen him," says Fouillade, "it was disgusting,
+those two ears hanging down. We had two packets of bandages, and the
+stretcher-men fired us one in. That makes three packets he's got
+rolled round his nut."
+
+"Give us your traps, we're going back."
+
+Farfadet and I divide Volpatte's equipment between us. Fouillade,
+sullen with thirst and racked by stiff joints, growls, and insists
+obstinately on keeping his weapons and bundles.
+
+We stroll back, finding diversion--as always--in walking without
+ranks. It is so uncommon that one finds it surprising and
+profitable. So it is a breach of liberty which soon enlivens all
+four of us. We are in the country as though for the pleasure of it.
+
+"We are pedestrians!" says Volpatte proudly. When we reach the
+turning at the top of the hill, he relapses upon rosy visions: "Old
+man, it's a good wound, after all. I shall be sent back, no mistake
+about it."
+
+His eyes wink and sparkle in the huge white clump that dithers on
+his shoulders--a clump reddish on each side, where the ears were.
+
+From the depth where the village lies we hear ten o'clock strike.
+"To hell with the time," says Volpatte "it doesn't matter to me any
+more what time it is."
+
+He becomes loquacious. It is a low fever that inspires his
+dissertation, and condenses it to the slow swing of our walk, in
+which his step is already jaunty.
+
+"They'll stick a red label on my greatcoat, you'll see, and take me
+to the rear. I shall be bossed this time by a very polite sort of
+chap, who'll say to me, 'That's one side, now turn the other
+way--so, my poor fellow.' Then the ambulance, and then the
+sick-train, with the pretty little ways of the Red Cross ladies all
+the way along, like they did to Crapelet Jules, then the base
+hospital. Beds with white sheets, a stove that snores in the middle
+of us all, people with the special job of looking after you, and
+that you watch doing it, regulation slippers--sloppy and
+comfortable--and a chamber-cupboard. Furniture! And it's in those
+big hospitals that you're all right for grub! I shall have good
+feeds, and baths. I shall take all I can get hold of. And there'll
+be presents--that you can enjoy without having to fight the others
+for them and get yourself into a bloody mess. I shall have my two
+hands on the counterpane, and they'll do damn well nothing, like
+things to look at--like toys, what? And under the sheets my legs'll
+be white-hot all the way through, and my trotters'll be expanding
+like bunches of violets."
+
+Volpatte pauses, fumbles about, and pulls out of his pocket, along
+with his famous pair of Soissons scissors, something that he shows
+to me: "Tiens, have you seen this?"
+
+It is a photograph of his wife and two children. He has already
+shown it to me many a time. I look at it and express appreciation.
+
+"I shall go on sick-leave," says Volpatte, "and while my ears are
+sticking themselves on again, the wife and the little ones will look
+at me, and I shall look at them. And while they're growing again
+like lettuces, my friends, the war, it'll make progress--the
+Russians--one doesn't know, what?" He is thinking aloud, lulling
+himself with happy anticipations, already alone with his private
+festival in the midst of us.
+
+"Robber!" Feuillade shouts at him. "You've too much luck, by God!"
+
+How could we not envy him? He would be going away for one, two, or
+three months; and all that time, instead of our wretched privations,
+he would be transformed into a man of means!
+
+"At the beginning," says Farfadet, "it sounded comic when I heard
+them wish for a 'good wound.' But all the same, and whatever can be
+said about it, I understand now that it's the only thing a poor
+soldier can hope for if he isn't daft."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We were drawing near to the village and passing round the wood. At
+its corner, the sudden shape of a woman arose against the sportive
+sunbeams that outlined her with light. Alertly erect she stood,
+before the faintly violet background of the wood's marge and the
+crosshatched trees. She was slender, her head all afire with fair
+hair, and in her pale face we could see the night-dark caverns of
+great eyes. The resplendent being gazed fixedly upon us, trembling,
+then plunged abruptly into the undergrowth and disappeared like a
+torch.
+
+The apparition and its flight so impressed Volpatte that he lost the
+thread of his discourse.
+
+"She's something like, that woman there!"
+
+"No," said Fouillade, who had misunderstood, "she's called Eudoxie.
+I knew her because I've seen her before. A refugee. I don't know
+where she comes from, but she's at Gamblin, in a family there."
+
+"She's thin and beautiful," Volpatte certified; "one would like to
+make her a little present--she's good enough to eat--tender as a
+chicken. And look at the eyes she's got!"
+
+"She's queer," says Fouillade. "You don't know when you've got her.
+You see her here, there, with her fair hair on top, then--off!
+Nobody about. And you know, she doesn't know what danger is;
+marching about, sometimes, almost in the front line, and she's been
+seen knocking about in No Man's Land. She's queer."
+
+"Look! There she is again. The spook! She's keeping an eye on us.
+What's she after?"
+
+The shadow-figure, traced in lines of light, this time adorned the
+other end of the spinney's edge.
+
+"To hell with women," Volpatte declared, whom the idea of his
+deliverance has completely recaptured.
+
+"There's one in the squad, anyway, that wants her pretty badly.
+See--when you speak of the wolf--"
+
+"You see its tail--"
+
+"Not yet, but almost--look!" From some bushes on our right we saw
+the red snout of Lamuse appear peeping, like a wild boar's.
+
+He was on the woman's trail. He had seen the alluring vision,
+dropped to the crouch of a setting dog, and made his spring. But in
+that spring he fell upon us.
+
+Recognizing Volpatte and Fouillade, big Lamuse gave shouts of
+delight. At once he had no other thought than to get possession of
+the bags, rifles, and haversacks--"Give me all of it--I'm
+resting--come on, give it up."
+
+He must carry everything. Farfadet and I willingly gave up
+Volpatte's equipment; and Fouillade, now at the end of his strength,
+agreed to surrender his pouches and his rifle.
+
+Lamuse became a moving heap. Under the huge burden he disappeared,
+bent double, and made progress only with shortened steps.
+
+But we felt that he was still under the sway of a certain project,
+and his glances went sideways. He was seeking the woman after whom
+he had hurled himself. Every time he halted, the better to trim some
+detail of the load, or puffingly to mop the greasy flow of
+perspiration, he furtively surveyed all the corners of the horizon
+and scrutinized the edges of the wood. He did not see her again.
+
+I did see her again, and got a distinct impression this time that it
+was one of us she was after. She half arose on our left from the
+green shadows of the undergrowth. Steadying herself with one hand on
+a branch, she leaned forward and revealed the night-dark eyes and
+pale face, which showed--so brightly lighted was one whole side of
+it--like a crescent moon.
+
+I saw that she was smiling. And following the course of the look
+that smiled, I saw Farfadet a little way behind us, and he was
+smiling too. Then she slipped away into the dark foliage, carrying
+the twin smile with her.
+
+Thus was the understanding revealed to me between this lissom and
+dainty gypsy, who was like no one at all, and Farfadet, conspicuous
+among us all--slender, pliant and sensitive as lilac. Evidently--!
+
+Lamuse saw nothing, blinded and borne down as he was by the load he
+had taken from Farfadet and me, occupied in the poise of them, and
+in finding where his laden and leaden feet might tread.
+
+But he looks unhappy; he groans. A weighty and mournful obsession is
+stifling him. In his harsh breathing it seems to me that I can hear
+his heart beating and muttering. Looking at Volpatte, hooded in
+bandages, and then at the strong man, muscular and full-blooded,
+with that profound and eternal yearning whose sharpness he alone can
+gauge, I say to myself that the worst wounded man is not he whom we
+think.
+
+We go down at last to the village. "Let's have a drink," says
+Fouillade. "I'm going to be sent back," says Volpatte. Lamuse puffs
+and groans.
+
+Our comrades shout and come running, and we gather in the little
+square where the church stands with its twin towers--so thoroughly
+mutilated by a shell that one can no longer look it in the face.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+Sanctuary
+
+
+
+
+
+THE dim road which rises through the middle of the night-bound wood
+is so strangely full of obstructing shadows that the deep darkness
+of the forest itself might by some magic have overflowed upon it. It
+is the regiment on the march, in quest of a new home.
+
+The weighty ranks of the shadows, burdened both high and broad,
+hustle each other blindly. Each wave, pushed by the following,
+stumbles upon the one in front, while alongside and detached are the
+evolutions of those less bulky ghosts, the N.C.O.'s. A clamor of
+confusion, compound of exclamations, of scraps of chat, of words of
+command, of spasms of coughing and of song, goes up from the dense
+mob enclosed between the banks. To the vocal commotion is added the
+tramping of feet, the jingling of bayonets in their scabbards, of
+cans and drinking-cups, the rumbling and hammering of the sixty
+vehicles of the two convoys--fighting and regimental--that follow
+the two battalions. And such a thing is it that trudges and spreads
+itself over the climbing road that, in spite of the unbounded dome
+of night, one welters in the odor of a den of lions.
+
+In the ranks one sees nothing. Sometimes, when one can lift his nose
+up, by grace of an eddy in the tide, one cannot help seeing the
+whiteness of a mess-tin, the blue steel of a helmet, the black steel
+of a rifle. Anon, by the dazzling jet of sparks that flies from a
+pocket flint-and-steel, or the red flame that expands upon the
+lilliputian stem of a match, one can see beyond the vivid near
+relief of hands and faces to the silhouetted and disordered groups
+of helmeted shoulders, swaying like surges that would storm the
+sable stronghold of the night. Then, all goes out, and while each
+tramping soldier's legs swing to and fro, his eye is fixed
+inflexibly upon the conjectural situation of the back that dwells in
+front of him.
+
+After several halts, when we have allowed ourselves to collapse on
+our haversacks at the foot of the stacked rifles--stacks that form
+on the call of the whistle with feverish haste and exasperating
+delay, through our blindness in that atmosphere of ink-dawn reveals
+itself, extends, and acquires the domain of Space. The walls of the
+Shadow crumble in vague ruin. Once more we pass under the grand
+panorama of the day's unfolding upon the ever-wandering horde that
+we are.
+
+We emerge at last from this night of marching, across concentric
+circles as it seems, of darkness less dark, then of half-shadow,
+then of gloomy light. Legs have a wooden stiffness, backs are
+benumbed, shoulders bruised. Faces are still so gray or so black,
+one would say they had but half rid themselves of the night. Now,
+indeed, one never throws it off altogether.
+
+It is into new quarters that the great company is going--this time
+to rest. What will the place be like that we have to live in for
+eight days? It is called, they say--but nobody is certain of
+anything--Gauchin-l'Abbe. We have heard wonders about it--"It
+appears to be just it."
+
+In the ranks of the companies whose forms and features one begins to
+make out in the birth of morning, and to distinguish the lowered
+heads and yawning mouths, some voices are heard in still higher
+praise. "There never were such quarters. The Brigade's there, and
+the court-martial. You can get anything in the shops."--"If the
+Brigade's there, we're all right."--
+
+"Think we can find a table for the squad?"--"Everything you want, I
+tell you."
+
+A pessimist prophet shakes his head: "What these quarters'll be like
+where we ye never been, I don't know," he says. "What I do know is
+that it'll be like the others."
+
+But we don't believe him, and emerging from the fevered turmoil of
+the night, it seems to all that it is a sort of Promised Land we are
+approaching by degrees the light brings us out of the east and the
+icy air towards the unknown village.
+
+At the foot of a bill in the half-light, we reach some houses, still
+slumbering and wrapped in heavy grayness
+
+"There it is!"
+
+Poof! We've done twenty-eight kilometers in the night. But what of
+that? There is no halt. We go past the houses, and they sink back
+again into their vague vapors and their mysterious shroud.
+
+"Seems we've got to march a long time yet. It's always there, there,
+there!"
+
+We march like machines, our limbs invaded by a sort of petrified
+torpor; our joints cry aloud, and force us to make echo.
+
+Day comes slowly, for a blanket of mist covers the earth. It is so
+cold that the men dare not sit down during the halts, though
+overborne by weariness, and they pace to and fro in the damp
+obscurity like ghosts. The besom of a biting wintry wind whips our
+skin, sweeps away and scatters our words and our sighs.
+
+At last the sun pierces the reek that spreads over us and soaks what
+it touches, and something like a fairy glade opens out in the midst
+of this gloom terrestrial. The regiment stretches itself and wakes
+up in truth, with slow-lifted faces to the gilded silver of the
+earliest rays. Quickly, then, the sun grows fiery, and now it is too
+hot. In the ranks we pant and sweat, and our grumbling is louder
+even than just now, when our teeth were chattering and the fog
+wet-sponged our hands and faces.
+
+It is a chalk country through which we are passing on this torrid
+forenoon--"They mend this road with lime, the dirty devils!" The
+road has become blinding--a long-drawn cloud of dessicated chalk and
+dust that rises high above our columns and powders us as we go.
+Faces turn red, and shine as though varnished; some of the
+full-blooded ones might be plastered with vaseline. Cheeks and
+foreheads are coated with a rusty paste which agglutinates and
+cracks. Feet lose their dubious likeness to feet and might have
+paddled in a mason's mortar-trough. Haversacks and rifles are
+powdered in white, and our legion leaves to left and right a long
+milky track on the bordering grass. And to crown all--"To the right!
+A convoy!"
+
+We bear to the right, hurriedly, and not without bumpings. The
+convoy of lorries, a long chain of foursquare and huge projectiles,
+rolling up with diabolical din, hurls itself along the road. Curse
+it! One after another, they gather up the thick carpet of white
+powder that upholsters the ground and send it broadcast over our
+shoulders! Now we are garbed in a stuff of light gray and our faces
+are pallid masks, thickest on the eyebrows and mustaches, on beards,
+and the cracks of wrinkles. Though still ourselves, we look like
+strange old men.
+
+"When we're old buffers, we shall be as ugly as this," says Tirette.
+
+"Tu craches blanc," declares Biquet. [note 1]
+
+When a halt puts us out of action, you might take us for rows of
+plaster statues, with some dirty indications of humanity showing
+through.
+
+We move again, silent and chagrined. Every step becomes hard to
+complete. Our faces assume congealed and fixed grimaces under the
+wan leprosy of dust. The unending effort contracts us and quite
+fills us with dismal weariness and disgust.
+
+We espy at last the long-sought oasis. Beyond a hill, on a still
+higher one, some slated roofs peep from clusters of foliage as
+brightly green as a salad. The village is there, and our looks
+embrace it, but we are not there yet. For a long time it seems to
+recede as fast as the regiment crawls towards it.
+
+At long last, on the stroke of noon, we reach the quarters that had
+begun to appear a pretense and a legend. In regular step and with
+rifles on shoulders, the regiment floods the street of
+Gauchin-l'Abbe right to its edges. Most of the villages of
+the Pas du Calais are composed of a single street, but such a
+street! It is often several kilometers long. In this one, the street
+divides in front of the mairie and forms two others, so that the
+hamlet becomes a big Y, brokenly bordered by low-built dwellings.
+
+The cyclists, the officers, the orderlies, break away from the long
+moving mass. Then, as they come up, a few of the men at a time are
+swallowed up by the barns, the still available houses being reserved
+for officers and departments. Our half-company is led at first to
+the end of the village, and then--by some misunderstanding among the
+quartermasters--back to the other end, the one by which we entered.
+This oscillation takes up time, and the squad, dragged thus from
+north to south and from south to north, heavily fatigued and
+irritated by wasted walking, evinces feverish impatience. For it is
+supremely important to be installed and set free as early as
+possible if we are to carry out the plan we have cherished so
+long--to find a native with some little place to let, and a table
+where the squad can have its meals. We have talked a good deal about
+this idea and its delightful advantages. We have taken counsel,
+subscribed to a common fund, and decided that this time we will take
+the header into the additional outlay.
+
+But will it be possible? Very many places are already snapped up. We
+are not the only ones to bring our dream of comfort here, and it
+will be a race for that table. Three companies are coming in after
+ours, but four were here before us, and there are the officers, the
+cooks of the hospital staff for the Section, and the clerks, the
+drivers, the orderlies and others, official cooks of the sergeants'
+mess, and I don't know how many more. All these men are more
+influential than the soldiers of the line, they have more mobility
+and more money, and can bring off their schemes beforehand. Already,
+while we march four abreast towards the barn assigned to the squad,
+we see some of these jokers across the conquered thresholds,
+domestically busy.
+
+Tirette imitates the sounds of lowing and bleating--"There's our
+cattle-shed." A fairly big barn. The chopped straw smells of
+night-soil, and our feet stir up clouds of dust. But it is almost
+enclosed. We choose our places and cast off our equipment.
+
+Those who dreamed yet once again of a special sort of Paradise sing
+low--yet once again. "Look now, it seems as ugly as the other
+places."--"It's something like the same."--"Naturally."
+
+But there is no time to waste in talking. The thing is to get clear
+and be after the others with all strength and speed. We hurry out.
+In spite of broken backs and aching feet, we set ourselves savagely
+to this last effort on which the comfort of a week depends.
+
+The squad divides into two patrols and sets off at the double, one
+to left and one to right along the street, which is already
+obstructed by busy questing poilus; and all the groups see and watch
+each other--and hurry. In places there are collisions, jostlings,
+and abuse.
+
+"Let's begin down there at once, or our goose'll be cooked!" I have
+an impression of a kind of fierce battle between all the soldiers,
+in the streets of the village they have just occupied. "For us,"
+says Marthereau, "war is always struggling and fighting--always,
+always."
+
+We knock at door after door, we show ourselves timidly, we offer
+ourselves like undesirable goods. A voice arises among us, "You
+haven't a bit of a corner, madame, for some soldiers? We would pay."
+
+"No--you see, I've got officers--under-officers, that is--you see,
+it's the mess for the band, and the secretaries, and the gentlemen
+of the ambulance--"
+
+Vexation after vexation. We close again, one after the other, all
+the doors we had half-opened, and look at each other, on the wrong
+side of the threshold, with dwindling hope in our eyes.
+
+"Bon Dieu! You'll see that we shan't find anything," growls Barque.
+"Damn those chaps that got on the midden before us!"
+
+The human flood reaches high-water mark everywhere. The three
+streets are all growing dark as each overflows into another. Some
+natives cross our path, old men or ill-shapen, contorted in their
+walk, stunted in the face; and even young people, too, over whom
+hovers the mystery of secret disorders or political connections. As
+for the petticoats, there are old women and many young ones--fat,
+with well-padded cheeks, and equal to geese in their whiteness.
+
+Suddenly, in an alley between two houses, I have a fleeting vision
+of a woman who crossed the shadowy gap--Eudoxie! Eudoxie, the fairy
+woman whom Lamuse hunted like a satyr, away back in the country,
+that morning we brought back Volpatte wounded, and Fouillade, the
+woman I saw leaning from the spinney's edge and bound to Farfadet in
+a mutual smile. It is she whom I just glimpsed like a gleam of
+sunshine in that alley. But the gleam was eclipsed by the tail of a
+wall, and the place thereof relapsed upon gloom. She here, already!
+Then she has followed our long and painful trek! She is attracted--?
+
+And she looks like one allured, too. Brief glimpse though it was of
+her face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was
+serious, thoughtful, absentminded.
+
+Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell
+him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that
+lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it
+evades him like a Will-o'-th'-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are
+on business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt
+with the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the
+matter to heart. He is trembling--you can see it in his dusty scalp.
+He guides us, nose to the wind. He suggests that we make an attempt
+on that yellow door over there. Forward!
+
+Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent. Blaire, his
+foot on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his
+knife, and plaster-like debris is falling fast. He might be engaged
+in sculpture.
+
+"You never had your feet so white before," jeers Barque. "Rotting
+apart," says Blaire, "you don't know where it is, that special van?"
+He goes on to explain: "I've got to look up the dentist-van, so they
+can grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that's
+left. Oui, seems it's stationed here, the chop-caravan."
+
+He folds up his knife, pockets it, and goes off alongside the wall,
+possessed by the thought of his jaw-bones' new lease of life.
+
+Once more we put up our beggars' petition: "Good-day, madame; you
+haven't got a little corner where we could feed? We would pay, of
+course, we would pay--"
+
+Through the glass of the low window we see lifted the face of an old
+man--like a fish in a bowl, it looks--a face curiously flat, and
+lined with parallel wrinkles, like a page of old manuscript.
+
+"You've the little shed there."
+
+"There's no room in the shed, and when the washing's done there--"
+
+Barque seizes the chance. "It'll do very likely. May we see it?"
+
+"We do the washing there," mutters the woman, continuing to wield
+her broom.
+
+"You know," says Barque, with a smile and an engaging air, "we're
+not like those disagreeable people who get drunk and make themselves
+a nuisance. May we have a look?"
+
+The woman has let her broom rest. She is thin and inconspicuous. Her
+jacket hangs from her shoulders as from a valise. Her face is like
+cardboard, stiff and without expression. She looks at us and
+hesitates, then grudgingly leads the way into a very dark little
+place, made of beaten earth and piled with dirty linen.
+
+"It's splendid," cries Lamuse, in all honesty.
+
+"Isn't she a darling, the little kiddie!" says Barque, as he pats
+the round cheek, like painted india-rubber, of a little girl who is
+staring at us with her dirty little nose uplifted in the gloom. "Is
+she yours, madame?"
+
+"And that one, too?" risks Marthereau, as he espies an over-ripe
+infant on whose bladder-like cheeks are shining deposits of jam, for
+the ensnaring of the dust in the air. He offers a half-hearted
+caress in the direction of the moist and bedaubed countenance. The
+woman does not deign an answer.
+
+So there we are, trifling and grinning, like beggars whose plea
+still hangs fire.
+
+Lamuse whispers to me, in a torment of fear and cupidity, "Let's
+hope she'll catch on, the filthy old slut. It's grand here, and, you
+know, everything else is pinched!"
+
+"There's no table," the woman says at last.
+
+"Don't worry about the table," Barque exclaims. "Tenez! there, put
+away in that corner, the old door; that would make us a table."
+
+"You're not going to trail me about and upset all my work!" replies
+the cardboard woman suspiciously, and with obvious regret that she
+had not chased us away immediately.
+
+"Don't worry, I tell you. Look, I'll show you. Hey, Lamuse, old
+cock, give me a hand."
+
+Under the displeased glances of the virago we place the old door on
+a couple of barrels.
+
+"With a bit of a rub-down," says I, "that will be perfect."
+
+"Eh, oui, maman, a flick with a brush'll do us instead of
+tablecloth."
+
+The woman hardly knows what to say; she watches us spitefully:
+"There's only two stools, and how many are there of you?"
+
+"About a dozen."
+
+"A dozen. Jesus Maria!"
+
+"What does it matter? That'll be all right, seeing there's a plank
+here--and that's a bench ready-made, eh, Lamuse?"
+
+"Course," says Lamuse.
+
+"I want that plank," says the woman. "Some soldiers that were here
+before you have tried already to take it away."
+
+"But us, we're not thieves," suggests Lamuse gently, so as not to
+irritate the creature that has our comfort at her disposal.
+
+"I don't say you are, but soldiers, vous savez, they smash
+everything up. Oh, the misery of this war!"
+
+"Well then, how much'll it be, to hire the table, and to heat up a
+thing or two on the stove?"
+
+"It'll be twenty sous a day," announces the hostess with restraint,
+as though we were wringing that amount from her.
+
+"It's dear," says Lamuse.
+
+"It's what the others gave me that were here, and they were very
+kind, too, those gentlemen, and it was worth my while to cook for
+them. I know it's not difficult for soldiers. If you think it's too
+much, it's no job to find other customers for this room and this
+table and the stove, and who wouldn't be in twelves. They're coming
+along all the time, and they'd pay still more, if I wanted. A
+dozen!--"
+
+Lamuse hastens to add, "I said 'It's dear,' but still, it'll do, eh,
+you others?" On this downright question we record our votes.
+
+"We could do well with a drop to drink," says Lamuse. "Do you sell
+wine?"
+
+"No," said the woman, but added, shaking with anger, "You see, the
+military authority forces them that's got wine to sell it at fifteen
+sous! Fifteen sous! The misery of this cursed war! One loses at it,
+at fifteen sous, monsieur. So I don't sell any wine. I've got plenty
+for ourselves. I don't say but sometimes, and just to oblige, I
+don't allow some to people that one knows, people that knows what
+things are, but of course, messieurs, not at fifteen sous."
+
+Lamuse is one of those people "that knows what things are." He grabs
+at his water-bottle, which is hanging as usual on his hip. "Give me
+a liter of it. That'll be what?"
+
+"That'll be twenty-two sous, same as it cost me. But you know it's
+just to oblige you, because you're soldiers."
+
+Barque, losing patience, mutters an aside. The woman throws him a
+surly glance, and makes as if to hand Lamuse's bottle back to him.
+But Lamuse, launched upon the hope of drinking wine at last, so that
+his cheeks redden as if the draught already pervaded them with its
+grateful hue, hastens to intervene--
+
+"Don't be afraid--it's between ourselves, la mere, we won't
+give you away."
+
+She raves on, rigid and bitter, against the limited price on wine;
+and, overcome by his lusty thirst, Lamuse extends the humiliation
+and surrender of conscience so far as to say, "No help for it,
+madame! It's a military order, so it's no use trying to understand
+it."
+
+She leads us into the store-room. Three fat barrels occupy it in
+impressive rotundity. "Is this your little private store?"
+
+"She knows her way about, the old lady," growls Barque.
+
+The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin
+myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all
+ways at once."
+
+"How?" insists Barque.
+
+"I can see you're not going to risk your money!"
+
+"That's right--we only risk our skins."
+
+We intervene, disturbed by the tone of menace for our present
+concern that the conversation has assumed. But the door of the
+wine-cellar is shaken, and a man's voice comes through. "Hey,
+Palmyra!" it calls.
+
+The woman hobbles away, discreetly leaving the door open. "That's
+all right--we've taken root!" Lamuse says.
+
+"What dirty devils these, people are!" murmurs Barque, who finds his
+reception hard to stomach.
+
+"It's shameful and sickening," says Marthereau.
+
+"One would think it was the first time you'd had any of it!"
+
+"And you, old gabbler," chides Barque, "that says prettily to the
+wine-robber, 'Can't be helped, it's a military order'! Gad, old man,
+you're not short of cheek!"
+
+"What else could I do or say? We should have had to go into mourning
+for our table and our wine. She could make us pay forty sous for the
+wine, and we should have had it all the same, shouldn't we? Very
+well, then, got to think ourselves jolly lucky. I'll admit I'd no
+confidence, and I was afraid it was no go."
+
+"I know; it's the same tale everywhere and always, but all the
+same--"
+
+"Damn the thieving natives, ah, oui! Some of 'em must be making
+fortunes. Everybody can't go and get killed."
+
+"Ah, the gallant people of the East!"
+
+"Yes, and the gallant people of the North!"
+
+"Who welcome us with open arms!"
+
+"With open hands, yes--"
+
+"I tell you," Marthereau says again, "it's a shame and it's
+sickening."
+
+"Shut it up--there's the she-beast coming back." We took a turn
+round to quarters to announce our success, and then went shopping.
+When we returned to our new dining-room, we were hustled by the
+preparations for lunch. Barque had been to the rations distribution,
+and had managed, thanks to personal relations with the cook (who was
+a conscientious objector to fractional divisions), to secure the
+potatoes and meat that formed the rations for all the fifteen men of
+the squad. He had bought some lard--a little lump for fourteen
+sous--and some one was frying. He had also acquired some green peas
+in tins, four tins. Mesnil Andre's tin of veal in jelly would
+be a hors-d'oeuvre.
+
+"And not a dirty thing in all the lot!" said Lamuse, enchanted.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We inspected the kitchen. Barque was moving cheerfully about the
+iron Dutch oven whose hot and steaming bulk furnished all one side
+of the room.
+
+"I've added a stewpan on the quiet for the soup," he whispered to
+me. Lifting the lid of the stove--"Fire isn't too hot. It's half an
+hour since I chucked the meat in, and the water's clean yet."
+
+A minute later we heard some one arguing with the hostess. This
+extra stove was the matter in dispute. There was no more room left
+for her on her stove. They had told her they would only need a
+casserole, and she had believed them. If she had known they were
+going to make trouble she would not have let the room to them.
+Barque, the good fellow, replied jokingly, and succeeded in soothing
+the monster.
+
+One by one the others arrived. They winked and rubbed their hands
+together, full of toothsome anticipation, like the guests at a
+wedding-breakfast. As they break away from the dazzling light
+outside and penetrate this cube of darkness, they are blinded, and
+stand like bewildered owls for several minutes.
+
+"It's not too brilliant in here," says Mesnil Joseph. "Come, old
+chap, what do you want?" The others exclaim in chorus, "We're damned
+well off here." And I can see heads nodding assent in the cavern's
+twilight.
+
+An incident: Farfadet having by accident rubbed against the damp and
+dirty wall, his shoulder has brought away from it a smudge so big
+and black that it can be seen even here. Farfadet, so careful of his
+appearance, growls, and in avoiding a second contact with the wall,
+knocks the table so that his spoon drops to the ground. Stooping, he
+fumbles among the loose earth, where dust and spiders' webs for
+years have silently fallen. When he recovers his spoon it is almost
+black, and webby threads hang from it. Evidently it is disastrous to
+let anything fall on the ground. One must live here with great care.
+
+Lamuse brings down his fat hand, like a pork-pie, between two of the
+places at table. "Allons, a table!" We fall to. The meal is
+abundant and of excellent quality. The sound of conversation mingles
+with those of emptying bottles and filling jaws. While we taste the
+joy of eating at a table, a glimmer of light trickles through a
+vent-hole, and wraps in dusty dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a
+patch of the table, while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's
+peak, an eye. Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little
+celebration that overflows with gayety. Biquet is telling about his
+suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do
+him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it was too damned
+dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer's. One might
+not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep. "And although
+you were outside, if you weren't satisfied, and groused too much,
+they chased you off."
+
+Any news yet? It is said that severe penalties have been imposed on
+those who plunder the population, and there is already a list of
+convictions. Volpatte has been sent down. Men of Class '93 are going
+to be sent to the rear, and Pepere is one of them.
+
+When Barque brings in the harvest of the fry-pan, he announces that
+our hostess has soldiers at her table--ambulance men of the
+machine-guns. "They thought they were the best off, but it's us
+that's that," says Fouillade with decision, lolling grandly in the
+darkness of the narrow and tainted hole where we are just as
+confusedly heaped together as in a dug-out. But who would think of
+making the comparison?
+
+"Vous savez pas," says Pepin, "the chaps of the 9th, they're
+in clover! An old woman has taken them in for nothing, because of
+her old man that's been dead fifty years and was a rifleman once on
+a time. Seems she's even given them a rabbit for nix, and they're
+just worrying it jugged."
+
+"There's good sorts everywhere. But the boys of the 9th had famous
+luck to fall into the only shop of good sorts in the whole village."
+
+Palmyra comes with the coffee, which she supplies. She thaws a
+little, listens to us, and even asks questions in a supercilious
+way: "Why do you call the adjutant 'le juteux'?"
+
+Barque replies sententiously, "'Twas ever thus."
+
+When she has disappeared, we criticize our coffee. "Talk about
+clear! You can see the sugar ambling round the bottom of the
+glass."--"She charges six sous for it."--"It's filtered water."
+
+The door half opens, and admits a streak of light. The face of a
+little boy is defined in it. We entice him in like a kitten and give
+him a bit of chocolate.
+
+Then, "My name's Charlie," chirps the child. "Our house, that's
+close by. We've got soldiers, too. We always had them, we had. We
+sell them everything they want. Only, voila, sometimes they
+get drunk."
+
+"Tell me, little one, come here a bit," says Cocon, taking the boy
+between his knees. "Listen now. Your papa, he says, doesn't he,
+'Let's hope the war goes on,' eh?" [note 2]
+
+"Of course," says the child, tossing his head, "because we're
+getting rich. He says, by the end of May, we shall have got fifty
+thousand francs."
+
+"Fifty thousand francs! Impossible!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" the child insists, stamping, "he said it to mamma. Papa
+wished it could be always like that. Mamma, sometimes, she isn't
+sure, because my brother Adolphe is at the front. But we're going to
+get him sent to the rear, and then the war can go on."
+
+These confidences are disturbed by sharp cries, coming from the
+rooms of our hosts. Biquet the mobile goes to inquire. "It's
+nothing," says he, coming back; "it's the good man slanging the
+woman because she doesn't know how to do things, he says, because
+she's made the mustard in a tumbler, and he never heard of such a
+thing, he says."
+
+We get up, and leave the strong odor of pipes, wine, and stale
+coffee in our cave. As soon as we have crossed the threshold, a
+heaviness of heat puffs in our faces, fortified by the mustiness of
+frying that dwells in the kitchen and emerges every time the door is
+opened. We pass through legions of flies which, massed on the walls
+in black hordes, fly abroad in buzzing swarms as we pass: "It's
+beginning again like last year! Flies outside, lice inside.--"
+
+"And microbes still farther inside!"
+
+In a corner of this dirty little house and its litter of old
+rubbish, its dusty debris of last year and the relics of so many
+summers gone by, among the furniture and household gear, something
+is moving. It is an old simpleton with a long bald neck, pink and
+rough, making you think of a fowl's neck which has prematurely
+molted through disease. His profile is that of a hen, too--no chin
+and a long nose. A gray overlay of beard felts his receded cheek,
+and you see his heavy eyelids, rounded and horny, move up and down
+like shutters on the dull beads of his eyes.
+
+Barque has already noticed him: "Watch him--he's a treasure-seeker.
+He says there's one somewhere in this hovel that he's stepfather to.
+You'll see him directly go on all-fours and push his old phizog in
+every corner there is. Tiens, watch him."
+
+With the aid of his stick, the old man proceeded to take methodical
+soundings. He tapped along the foot of the walls and on the
+floor-tiles.. He was hustled by the coming and going of the
+occupants of the house, by callers, and by the swing of Palmyra's
+broom; but she let him alone and said nothing, thinking to herself,
+no doubt, that the exploitation of the national calamity is a more
+profitable treasure than problematical caskets.
+
+Two gossips are standing in a recess and exchanging confidences in
+low voices, hard by an old map of Russia that is peopled with flies.
+"Oui, but it's with the Picon bitters that you've got to be careful.
+If you haven't got a light touch, you can't get your sixteen glasses
+out of a bottle, and so you lose too much profit. I don't say but
+what one's all right in one's purse, even so, but one doesn't make
+enough. To guard against that, the retailers ought to agree among
+themselves, but the understanding's so difficult to bring off, even
+when it's in the general interest."
+
+Outside there is torrid sunshine, riddled with flies. The little
+beasts, quite scarce but a few days ago, multiply everywhere the
+murmur of their minute and innumerable engines. I go out in the
+company of Lamuse; we are going for a saunter. One can be at peace
+today--it is complete rest, by reason of the overnight march. We
+might sleep, but it suits us much better to use the rest for an
+extensive promenade. To-morrow, the exercise and fatigues will get
+us again. There are some, less lucky than we, who are already caught
+in the cogwheels of fatigue. To Lamuse, who invites him to come and
+stroll with us, Corvisart replies, screwing up the little round nose
+that is laid flatly on his oblong face like a cork, "Can't--I'm on
+manure!" He points to the shovel and broom by whose help he is
+performing his task of scavenger and night-soil man.
+
+We walk languidly. The afternoon lies heavy on the drowsy land and
+on stomachs richly provided and embellished with food. The remarks
+we exchange are infrequent.
+
+Over there, we hear noises. Barque has fallen a victim to a
+menagerie of housewives; and the scene is pointed by a pale little
+girl, her hair tied behind in a pencil of tow and her mouth
+embroidered with fever spots, and by women who are busy with some
+unsavory job of washing in the meager shade before their doors.
+
+Six men go by, led by a quartermaster corporal. They carry heaps of
+new greatcoats and bundles of boots. Lamuse regards his bloated and
+horny feet--"I must have some new sheds, and no mistake; a bit more
+and you'll see my splay-feet through these ones. Can't go marching
+on the skin of my tongs, eh?"
+
+An aeroplane booms overhead. We follow its evolutions with our faces
+skyward, our necks twisted, our eyes watering at the piercing
+brightness of the sky.
+
+Lamuse declares to me, when we have brought our gaze back to earth,
+"Those machines'll never become practical, never."
+
+"How can you say that? Look at the progress they've made already,
+and the speed of it."
+
+"Yes, but they'll stop there. They'll never do any better, never."
+
+This time I do not challenge the dull and obstinate denial that
+ignorance opposes to the promise of progress, and I let my big
+comrade alone in his stubborn belief that the wonderful effort of
+science and industry has been suddenly cut short.
+
+Having thus begun to reveal to me his inmost thoughts, Lamuse
+continues. Coming nearer and lowering his head, he says to me, "You
+know she's here--Eudoxie?"
+
+"Ah!" said I.
+
+"Yes, old chap. You never notice anything, you don't, but I
+noticed," and Lamuse smiles at me indulgently. "Now, do you catch
+on? If she's come here, it's because we interest her, eh? She's
+followed us for one of us, and don't you forget it."
+
+He gets going again. "My boy, d'you want to know what I say? She's
+come after me."
+
+"Are you sure of it, old chap?"
+
+"Yes," says the ox-man, in a hollow voice. "First, I want her. Then,
+twice, old man, I've found her exactly in my path, in mine, d'you
+understand? You may tell me that she ran away; that's because she's
+timid, that, yes--"
+
+He stopped dead in the middle of the street and looked straight at
+me. The heavy face, greasily moist on the cheeks and nose, was
+serious. His rotund fist went up to the dark yellow mustache, so
+carefully pointed, and smoothed it tenderly. Then he continued to
+lay bare his heart to me "I want her; but, you know, I shall marry
+her all right, I shall. She's called Eudoxie Dumail. At first, I
+wasn't thinking of marrying her. But since I've got to know her
+family name, it seems to me that it's different, and I should get on
+all right. Ah, nom de Dieu! She's so pretty, that woman! And it's
+not only that she's pretty--ah!"
+
+The huge child was overflowing with sentiment and emotion, and
+trying to make them speak to me. "Ah, my boy, there are times when
+I've just got to hold myself back with a hook," came the strained
+and gloomy tones, while the blood flushed to the fleshy parts of his
+cheeks and neck. "She's so beautiful, she's--and me I'm--she's so
+unlike--you'll have noticed it, surely, you that notices--she's a
+country girl, oui; eh bien, she's got a God knows what that's better
+than a Parisienne, even a toffed-up and stylish Parisienne, pas?
+She--as for me, I--"
+
+He puckered his red eyebrows. He would have liked to tell me all the
+splendor of his thoughts, but he knew not the art of expressing
+himself, so he was silent. He remained alone in his voiceless
+emotion, as always alone.
+
+We went forward side by side between the rows of houses. In front of
+the doors, drays laden with casks were drawn up. The front windows
+blossomed with many-hued heaps of jam-pots, stacks of tinder
+pipe-lighters--everything that the soldier is compelled to buy.
+Nearly all the natives had gone into grocery. Business had been
+getting out of gear locally for a long time, but now it was booming.
+Every one, smitten with the fever of sum-totals and dazzled by the
+multiplication table, plunged into trade.
+
+Bells tolled, and the procession of a military funeral came out. A
+forage wagon, driven by a transport man, carried a coffin wrapped in
+a flag. Following, were a detachment of men, an adjutant, a padre,
+and a civilian.
+
+"The poor little funeral with its tail lopped off!" said Lamuse.
+"Ah, those that are dead are very happy. But only sometimes, not
+always--voila!"
+
+We have passed the last of the houses. In the country, beyond the
+end of the street, the fighting convoy and the regimental convoy
+have settled themselves, the traveling kitchens and jingling carts
+that follow them with odds and ends of equipment, the Red Cross
+wagons, the motor lorries, the forage carts, the baggage-master's
+gig. The tents of drivers and conductors swarm around the vehicles.
+On the open spaces horses lift their metallic eyes to the sky's
+emptiness, with their feet on barren earth. Four poilus are setting
+up a table. The open-air smithy is smoking. This heterogeneous and
+swarming city, planted in ruined fields whose straight or winding
+ruts are stiffening in the heat, is already broadly valanced with
+rubbish and dung.
+
+On the edge of the camp a big, white-painted van stands out from the
+others in its tidy cleanliness. Had it been in the middle of a fair,
+one would have said it was the stylish show where one pays more than
+at the others.
+
+This is the celebrated "stomatological" van that Blaire was asking
+about. In point of fact, Blaire is there in front, looking at it.
+For some long time, no doubt, he has been going round it and gazing.
+Field-hospital orderly Sambremeuse, of the Division, returning from
+errands, is climbing the portable stair of painted wood which leads
+to the van door. In his arms he carries a bulky box of biscuits, a
+loaf of fancy bread, and a bottle of champagne. Blaire questions
+him--"Tell me, Sir Rump, this horse-box--is it the dentist's?"
+
+"It's written up there," replies Sambremeuse--a little corpulent
+man, clean, close-shaven, and his chin starch-white. "If you can't
+see it, you don't want the dentist to look after your grinders, you
+want the vet to clean your eyesight."
+
+Blaire comes nearer and scrutinizes the establishment. "It's a queer
+shop," he says. He goes nearer yet, draws back, hesitates to risk
+his gums in that carriage. At last he decides, puts a foot on the
+stair, and disappears inside the caravan.
+
+We continue our walk, and turn into a footpath where are high, dusty
+bushes and the noises are subdued. The sunshine blazes everywhere;
+it heats and roasts the hollow of the way, spreading blinding and
+burning whiteness in patches, and shimmers in the sky of faultless
+blue.
+
+At the first turning, almost before we had heard the light grating
+of a footstep, we are face to face with Eudoxie!
+
+Lamuse utters a deep exclamation. Perhaps he fancies once more that
+she is looking for him, and believes that she is the gift of his
+destiny. He goes up to her--all the bulk of him.
+
+She looks at him and stops, framed by the hawthorn. Her strangely
+slight and pale face is apprehensive, the lids tremble on her
+magnificent eyes. She is bareheaded, and in the hollowed neck of her
+linen corsage there is the dawning of her flesh. So near, she is
+truly enticing in the sunshine, this woman crowned with gold, and
+one's glance is impelled and astonished by the moon-like purity of
+her skin. Her eyes sparkle; her teeth, too, glisten white in the
+living wound of her half-open mouth, red as her heart.
+
+"Tell me--I am going to tell you "pants Lamuse. "I like you so
+much--" He outstretches his arm towards the motionless, beloved
+wayfarer.
+
+She starts, and replies to him, "Leave me alone--you disgust me!"
+
+The man's hand is thrown over one of her little ones. She tries to
+draw it back, and shakes it to free herself. Her intensely fair hair
+falls loose, flaming. He draws her to him. His head bends towards
+her, and his lips are ready. His desire--the wish of all his
+strength and all his life--is to caress her. He would die that he
+might touch her with his lips. But she struggles, and utters a
+choking cry. She is trembling, and her beautiful face is disfigured
+with abhorrence.
+
+I go up and put my hand on my friend's shoulder, but my intervention
+is not needed. Lamuse recoils and growls, vanquished.
+
+"Are you taken that way often?" cries Eudoxie.
+
+"No!" groans the miserable man, baffled, overwhelmed, bewildered.
+
+"Don't do it again, vous savez!" she says, and goes off panting, and
+he does not even watch her go. He stands with his arms hanging,
+gazing at the place whence she has gone, tormented to the quick,
+torn from his dreams of her, and nothing left him to desire.
+
+I lead him away and he comes in dumb agitation, sniffling and out of
+breath, as though he had run a long way. The mass of his big head is
+bent. In the pitiless light of eternal spring, he is like the poor
+Cyclops who roamed the shores of ancient Sicily in the beginnings of
+time--like a huge toy, a thing of derision, that a child's shining
+strength could subdue.
+
+The itinerant wine-seller, whose barrow is hunchbacked with a
+barrel, has sold several liters to the men on guard duty. He
+disappears round the bend in the road, with his face flat and yellow
+as a Camembert, his scanty, thin hair frayed into dusty flakes, and
+so emaciated himself that one could fancy his feet were fastened to
+his trunk by strings through his flopping trousers.
+
+And among the idle poilus of the guard-room at the end of the place,
+under the wing of the shaking and rattling signboard which serves as
+advertisement of the village, [note 3] a conversation is set up on
+the subject of this wandering buffoon.
+
+"He has a dirty neb," says Bigornot; "and I'll tell you what I
+think--they've no business to let civvies mess about at the front
+with their pretty ringlets, and especially individuals that you
+don't know where they come from."
+
+"You're quite crushing, you portable louse," replies Cornet.
+
+"Never mind, shoe-sole face," Bigornot insists; "we trust 'em too
+much. I know what I'm saying when I open it."
+
+"You don't," says Canard. "Pepere's going to the
+rear."
+
+"The women here," murmurs La Mollette, "they're ugly; they're a lot
+of frights."
+
+The other men on guard, their concentrated gaze roaming in space,
+watch two enemy aeroplanes and the intricate skeins they are
+spinning. Around the stiff mechanical birds up there that appear now
+black like crows and now white like gulls, according to the play of
+the light, clouds of bursting shrapnel stipple the azure, and seem
+like a long flight of snowflakes in the sunshine.
+
+As we are going back, two strollers come up--Carassus and Cheyssier.
+They announce that mess-man Pepere is going to the
+rear, to be sent to a Territorial regiment, having come under the
+operation of the Dalbiez Act.
+
+"That's a hint for Blaire," says Carassus, who has a funny big nose
+in the middle of his face that suits him ill.
+
+In the village groups of poilus go by, or in twos, joined by the
+crossing bonds of converse. We see the solitary ones unite in
+couples, separate, then come together again with a new inspiration
+of talk, drawn to each other as if magnetized.
+
+In the middle of an excited crowd white papers are waving. It is the
+newspaper hawker, who is selling for two sous papers which should be
+one sou. Fouillade is standing in the middle of the road, thin as
+the legs of a hare. At the corner of a house Paradis shows to the
+sun face pink as ham.
+
+Biquet joins us again, in undress, with a jacket and cap of the
+police. He is licking his chops: "I met some pals and we've had a
+drink. You see, to-morrow one starts scratching again, and cleaning
+his old rags and his catapult. But my greatcoat!--going to be some
+job to filter that! It isn't a greatcoat any longer--it's
+armor-plate."
+
+Montreuil, a clerk at the office, appears and hails Biquet: "Hey,
+riff-raff! A letter! Been chasing you an hour. You're never to be
+found, rotter!"
+
+"Can't be both here and there, looney. Give us a squint." He
+examines the letter, balances it in his hand, and announces as he
+tears the envelope, "It's from the old woman."
+
+We slacken our pace. As he reads, he follows the lines with his
+finger, wagging his head with an air of conviction, and his lips
+moving like a woman's in prayer.
+
+The throng increases the nearer we draw to the middle of the
+village. We salute the commandant and the black-skirted padre who
+walks by the other's side like his nurse. We are questioned by
+Pigeon, Guenon, young Escutenaire, and Chasseur Clodore. Lamuse
+appears blind and deaf, and concerned only to walk.
+
+Bizouarne, Chanrion, and Roquette arrive excitedly to announce big
+news--"D'you know, Pepere's going to the rear."
+
+"Funny," says Biquet, raising his nose from his letter, "how people
+kid themselves. The old woman's bothered about me!" He shows me a
+passage in the maternal epistle: "'When you get my letter,'" he
+spells out, "'no doubt you will be in the cold and mud, deprived of
+everything, mon pauvre Eugene'" He laughs: "It's ten days
+since she put that down for me, and she's clean off it. We're not
+cold, 'cos it's been fine since this morning; and we're not
+miserable, because we've got a room that's good enough. We've had
+hard times, but we're all right now."
+
+As we reach the kennel in which we are lodgers, we are thinking that
+sentence over. Its touching simplicity affects me, shows me a
+soul--a host of souls. Because the sun has shown himself, because we
+have felt a gleam and a similitude of comfort, suffering exists no
+longer, either of the past or the terrible future. "We're all right
+now." There is no more to say.
+
+Biquet establishes himself at the table, like a gentleman, to write
+a reply. Carefully he lays abroad his pen ink, and paper, and
+examines each, then smilingly traces the strictly regular lines of
+his big handwriting across the meager page.
+
+"You'd laugh," he says, "if you knew what I've written to the old
+woman." He reads his letter again, fondles it, and smiles to
+himself.
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] Pity to spoil this jest by translation, but Biquet's
+primary meaning was "You're cross because you've a throat like a
+lime-kiln." His secondary or literal meaning is obvious.--Tr.
+
+[note 2:] See p. 34 ante; [chapter 5, note 3] another reference to
+the famous phrase. "Pourvu que les civils tiennent."--Tr.
+
+[note 3:] Every French village has a plaque attached to the first
+house on each road of approach, giving its name and the distance to
+the next.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+Habits
+
+
+
+
+
+WE are enthroned in the back yard. The big hen, white as a cream
+cheese, is brooding in the depths of a basket near the coop whose
+imprisoned occupant is rummaging about. But the black hen is free to
+travel. She erects and withdraws her elastic neck in jerks, and
+advances with a large and affected gait. One can just see her
+profile and its twinkling spangle, and her talk appears to proceed
+from a metal spring. She marches, glistening black and glossy like
+the love-locks of a gypsy; and as she marches, she unfolds here and
+there upon the ground a faint trail of chickens.
+
+These trifling little yellow balls, kept always by a whispering
+instinct on the ebb-tide to safety, hurry along under the maternal
+march in short, sharp jerks, pecking as they go. Now the train comes
+to a full stop, for two of the chickens are thoughtful and immobile,
+careless of the parental clucking.
+
+"A bad sign," says Paradis; "the hen that reflects is ill." And
+Paradis uncrosses and recrosses his legs. Beside him on the bench,
+Blaire extends his own, lets loose a great yawn that he maintains in
+placid duration, and sets himself again to observe, for of all of us
+he most delights in watching fowls during the brief life when they
+are in such a hurry to eat.
+
+And we watch them in unison, not forgetting the shabby old cock,
+worn threadbare. Where his feathers have fallen appears the naked
+india-rubber leg, lurid as a grilled cutlet. He approaches the white
+sitter, which first turns her head away in tart denial, with several
+"No's" in a muffled rattle, and then watches him with the little
+blue enamel dials of her eyes.
+
+"We're all right," says Barque.
+
+"Watch the little ducks," says Blaire, "going along the
+communication trench."
+
+We watch a single file of all-golden ducklings go past--still almost
+eggs on feet--their big heads pulling their little lame bodies along
+by the string of their necks, and that quickly. From his corner, the
+big dog follows them also with his deeply dark eye, on which the
+slanting sun has shaped a fine tawny ring.
+
+Beyond this rustic yard and over the scalloping of the low wall, the
+orchard reveals itself, where a green carpet, moist and thick,
+covers the rich soil and is topped by a screen of foliage with a
+garniture of blossom, some white as statuary, others pied and glossy
+as knots in neckties. Beyond again is the meadow, where the shadowed
+poplars throw shafts of dark or golden green. Still farther again is
+a square patch of upstanding hops, followed by a patch of cabbages,
+sitting on the ground and dressed in line. In the sunshine of air
+and of earth we hear the bees, as they work and make music (in
+deference to the poets), and the cricket which, in defiance of the
+fable, sings with no humility and fills Space by himself.
+
+Over yonder, there falls eddying from a poplar's peak a magpie--half
+white, half black, like a shred of partly-burned paper.
+
+The soldiers outstretch themselves luxuriously on the stone bench,
+their eyes half closed, and bask in the sunshine that warms the
+basin of the big yard till it is like a bath.
+
+"That's seventeen days we've been here! After thinking we were going
+away day after day!"
+
+"One never knows," said Paradis, wagging his head and smacking his
+lips.
+
+Through the yard gate that opens on to the road we see a group of
+poilus strolling, nose in air, devouring the sunshine; and then, all
+alone, Tellurure. In the middle of the street he oscillates the
+prosperous abdomen of which he is proprietor, and rocking on legs
+arched like basket-handles, he expectorates in wide abundance all
+around him.
+
+"We thought, too, that we should be as badly off here as in the
+other quarters. But this time it's real rest, both in the time it
+lasts and the kind it is."
+
+"You're not given too many exercises and fatigues."
+
+"And between whiles you come in here to loll about."
+
+The old man huddled up at the end of the seat--no other than the
+treasure-seeking grandfather whom we saw the day of our
+arrival--came nearer and lifted his finger. "When I was a young
+man, I was thought a lot of by women," he asserted, shaking his
+head. "I have led young ladies astray!"
+
+"Ah!" said we, heedless, our attention taken away from his senile
+prattle by the timely noise of a cart that was passing, laden and
+laboring.
+
+"Nowadays," the old man went on, "I only think about money."
+
+"Ah, oui, the treasure you're looking for, papa."
+
+"That's it," said the old rustic, though he felt the skepticism
+around him. He tapped his cranium with his forefinger, which he then
+extended towards the house. "Take that insect there," he said,
+indicating a little beast that ran along the plaster. "What does it
+say? It says, 'I am the spider that spins the Virgin's thread.'" And
+the archaic simpleton added, "One must never judge what people do,
+for one can never tell what may happen."
+
+"That's true," replied Paradis politely. "He's funny," said Mesnil
+Andre, between his teeth, while he sought the mirror in his
+pocket to look at the facial benefit of fine weather. "He's crazy,"
+murmured Barque in his ecstasy.
+
+"I leave you," said the old man, yielding in annoyance.
+
+He got up to go and look for his treasure again, entered the house
+that supported our backs, and left the door open, where beside the
+huge fireplace in the room we saw a little girl, so seriously
+playing with a doll that Blaire fell considering, and said, "She's
+right."
+
+The games of children are a momentous preoccupation. Only the
+grown-ups play.
+
+After we have watched the animals and the strollers go by, we watch
+the time go by, we watch everything.
+
+We are seeing the life of things, we are present with Nature,
+blended with climates, mingled even with the sky, colored by the
+seasons. We have attached ourselves to this corner of the land where
+chance has held us back from our endless wanderings in longer and
+deeper peace than elsewhere; and this closer intercourse makes us
+sensible of all its traits and habits. September--the morrow of
+August and eve of October, most affecting of months--is already
+sprinkling the fine days with subtle warnings. Already one knows the
+meaning of the dead leaves that flit about the flat stones like a
+flock of sparrows.
+
+In truth we have got used to each other's company, we and this
+place. So often transplanted, we are taking root here, and we no
+longer actually think of going away, even when we talk about it.
+
+"The 11th Division jolly well stayed a month and a half resting,"
+says Blaire.
+
+"And the 375th, too, nine weeks!" replies Barque, in a tone of
+challenge.
+
+"I think we shall stay here at least as long--at least, I say."
+
+"We could finish the war here all right."
+
+Barque is affected by the words, nor very far from believing them.
+"After all, it will finish some day, what!"
+
+"After all!" repeat the others.
+
+"To be sure, one never knows," says Paradis. He says this weakly,
+without deep conviction. It is, however, a saying which leaves no
+room for reply. We say it over again, softly, lulling ourselves with
+it as with an old song.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Farfadet rejoined us a moment ago. He took his place near us, but a
+little withdrawn all the same, and sits on an overturned tub, his
+chin on his fists.
+
+This man is more solidly happy than we are. We know it well, and he
+knows it well. Lifting his head he has looked in turn, with the same
+distant gaze, at the back of the old man who went to seek his
+treasure, and at the group that talks of going away no more. There
+shines over our sensitive and sentimental comrade a sort of personal
+glamour, which makes of him a being apart, which gilds him and
+isolates him from us, in spite of himself, as though an officer's
+tabs had fallen on him from the sky.
+
+His idyll with Eudoxie has continued here. We have had the proofs;
+and once, indeed, he spoke of it. She is not very far away, and they
+are very near to each other. Did I not see her the other evening,
+passing along the wall of the parsonage, her hair but half quenched
+by a mantilla, as she went obviously to a rendezvous? Did I not see
+that she began to hurry and to lean forward, already smiling?
+Although there is no more between them yet than promises and
+assurances, she is his, and he is the man who will hold her in his
+arms.
+
+Then, too, he is going to leave us, called to the rear, to Brigade
+H.Q., where they want a weakling who can work a typewriter. It is
+official; it is in writing; he is saved. That gloomy future at which
+we others dare not look is definite and bright for him.
+
+He looks at an open window and the dark gap behind it of some room
+or other over there, a shadowy room that bemuses him. His life is
+twofold in hope; he is happy, for the imminent happiness that does
+not yet exist is the only real happiness down here.
+
+So a scanty spirit of envy grows around him. "One never knows,"
+murmurs Paradis again, but with no more confidence than when before,
+in the straitened scene of our life to-day, he uttered those
+immeasurable words.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+Entraining
+
+
+
+
+
+THE next day, Barque began to address us, and said: "I'll just
+explain to you what it is. There are some i--"
+
+A ferocious whistle cut his explanation off short, on the syllable.
+We were in a railway station, on a platform. A night alarm had torn
+us from our sleep in the village and we had marched here. The rest
+was over; our sector was being changed; they were throwing us
+somewhere else. We had disappeared from Gauchin under cover of
+darkness without seeing either the place or the people, without
+bidding them good-by even in a look, without bringing away a last
+impression.
+
+A locomotive was shunting, near enough to elbow us, and screaming
+full-lunged. I saw Barque's mouth, stoppered by the clamor of our
+huge neighbor, pronounce an oath, and I saw the other faces
+grimacing in deafened impotence, faces helmeted and chin-strapped,
+for we were sentries in the station.
+
+"After you!" yelled Barque furiously, addressing the white-plumed
+whistle. But the terrible mechanism continued more imperiously than
+ever to drive his words back in his throat. When it ceased, and only
+its echo rang in our ears, the thread of the discourse was broken
+for ever, and Barque contented himself with the brief conclusion,
+"Oui."
+
+Then we looked around us. We were lost in a sort of town.
+Interminable strings of trucks, trains of forty to sixty carriages,
+were taking shape like rows of dark-fronted houses, low built, all
+alike, and divided by alleys. Before us, alongside the collection of
+moving houses, was the main line, the limitless street where the
+white rails disappeared at both ends, swallowed up in distance.
+Sections of trains and complete trains were staggering in great
+horizontal columns, leaving their places, then taking them again. On
+every side one heard the regular hammering on the armored ground,
+piercing whistles, the ringing of warning bells, the solid metallic
+crash of the colossal cubes telescoping their steel stumps, with the
+counter-blows of chains and the rattle of the long carcases'
+vertebrae. On the ground floor of the building that arises in the
+middle of the station like a town ball, the hurried bell of
+telegraph and telephone was at work, punctuated by vocal noises. All
+about on the dusty ground were the goods sheds, the low stores
+through whose doors one could dimly see the stacked interiors--the
+pointsmen's cabins, the bristling switches, the hydrants, the
+latticed iron posts whose wires ruled the sky like music-paper; here
+and there the signals, and rising naked over this flat and gloomy
+city, two steam cranes, like steeples.
+
+Farther away, on waste ground and vacant sites in the environs of
+the labyrinth of platforms and buildings, military carts and lorries
+were standing idle, and rows of horses, drawn out farther than one
+could see.
+
+"Talk about the job this is going to be!"--"A whole army corps
+beginning to entrain this evening!"--"Tiens, they're coming now!"
+
+A cloud which overspread a noisy vibration of wheels and the rumble
+of horses' hoofs was coming near and getting bigger in the approach
+to the station formed by converging buildings.
+
+"There are already some guns on board." On some flat trucks down
+there, between two long pyramidal dumps of chests, we saw indeed the
+outline of wheels, and some slender muzzles. Ammunition wagons, guns
+and wheels were streaked and blotched with yellow, brown, and green.
+
+"They're camoufles. [note 1] Down there, there are even
+horses painted. Look! spot that one, there, with the big feet as if
+he had trousers on. Well, he was white, and they've slapped some
+paint on to change his color."
+
+The horse in question was standing apart from the others, which
+seemed to mistrust it, and displayed a grayish yellow tone,
+obviously with intent to deceive. "Poor devil!" said Tulacque.
+
+"You see," said Paradis, "we not only take 'em to get killed, but
+mess them about first!"
+
+"It's for their good, any way!"
+
+"Eh oui, and us too, it's for our good!"
+
+Towards evening soldiers arrived. From all sides they flowed towards
+the station. Deep-voiced non-coms. ran in front of the files. They
+were stemming the tide of men and massing them along the barriers or
+in railed squares--pretty well everywhere. The men piled their arms,
+dropped their knapsacks, and not being free to go out, waited,
+buried side by side in shadow.
+
+The arrivals followed each other in volume that grew as the twilight
+deepened. Along with the troops, the motors flowed up, and soon
+there was an unbroken roar. Limousines glided through an enormous
+sea of lorries, little, middling, and big. All these cleared aside,
+wedged themselves in, subsided in their appointed places. A vast hum
+of voices and mingled noises arose from the ocean of men and
+vehicles that beat upon the approaches to the station and began in
+places to filter through.
+
+"That's nothing yet," said Cocon, The Man of Figures. "At Army Corps
+Headquarters alone there are thirty officers' motors; and you don't
+know," he added, "how many trains of fifty trucks it takes to
+entrain all the Corpsmen and all the box of tricks--except, of
+course, the lorries, that'll join the new sector on their feet?
+Don't guess, fiat-face. It takes ninety."
+
+"Great Scott! And there are thirty-three Corps?"
+
+"There are thirty-nine, lousy one!"
+
+The turmoil increases; the station becomes still more populous. As
+far as the eye can make out a shape or the ghost of a shape, there
+is a hurly-burly of movement as lively as a panic. All the hierarchy
+of the non-coms. expand themselves and go into action, pass and
+repass like meteors, wave their bright-striped arms, and multiply
+the commands and counter-commands that are carried by the worming
+orderlies and cyclists, the former tardy, the latter maneuvering in
+quick dashes, like fish in water.
+
+Here now is evening, definitely. The blots made by the uniforms of
+the poilus grouped about the hillocks of rifles become indistinct,
+and blend with the ground; and then their mass is betrayed only by
+the glow of pipes and cigarettes. In some places on the edge of the
+clusters, the little bright points festoon the gloom like
+illuminated streamers in a merry-making street.
+
+Over this confused and heaving expanse an amalgam of voices rises
+like the sea breaking on the shore: and above this unending murmur,
+renewed commands, shouts, the din of a shot load or of one
+transferred, the crash of steam-hammers redoubling their dull
+endeavors, and the roaring of boilers.
+
+In the immense obscurity, surcharged with men and with all things,
+lights begin everywhere to appear. These are the flash-lamps of
+officers and detachment leaders, and the cyclists' acetylene lamps,
+whose intensely white points zigzag hither and thither and reveal an
+outer zone of pallid resurrection.
+
+An acetylene searchlight blazes blindingly out and depicts a dome of
+daylight. Other beams pierce and rend the universal gray.
+
+Then does the station assume a fantastic air. Mysterious shapes
+spring up and adhere to the sky's dark blue. Mountains come into
+view, rough-modeled, and vast as the ruins of a town. One can see
+the beginning of unending rows of objects, finally plunged in night.
+One guesses what the great bulks may be whose outermost outlines
+flash forth from a black abyss of the unknown.
+
+On our left, detachments of cavalry and infantry move ever forward
+like a ponderous flood. We hear the diffused obscurity of voices. We
+see some ranks delineated by a flash of phosphorescent light or a
+ruddy glimmering, and we listen to long-drawn trails of noise.
+
+Up the gangways of the vans whose gray trunks and black mouths one
+sees by the dancing and smoking flame of torches, artillerymen are
+leading horses. There are appeals and shouts, a frantic trampling of
+conflict, and the angry kicking of some restive animal--insulted by
+its guide--against the panels of the van where he is cloistered.
+
+Not far away, they are putting wagons on to railway trucks. Swarming
+humanity surrounds a hill of trusses of fodder. A scattered
+multitude furiously attacks great strata of bales.
+
+"That's three hours we've been on our pins," sighs Paradis.
+
+"And those, there, what are they?" In some snatches of light we see
+a group of goblins, surrounded by glowworms and carrying strange
+instruments, come out and then disappear.
+
+"That's the searchlight section," says Cocon.
+
+"You've got your considering cap on, camarade; what's it about?"
+
+"There are four Divisions, at present, in an Army Corps," replies
+Cocon; "the number changes, sometimes it is three, sometimes five.
+Just now, it's four. And each of our Divisions," continues the
+mathematical one, whom our squad glories in owning, "includes three
+R.I.--regiments of infantry; two B.C.P.--battalions of chasseurs
+pied; one R.T.I.--regiment of territorial infantry--without counting
+the special regiments, Artillery, Engineers, Transport, etc., and
+not counting either Headquarters of the D.I. and the departments not
+brigaded but attached directly to the D.I. A regiment of the line of
+three battalions occupies four trains, one for H.Q., the machine-gun
+company, and the C.H.R. (compagnie hors rang [note 2]), and one to
+each battalion. All the troops won't entrain here. They'll entrain
+in echelons along the line according to the position of the quarters
+and the period of reliefs."
+
+"I'm tired," says Tulacque. "We don't get enough solids to eat, mark
+you. We stand up because it's the fashion, but we've no longer
+either force or freshness."
+
+"I've been getting information," Cocon goes on; "the troops--the
+real troops--will only entrain as from midnight. They are still
+mustered here and there in the villages ten kilometers round about.
+All the departments of the Army Corps will first set off, and the
+E.N.E.--elements non endivisionnes," Cocon
+obligingly explains, "that is, attached directly to the A.C. Among
+the E.N.E. you won't see the Balloon Department nor the
+Squadron--they're too big goods, and they navigate on their own,
+with their staff and officers and hospitals. The chasseurs regiment
+is another of these E.N.E."
+
+"There's no regiment of chasseurs," says Barque, thoughtlessly,
+"it's battalions. One says 'such and such a battalion of
+chasseurs.'"
+
+We can see Cocon shrugging his shoulders in the shadows, and his
+glasses cast a scornful gleam. "Think so, duck-neb? Then I'll tell
+you, since you're so clever, there are two--foot chasseurs and horse
+chasseurs."
+
+"Gad! I forgot the horsemen," says Barque.
+
+"Only them!" Cocon said. "In the E.N.E. of the Army Corps, there's
+the Corps Artillery, that is to say, the central artillery that's
+additional to that of the divisions. It includes the H.A.--heavy
+artillery; the T.A.--trench artillery; the A.D.--artillery depot,
+the armored cars, the anti-aircraft batteries--do I know, or don't
+I? There's the Engineers; the Military Police--to wit, the service
+of cops on foot and slops on horseback; the Medical Department; the
+Veterinary ditto; a squadron of the Draught Corps; a Territorial
+regiment for the guards and fatigues at H.Q.--Headquarters; the
+Service de l'lntendance, [note 3] and the supply column. There's
+also the drove of cattle, the Remount Depot, the Motor
+Department--talk about the swarm of soft jobs I could tell you about
+in an hour if I wanted to!--the Paymaster that controls the
+pay-offices and the Post, the Council of War, the Telegraphists, and
+all the electrical lot. All those have chiefs, commandants, sections
+and sub-sections, and they're rotten with clerks and orderlies of
+sorts, and all the bally box of tricks. You can see from here the
+sort of job the C.O. of a Corp's got!"
+
+At this moment we were surrounded by a party of soldiers carrying
+boxes in addition to their equipment, and parcels tied up in paper
+that they bore reluctantly and anon placed on the ground, puffing.
+
+"Those are the Staff secretaries. They are a part of the
+H.Q.--Headquarters--that is to say, a sort of General's suite. When
+they're flitting, they lug about their chests of records, their
+tables, their registers, and all the dirty oddments they need for
+their writing. Tiens! see that, there; it's a typewriter those two
+are carrying, the old papa and the little sausage, with a rifle
+threaded through the parcel. They're in three offices, and there's
+also the dispatch-riders' section, the Chancellerie, the
+A.C.T.S.--Army Corps Topographical Section--that distributes maps to
+the Divisions, and makes maps and plans from the aviators and the
+observers and the prisoners. It's the officers of all the
+departments who, under the orders of two colonels, form the Staff of
+the Army Corps. But the H.Q., properly so called, which also
+includes orderlies, cooks, storekeepers, workpeople, electricians,
+police, and the horsemen of the Escort, is bossed by a commandant."
+
+At this moment we receive collectively a tremendous bump. "Hey, look
+out! Out of the way!" cries a man, by way of apology, who is being
+assisted by several others to push a cart towards the wagons. The
+work is hard, for the ground slopes up, and so soon as they cease to
+buttress themselves against the cart and adhere to the wheels, it
+slips back. The sullen men crush themselves against it in the depth
+of the gloom, grinding their teeth and growling, as though they fell
+upon some monster.
+
+Barque, all the while rubbing his back, questions one of the frantic
+gang: "Think you're going to do it, old duckfoot?"
+
+"Nom de Dieu!" roars he, engrossed in his job, "mind these setts!
+You're going to wreck the show!" With a sudden movement he jostles
+Barque again, and this time turns round on him: "What are you doing
+there, dung-guts, numskull?"
+
+"Non, it can't be that you're drunk?" Barque retorts. "'What am I
+doing here?' It's good, that! Tell me, you lousy gang, wouldn't you
+like to do it too!"
+
+"Out of the way!" cries a new voice, which precedes some men doubled
+up under burdens incongruous, but apparently overwhelming.
+
+One can no longer remain anywhere. Everywhere we are in the way. We
+go forward, we scatter, we retire in the turmoil.
+
+"In addition, I tell you," continues Cocon, tranquil as a scientist,
+"there are the Divisions, each organized pretty much like an Army
+Corps--"
+
+"Oui, we know it; miss the deal!"
+
+"He makes a fine to-do about it all, that mountebank in the
+horse-box on casters. What a mother-in-law he'd make!"
+
+"I'll bet that's the Major's wrong-headed horse, the one that the
+vet said was a calf in process of becoming a cow."
+
+"It's well organized, all the same, all that, no doubt about it,"
+says Lamuse admiringly, forced back by a wave of artillerymen
+carrying boxes.
+
+"That's true," Marthereau admits; "to get all this lot on the way,
+you've not got to be a lot of turnip-heads nor a lot of
+custards--Bon Dieu, look where you're putting your damned boots, you
+black-livered beast!"
+
+"Talk about a flitting! When I went to live at Marcoussis with my
+family, there was less fuss than this. But then I'm not built that
+way myself."
+
+We are silent; and then we hear Cocon saying, "For the whole French
+Army that holds the lines to go by--I'm not speaking of those who
+are fixed up at the rear, where there are twice as many men again,
+and services like the ambulance that cost nine million francs and
+can clear you seven thousand cases a day--to see them go by in
+trains of sixty coaches each, following each other without stopping,
+at intervals of a quarter of an hour, it would take forty days and
+forty nights."
+
+"Ah!" they say. It is too much effort for their imagination; they
+lose interest and sicken of the magnitude of these figures. They
+yawn, and with watering eyes they follow, in the confusion of haste
+and shouts and smoke, of roars and gleams and flashes, the terrible
+line of the armored train that moves in the distance, with fire in
+the sky behind it.
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] The word is likely to become of international usage. It
+stands for the use of paint in blotches of different colors, and of
+branches and other things to disguise almost any object that may be
+visible to hostile aircraft.--Tr.
+
+[note 2:] Non-combatant.--Tr.
+
+[note 3:] Akin to the British A.S.C.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+On Leave
+
+
+
+
+
+EUDORE sat down awhile, there by the roadside well, before taking
+the path over the fields that led to the trenches, his hands crossed
+over one knee, his pale face uplifted. He had no mustache under his
+nose--only a little flat smear over each corner of his mouth. He
+whistled, and then yawned in the face of the morning till the tears
+came.
+
+An artilleryman who was quartered on the edge of the wood--over
+there where a line of horses and carts looked like a gypsies'
+bivouac--came up, with the well in his mind, and two canvas buckets
+that danced at the end of his arms in time with his feet. In front
+of the sleepy unarmed soldier with a bulging bag he stood fast.
+
+"On leave?"
+
+"Yes," said Eudore; "just back."
+
+"Good for you," said the gunner as he made off.
+
+"You've nothing to grumble at--with six days' leave in your
+water-bottle!"
+
+And here, see, are four more men coming down the road, their gait
+heavy and slow, their boots turned into enormous caricatures of
+boots by reason of the mud. As one man they stopped on espying the
+profile of Eudore.
+
+"There's Eudore! Hello, Eudore! hello, the old sport! You're back
+then!" they cried together, as they hurried up and offered him hands
+as big and ruddy as if they were hidden in woolen gloves.
+
+"Morning, boys," said Eudore.
+
+"Had a good time? What have you got to tell us, my boy?"
+
+"Yes," replied Eudore, "not so bad."
+
+"We've been on wine fatigue, and we've finished. Let's go back
+together, pas?"
+
+In single file they went down the embankment of the road--arm in arm
+they crossed the field of gray mud, where their feet fell with the
+sound of dough being mixed in the kneading-trough.
+
+"Well, you've seen your wife, your little Mariette--the only girl
+for you--that you could never open your jaw without telling us a
+tale about her, eh?"
+
+Eudore's wan face winced.
+
+"My wife? Yes, I saw her, sure enough, but only for a little
+while--there was no way of doing any better--but no luck, I admit,
+and that's all about it."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"How? You know that we live at Villers-l'Abbaye, a hamlet of four
+houses neither more nor less, astraddle over the road. One of those
+houses is our cafe, and she runs it, or rather she is running
+it again since they gave up shelling the village.
+
+"Now then, with my leave coming along, she asked for a permit to
+Mont-St-Eloi, where my old folks are, and my permit was for
+Mont-St-Eloi too. See the move?
+
+"Being a little woman with a head-piece, you know, she had applied
+for her permit long before the date when my leave was expected. All
+the same, my leave came before her permit. Spite o' that I set
+off--for one doesn't let his turn in the company go by, eh? So I
+stayed with the old people, and waited. I like 'em well enough, but
+I got down in the mouth all the same. As for them, it was enough
+that they could see me, and it worried them that I was bored by
+their company-how else could it be? At the end of the sixth day--at
+the finish of my leave, and the very evening before returning--a
+young man on a bicycle, son of the Florence family, brings me a
+letter from Mariette to say that her permit had not yet come--"
+
+"Ah, rotten luck," cried the audience.
+
+"And that," continued Eudore, "there was only one thing to do.--I
+was to get leave from the mayor of Mont-St-Eloi, who would get it
+from the military, and go myself at full speed to see her at
+Villers."
+
+"You should have done that the first day, not the sixth!"
+
+"So it seems, but I was afraid we should cross and me miss
+her--y'see, as soon as I landed, I was expecting her all the time,
+and every minute I fancied I could see her at the open door. So I
+did as she told me."
+
+"After all, you saw her?"
+
+"Just one day--or rather, just one night."
+
+"Quite sufficient!" merrily said Lamuse, and Eudore the pale and
+serious shook his head under the shower of pointed and perilous
+jests that followed.
+
+"Shut your great mouths for five minutes, chaps."
+
+"Get on with it, petit."
+
+"There isn't a great lot of it," said Eudore.
+
+"Well, then, you were saying you had got a hump with your old
+people?"
+
+"Ah, yes. They had tried their best to make up for Mariette--with
+lovely rashers of our own ham, and plum brandy, and patching up my
+linen, and all sorts of little spoiled-kid tricks--and I noticed
+they were still slanging each other in the old familiar way! But you
+talk about a difference! I always had my eye on the door to see if
+some time or other it wouldn't get a move on and turn into a woman.
+So I went and saw the mayor, and set off, yesterday, towards two in
+the afternoon--towards fourteen o'clock I might well say, seeing
+that I had been counting the hours since the day before! I had just
+one day of my leave left then.
+
+"As we drew near in the dusk, through the carriage window of the
+little railway that still keeps going down there on some fag-ends of
+line, I recognized half the country, and the other half I didn't.
+Here and there I got the sense of it, all at once, and it came back
+all fresh to me, and melted away again, just as if it was talking to
+me. Then it shut up. In the end we got out, and I found--the limit,
+that was--that we had to pad the hoof to the last station.
+
+"Never, old man, have I been in such weather. It had rained for six
+days. For six days the sky washed the earth and then washed it
+again. The earth was softening and shifting, and filling up the
+holes and making new ones."
+
+"Same here--it only stopped raining this morning."
+
+"It was just my luck. And everywhere there were swollen new streams,
+washing away the borders of the fields as though they were lines on
+paper. There were hills that ran with water from top to bottom.
+Gusts of wind sent the rain in great clouds flying and whirling
+about, and lashing our hands and faces and necks.
+
+"So you bet, when I had tramped to the station, if some one had
+pulled a really ugly face at me, it would have been enough to make
+me turn back.
+
+"But when we did get to the place, there were several of us--some
+more men on leave--they weren't bound for Villers, but they had to
+go through it to get somewhere else. So it happened that we got
+there in a lump--five old cronies that didn't know each other.
+
+"I could make out nothing of anything. They've been worse shelled
+over there than here, and then there was the water everywhere, and
+it was getting dark.
+
+"I told you there are only four houses in the little place, only
+they're a good bit off from each other. You come to the lower end of
+a slope. I didn't know too well where I was, no more than my pals
+did, though they belonged to the district and had some notion of the
+lay of it--and all the less because of the rain falling in
+bucketsful.
+
+"It got so bad that we couldn't keep from hurrying and began to run.
+We passed by the farm of the Alleux--that's the first of the
+houses--and it looked like a sort of stone ghost. Bits of walls like
+splintered pillars standing up out of the water; the house was
+shipwrecked. The other farm, a little further, was as good as
+drowned dead.
+
+"Our house is the third. It's on the edge of the road that runs
+along the top of the slope. We climbed up, facing the rain that beat
+on us in the dusk and began to blind us--the cold and wet fairly
+smacked us in the eye, flop!--and broke our ranks like machine-guns.
+
+"The house! I ran like a greyhound--like an African attacking.
+Mariette! I could see her with her arms raised high in the doorway
+behind that fine curtain of night and rain--of rain so fierce that
+it drove her back and kept her shrinking between the doorposts like
+a statue of the Virgin in its niche. I just threw myself forward,
+but remembered to give my pals the sign to follow me. The house
+swallowed the lot of us. Mariette laughed a little to see me, with a
+tear in her eye. She waited till we were alone together and then
+laughed and cried all at once. I told the boys to make themselves at
+home and sit down, some on the chairs and the rest on the table.
+
+"'Where are they going, ces messieurs?' asked Manette.
+
+"'We are going to Vauvelles.'
+
+"'Jesus!' she said, 'you'll never get there. You can't do
+those two miles and more in the night, with the roads washed away,
+and swamps everywhere. You mustn't even try to.'
+
+"'Well, we'll go on to-morrow, then; only we must find somewhere to
+pass the night.'
+
+"'I'll go with you,' I said, 'as far as the Pendu farm--they're not
+short of room in that shop. You'll snore in there all right, and you
+can start at daybreak.'
+
+"'Right! let's get a move on so far.'
+
+"We went out again. What a downpour! We were wet past bearing. The
+water poured into our socks through the boot-soles and by the
+trouser bottoms, and they too were soaked through and through up to
+the knees. Before we got to this Pendu, we meet a shadow in a big
+black cloak, with a lantern. The lantern is raised, and we see a
+gold stripe on the sleeve, and then an angry face.
+
+"'What the hell are you doing there?' says the shadow, drawing back
+a little and putting one fist on his hip, while the rain rattled
+like hail on his hood.
+
+"'They're men on leave for Vauvelles--they can't set off again
+to-night--they would like to sleep in the Pendu farm.'
+
+"'What do you say? Sleep here?--This is the police station--I am the
+officer on guard and there are Boche prisoners in the buildings.'
+And I'll tell you what he said as well--'I must see you hop it from
+here in less than two seconds. Bonsoir.'
+
+"So we right about face and started back again--stumbling as if we
+were boozed, slipping, puffing, splashing and bespattering
+ourselves. One of the boys cried to me through the wind and rain,
+'We'll go back with you as far as your home, all the same. If we
+haven't a house we've time enough.'
+
+"'Where will you sleep?'
+
+"'Oh, we'll find somewhere, don't worry, for the little time we have
+to kill here.'
+
+"'Yes, we'll find somewhere, all right,' I said. 'Come in again for
+a minute meanwhile--I won't take no--and Mariette sees us enter once
+more in single file, all five of us soaked like bread in soup.
+
+"So there we all were, with only one little room to go round in and
+go round again--the only room in the house, seeing that it isn't a
+palace.
+
+"'Tell me, madame,' says one of our friends, 'isn't there a cellar
+here?'
+
+"'There's water in it,' says Mariette; 'you can't see the bottom
+step and it's only got two.'
+
+"'Damn,' says the man, 'for I see there's no loft, either.'
+
+"After a minute or two he gets up: 'Good-night, old pal,' he says to
+me, and they get their hats on.
+
+"'What, are you going off in weather like this, boys?'
+
+"'Do you think,' says the old sport, 'that we're going to spoil your
+stay with your wife?'
+
+"'But, my good man--'
+
+"'But me no buts. It's nine o'clock, and you've got to take your
+hook before day. So good-night. Coming, you others?'
+
+"'Rather,' say the boys. 'Good-night all.'
+
+"There they are at the door and opening it. Mariette and me, we look
+at each other--but we don't move. Once more we look at each other,
+and then we sprang at them. I grabbed the skirt of a coat and she a
+belt--all wet enough to wring out.
+
+"'Never! We won't let you go--it can't be done.'
+
+"'But--'
+
+"'But me no buts,' I reply, while she locks the door."
+
+"Then what?" asked Lamuse.
+
+"Then? Nothing at all," replied Eudore. "We just stayed like that,
+very discreetly--all the night--sitting, propped up in the corners,
+yawning--like the watchers over a dead man. We made a bit of talk at
+first. From time to time some one said, 'Is it still raining?' and
+went and had a look, and said, 'It's still raining'--we could hear
+it, by the way. A big chap who had a mustache like a Bulgarian
+fought against sleeping like a wild man. Sometimes one or two among
+the crowd slept, but there was always one to yawn and keep an eye
+open for politeness, who stretched himself or half got up so that he
+could settle more comfortably.
+
+"Mariette and me, we never slept. We looked at each other, but we
+looked at the others as well, and they looked at us, and there you
+are.
+
+"Morning came and cleaned the window. I got up to go and look
+outside. The rain was hardly less. In the room I could see dark
+forms that began to stir and breathe hard. Mariette's eyes were red
+with looking at me all night. Between her and me a soldier was
+filling his pipe and shivering.
+
+"Some one beats a tattoo on the window, and I half open it. A
+silhouette with a streaming hat appears, as though carried and
+driven there by the terrible force of the blast that came with it,
+and asks--
+
+"'Hey, in the cafe there! Is there any coffee to be had?'
+
+"'Coming, sir, coming,' cried Mariette.
+
+"She gets up from her chair, a little benumbed. Without a word she
+looks at her self in our bit of a mirror, touches her hair lightly,
+and says quite simply, the good lass--
+
+"'I am going to make coffee for everybody.'
+
+"When that was drunk off, we had all of us to go. Besides, customers
+turned up every minute.
+
+"'Hey, la p'tite mere,' they cried, shoving their noses in at
+the half-open window, 'let's have a coffee--or three--or four'--'and
+two more again,' says another voice.
+
+"We go up to Mariette to say good-by. They knew they had played
+gooseberry that night most damnably, but I could see plainly that
+they didn't know if it would be the thing to say something about it
+or just let it drop altogether.
+
+"Then the Bulgarian made up his mind: 'We've made a hell of a mess
+of it for you, eh, ma p'tite dame?'
+
+"He said that to show he'd been well brought up, the old sport.
+
+"Mariette thanks him and offers him her hand--'That's nothing at
+all, sir. I hope you'll enjoy your leave.'
+
+"And me, I held her tight in my arms and kissed her as long as I
+could--half a minute--discontented--my God, there was reason to
+be--but glad that Mariette had not driven the boys out like dogs,
+and I felt sure she liked me too for not doing it.
+
+"'But that isn't all,' said one of the leave men, lifting the skirt
+of his cape and fumbling in his coat pocket; 'that's not all. What
+do we owe you for the coffees?'
+
+"'Nothing, for you stayed the night with me; you are my guests.'
+
+"'Oh, madame, we can't have that!'
+
+"And how they set to to make protests and compliments in front of
+each other! Old man, you can say what you like--we may be only poor
+devils, but it was astonishing, that little palaver of good manners.
+
+"'Come along! Let's be hopping it, eh?'
+
+"They go out one by one. I stay till the last. Just then another
+passer-by begins to knock on the window--another who was dying for a
+mouthful of coffee. Mariette by the open door leaned forward and
+cried, 'One second!'
+
+"Then she put into my arms a parcel that she had ready. 'I had
+bought a knuckle of ham--it was for supper--for us--for us two--and
+a liter of good wine. But, ma foi! when I saw there were five of
+you, I didn't want to divide it out so much, and I want still less
+now. There's the ham, the bread, and the wine. I give them to you so
+that you can enjoy them by yourself, my boy. As for them, we have
+given them enough,' she says.
+
+"Poor Mariette," sighs Eudore. "Fifteen months since I'd seen her.
+And when shall I see her again? Ever?--It was jolly, that idea of
+hers. She crammed all that stuff into my bag--"
+
+He half opens his brown canvas pouch.
+
+"Look, here they are! The ham here, and the bread, and there's the
+booze. Well, seeing it's there, you don't know what we're going to
+do with it? We're going to share it out between us, eh, old pals?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+The Anger of Volpatte
+
+
+
+
+
+WHEN Volpatte arrived from his sick-leave, after two months'
+absence, we surrounded him. But he was sullen and silent, and tried
+to get away.
+
+"Well, what about it? Volpatte, have you nothing to tell us?"
+
+"Tell us all about the hospital and the sick-leave, old cock, from
+the day when you set off in your bandages, with your snout in
+parenthesis! You must have seen something of the official shops.
+Speak then, nome de Dieu!"
+
+"I don't want to say anything at all about it," said Volpatte.
+
+"What's that? What are you talking about?"
+
+"I'm fed up--that's what I am! The people back there, I'm sick of
+them--they make me spew, and you can tell 'em so!"
+
+"What have they done to you?"
+
+"A lot of sods, they are!" says Volpatte.
+
+There he was, with his head as of yore, his ears "stuck on again"
+and his Mongolian cheekbones--stubbornly set in the middle of the
+puzzled circle that besieged him; amid we felt that the mouth fast
+closed on ominous silence meant high pressure of seething
+exasperation in the depth of him.
+
+Some words overflowed from him at last. He turned round--facing
+towards the rear and the bases--and shook his fist at infinite
+space. "There are too many of them," he said between his teeth,
+"there are too many!" He seemed to be threatening and repelling a
+rising sea of phantoms.
+
+A little later, we questioned him again, knowing well that his anger
+could not thus be retained within, and that the savage silence would
+explode at the first chance.
+
+It was in a deep communication trench, away back, where we had come
+together for a meal after a morning spent in digging. Torrential
+rain was falling. We were muddled and drenched and hustled by the
+flood, and we ate standing in single file, without shelter, under
+the dissolving sky. Only by feats of skill could we protect the
+bread and bully from the spouts that flowed from every point in
+space; and while we ate we put our hands and faces as much as
+possible under our cowls. The rain rattled and bounced and streamed
+on our limp woven armor, and worked with open brutality or sly
+secrecy into ourselves and our food. Our feet were sinking farther
+and farther, taking deep root in the stream that flowed along the
+clayey bottom of the trench. Some faces were laughing, though their
+mustaches dripped. Others grimaced at the spongy bread and flabby
+meat, or at the missiles which attacked their skin from all sides at
+every defect in their heavy and miry armor-plate.
+
+Barque, who was hugging his mess-tin to his heart, bawled at
+Volpatte: "Well then, a lot of sods, you say, that you've seen down
+there where you've been?"
+
+"For instance?" cried Blaire, while a redoubled squall shook and
+scattered his words; "what have you seen in the way of sods?"
+
+"There are--" Volpatte began, "and then--there are too many of
+them, nom de Dieu! There are--"
+
+He tried to say what was the matter with him, but could only repeat,
+"There are too many of them!" oppressed and panting. He swallowed a
+pulpy mouthful of bread as if there went with it the disordered and
+suffocating mass of his memories.
+
+"Is it the shirkers you want to talk about?"
+
+"By God!" He had thrown the rest of his beef over the parapet, and
+this cry, this gasp, escaped violently from his mouth as if from a
+valve.
+
+"Don't worry about the soft-job brigade, old cross-patch," advised
+Barque, banteringly, but not without some bitterness. "What good
+does it do?"
+
+Concealed and huddled up under the fragile and unsteady roof of his
+oiled hood, while the water poured down its shining slopes, and
+holding his empty mess-tin out for the rain to clean it, Volpatte
+snarled, "I'm not daft--not a bit of it--and I know very well
+there've got to be these individuals at the rear. Let them have
+their dead-heads for all I care--but there's too many of them, and
+they're all alike, and all rotters, voila!"
+
+Relieved by this affirmation, which shed a little light on the
+gloomy farrago of fury he was loosing among us, Volpatte began to
+speak in fragments across the relentless sheets of rain--
+
+"At the very first village they sent me to, I saw duds, and duds
+galore, and they began to get on my nerves. All sorts of departments
+and sub-departments and managements and centers and offices and
+committees--you're no sooner there than you meet swarms of fools,
+swam-ms of different services that are only different in name-enough
+to turn your brain. I tell you, the man that invented the names of
+all those committees, he was wrong in his head.
+
+"So could I help but be sick of it? Ah, mon vieux," said our
+comrade, musing, "all those individuals fiddle-faddling and making
+believe down there, all spruced up with their fine caps and
+officers' coats and shameful boots, that gulp dainties and can put a
+dram of best brandy down their gullets whenever they want, and wash
+themselves oftener twice than once, and go to church, and never stop
+smoking, and pack themselves up in feathers at night to read the
+newspaper--and then they say afterwards, 'I've been in the war!'"
+
+One point above all had got hold of Volpatte and emerged from his
+confused and impassioned vision: "All those soldiers, they haven't
+to run away with their table-tools and get a bite any old
+way--they've got to be at their ease--they'd rather go and sit
+themselves down with some tart in the district, at a special
+reserved table, and guzzle vegetables, and the fine lady puts their
+crockery out all square for them on the dining-table, and their pots
+of jam and every other blasted thing to eat; in short, the
+advantages of riches and peace in that doubly-damned hell they call
+the Rear!"
+
+Volpatte's neighbor shook his head under the torrents that fell from
+heaven and said," So much the better for them."
+
+"I'm not crazy--" Volpatte began again.
+
+"P'raps, but you're not fair."
+
+Volpatte felt himself insulted by the word. He started, and raised
+his head furiously, and the rain, that was waiting for the chance,
+took him plump in the face. "Not fair--me? Not fair--to those
+dung-hills?"
+
+"Exactly, monsieur," the neighbor replied; "I tell you that you play
+hell with them and yet you'd jolly well like to be in the rotters'
+place."
+
+"Very likely--but what does that prove, rump-face? To begin with,
+we, we've been in danger, and it ought to be our turn for the other.
+But they're always the same, I tell you; and then there's young men
+there, strong as bulls and poised like wrestlers, and then--there
+are too many of them! D'you hear? It's always too many, I say,
+because it is so."
+
+"Too many? What do you know about it, vilain? These departments and
+committees, do you know what they are?"
+
+"I don't know what they are," Volpatte set off again, "but I
+know--"
+
+"Don't you think they need a crowd to keep all the army's affairs
+going?"
+
+"I don't care a damn, but--"
+
+"But you wish it was you, eh?" chaffed the invisible neighbor, who
+concealed in the depth of the hood on which the reservoirs of space
+were emptying either a supreme indifference or a cruel desire to
+take a rise out of Volpatte.
+
+"I can't help it," said the other, simply.
+
+"There's those that can help it for you," interposed the shrill
+voice of Barque; "I knew one of 'em--"
+
+"I, too, I've seen 'em!" Volpatte yelled with a desperate effort
+through the storm. "Tiens! not far from the front, don't know where
+exactly, where there's an ambulance clearing-station and a
+sous-intendance--I met the reptile there."
+
+The wind, as it passed over us, tossed him the question, "What was
+it?"
+
+At that moment there was a lull, and the weather allowed Volpatte to
+talk after a fashion. He said: "He took me round all the jumble of
+the depot as if it was. a fair, although he was one of the sights of
+the place. He led me along the passages and into the dining-rooms of
+houses and supplementary barracks. He half opened doors with labels
+on them, and said, 'Look here, and here too--look!' I went
+inspecting with him, but he didn't go back, like I did, to the
+trenches, don't fret yourself, and he wasn't coming back from them
+either. don't worry! The reptile, the first time I saw him he was
+walking nice and leisurely in the yard--'I'm in the Expenses
+Department,' he says. We talked a bit, and the next day he got an
+orderly job so as to dodge getting sent away, seeing it was his turn
+to go since the beginning of the war.
+
+"On the step of the door where he'd laid all night on a feather bed,
+he was polishing the pumps of his monkey master--beautiful yellow
+pumps--rubbing 'em with paste, fairly glazing 'em, my boy. I stopped
+to watch him, and the chap told me all about himself. Mon vieux, I
+don't remember much more of the stuffing that came out of his crafty
+skull than I remember of the History of France and the dates we
+whined at school. Never, I tell you, bad be been sent to the front,
+although he was Class 1903, [note 1] and a lusty devil at that, he
+was. Danger and dog-tiredness and all the ugliness of war--not for
+him, but for the others, oui. He knew damned well that if he set
+foot in the firing-line, the line would see that the beast got it,
+so he ran like hell from it, and stopped where he was. He said
+they'd tried all ways to get him, but he'd given the slip to all the
+captains, all the colonels, all the majors, and they were all
+damnably mad with him. He told me about it. How did he work it? He'd
+sit down all of a sudden, put on a stupid look, do the scrim-shanker
+stunt, and flop like a bundle of dirty linen. 'I've got a sort of
+general fatigue,' he'd blubber. They didn't know how to take him,
+and after a bit they just let him drop--everybody was fit to spew on
+him. And he changed his tricks according to the circumstances, d'you
+catch on? Sometimes he had something wrong with his foot--he was
+damned clever with his feet. And then he contrived things, and he
+knew one head from another, and how to take his opportunities. He
+knew what's what, he did. You could see him go and slip in like a
+pretty poilu among the depot chaps, where the soft jobs were, and
+stay there; and then he'd put himself out no end to be useful to the
+pals. He'd get up at three o'clock in the morning to make the juice,
+go and fetch the water while the others were getting their grub. At
+last, he'd wormed himself in everywhere, he came to be one of the
+family, the rotter, the carrion. He did it so he wouldn't have to do
+it. He seemed to me like an individual that would have earned five
+quid honestly with the same work and bother that he puts into
+forging a one-pound note. But there, he'll get his skin out of it
+all right, he will. At the front he'd be lost sight of in the throng
+of it, but he's not so stupid. Be damned to them, he says, that take
+their grub on the ground, and be damned to them still more when
+they're under it. When we've all done with fighting, he'll go back
+home and he'll say to his friends and neighbors, 'Here I am safe and
+sound,' and his pals'll be glad, because be's a good sort, with
+engaging manners, contemptible creature that he is, and--and this is
+the most stupid thing of all--but he takes you in and you swallow
+him whole, the son of a bug.
+
+"And then, those sort of beings, don't you believe there's only one
+of them. There are barrels of 'em in every depot, that hang on and
+writhe when their time comes to go, and they say, 'I'm not going,'
+and they don't go, and they never succeed in driving them as far as
+the front."
+
+"Nothing new in all that," said Barque, "we know it, we know it!"
+
+"Then there are the offices," Volpatte went on, engrossed in his
+story of travel; "whole houses and streets and districts. I saw that
+my little corner in the rear was only a speck, and I had full view
+of them. Non, I'd never have believed there'd be so many men on
+chairs while war was going on--"
+
+A hand protruded from the rank and made trial of space--"No more
+sauce falling"--"Then we're going out, bet your life on it." So
+"March!" was the cry.
+
+The storm held its peace. We filed off in the long narrow swamp
+stagnating in the bottom of the trench where the moment before it
+had shaken under slabs of rain. Volpatte's grumbling began again
+amidst our sorry stroll and the eddies of floundering feet. I
+listened to him as I watched the shoulders of a poverty-stricken
+overcoat swaying in front of me, drenched through and through. This
+time Volpatte was on the track of the police--
+
+"The farther you go from the front the more you see of them."
+
+"Their battlefield is not the same as ours."
+
+Tulacque had an ancient grudge against them. "Look," he said, "how
+the bobbies spread themselves about to get good lodgings and good
+food, and then, after the drinking regulations, they dropped on the
+secret wine-sellers. You saw them lying in wait, with a corner of an
+eye on the shop-doors, to see if there weren't any poilus slipping
+quietly out, two-faced that they are, leering to left and to right
+and licking their mustaches."
+
+"There are good ones among 'em. I knew one in my country, the
+Cote d'Or, where I--"
+
+"Shut up!" was Tulacque's peremptory interruption; "they're all
+alike. There isn't one that can put another right."
+
+"Yes, they're lucky," said Volpatte, "but do you think they're
+contented? Not a bit; they grouse. At least," he corrected himself,
+"there was one I met, and he was a grouser. He was devilish bothered
+by the drill-manual. 'It isn't worth while to learn the drill
+instruction,' he said, 'they're always changing it. F'r instance,
+take the department of military police; well, as soon as you've got
+the gist of it, it's something else. Ah, when will this war be
+over?' he says."
+
+"They do what they're told to do, those chaps," ventured Eudore.
+
+"Surely. It isn't their fault at all. It doesn't alter the fact that
+these professional soldiers, pensioned and decorated in the time
+when we're only civvies, will have made war in a damned funny way."
+
+"That reminds me of a forester that I saw as well," said Volpatte,
+"who played hell about the fatigues they put him to. 'It's
+disgusting,' the fellow said to me, 'what they do with us. We're old
+non-coms., soldiers that have done four years of service at least.
+We're paid on the higher scale, it's true, but what of that? We are
+Officials, and yet they humiliate us. At H.Q. they set us to
+cleaning, and carrying the dung away. The civilians see the
+treatment they inflict on us, and they look down on us. And if you
+look like grousing, they'll actually talk about sending you off to
+the trenches, like foot-soldiers! What's going to become of our
+prestige? When we go back to the parishes as rangers after the
+war--if we do come back from it--the people of the villages and
+forests will say, "Ah, it was you that was sweeping the streets at
+X--!" To get back our prestige, compromised by human injustice and
+ingratitude, I know well,' he says, 'that we shall have to make
+complaints, and make complaints and make 'em with all our might, to
+the rich and to the influential!' he says."
+
+"I knew a gendarme who was all right," said Lamuse. "'The police are
+temperate enough in general,' he says, 'but there are always dirty
+devils everywhere, pas? The civilian is really afraid of the
+gendarme,' says he, 'and that's a fact; and so, I admit it, there
+are some who take advantage of it, and those ones--the tag-rag of
+the gendarmerie--know where to get a glass or two. If I was Chief or
+Brigadier, I'd screw 'em down; not half I wouldn't,' he says; 'for
+public opinion,' he says again. 'lays the blame on the whole force
+when a single one with a grievance makes a complaint.'"
+
+"As for me," says Paradis, "one of the worst days of my life was
+once when I saluted a gendarme, taking him for a lieutenant, with
+his white stripes. Fortunately--I don't say it to console myself,
+but because it's probably true--fortunately, I don't think he saw
+me."
+
+A silence. "Oui, 'vidently," the men murmured; "but what about it?
+No need to worry."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+A little later, when we were seated along a wall, with our backs to
+the stones, and our feet plunged and planted in the ground, Volpatte
+continued unloading his impressions.
+
+"I went into a big room that was a Depot office--bookkeeping
+department, I believe. It swarmed with tables, and people in it like
+in a market. Clouds of talk. All along the walls on each side and in
+the middle, personages sitting in front of their spread-out goods
+like waste-paper merchants. I put in a request to be put back into
+my regiment, and they said to me, 'Take your damned hook, and get
+busy with it.' I lit on a sergeant, a little chap with airs, spick
+as a daisy, with a gold-rimmed spy-glass--eye-glasses with a tape on
+them. He was young, but being a re-enlisted soldier, he had the
+right not to go to the front. I said to him, 'Sergeant!' But he
+didn't hear me, being busy slanging a secretary--it's unfortunate,
+mon garcon,' he was saying; 'I've told you twenty times that
+you must send one notice of it to be carried out by the Squadron
+Commander, Provost of the C.A., and one by way of advice, without
+signature, but making mention of the signature, to the Provost of
+the Force Publique d'Amiens and of the centers of the district, of
+which you have the list--in envelopes, of course, of the general
+commanding the district. It's very simple,' he says.
+
+"I'd drawn back three paces to wait till he'd done with jawing. Five
+minutes after, I went up to the sergeant. He said to me, 'My dear
+sir, I have not the time to bother with you; I have many other
+matters to attend to.' As a matter of fact, he was all in a flummox
+in front of his typewriter, the chump, because he'd forgotten, he
+said, to press on the capital-letter lever, and so, instead of
+underlining the heading of his page, he'd damn well scored a line of
+8's in the middle of the top. So he couldn't hear anything, and he
+played hell with the Americans, seeing the machine came from there.
+
+"After that, he growled against another woolly-leg, because on the
+memorandum of the distribution of maps they hadn't put the names of
+the Ration Department, the Cattle Department, and the Administrative
+Convoy of the 328th D.I.
+
+"Alongside, a fool was obstinately trying to pull more circulars off
+a jellygraph than it would print, doing his damnedest to produce a
+lot of ghosts that you could hardly read. Others were talking:
+'Where are the Parisian fasteners?' asked a toff. And they don't
+call things by their proper names: 'Tell me now, if you please, what
+are the elements quartered at X--?' The elements! What's all that
+sort of babble?" asked Volpatte.
+
+"At the end of the big table where these fellows were that I've
+mentioned and that I'd been to, and the sergeant floundering about
+behind a hillock of papers at the top of it and giving orders, a
+simpleton was doing nothing but tap on his blotting-pad with his
+hands. His job, the mug, was the department of leave-papers, and as
+the big push had begun and all leave was stopped, he hadn't anything
+to do--'Capital!' he says.
+
+"And all that, that's one table in one room in one department in one
+depot. I've seen more, and then more, and more and more again. I
+don't know, but it's enough to drive you off your nut, I tell you."
+
+"Have they got brisques?" [note 2]
+
+"Not many there, but in the department of the second line every one
+had 'em. You had museums of 'em there--whole Zoological Gardens of
+stripes."
+
+"Prettiest thing I've seen in the way of stripes," said Tulacque,
+"was a motorist, dressed in cloth that you'd have said was satin,
+with new stripes, and the leathers of an English officer, though a
+second-class soldier as he was. With his finger on his cheek, he
+leaned with his elbows on that fine carriage adorned with windows
+that he was the valet de chambre of. He'd have made you sick, the
+dainty beast. He was just exactly the poilu that you see pictures of
+in the ladies' papers--the pretty little naughty papers."
+
+Each has now his memories, his tirade on this much-excogitated
+subject of the shirkers, and all begin to overflow and to talk at
+once. A hubbub surrounds the foot of the mean wall where we are
+heaped like bundles, with a gray, muddy, and trampled spectacle
+lying before us, laid waste by rain.
+
+"--orderly in waiting to the Road Department, then at the Bakery,
+then cyclist to the Revictualing Department of the Eleventh
+Battery."
+
+"--every morning he had a note to take to the Service de
+l'Intendance, to the Gunnery School, to the Bridges Department, and
+in the evening to the A.D. and the A.T.--that was all."
+
+"--when I was coming back from leave,' said that orderly, 'the
+women cheered us at all the level-crossing gates that the train
+passed.' 'They took you for soldiers,' I said."
+
+"--'Ah,' I said, 'you're called up, then, are you?' 'Certainly,'
+he says to me, 'considering that I've been a round of meetings in
+America with a Ministerial deputation. P'raps it's not exactly being
+called up, that? Anyway, mon ami,' he says, 'I don't pay any rent,
+so I must be called up.' 'And me--'"
+
+"To finish," cries Volpatte, silencing the hum with his authority of
+a traveler returned from "down there," "to finish, I saw a whole
+legion of 'em all together at a blow-out. For two days I was a sort
+of helper in the kitchen of one of the centers of the C.O.A., 'cos
+they couldn't let me do nothing while waiting for my reply, which
+didn't hurry, seeing they'd sent another inquiry and a super-inquiry
+after it, and the reply had too many halts to make in each office,
+going and coming.
+
+"In short, I was cook in the shop. Once I waited at table, seeing
+that the head cook had just got back from leave for the fourth time
+and was tired. I saw and I heard those people every time I went into
+the dining-room, that was in the Prefecture, and all that hot and
+illuminated row got into my head. They were only auxiliaries in
+there, but there were plenty of the armed service among the number,
+too. They were almost all old men, with a few young ones besides,
+sitting here and there.
+
+"I'd begun to get about enough of it when one of the broomsticks
+said, 'The shutters must be closed; it's more prudent.' My boy. they
+were a lump of a hundred and twenty-five miles from the firing-line,
+but that pock-marked puppy he wanted to make believe there was
+danger of bombardment by aircraft--"
+
+"And there's my cousin," said Tulacque, fumbling, "who wrote to
+me--Look, here's what he says: 'Mon cher Adolphe, here I am
+definitely settled in Paris as attache to Guard-Room 60.
+While you are down there. I must stay in the capital at the mercy of
+a Taube or a Zeppelin!'"
+
+The phrase sheds a tranquil delight abroad, and we assimilate it
+like a tit-bit, laughing.
+
+"After that," Volpatte went on, "those layers of soft-jobbers fed me
+up still more. As a dinner it was all right--cod, seeing it was
+Friday, but prepared like soles a la Marguerite--I know all
+about it. But the talk!--"
+
+"They call the bayonet Rosalie, don't they?"
+
+"Yes, the padded luneys. But during dinner these gentlemen talked
+above all about themselves. Every one, so as to explain why he
+wasn't somewhere else, as good as said (but all the while saying
+something else and gorging like an ogre), 'I'm ill, I'm feeble, look
+at me, ruin that I am. Me, I'm in my dotage.' They were all seeking
+inside themselves to find diseases to wrap themselves up in--'I
+wanted to go to the war, but I've a rupture, two ruptures, three
+ruptures.' Ah, non, that feast!--'The orders that speak of sending
+everybody away,' explained a funny man, 'they're like the comedies,'
+he explained, 'there's always a last act to clear up all the jobbery
+of the others. That third act is this paragraph, "Unless the
+requirements of the Departments stand in the way."' There was one
+that told this tale, 'I had three friends that I counted on to give
+me a lift up. I was going to apply to them; but, one after another,
+a little before I put my request, they were killed by the enemy;
+look at that,' he says, 'I've no luck!' Another was explaining to
+another that, as for him, he would very much have liked to go, but
+the surgeon-major had taken him round the waist to keep him by force
+in the depot with the auxiliary. 'Eh bien,' he says, 'I resigned
+myself. After all, I shall be of greater value in putting my
+intellect to the service of the country than in carrying a
+knapsack.' And him that was alongside said, 'Oui,' with his
+headpiece feathered on top. He'd jolly well consented to go to
+Bordeaux at the time when the Boches were getting near Paris, and
+then Bordeaux became the stylish place; but afterwards he returned
+firmly to the front--to Paris--and said something like this, 'My
+ability is of value to France; it is absolutely necessary that I
+guard it for France.'
+
+"They talked about other people that weren't there--of the
+commandant who was getting an impossible temper, and they explained
+that the more imbecile he got the harsher he got; and the General
+that made unexpected inspections with the idea of kicking all the
+soft-jobbers out, but who'd been laid up for eight days, very
+ill--'he's certainly going to die; his condition no longer gives
+rise to any uneasiness,' they said, smoking the cigarettes that
+Society swells send to the depots for the soldiers at the front.
+'D'you know,' they said, 'little Frazy, who is such a nice boy, the
+cherub, he's at last found an excuse for staying behind. They wanted
+some cattle slaughterers for the abattoir, and he's enlisted himself
+in there for protection, although he's got a University degree and
+in spite of being an attorney's clerk. As for Flandrin's son, he's
+succeeded in getting himself attached to the
+roadmenders.--Roadmender, him? Do you think they'll let him stop
+so?' 'Certain sure,' replies one of the cowardly milksops. 'A
+road-mender's job is for a long time.'
+
+"Talk about idiots," Marthereau growls.
+
+"And they were all jealous, I don't know why, of a chap called
+Bourin. Formerly he moved in the best Parisian circles. He lunched
+and dined in the city. He made eighteen calls a day, and fluttered
+about the drawing-rooms from afternoon tea till daybreak. He was
+indefatigable in leading cotillons, organizing festivities,
+swallowing theatrical shows, without counting the motoring parties,
+and all the lot running with champagne. Then the war came. So he's
+no longer capable, the poor boy, of staying on the look-out a bit
+late at an embrasure, or of cutting wire. He must stay peacefully in
+the warm. And then, him, a Parisian, to go into the provinces and
+bury himself in the trenches! Never in this world! 'I realize, too,'
+replied an individual, 'that at thirty-seven I've arrived at the age
+when I must take care of myself!' And while the fellow was saying
+that, I was thinking of Dumont the gamekeeper, who was forty-two,
+and was done in close to me on Hill 132, so near that after he got
+the handful of bullets in his head, my body shook with the trembling
+of his."
+
+"And what were they like with you, these thieves?"
+
+"To hell with me, it was, but they didn't show it too much, only now
+and again when they couldn't hold themselves in. They looked at me
+out of the corner of their eyes, and took damn good care not to
+touch me in passing, for I was still war-mucky.
+
+"It disgusted me a bit to be in the middle of that heap of
+good-for-nothings, but I said to myself, 'Come, it's only for a bit,
+Firmin.' There was just one time that I very near broke out with the
+itch, and that was when one of 'em said, 'Later, when we return, if
+we do return.'--NO! He had no right to say that. Sayings like that,
+before you let them out of your gob, you've got to earn them; it's
+like a decoration. Let them get cushy jobs, if they like, but not
+play at being men in the open when they've damned well run away. And
+you hear 'em discussing the battles, for they're in closer touch
+than you with the big bugs and with the way the war's managed; and
+afterwards, when you return, if you do return, it's you that'll be
+wrong in the middle of all that crowd of humbugs, with the poor
+little truth that you've got.
+
+"Ah, that evening, I tell you, all those heads in the reek of the
+light, the foolery of those people enjoying life and profiting by
+peace! It was like a ballet at the theater or the make-believe of a
+magic lantern. There were--there were--there are a hundred thousand
+more of them," Volpatte at last concluded in confusion.
+
+But the men who were paying for the safety of the others with their
+strength and their lives enjoyed the wrath that choked him, that
+brought him to bay in his corner, and overwhelmed him with the
+apparitions of shirkers.
+
+"Lucky he doesn't start talking about the factory hands who've
+served their apprenticeship in the war, and all those who've stayed
+at home under the excuse of National Defense, that was put on its
+feet in five secs!" murmured Tirette; "he'd keep us going with them
+till Doomsday."
+
+"You say there are a hundred thousand of them, flea-bite," chaffed
+Barque. "Well, in 1914--do you hear me?--Millerand, the War
+Minister, said to the M.P.'s, 'There are no shirkers.'"
+
+"Millerand!" growled Volpatte. "I tell you, I don't know the man;
+but if he said that, he's a dirty sloven, sure enough!"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"One is always," said Bertrand, "a shirker to some one else."
+
+"That's true; no matter what you call yourself, you'll
+always--always--find worse blackguards and better blackguards than
+yourself."
+
+"All those that never go up to the trenches, or those who never go
+into the first line, and even those who only go there now and then,
+they're shirkers, if you like to call 'em so, and you'd see how many
+there are if they only gave stripes to the real fighters."
+
+"There are two hundred and fifty to each regiment of two
+battalions," said Cocon.
+
+"There are the orderlies, and a bit since there were even the
+servants of the adjutants."--"The cooks and the under-cooks."--"The
+sergeant-majors, and the quartermaster-sergeants, as often as
+not."--"The mess corporals and the mess fatigues."--"Some
+office-props and the guard of the colors."--"The baggage-masters."
+"The drivers, the laborers, and all the section, with all its
+non-coms., and even the sappers."--"The cyclists." "Not all of
+them."--"Nearly all the Red Cross service."--"Not the
+stretcher-bearers, of course; for they've not only got a devilish
+rotten job, but they live with the companies, and when attacks are
+on they charge with their stretchers; but the hospital attendants."
+
+"Nearly all parsons, especially at the rear. For, you know, parsons
+with knapsacks on, I haven't seen a devil of a lot of 'em, have
+you?"
+
+"Nor me either. In the papers, but not here."
+
+"There are some, it seems."--"Ah!"
+
+"Anyway, the common soldier's taken something on in this war."
+
+"There are others that are in the open. We're not the only ones."
+
+"We are!" said Tulacque, sharply; "we're almost the only ones!"
+
+He added, "You may say--I know well enough what you'll tell me--that
+it was the motor lorries and the heavy artillery that brought it off
+at Verdun. It's true, but they've got a soft job all the same by the
+side of us. We're always in danger, against their once, and we've
+got the bullets and the bombs, too, that they haven't. The heavy
+artillery reared rabbits near their dug-outs, and they've been
+making themselves omelettes for eighteen months. We are really in
+danger. Those that only get a bit of it, or only once, aren't in it
+at all. Otherwise, everybody would be. The nursemaid strolling the
+streets of Paris would be, too, since there are the Taubes and the
+Zeppelins, as that pudding-head said that the pal was talking about
+just now."
+
+"In the first expedition to the Dardanelles, there was actually a
+chemist wounded by a shell. You don't believe me, but it's true all
+the same--an officer with green facings, wounded!"
+
+"That's chance, as I wrote to Mangouste, driver of a remount horse
+for the section, that got wounded--but it was done by a motor
+lorry."
+
+"That's it, it's like that. After all, a bomb can tumble down on a
+pavement, in Paris or in Bordeaux."
+
+"Oui, oui; so it's too easy to say, 'Don't let's make distinctions
+in danger!' Wait a bit. Since the beginning, there are some of those
+others who've got killed by an unlucky chance; among us there are
+some that are still alive by a lucky chance. It isn't the same
+thing, that, seeing that when you're dead, it's for a long time."
+
+"Yes," says Tirette, "but you're getting too venomous with your
+stories of shirkers. As long as we can't help it, it's time to turn
+over. I'm thinking of a retired forest-ranger at Cherey, where we
+were last month, who went about the streets of the town spying
+everywhere to rout out some civilian of military age, and he smelled
+out the dodgers like a mastiff. Behold him pulling up in front of a
+sturdy goodwife that had a mustache, and he only sees her mustache,
+so he bullyrags her--'Why aren't you at the front, you?'"
+
+"For my part," says Pepin, "I don't fret myself about the
+shirkers or the semi-shirkers, it's wasting one's time; but where
+they get on my nerves, it's when they swank. I'm of Volpatte's
+opinion. Let 'em shirk, good, that's human nature; but afterwards
+they shouldn't say, 'I've been a soldier.' Take the engages,
+[note 3] for instance--"
+
+"That depends on the engages. Those who have offered for the
+infantry without conditions, I look up to those men as much as to
+those that have got killed; but the engages in the
+departments or special arms, even in the heavy artillery, they begin
+to get my back up. We know 'em! When they're doing the agreeable in
+their social circle, they'll say, 'I've offered for the war.'--'Ah,
+what a fine thing you have done; of your own free will you have
+defied the machine-guns! '--'Well, yes, madame la marquise, I'm
+built like that!' Eh, get out of it, humbug!"
+
+"Oui, it's always the same tale. They wouldn't be able to say in the
+drawing-rooms afterwards, 'Tenez, here I am; look at me for a
+voluntary engage!'"
+
+"I know a gentleman who enlisted in the aerodromes. He had a fine
+uniform--he'd have done better to offer for the
+Opera-Comique. What am I saying--'he'd have done better?'
+He'd have done a damn sight better, oui. At least he'd have made
+other people laugh honestly, instead of making them laugh with the
+spleen in it."
+
+"They're a lot of cheap china, fresh painted, and plastered with
+ornaments and all sorts of falderals, but they don't go under fire."
+
+"If there'd only been people like those, the Boches would be at
+Bayonne."
+
+"When war's on, one must risk his skin, eh, corporal?"
+
+"Yes," said Bertrand, "there are some times when duty and danger are
+exactly the same thing; when the country, when justice and liberty
+are in danger, it isn't in taking shelter that you defend them. On
+the contrary, war means danger of death and sacrifice of life for
+everybody, for everybody; no one is sacred. One must go for it,
+upright, right to the end, and not pretend to do it in a fanciful
+uniform. These services at the bases, and they're necessary, must be
+automatically guaranteed by the really weak and the really old."
+
+"Besides, there are too many rich and influential people who have
+shouted, 'Let us save France!--and begin by saving ourselves!' On
+the declaration of war, there was a big rush to get out of it,
+that's what there was, and the strongest succeeded. I noticed
+myself, in my little corner, it was especially those that jawed most
+about patriotism previously. Anyway, as the others were saying just
+now, if they get into a funk-hole, the worst filthiness they can do
+is to make people believe they've run risks. 'Cos those that have
+really run risks, they deserve the same respect as the dead."
+
+"Well, what then? It's always like that, old man; you can't change
+human nature."
+
+"It can't be helped. Grouse, complain? Tiens! talking about
+complaining, did you know Margoulin?"
+
+"Margoulin? The good sort that was with us, that they left to die at
+le Crassier because they thought he was dead?"
+
+"Well, he wanted to make a complaint. Every day he talked about
+protesting against all those things to the captain and the
+commandant. He'd say after breakfast, 'I'll go and say it as sure as
+that pint of wine's there.' And a minute later, 'If I don't speak,
+there's never a pint of wine there at all.' And if you were passing
+later you'd hear him again, 'Tiens! is that a pint of wine there?
+Well, you'll see if I don't speak! Result--he said nothing at all.
+You'll say, 'But he got killed.' True, but previously he had God's
+own time to do it two thousand times if he'd dared."
+
+"All that, it makes me ill," growled Blaire, sullen, but with a
+flash of fury.
+
+"We others, we've seen nothing--seeing that we don't see
+anything--but if we did see--!"
+
+"Old chap," Volpatte cried, "those depots--take notice of what I
+say--you'd have to turn the Seine, the Garonne, the Rhone and the
+Loire into them to clean them. In the interval, they're living, and
+they live well, and they go to doze peacefully every night, every
+night!"
+
+The soldier held his peace. In the distance he saw the night as they
+would pass it--cramped up, trembling with vigilance in the deep
+darkness, at the bottom of the listening-hole whose ragged jaws
+showed in black outline all around whenever a gun hurled its dawn
+into the sky.
+
+Bitterly said Cocon: "All that, it doesn't give you any desire to
+die."
+
+"Yes, it does," some one replies tranquilly. "Yes, it does. Don't
+exaggerate, old kipper-skin."
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] Thirty or thirty-one years old in 1914.--Tr.
+
+[note 2:] A-shape badges worn on the left arm to indicate the
+duration of service at the front.--Tr.
+
+[note 3:] Soldiers voluntarily enlisted in ordinary times for three.
+four, or five years. Those enlisted for four or five year' have the
+right to choose their arm of the service, subject to conditions.--
+
+
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+Argoval
+
+
+
+
+
+THE twilight of evening was coming near from the direction of the
+country, and a gentle breeze, soft as a whisper, came with it.
+
+In the houses alongside this rural way--a main road, garbed for a
+few paces like a main street--the rooms whose pallid windows no
+longer fed them with the limpidity of space found their own light
+from lamps and candles, so that the evening left them and went
+outside, and one saw light and darkness gradually changing places.
+
+On the edge of the village, towards the fields, some unladen
+soldiers were wandering, facing the breeze. We were ending the day
+in peace, and enjoying that idle ease whose happiness one only
+realizes when one is really weary. It was fine weather, we were at
+the beginning of rest, and dreaming about it. Evening seemed to make
+our faces bigger before it darkened them, and they shone with the
+serenity of nature.
+
+Sergeant Suilhard came to me, took my arm, and led me away. "Come,"
+he said, "and I'll show you something."
+
+The approaches to the village abounded in rows of tall and tranquil
+trees, and we followed them along. Under the pressure of the breeze
+their vast verdure yielded from time to time in slow majestic
+movements.
+
+Suilhard went in front of me. He led me into a deep lane, which
+twisted about between high banks; and on each side grew a border of
+bushes, whose tops met each other. For some moments we walked in a
+bower of tender green. A last gleam of light, falling aslant across
+the lane, made points of bright yellow among the foliage, and round
+as gold coins. "This is pretty," I said.
+
+He said nothing, but looked aside and hard. Then he stopped. "It
+must be there."
+
+He made me climb up a bit of a track to a field, a great quadrangle
+within tall trees, and full of the scent of hay.
+
+"Tiens!" I said, looking at the ground, "it's all trampled here;
+there's been something to do."
+
+"Come," said Suilhard to me. He led me into the field, not far from
+its gate. There was a group of soldiers there, talking in low
+voices. My companion stretched out his hand. "It's there," he said.
+
+A very short post, hardly a yard high, was implanted a few paces
+from the hedge, composed just there of young trees. "It was there,"
+he said, "that they shot a soldier of the 204th this morning. They
+planted that post in the night. They brought the chap here at dawn,
+and these are the fellows of his squad who killed him. He tried to
+dodge the trenches. During relief he stayed behind, and then went
+quietly off to quarters. He did nothing else; they meant, no doubt,
+to make an example of him."
+
+We came near to the conversation of the others. "No. no, not at
+all," said one. "He wasn't a ruffian, he wasn't one of those toughs
+that we all know. We all enlisted together. He was a decent sort,
+like ourselves, no more, no less--a bit funky, that's all. He was in
+the front line from the beginning, he was, and I've never seen him
+boozed, I haven't."
+
+"Yes, but all must be told. Unfortunately for him, there was a
+'previous conviction.' There were two, you know, that did the
+trick--the other got two years. But Cajard, [note 1] because of the
+sentence he got in civil life couldn't benefit by extenuating
+circumstances. He'd done some giddy-goat trick in civil life, when
+he was drunk."
+
+"You can see a little blood on the ground if you look," said a
+stooping soldier.
+
+"There was the whole ceremonial," another went on, "from A to Z--the
+colonel on horseback, the degradation; then they tied him to the
+little post, the cattle-stoup. He had to be forced to kneel or sit
+on the ground with a similar post."
+
+"It's past understanding," said a third, after a silence, "if it
+wasn't for the example the sergeant spoke about."
+
+On the post the soldiers had scrawled inscriptions and protests. A
+croix de guerre, cut clumsily of wood, was nailed to it, and read:
+"A. Cajard, mobilized in August, 1914, in gratitude to France."
+
+Returning to quarters I met Volpatte, still surrounded and talking.
+He was relating some new anecdotes of his journey among the happy
+ones.
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] I have altered the name of this soldier as well as that of
+the village.--H. B.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+The Dog
+
+
+
+
+
+THE weather was appalling. Water and wind attacked the passers-by;
+riddled, flooded, and upheaved the roads.
+
+I was returning from fatigue to our quarters at the far end of the
+village. The landscape that morning showed dirty yellow through the
+solid rain, and the sky was dark as a slated roof. The downpour
+flogged the horse-trough as with birchen rods. Along the walls.
+human shapes went in shrinking files, stooping, abashed, splashing.
+
+In spite of the rain and the cold and bitter wind, a crowd had
+gathered in front of the door of the barn where we were lodging. All
+close together and back to back, the men seemed from a distance like
+a great moving sponge. Those who could see, over shoulders and
+between heads, opened their eyes wide and said, "He has a nerve, the
+boy!" Then the inquisitive ones broke away, with red noses and
+streaming faces, into the down-pour that lashed and the blast that
+bit, and letting the hands fall that they had upraised in surprise,
+they plunged them in their pockets.
+
+In the center, and running with rain, abode the cause of the
+gathering--Fouillade, bare to the waist and washing himself in
+abundant water. Thin as an insect, working his long slender arms in
+riotous frenzy, he soaped and splashed his head, neck, and chest,
+down to the upstanding gridirons of his sides. Over his
+funnel-shaped cheeks the brisk activity had spread a flaky beard
+like snow, and piled on the top of his head a greasy fleece that the
+rain was puncturing with little holes.
+
+By way of a tub, the patient was using three mess-tins which he had
+filled with water--no one knew how--in a village where there was
+none; and as there was no clean spot anywhere to put anything down
+in that universal streaming of earth and sky, he thrust his towel
+into the waistband of his trousers, while the soap went back into
+his pocket every time he used it.
+
+They who still remained wondered at this heroic gesticulation in the
+face of adversity, and said again, as they wagged their heads, "It's
+a disease of cleanliness he's got."
+
+"You know he's going to be carpeted, they say, for that affair of
+the shell-hole with Volpatte." And they mixed the two exploits
+together in a muddled way, that of the shell-hole, and the present,
+and looked on him as the hero of the moment, while he puffed,
+sniffled, grunted, spat, and tried to dry himself under the
+celestial shower-bath with rapid rubbing and as a measure of
+deception; then at last he resumed his clothes.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+After his wash, Fouillade feels cold. He turns about and stands in
+the doorway of the barn that shelters us. The arctic blast discolors
+and disparages his long face, so hollow and sunburned; it draws
+tears from his eyes, and scatters them on the cheeks once scorched
+by the mistral; his nose, too, weeps increasingly.
+
+Yielding to the ceaseless bite of the wind that grips his ears in
+spite of the muffler knotted round his head, and his calves in spite
+of the yellow puttees with which his cockerel legs are enwound, he
+reenters the barn, but comes out of it again at once, rolling
+ferocious eyes, and muttering oaths with the accent one hears in
+that corner of the land, over six hundred miles from here, whence he
+was driven by war.
+
+So he stands outside, erect, more truly excited than ever before in
+these northern scenes. And the wind comes and steals into him, and
+comes again roughly, shaking and maltreating his scarecrow's slight
+and flesh-less figure.
+
+Ye gods! It is almost uninhabitable, the barn they have assigned to
+us to live in during this period of rest. It is a collapsing refuge,
+gloomy and leaky, confined as a well. One half of it is under
+water--we see rats swimming in it--and the men are crowded in the
+other half. The walls, composed of laths stuck together with dried
+mud, are cracked, sunken, holed in all their circuit, and
+extensively broken through above. The night we got here--until the
+morning--we plugged as well as we could the openings within reach,
+by inserting leafy branches and hurdles. But the higher holes, and
+those in the roof, still gaped and always. When dawn hovers there,
+weakling and early, the wind for contrast rushes in and blows round
+every side with all its strength, and the squad endures the hustling
+of an everlasting draught.
+
+When we are there, we remain upright in the ruined obscurity,
+groping, shivering, complaining.
+
+Fouillade, who has come in once more, goaded by the cold, regrets
+his ablutions. He has pains in his loins and back. He wants
+something to do, but what?
+
+Sit down? Impossible; it is too dirty inside there. The ground and
+the paving-stones are plastered with mud; the straw scattered for
+our sleeping is soaked through, by the water that comes through the
+holes and by the boots that wipe themselves with it. Besides, if you
+sit down, you freeze; and if you lie on the straw, you are troubled
+by the smell of manure, and sickened by the vapors of ammonia.
+Fouillade contents himself by looking at his place, and yawning wide
+enough to dislocate his long jaw, further lengthened by a goatee
+beard where you would see white hairs if the daylight were really
+daylight.
+
+"The other pals and boys," said Marthereau, "they're no better off
+than we are. After breakfast I went to see a jail-bird of the 11th
+on the farm near the hospital. You've to clamber over a wall by a
+ladder that's too short--talk about a scissor-cut!" says Marthereau,
+who is short in the leg; "and when once you're in the hen-run and
+rabbit-hutch you're shoved and poked by everybody and a nuisance to
+'em all. You don't know where to put your pasties down. I vamoosed
+from there, and sharp."
+
+"For my part," says Cocon, "I wanted to go to the blacksmith's when
+we'd got quit of grubbing, to imbibe something hot, and pay for it.
+Yesterday he was selling coffee, but some bobbies called there this
+morning, so the good man's got the shakes, and he's locked his
+door."
+
+Lamuse has tried to clean his rifle. But one cannot clean his rifle
+here, even if he squats on the ground near the door, nor even if he
+takes away the sodden tent-cloth, hard and icy, which hangs across
+the doorway like a stalactite; it is too dark. "And then, old chap,
+if you let a screw fall, you may as well hang yourself as try to
+find it, 'specially when your fists are frozen silly."
+
+"As for me, I ought to be sewing some things, but--what cheer!"
+
+One alternative remains--to stretch oneself on the straw, covering
+the head with handkerchief or towel to isolate it from the searching
+stench of fermenting straw, and sleep. Fouillade, master of his time
+to-day, being on neither guard nor fatigues, decides. He lights a
+taper to seek among his belongings, and unwinds the coils of his
+comforter, and we see his emaciated shape, sculptured in black
+relief, folding and refolding it.
+
+"Potato fatigue, inside there, my little lambs!" a sonorous voice
+bellows at the door. The hooded shape from which it comes is
+Sergeant Henriot. He is a malignant sort of simpleton, and though
+all the while joking in clumsy sympathy he supervises the evacuation
+of quarters with a sharp eye for the evasive malingerer.
+
+Outside, on the streaming road in the perpetual rain. the second
+section is scattered, also summoned and driven to work by the
+adjutant. The two sections mingle together. We climb the street and
+the hillock of clayey soil where the traveling kitchen is smoking.
+
+"Now then, my lads, get on with it; it isn't a long job when
+everybody sets to--Come--what have you got to grumble about, you?
+That does no good."
+
+Twenty minutes later we return at a trot. As we grope about in the
+barn, we cannot touch anything but what is sodden and cold, and the
+sour smell of wet animals is added to the vapor of the liquid manure
+that our beds contain.
+
+We gather again, standing, around the props that hold the barn up,
+and around the rills that fall vertically from the holes in the
+roof--faint columns which rest on vague bases of splashing water.
+"Here we are again!" we cry.
+
+Two lumps in turn block the doorway, soaked with the rain that
+drains from them--Lamuse and Barque. who have been in quest of a
+brasier, and now return from the expedition empty-handed, sullen and
+vicious. "Not a shadow of a fire-bucket, and what's more, no wood or
+coal either, not for a fortune." It is impossible to have any fire.
+"If I can't get any, no one can," says Barque, with a pride which a
+hundred exploits justify.
+
+We stay motionless, or move slowly in the little space we have,
+aghast at so much misery. "Whose is the paper?"
+
+"It's mine," says Becuwe.
+
+"What does it say? Ah, zut, one can't read in this darkness!"
+
+"It says they've done everything necessary now for the soldiers, to
+keep them warm in the trenches. They've got all they want, and
+blankets and shirts and brasiers and fire-buckets and bucketsful of
+coal; and that it's like that in the first-line trenches."
+
+"Ah, damnation!" growl some of the poor prisoners of the barn, and
+they shake their fists at the emptiness without and at the newspaper
+itself.
+
+But Fouillade has lost interest in what they say. He has bent his
+long Don Quixote carcase down in the shadow, and outstretched the
+lean neck that looks as if it were braided with violin strings.
+There is something on the ground that attracts him.
+
+It is Labri, the other squad's dog, an uncertain sort of mongrel
+sheep-dog, with a lopped tail, curled up on a tiny litter of
+straw-dust. Fouillade looks at Labri, and Labri at him.
+Becuwe comes up and says, with the intonation of the Lille
+district, "He won't eat his food; the dog isn't well. Hey, Labri,
+what's the matter with you? There's your bread and meat; eat it up;
+it's good when it's in your bucket. He's poorly. One of these
+mornings we shall find him dead."
+
+Labri is not happy. The soldier to whom he is entrusted is hard on
+him, and usually ill-treats him--when he takes any notice of him at
+all. The animal is tied up all day. He is cold and ill and left to
+himself. He only exists. From time to time, when there is movement
+going on around him, he has hopes of going out, rises and stretches
+himself, and bestirs his tail to incipient demonstration. But he is
+disillusioned, and lies down again, gazing past his nearly full
+mess-tin.
+
+He is weary, and disgusted with life. Even if he has escaped the
+bullet or bomb to which he is as much exposed as we, he will end by
+dying here. Fouillade puts his thin hand on the dog's head, and it
+gazes at him again. Their two glances are alike--the only difference
+is that one comes from above and the other from below.
+
+Fouillade sits down also--the worse for him!--in a corner, his hands
+covered by the folds of his greatcoat, his long legs doubled up like
+a folding bed. He is dreaming, his eyes closed under their bluish
+lids; there is something that he sees again. It is one of those
+moments when the country from which he is divided assumes in the
+distance the charms of reality--the perfumes and colors of
+l'Herault. the streets of Cette. He sees so plainly and so
+near that he hears the noise of the shallops in the Canal du Midi,
+and the unloading at the docks; and their call to him is distinctly
+clear.
+
+Above the road where the scent of thyme and immortelles is so strong
+that it is almost a taste in the mouth, in the heart of the sunshine
+whose winging shafts stir the air into a warmed and scented breeze,
+on Mont St. Clair, blossoms and flourishes the home of his folks. Up
+there, one can see with the same glance where the Lake of Thau,
+which is green like glass, joins hands with the Mediterranean Sea,
+which is azure; and sometimes one can make out as well, in the
+depths of the indigo sky, the carven phantoms of the Pyrenees.
+
+There was he born, there he grew up, happy and free. There he
+played, on the golden or ruddy ground; played--even--at soldiers.
+The eager joy of wielding a wooden saber flushed the cheeks now
+sunken and seamed. He opens his eyes, looks about him, shakes his
+head, and falls upon regret for the days when glory and war to him
+were pure, lofty, and sunny things.
+
+The man puts his hand over his eyes, to retain the vision within.
+Nowadays, it is different.
+
+It was up there in the same place, later, that he came to know
+Clemence. She was just passing, the first time, sumptuous
+with sunshine, and so fair that the loose sheaf of straw she carried
+in her arms seemed to him nut-brown by contrast. The second time,
+she had a friend with her, and they both stopped to watch him. He
+heard them whispering, and turned towards them. Seeing themselves
+discovered, the two young women made off, with a sibilance of
+skirts, and giggles like the cry of a partridge.
+
+And it was there, too, that he and she together set up their home.
+Over its front travels a vine, which he coddled under a straw hat,
+whatever the season. By the garden gate stands the rose-tree that he
+knows so well--it never used its thorns except to try to hold him
+back a little as he went by.
+
+Will he return again to it all? Ah, he has looked too deeply into
+the profundity of the past not to see the future in appalling
+accuracy. He thinks of the regiment, decimated at each shift; of the
+big knocks and hard he has had and will have, of sickness, and of
+wear--
+
+He gets up and snorts, as though to shake off what was and what will
+be. He is back in the middle of the gloom, and is frozen and swept
+by the wind, among the scattered and dejected men who blindly await
+the evening. He is back in the present, and he is shivering still.
+
+Two paces of his long legs make him butt into a group that is
+talking--by way of diversion or consolation--of good cheer.
+
+"At my place," says one, "they make enormous loaves, round ones, big
+as cart-wheels they are!" And the man amuses himself by opening his
+eyes wide, so that he can see the loaves of the homeland.
+
+"Where I come from," interposes the poor Southerner, "holiday feasts
+last so long that the bread that's new at the beginning is stale at
+the end!"
+
+"There's a jolly wine--it doesn't look much, that little wine where
+I come from; but if it hasn't fifteen degrees of alcohol it hasn't
+anything!"
+
+Fouillade speaks then of a red wine which is almost violet, which
+stands dilution as well as if it had been brought into the world to
+that end.
+
+"We've got the jurancon wine," said a Bearnais, "the
+real thing, not what they sell you for jurancon, which comes
+from Paris; indeed, I know one of the makers."
+
+"If it comes to that," said Fouillade, "in our country we've got
+muscatels of every sort, all the colors of the rainbow, like
+patterns of silk stuff. You come home with me some time, and every
+day you shall taste a nonsuch, my boy."
+
+"Sounds like a wedding feast," said the grateful soldier.
+
+So it comes about that Fouillade is agitated by the vinous memories
+into which he has plunged, which recall to him as well the dear
+perfume of garlic on that far-off table. The vapors of the blue wine
+in big bottles, and the liqueur wines so delicately varied, mount to
+his head amid the sluggish and mournful storm that fills the barn.
+
+Suddenly he calls to mind that there is settled in the village where
+they are quartered a tavern-keeper who is a native of
+Beziers, called Magnac. Magnac had said to him, "Come and see
+me, mon camarade, one of these mornings, and we'll drink some wine
+from down there, we will! I've several bottles of it, and you shall
+tell me what you think of it."
+
+This sudden prospect dazzles Fouillade. Through all his length runs
+a thrill of delight, as though he had found the way of salvation.
+Drink the wine of the South--of his own particular South,
+even--drink much of it--it would be so good to see life rosy again,
+if only for a day! Ah yes, he wants wine; and he gets drunk in a
+dream.
+
+But as he goes out he collides at the entry with Corporal Broyer,
+who is running down the street like a peddler, and shouting at every
+opening, "Morning parade!"
+
+The company assembles and forms in squares on the sticky mound where
+the traveling kitchen is sending soot into the rain. "I'll go and
+have a drink after parade," says Fouillade to himself.
+
+And he listens listlessly, full of his plan, to the reading of the
+report. But carelessly as he listens, he hears the officer read, "It
+is absolutely forbidden to leave quarters before 5 p.m. and after 8
+p.m.," and he hears the captain, without noticing the murmur that
+runs round the poilus, add this comment on the order: "This is
+Divisional Headquarters. However many there are of you, don't show
+yourselves. Keep under cover. If the General sees you in the street,
+he will have you put to fatigues at once. He must not see a single
+soldier. Stay where you are all day in your quarters. Do what you
+like as long as no one sees you--no one!"
+
+We go back into the barn.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Two o'clock. It is three hours yet, and then it will be totally
+dark, before one may risk going outside without being punished.
+
+Shall we sleep while waiting? Fouillade is sleepy no longer; the
+hope of wine has shaken him up. And then, if one sleeps in the day,
+he will not sleep at night. No! To lie with your eyes open is worse
+than a nightmare. The weather gets worse; wind and rain increase,
+without and within.
+
+Then what? If one may not stand still, nor sit down, nor lie down,
+nor go for a stroll, nor work--what?
+
+Deepening misery settles on the party of benumbed and tired
+soldiers. They suffer to the bone, nor know what to do with their
+bodies. "Nom de Dieu, we're badly off!" is the cry of the
+derelicts--a lamentation, an appeal for help.
+
+Then by instinct they give themselves up to the only occupation
+possible to them in there--to walk up and down on the spot, and thus
+ward off anchylosis.
+
+So they begin to walk quickly to and fro in the scanty place that
+three strides might compass; they turn about and cross and brush
+each other, bent forward, hands pocketed--tramp, tramp. These human
+beings whom the blast cuts even among their straw are like a crowd
+of the wretched wrecks of cities who await, under the lowering sky
+of winter, the opening of some charitable institution. But no door
+will open for them--unless it Le four days hence, one evening at the
+end of the rest, to return to the trenches.
+
+Alone in a corner, Cocon cowers. He is tormented by lice; but
+weakened by the cold and wet he has not the pluck to change his
+linen; and he sits there sullen, unmoving--and devoured.
+
+As five o'clock draws near, in spite of all, Fouillade begins again
+to intoxicate himself with his dream of wine, and he waits, with its
+gleam in his soul. What time is it?--A quarter to five.--Five
+minutes to five.--Now!
+
+He is outside in black night. With great splashing skips he makes
+his way towards the tavern of Magnac, the generous and communicative
+Biterrois. Only with great trouble does he find the door in the dark
+and the inky rain. By God, there is no light! Great God again, it is
+closed! The gleam of a match that his great lean hand covers like a
+lamp-shade shows him the fateful notice--"Out of Bounds." Magnac,
+guilty of some transgression, has been banished into gloom and
+idleness!
+
+Fouillade turns his back on the tavern that has become the prison of
+its lonely keeper. He will not give up his dream. He will go
+somewhere else and have vin ordinaire, and pay for it, that's all.
+He puts his hand in his pocket to sound his purse; it is there.
+There ought to be thirty-seven sous in it, which will not run to the
+wine of Prou, but--
+
+But suddenly he starts, stops dead, and smites himself on the
+forehead. His long-drawn face is contracted in a frightful grimace,
+masked by the night. No, he no longer has thirty-seven sous, fool
+that he is! He has forgotten the tin of sardines that he bought the
+night before--so disgusting did he find the dark macaroni of the
+soldiers' mess--and the drinks he stood to the cobbler who put him
+some nails in his boots.
+
+Misery! There could not be more than thirteen sous left!
+
+To get as elevated as one ought, and to avenge himself on the life
+of the moment, he would certainly need--damn'ation--a liter and a
+half, In this place, a liter of red ordinary costs twenty-one sous.
+It won't go.
+
+His eyes wander around him in the darkness, looking for some one.
+Perhaps there is a pal somewhere who will lend him money, or stand
+him a liter.
+
+But who--who? Not Becuwe, he has only a marraine [note 1:]
+who sends him tobacco and note-paper every fortnight. Not Barque,
+who would not toe the line; nor Blaire, the miser--he wouldn't
+understand. Not Biquet, who seems to have something against him; nor
+Pepin who himself begs, and never pays, even when he is host.
+Ah, if Volpatte were there! There is Mesnil Andre, but he is
+actually in debt to Fouillade on account of several drinks round.
+Corporal Bertrand? Following on a remark of Fouillade's, Bertrand
+told him to go to the devil, and now they look at each other
+sideways. Farfadet? Fouillade hardly speaks a word to him in the
+ordinary way. No, he feels that he cannot ask this of Farfadet. And
+then--a thousand thunders!--what is the use of seeking saviors in
+one s imagination? Where are they, all these people, at this hour?
+
+Slowly he goes back towards the barn. Then mechanically he turns and
+goes forward again, with hesitating steps. He will try, all the
+same. Perhaps he can find convivial comrades. He approaches the
+central part of the village just when night has buried the earth.
+
+The lighted doors and windows of the taverns shine again in the mud
+of the main street. There are taverns every twenty paces. One dimly
+sees the heavy specters of soldiers, mostly in groups, descending
+the street. When a motor-car comes along, they draw aside to let it
+pass, dazzled by the head-lights, and bespattered by the liquid mud
+that the wheels hurl over the whole width of the road.
+
+The taverns are full. Through the steamy windows one can see they
+are packed with compact clouds of helmeted men. Fouillade goes into
+one or two, on chance. Once over the threshold, the dram-shop's
+tepid breath, the light, the smell and the hubbub, affect him with
+longing. This gathering at tables is at least a fragment of the past
+in the present.
+
+He looks from table to table, and disturbs the groups as he goes up
+to scrutinize all the merrymakers in the room. Alas, he knows no
+one! Elsewhere, it is the same; he has no luck. In vain he has
+extended his neck and sent his desperate glances in search of a
+familiar head among the uniformed men who in clumps or couples drink
+and talk or in solitude write. He has the air of a cadger, and no
+one pays him heed.
+
+Finding no soul to come to his relief, he decides to invest at least
+what he has in his pocket. He slips up to the counter. "A pint of
+wine--and good."
+
+"White?"
+
+"Eh, oui."
+
+"You, mon garcon, you're from the South," says the landlady,
+handing him a little full bottle and a glass, and gathering his
+twelve sous.
+
+He places himself at the corner of a table already overcrowded by
+four drinkers who are united in a game of cards. He fills the glass
+to the brim and empties it, then fills it again.
+
+"Hey, good health to you! Don't drink the tumbler!" yelps in his
+face a man who arrives in the dirty blue jumper of fatigues, and
+displays a heavy cross-bar of eyebrows across his pale face, a
+conical head, and half a pound's weight of ears. It is Harlingue,
+the armorer.
+
+It is not very glorious to be seated alone before a pint in the
+presence of a comrade who gives signs of thirst. But Fouillade
+pretends not to understand the requirements of the gentleman who
+dallies in front of him with an engaging smile, and he hurriedly
+empties his glass. The other turns his back, not without grumbling
+that "they're not very generous, but on the contrary greedy, these
+Southerners."
+
+Fouillade has put his chin on his fists, and looks unseeing at a
+corner of the room where the crowded poilus elbow, squeeze, and
+jostle each other to get by.
+
+It was pretty good, that swig of white wine, but of what use are
+those few drops in the Sahara of Fouillade? The blues did not far
+recede, and now they return.
+
+The Southerner rises and goes out, with his two glasses of wine in
+his stomach and one sou in his pocket. He plucks up courage to visit
+one more tavern, to plumb it with his eyes, and by way of excuse to
+mutter, as he leaves the place, "Curse him! He's never there, the
+animal!"
+
+Then he returns to the barn, which still--as always--whistles with
+wind and water. Fouillade lights his candle, and by the glimmer of
+the flame that struggles desperately to take wing and fly away, he
+sees Labri. He stoops low, with his light over the miserable
+dog--perhaps it will die first. Labri is sleeping, hut feebly, for
+he opens an eye at once, and his tail moves.
+
+The Southerner strokes him, and says to him in a low voice, "It
+can't be helped, it--" He will not say more to sadden him, but the
+dog signifies appreciation by jerking his head before closing his
+eyes again. Fouillade rises stiffly, by reason of his rusty joints,
+and makes for his couch. For only one thing more he is now
+hoping--to sleep, that the dismal day may die, that wasted day, like
+so many others that there will be to endure stoically and to
+overcome, before the last day arrives of the war or of his life.
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] French soldiers have extensively developed a system of
+corresponding with French women whom they do not know from Eve and
+whose acquaintance they usually make through newspaper
+advertisements. As typical of the latter I copy the following:
+"Officier artilleur, 30 ans, desire correspondance
+discrete avec jeune marraine, femme du monde. Ecrire," etc.
+The "lonely soldier" movement in this country is similar.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+The Doorway
+
+
+
+
+
+"IT's foggy. Would you like to go?"
+
+It is Poterloo who asks, as he turns towards me and shows eyes so
+blue that they make his fine, fair head seem transparent.
+
+Poterloo comes from Souchez, and now that the Chasseurs have at last
+retaken it, he wants to see again the village where he lived happily
+in the days when he was only a man.
+
+It is a pilgrimage of peril; not that we should have far to
+go--Souchez is just there. For six months we have lived and worked
+in the trenches almost within hail of the village. We have only to
+climb straight from here on to the Bethune road along which
+the trench creeps, the road honeycombed underneath by our shelters,
+and descend it for four or five hundred yards as it dips down
+towards Souchez. But all that ground is under regular and terrible
+attention. Since their recoil, the Germans have constantly sent huge
+shells into it. Their thunder shakes us in our caverns from time to
+time, and we see, high above the scarps, now here now there, the
+great black geysers of earth and rubbish, and the piled columns of
+smoke, as high as churches. Why do they bombard Souchez? One cannot
+say why, for there is no longer anybody or anything in the village
+so often taken and retaken, that we have so fiercely wrested from
+each other.
+
+But this morning a dense fog enfolds us, and by favor of the great
+curtain that the sky throws over the earth one might risk it. We are
+sure at least of not being seen. The fog hermetically closes the
+perfected retina of the Sausage that must be somewhere up there,
+enshrouded in the white wadding that raises its vast wall of
+partition between our lines and those observation posts of Lens and
+Angres, whence the enemy spies upon us.
+
+"Right you are!" I say to Poterloo.
+
+Adjutant Barthe, informed of our project, wags his head up and down,
+and lowers his eyelids in token that he does not see.
+
+We hoist ourselves out of the trench, and behold us both, upright,
+on the Bethune road!
+
+It is the first time I have walked there during the day. I have
+never seen it, except from afar, the terrible road that we have so
+often traveled or crossed in leaps, bowed down in the darkness, and
+under the whistling of missiles.
+
+"Well, are you coming, old man?"
+
+After some paces, Poterloo has stopped in the middle of the road,
+where the fog like cotton-wool unravels itself into pendent
+fragments, and there he dilates his sky-blue eyes and half opens his
+scarlet mouth.
+
+"Ah, la, la! Ah, la, la!" he murmurs. When I turn to him he points
+to the road, shakes his head and says, "This is it, Bon Dieu, to
+think this is it! This bit where we are, I know it so well that if I
+shut my eyes I can see it as it was, exactly. Old chap, it's awful
+to see it again like that. It was a beautiful road, planted all the
+way along with big trees.
+
+"And now, what is it? Look at it--a sort of long thing without a
+soul--sad, sad. Look at these two trenches on each side, alive; this
+ripped-up paving, bored with funnels; these trees uprooted, split,
+scorched, broken like faggots, thrown all ways, pierced by
+bullets--look, this pock-marked pestilence, here! Ah, my boy, my
+boy, you can't imagine how it is disfigured, this road!" And he goes
+forward, seeing some new amazement at every step.
+
+It is a fantastic road enough, in truth. On both sides of it are
+crouching armies, and their missiles have mingled on it for a year
+and a half. It is a great disheveled highway, traveled only by
+bullets and by ranks and files of shells, that have furrowed and
+upheaved it, covered it with the earth of the fields, scooped it and
+laid bare its bones. It might be under a curse; it is a way of no
+color, burned and old, sinister and awful to see.
+
+"If you'd only known it--how clean and smooth it was!" says
+Poterloo. "All sorts of trees were there, and leaves, and
+colors--like butterflies; and there was always some one passing on
+it to give good-day to some good woman rocking between two baskets,
+or people shouting [note 1] to each other in a chaise, with the good
+wind ballooning their smocks. Ah, how happy life was once on a
+time!"
+
+He dives down to the banks of the misty stream that follows the
+roadway towards the land of parapets. Stooping, he stops by some
+faint swellings of the ground on which crosses are fixed--tombs,
+recessed at intervals into the wall of fog, like the Stations of the
+Cross in a church.
+
+I call him--we shall never get there at such a funeral pace. Allons!
+
+We come to a wide depression in the land, I in front and Poterloo
+lagging behind, his head confused and heavy with thought as he tries
+in vain to exchange with inanimate things his glances of
+recognition. Just there the road is lower, a fold secretes it from
+the side towards the north. On this sheltered ground there is a
+little traffic.
+
+Along the hazy, filthy, and unwholesome space, where withered grass
+is embedded in black mud, there are rows of dead. They are carried
+there when the trenches or the plain are cleared during the night.
+They are waiting--some of them have waited long--to be taken back to
+the cemeteries after dark.
+
+We approach them slowly. They are close against each other, and each
+one indicates with arms or legs some different posture of stiffened
+agony. There are some with half-moldy faces, the skin rusted, or
+yellow with dark spots. Of several the faces are black as tar, the
+lips hugely distended--the heads of negroes blown out in
+goldbeaters' skin. Between two bodies, protruding uncertainly from
+one or the other, is a severed wrist, ending with a cluster of
+strings.
+
+Others are shapeless larvae of pollution, with dubious items of
+equipment pricking up, or bits of bone. Farther on, a corpse has
+been brought in in such a state that they have been obliged--so as
+not to lose it on the way--to pile it on a lattice of wire which was
+then fastened to the two ends of a stake. Thus was it carried in the
+hollow of its metal hammock, and laid there. You cannot make out
+either end of the body; alone, in the heap that it makes, one
+recognizes the gape of a trouser-pocket. An insect goes in and out
+of it.
+
+Around the dead flutter letters that have escaped from pockets or
+cartridge pouches while they were being placed on the ground. Over
+one of these bits of white paper, whose wings still beat though the
+mud ensnares them, I stoop slightly and read a sentence--"My dear
+Henry, what a fine day it is for your birthday!" The man is on his
+belly; his loins are rent from hip to hip by a deep furrow; his head
+is half turned round; we see a sunken eye; and on temples, cheek and
+neck a kind of green moss is growing.
+
+A sickening atmosphere roams with the wind around these dead and the
+heaped-up debris, that lies about them--tent-cloth or clothing in
+stained tatters, stiff with dried blood, charred by the scorch of
+the shell, hardened, earthy and already rotting, quick with swarming
+and questing things. It troubles us. We look at each other and shake
+our heads, nor dare admit aloud that the place smells bad. All the
+same, we go away slowly.
+
+Now come breaking out of the fog the bowed backs of men who are
+joined together by something they are carrying. They are Territorial
+stretcher-bearers with a new corpse. They come up with their old wan
+faces, toiling, sweating, and grimacing with the effort. To carry a
+dead man in the lateral trenches when they are muddy is a work
+almost beyond human power. They put down the body, which is dressed
+in new clothes.
+
+"It's not long since, now, that he was standing," says one of the
+bearers. "It's two hours since he got his bullet in the head for
+going to look for a Boche rifle in the plain. He was going on leave
+on Wednesday and wanted to take a rifle home with him. He is a
+sergeant of the 405th, Class 1914. A nice lad, too."
+
+He takes away the handkerchief that is over the face. It is quite
+young, and seems to sleep, except that an eyeball has gone, the
+cheek looks waxen, and a rosy liquid has run over the nostrils,
+mouth, and eyes.
+
+The body strikes a note of cleanliness in the charnel-house, this
+still pliant body that lolls its head aside when it is moved as if
+to lie better; it gives a childish illusion of being less dead than
+the others. But being less disfigured, it seems more pathetic,
+nearer to one, more intimate, as we look. And had we said anything
+in the presence of all that heap of beings destroyed, it would have
+been "Poor boy!"
+
+We take the road again, which at this point begins to slope down to
+the depth where Souchez lies. Under our feet in the whiteness of the
+fog it appears like a valley of frightful misery. The piles of
+rubbish, of remains and of filthiness accumulate on the shattered
+spine of the road's paving and on its miry borders in final
+confusion. The trees bestrew the ground or have disappeared, torn
+away, their stumps mangled. The banks of the road are overturned and
+overthrown by shell-fire. All the way along, on both sides of this
+highway where only the crosses remain standing, are trenches twenty
+times blown in and re-hollowed, cavities--some with passages into
+them--hurdles on quagmires.
+
+The more we go forward, the more is everything turned terribly
+inside out, full of putrefaction, cataclysmic. We walk on a surface
+of shell fragments, and the foot trips on them at every step. We go
+among them as if they were snares, and stumble in the medley of
+broken weapons or bits of kitchen utensils, of water-bottles,
+fire-buckets, sewing-machines, among the bundles of electrical
+wiring, the French and German accouterments all mutilated and
+encrusted in dried mud, and among the sinister piles of clothing,
+stuck together with a reddish-brown cement. And one must look out,
+too, for the unexploded shells, which everywhere protrude their
+noses or reveal their flanks or their bases, painted red, blue, and
+tawny brown.
+
+"That's the old Boche trench, that they cleared out of in the end."
+It is choked up in some places, in others riddled with shell-holes.
+The sandbags have been torn asunder and gutted; they are crumbled,
+emptied, scattered to the wind. The wooden props and beams arc
+splintered, and point all ways. The dug-outs are filled to the brim
+with earth and with--no one knows what. It is all like the dried bed
+of a river, smashed, extended, slimy, that both water and men have
+abandoned. In one place the trench has been simply wiped out by the
+guns. The wide fosse is blocked, and remains no more than a field of
+new-turned earth, made of holes symmetrically bored side by side, in
+length and in breadth.
+
+I point out to Poterloo this extraordinary field, that would seem to
+have been traversed by a giant plow. But he is absorbed to his very
+vitals in the metamorphosis of the country's face.
+
+He indicates a space in the plain with his finger, and with a
+stupefied air, as though he came out of a dream--"The Red Tavern!"
+It is a flat field, carpeted with broken bricks.
+
+And what is that, there? A milestone? No, it is not a milestone. It
+is a head, a black head, tanned and polished. The mouth is all
+askew, and you can see something of the mustache bristling on each
+side--the great head of a carbonized cat. The corpse--it is
+German--is underneath, buried upright.
+
+"And that?" It is a ghastly collection containing an entirely white
+skull, and then, six feet away, a pair of boots, and between the two
+a heap of frayed leather and of rags, cemented by brown mud.
+
+"Come on, there's less fog already. We must hurry."
+
+A hundred yards in front of us, among the more transparent waves of
+fog that are changing places with us and hide us less and less, a
+shell whistles and bursts. It has fallen in the spot we are just
+nearing. We are descending, and the gradient is less steep. We go
+side by side. My companion says nothing, but looks to right and to
+left. Then he stops again, as he did at the top of the road. I hear
+his faltering voice, almost inaudible--"What's this! We're
+there--this is it--"
+
+In point of fact we have not left the plain, the vast plain, seared
+and barren--but we are in Souchez!
+
+The village has disappeared, nor have I seen a village go so
+completely. Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, and Carency. these still retained
+some shape of a place, with their collapsed and truncated houses,
+their yards heaped high with plaster and tiles. Here, within the
+framework of slaughtered trees that surrounds us as a spectral
+background in the fog, there is no longer any shape. There is not
+even an end of wall, fence, or porch that remains standing; and it
+amazes one to discover that there are paving-stones under the tangle
+of beams, stones, and scrap-iron. This--here--was a street.
+
+It might have been a dirty and boggy waste near a big town, whose
+rubbish of demolished buildings and its domestic refuse had been
+shot here for years, till no spot was empty. We plunge into a
+uniform layer of dung and debris, and make but slow and difficult
+progress. The bombardment has so changed the face of things that it
+has diverted the course of the millstream, which now runs haphazard
+and forms a pond on the remains of the little place where the cross
+stood.
+
+Here are several shell-holes where swollen horses are rotting; in
+others the remains of what were once human beings are scattered,
+distorted by the monstrous injury of shells.
+
+Here, athwart the track we are following, that we ascend as through
+an avalanche or inundation of ruin, under the unbroken melancholy of
+the sky, here is a man stretched out as if he slept, but he has that
+close flattening against the ground which distinguishes a dead man
+from a sleeper. He is a dinner-fatigue man, with a chaplet of loaves
+threaded over a belt, and a bunch of his comrades' water-bottles
+slung on his shoulder by a skein of straps. It must have been only
+last night that the fragment of a shell caught him in the back. No
+doubt we are the first to find him, this unknown soldier secretly
+dead. Perhaps he will be scattered before others find him, so we
+look for his identity disc--it is stuck in the clotted blood where
+his right hand stagnates. I copy down the name that is written in
+letters of blood.
+
+Poterloo lets me do it by myself--he is like a sleepwalker. He
+looks, and looks in despair, everywhere. He seeks endlessly among
+those evanished and eviscerated things; through the void he gazes to
+the haze of the horizon. Then he sits down on a beam, having first
+sent flying with a kick a saucepan that lay on it, and I sit by his
+side. A light drizzle is falling. The fog's moisture is resolving in
+little drops that cover everything with a slight gloss. He murmurs,
+"Ah, la, la!"
+
+He wipes his forehead and raises imploring eyes to me. He is trying
+to make out and take in the destruction of all this corner of the
+earth, and the mournfulness of it. He stammers disjointed remarks
+and interjections. He takes off his great helmet and his head is
+smoking. Then he says to me with difficulty, "Old man, you cannot
+imagine, you cannot, you cannot--"
+
+He whispers: "The Red Tavern, where that--where that Boche's head
+is, and litters of beastliness all around, that sort of cesspool--it
+was on the edge of the road, a brick house and two out-buildings
+alongside--how many times, old man, on the very spot where we stood,
+how many times, there, the good woman who joked with me on her
+doorstep, I've given her good-day as I wiped my mouth and looked
+towards Souchez that I was going back to! And then, after a few
+steps, I've turned round to shout some nonsense to her! Oh, you
+cannot imagine! But that, now, that!" He makes an inclusive gesture
+to indicate all the emptiness that surrounds him.
+
+"We mustn't stay here too long, old chap. The fog's lifting, you
+know."
+
+He stands up with an effort--"Allons."
+
+The most serious part is yet to come. His house--
+
+He hesitates, turns towards the east, goes. "It's there--no, I've
+passed it. It's not there. I don't know where it is--or where it
+was. Ah, misery, misery!" He wrings his hands in despair and
+staggers in the middle of the medley of plaster and bricks. Then,
+bewildered by this encumbered plain of lost landmarks, he looks
+questioningly about in the air, like a thoughtless child, like a
+madman. He is looking for the intimacy of the bedrooms scattered in
+infinite space, for their inner form and their twilight now cast
+upon the winds!
+
+After several goings and comings, he stops at one spot and draws
+back a little--"It was there, I'm right. Look--it's that stone there
+that I knew it by. There was a vent-hole there, you can see the mark
+of the bar of iron that was over the hole before it disappeared."
+
+Sniffling he reflects, and gently shaking his head as though he
+could not stop it: "It is when you no longer have anything that you
+understand how happy you were. Ah, how happy we were!"
+
+He comes up to me and laughs nervously: "It's out of the common,
+that, eh? I'm sure you've never seen yourself like it--can't find
+the house where you've always lived since--since always--"
+
+He turns about, and it is he who leads me away:
+
+"Well, let's leg it, since there is nothing. Why spend a whole hour
+looking at places where things were? Let's be off, old man."
+
+We depart--the only two living beings to be seen in that unreal and
+miasmal place, that village which bestrews the earth and lies under
+our feet.
+
+We climb again. The weather is clearing and the fog scattering
+quickly. My silent comrade, who is making great strides with lowered
+head, points out a field: "The cemetery," he says; "it was there
+before it was everywhere, before it laid hold on everything without
+end, like a plague."
+
+Half-way, we go more slowly, and Poterloo comes close to me-"You
+know, it's too much, all that. It's wiped out too much--all my life
+up to now. It makes me afraid--it is so completely wiped out."
+
+"Come; your wife's in good health, you know; your little girl, too."
+
+He looks at me comically: "My wife--I'll tell you something; my
+wife--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, old chap, I've seen her again."
+
+"You've seen her? I thought she was in the occupied country?"
+
+"Yes, she's at Lens, with my relations. Well, I've seen her--ah,
+and then, after all, zut!--I'll tell you all about it. Well, I was
+at Lens, three weeks ago. It was the eleventh; that's twenty days
+since."
+
+I look at him, astounded. But he looks like one who is speaking the
+truth. He talks in sputters at my side. as we walk in the increasing
+light--
+
+"They told us--you remember, perhaps--but you weren't there, I
+believe--they told us the wire had got to be strengthened in front
+of the Billard Trench. You know what that means, eh? They hadn't
+been able to do it till then. As soon as one gets out of the trench
+he's on a downward slope, that's got a funny name."
+
+"The Toboggan."
+
+"Yes, that's it; and the place is as bad by night or in fog as in
+broad daylight, because of the rifles trained on it before hand on
+trestles, and the machine-guns that they point during the day. When
+they can't see any more, the Boches sprinkle the lot.
+
+"They took the pioneers of the C.H.R., hut there were some missing,
+and they replaced 'em with a few poilus. I was one of 'em. Good. We
+climb out. Not a single rifle-shot! 'What does it mean?' we says,
+and behold. we see a Boche, two Boches, three Boches, coming out of
+the ground--the gray devils!--and they make signs to us and shout
+'Kamarad!' 'We're Alsatians,' they says. coming more and more out of
+their communication trench--the International. 'They won't fire on
+you, up there,' they says; 'don't be afraid, friends. Just let us
+bury our dead.' And behold us working aside of each other, and even
+talking together since they were from Alsace. And to tell the truth,
+they groused about the war and about their officers. Our sergeant
+knew all right that it was forbidden to talk with the enemy, and
+they'd even read it out to us that we were only to talk to them with
+our rifles. But the sergeant he says to himself that this is God's
+own chance to strengthen the wire, and as long as they were letting
+us work against them, we'd just got to take advantage of it,
+
+"Then behold one of the Boches that says, 'There isn't perhaps one
+of you that comes from the invaded country and would like news of
+his family?'
+
+"Old chap, that was a bit too much for me. Without thinking if I did
+right or wrong, I went up to him and I said, 'Yes, there's me.' The
+Boche asks me questions. I tell him my wife's at Lens with her
+relations, and the little one, to. He asks where she's staying. I
+explain to him, and he says he can see it from there. 'Listen,' he
+says, 'I'll take her a letter, and not only that, but I'll bring you
+an answer.' Then all of a sudden he taps his forehead, the Boche,
+and comes close to me--'Listen, my friend, to a lot better still. If
+you like to do what I say, you shall see your wife, and your kids as
+well, and all the lot, sure as I see you.' He tells me, to do it,
+I've only got to go with him at a certain time with a Boche
+greatcoat and a shako that he'll have for me. He'd mix me up in a
+coal-fatigue in Lens, and we'd go to our house. I could go and have
+a look on condition that I laid low and didn't show myself, and he'd
+be responsible for the chaps of the fatigue, but there were
+non-coms. in the house that he wouldn't answer for--and, old chap, I
+agreed!"
+
+"That was serious."
+
+"Yes, for sure, it was serious. I decided all at once. without
+thinking and without wishing to think, seeing I was dazzled with the
+idea of seeing my people again; and if I got shot afterwards, well,
+so much the worse--but give and take. The supply of law and demand
+they call it, don't they?
+
+"My boy, it all went swimmingly. The only hitch was they had such
+hard work to find a shako big enough, for, as you know, I'm well off
+for head. But even that was fixed up. They raked me out in the end a
+lousebox big enough to hold my head. I've already some Boche
+boots--those that were Caron's, you know. So, behold us setting off
+in the Boche trenches--and they're most damnably like ours--with
+these good sorts of Boche comrades, who told me in very good
+French--same as I'm speaking--not to fret myself.
+
+"There was no alarm, nothing. Getting there came off all right.
+Everything went off so sweet and simple that I fancied I must be a
+defaulting Boche. We got to Lens at nightfall. I remember we passed
+in front of La Perche and went down the Rue du Quatorze-Juillet. I
+saw some of the townsfolk walking about in the streets like they do
+in our quarters. I didn't recognize them because of the evening, nor
+them me, because of the evening too, and because of the seriousness
+of things. It was so dark you couldn't put your finger into your eye
+when I reached my folk's garden.
+
+"My heart was going top speed. I was all trembling from head to foot
+as if I were only a sort of heart myself. And I had to hold myself
+back from carrying on aloud, and in French too, I was so happy and
+upset. The Kamarad says to me, 'You go, pass once, then another
+time, and look in at the door and the window. Don't look as if you
+were looking. Be careful.' So I get hold of myself again, and
+swallow my feelings all at a gulp. Not a bad sort, that devil,
+seeing he'd have had a hell of a time if I'd got nailed.
+
+"At our place, you know, same as everywhere in the Pas de Calais,
+the outside doors of the houses are cut in two. At the bottom, it's
+a sort of barrier, half-way up your body; and above, you might call
+it a shutter. So you can shut the bottom half and be one-half
+private.
+
+"The top half was open, and the room, that's the dining-room, and
+the kitchen as well, of course, was lighted up and I heard voices.
+
+"I went by with my neck twisted sideways. There were heads of men
+and women with a rosy light on them, round the round table and the
+lamp. My eyes fell on her, on Clotilde. I saw her plainly. She was
+sitting between two chaps, non-coms., I believe, and they were
+talking to her. And what was she doing? Nothing; she was smiling,
+and her face was prettily bent forward and surrounded with a light
+little framework of fair hair, and the lamp gave it a bit of a
+golden look.
+
+"She was smiling. She was contented. She had a look of being well
+off, by the side of the Boche officer, and the lamp, and the fire
+that puffed an unfamiliar warmth out on me. I passed, and then I
+turned round, and passed again. I saw her again, and she was always
+smiling. Not a forced smile, not a debtor's smile, non, a real smile
+that came from her, that she gave. And during that time of
+illumination that I passed in two senses, I could see my baby as
+well, stretching her hands out to a great striped simpleton and
+trying to climb on his knee; and then, just by, who do you think I
+recognized? Madeleine Vandaert, Vandaert's wife, my pal of
+the 19th, that was killed at the Maine, at Montyon.
+
+"She knew he'd been killed because she was in mourning. And she, she
+was having good fun, and laughing outright, I tell you--and she
+looked at one and the other as much as to say, 'I'm all right here!'
+
+"Ah, my boy, I cleared out of that, and butted into the Kamarads
+that were waiting to take me back. How I got back I couldn't tell
+you. I was knocked out. I went stumbling like a man under a curse,
+and if any-body had said a wrong word to me just then--! I should
+have shouted out loud; I should have made a row, so as to get killed
+and be done with this filthy life!
+
+"Do you catch on? She was smiling, my wife, my Clotilde, at this
+time in the war! And why? Have we only got to be away for a time for
+us not to count any more? You take your damned hook from home to go
+to the war, and everything seems finished with; and they worry for a
+while that you're gone, but bit by bit you become as if you didn't
+exist, they can do without you to be as happy as they were before,
+and to smile. Ah, Christ! I'm not talking of the other woman that
+was laughing, but my Clotilde, mine, who at that chance moment when
+I saw her, whatever you may say, was getting on damned well without
+me!
+
+"And then, if she'd been with friends or relations; but no, actually
+with Boche officers! Tell me, shouldn't I have had good reason to
+jump into the room, fetch her a couple of swipes, and wring the neck
+of the other old hen in mourning?
+
+"Yes, yes; I thought of doing it. I know all right I was getting
+violent, I was getting out of control.
+
+"Mark me. I don't want to say more about it than I have said. She's
+a good lass, Clotilde. I know her, and I've confidence in her. I'm
+not far wrong, you know. If I were done in, she'd cry all the tears
+in her body to begin with. She thinks I'm alive, I admit, but that
+isn't the point. She can't prevent herself from being; well off, and
+contented, and letting herself go, when she's a good fire, a good
+lamp, and company, whether I'm there or not--"
+
+I led Poterloo away: "You exaggerate, old chap; you're getting
+absurd notions, come." We had walked very slowly and were still at
+the foot of the hill. The fog was becoming like silver as it
+prepared for departure. Sunshine was very near.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Poterloo looked up and said, "We'll go round by the Carency road and
+go in at the back." We struck off at an angle into the fields. At
+the end of a few minutes he said to me, "I exaggerate, you think?
+You say that I exaggerate?" He reflected. "Ah!" Then he added, with
+the shaking of the head that had hardly left him all the morning,
+"What about it? All the same, it's a fact--"
+
+We climbed the slope. The cold had become tepidity. Arrived on a
+little plateau--"Let's sit here again before going in," he proposed.
+He sat down, heavy with the world of thought that entangled him. His
+forehead was wrinkled. Then he turned towards me with an awkward
+air, as if he were going to beg some favor: "Tell me, mate, I'm
+wondering if I'm right."
+
+But after looking at me, he looked at everything else, as though he
+would rather consult them than me.
+
+A transformation was taking place in the sky and on the earth. The
+fog was hardly more than a fancy. Distances revealed themselves. The
+narrow plain, gloomy and gray, was getting bigger, chasing its
+shadows away, and assuming color. The light was passing over it from
+east to west like sails.
+
+And down there at our very feet, by the grace of distance and of
+light, we saw Souchez among the trees--the little place arose again
+before our eyes, new-born in the sunshine!
+
+"Am I right?" repeated Poterloo, more faltering, more dubious.
+
+Before I could speak he replied to himself, at first almost in a
+whisper, as the light fell on him--"She's quite young, you know;
+she's twenty-six. She can't hold her youth in, it's coming out of
+her all over, and when she's resting in the lamp-light and the
+warmth, she's got to smile; and even if she burst out laughing, it
+would just simply be her youth, singing in her throat. It isn't on
+account of others, if truth were told; it's on account of herself.
+It's life. She lives. Ah, yes, she lives, and that's all. It isn't
+her fault if she lives. You wouldn't have her die? Very well, what
+do you want her to do? Cry all day on account of me and the Boches?
+Grouse? One can't cry all the time, nor grouse for eighteen months.
+Can't be done. It's too long, I tell you. That's all there is to
+it."
+
+He stops speaking to look at the view of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, now
+wholly illuminated.
+
+"Same with the kid; when she found herself alongside a simpleton
+that doesn't tell her to go and play with herself, she ends by
+wanting to get on his knee. Perhaps she'd prefer that it was her
+uncle or a friend or her father--perhaps--but she tries it on all
+the same with the only man that's always there, even if it's a great
+hog in spectacles.
+
+"Ah," he cries, as he gets up and comes gesticulating before me.
+"There's a good answer one could give me. If I didn't come back from
+the war, I should say, 'My lad, you've gone to smash, no more
+Clotilde, no more love! You'll be replaced in her heart sooner or
+later; no getting round it; your memory, the portrait of you that
+she carries in her, that'll fade bit by bit and another'll come on
+top of it, and she'll begin another life again.' Ah, if I didn't
+come back!"
+
+He laughs heartily. "But I mean to come back. Ah, yes! One must be
+there. Otherwise--I must be there, look you," he says again more
+seriously; "otherwise, if you're not there, even if you're dealing
+with saints and angels, you'll be at fault in the end. That's life.
+But I am there." He laughs. "Well, I'm a little there, as one might
+say!"
+
+I get up too, and tap him on the shoulder. "You're right, old pal,
+it'll all come to an end."
+
+He rubs his hands and goes on talking. "Yes, by God! it'll all
+finish, don't worry. Oh, I know well there'll be hard graft before
+it's finished, and still more after. We've got to work, and I don't
+only mean work with the arms.
+
+"It'll be necessary to make everything over again. Very well, we'll
+do it. The house? Gone. The garden? Nowhere. All right, we'll
+rebuild the house, we'll remake the garden. The less there is the
+more we'll make over again. After all, it's life, and we're made to
+remake, eh? And we'll remake our life together, and happiness. We'll
+make the days again; we'll remake the nights.
+
+"And the other side, too. They'll make their world again. Do you
+know what I say?--perhaps it won't be as long as one thinks--"
+
+"Tiens! I can see Madeleine Vandaert marrying another chap.
+She's a widow; but, old man, she's been a widow eighteen months. Do
+you think it's not a big slice, that, eighteen months? They even
+leave off wearing mourning, I believe, about that time! People don't
+remember that when they say 'What a strumpet she is,' and when, in
+effect, they ask her to commit suicide. But mon vieux, one forgets.
+One is forced to forget. It isn't the people that make you forget;
+you do it yourself; it's just forgetfulness, mind you. I find
+Madeleine again all of a sudden, and to see her frivvling there it
+broke me up as much as if her husband had been killed
+yesterday--it's natural. But it's a devil of a long time since he
+got spiked, poor lad. It's a long time since, it's too long since.
+People are no longer the same. But, mark you, one must come back,
+one must be there! We shall be there, and we shall be busy with
+beginning again!"
+
+On the way, he looks and winks, cheered up by finding a peg on which
+to hang his ideas. He says--"I can see it from here, after the war,
+all the Souchez people setting themselves again to work and to
+life--what a business! Tiens, Papa Ponce, for example, the
+back-number! He was so pernickety that you could see him sweeping
+the grass in his garden with a horsehair brush, or kneeling on his
+lawn and trimming the turf with a pair of scissors. Very well, he'll
+treat himself to that again! And Madame Imaginaire, that lived in
+one of the last houses towards the Chateau de Carleul, a large woman
+who seemed to roll along the ground as if she'd got casters under
+her big circular petticoats. She had a child every year, regular,
+punctual--a proper machine-gun of kids. Very well, she'll take that
+occupation up again with all her might."
+
+He stops and ponders, and smiles a very little--almost within
+himself: "Tiens, I'll tell you; I noticed--it isn't very important,
+this," he insists, as though suddenly embarrassed by the triviality
+of this parenthesis--"but I noticed (you notice it in a glance when
+you're noticing something else) that it was cleaner in our house
+than in my time--"
+
+We come on some little rails in the ground, climbing almost hidden
+in the withered grass underfoot. Poterloo points out with his foot
+this bit of abandoned track, and smiles; "That, that's our railway.
+It was a cripple, as you may say; that means something that doesn't
+move. It didn't work very quickly. A snail could have kept pace with
+it. We shall remake it. But certainly it won't go any quicker. That
+can't be allowed!"
+
+When we reached the top of the hill, Poterloo turned round and threw
+a last look over the slaughtered places that we had just visited.
+Even more than a minute ago, distance recreated the village across
+the remains of trees shortened and sliced that now looked like young
+saplings. Better even than just now, the sun shed on that white and
+red accumulation of mingled material an appearance of life and even
+an illusion of meditation. Its very stones seemed to feel the vernal
+revival. The beauty of sunshine heralded what would be, and revealed
+the future. The face of the watching soldier, too, shone with a
+glamour of reincarnation, and the smile on it was born of the
+springtime and of hope. His rosy cheeks and blue eyes seemed
+brighter than ever.
+
+We go down into the communication trench and there is sunshine
+there. The trench is yellow, dry, and resounding. I admire its
+finely geometrical depth, its shovel-smoothed and shining flanks;
+and I find it enjoyable to hear the clean sharp sound of our feet on
+the hard ground or on the caillebotis--little gratings of wood,
+placed end to end and forming a plankway.
+
+I look at my watch. It tells me that it is nine o'clock, and it
+shows me, too, a dial of delicate color where the sky is reflected
+in rose-pink and blue, and the fine fret-work of bushes that are
+planted there above the marges of the trench.
+
+And Poterloo and I look at each other with a kind of confused
+delight. We are glad to see each other, as though we were meeting
+after absence! He speaks to me, and though I am quite familiar with
+the singsong accent of the North, I discover that he is singing.
+
+We have had bad days and tragic nights in the cold and the rain and
+the mud. Now, although it is still winter, the first fine morning
+shows and convinces us that it will soon be spring once more.
+Already the top of the trench is graced by green young grass, and
+amid its new-born quivering some flowers are awakening. It means the
+end of contracted and constricted days. Spring is coming from above
+and from below. We inhale with joyful hearts; we are uplifted.
+
+Yes, the had days are ending. The war will end, too, que diable! And
+no doubt it will end in the beautiful season that is coming, that
+already illumines us, whose zephyrs already caress us.
+
+A whistling sound--tiens, a spent bullet! A bullet? Nonsense--it's a
+blackbird! Curious how similar the sound was! The blackbirds and the
+birds of softer song, the countryside and the pageant of the
+seasons, the intimacy of dwelling-rooms, arrayed in light--Oh! the
+war will end soon; we shall go back for good to our own; wife,
+children, or to her who is at once wife and child, and we smile
+towards them in this young glory that already unites us again.
+
+At the forking of the two trenches, in the open and on the edge,
+here is something like a doorway. Two posts lean one upon the other,
+with a confusion of electric wires between them, hanging down like
+tropical creepers. It looks well. You would say it was a theatrical
+contrivance or scene. A slender climbing plant twines round one of
+the posts, and as you follow it with your glance, you see that it
+already dares to pass from one to the other.
+
+Soon, passing along this trench whose grassy slopes quiver like the
+flanks of a fine horse, we come out into our own trench on the
+Bethune road, and here is our place. Our comrades are there,
+in clusters. They are eating, and enjoying the goodly temperature.
+
+The meal finished, we clean our aluminium mess-tins or plates with a
+morsel of bread. "Tiens, the sun's going!" It is true; a cloud has
+passed over and hidden it. "It's going to splash, my little lads,"
+says Lamuse "that's our luck all over! Just as we are going off!"
+
+"A damned country!" says Fouillade. In truth this Northern climate
+is not worth much. It drizzles and mizzles, reeks and rains. And
+when there is any sun it soon disappears in the middle of this great
+damp sky.
+
+Our four days in the trenches are finished, and the relief will
+commence at nightfall. Leisurely we get ready for leaving. We fill
+and put aside the knapsacks and bags. We give a rub to the rifles
+and wrap them up.
+
+It is already four o'clock. Darkness is falling quickly, and we grow
+indistinct to each other. "Damnation. Here's the rain!" A few drops
+and then the downpour. Oh, la, la, la! We don our capes and
+tent-cloths. We go back unto the dug-out, dabbling, and gathering
+mud on our knees, hands, and elbows, for the bottom of the trench is
+getting sticky. Once inside, we have hardly time to light a candle,
+stuck on a bit of stone, and to shiver all round--"Come on, en
+route!"
+
+We hoist ourselves into the wet and windy darkness outside. I can
+dimly see Poterloo's powerful shoulders; in the ranks we are always
+side by side. When we get going I call to him, "Are you there, old
+chap?"--"Yes, in front of you," he cries to me, turning round. As he
+turns he gets a buffet in the face from wind and rain, but he
+laughs. His happy face of the morning abides with him. No downpour
+shall rob him of the content that he carries in his strong and
+steadfast heart; no evil night put out the sunshine that I saw
+possess his thoughts some hours ago.
+
+We march, and jostle each other, and stumble. The rain is
+continuous, and water runs in the bottom of the trench. The
+floor-gratings yield as the soil becomes soaked; some of them slope
+to right or left and we skid on them. In the dark, too, one cannot
+see them, so we miss them at the turnings and put our feet into
+holes full of water.
+
+Even in the grayness of the night I will not lose sight of the slaty
+shine of Poterloo's helmet, which streams like a roof under the
+torrent, nor of the broad back that is adorned with a square of
+glistening oilskin. I lock my step in his, and from time to time I
+question him and he answers me--always in good humor, always serene
+and strong.
+
+When there are no more of the wooden floor-gratings, we tramp in the
+thick mud. It is dark now. There is a sudden halt and I am thrown on
+Poterloo. Up higher we hear half-angry reproaches--"What the devil,
+will you get on? We shall get broken up!"
+
+"I can't get my trotters unstuck!" replies a pitiful voice.
+
+The engulfed one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake
+the rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster
+against those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we
+stumble and hold ourselves up by the wails, so that our hands are
+plastered with mud. The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise
+of metal things and of oaths.
+
+In redoubled rain there is a second halt; some one has fallen, and
+the hubbub is general. He picks himself up and we are off again. I
+exert myself to follow Poterloo's helmet closely that gleams feebly
+in the night before my eyes, and I shout from time to time, "All
+right?"--"Yes, yes, all right," he replies, puffing and blowing, and
+his voice always singsong and resonant.
+
+Our knapsacks, tossed in this rolling race under the assault of the
+elements, drag and hurt our shoulders.
+
+The trench is blocked by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it.
+We have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting
+them high at each step. Then, when this crossing is laboriously
+accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the
+bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one's
+foot like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a
+great splash. In one place we must stoop very low to pass under a
+heavy and glutinous bridge that crosses the trench, and we only get
+through with difficulty. It obliges us to kneel in the mud, to
+flatten ourselves on the ground, and to crawl on all fours for a few
+paces. A little farther there are evolutions to perform as we grasp
+a post that the sinking of the ground has set aslope across the
+middle of the fairway.
+
+We come to a trench-crossing. "Allons, forward! Look out for
+yourselves, boys!" says the adjutant, who has flattened himself in a
+corner to let us pass and to speak to us. "This is a bad spot."
+
+"We're done up," shouts a voice so hoarse that I cannot identify the
+speaker.
+
+"Damn! I've enough of it, I'm stopping here," groans another, at the
+end of his wind and his muscle.
+
+"What do you want me to do?" replies the adjutant, "No fault of
+mine. eh? Allons, get a move on, it's a bad spot--it was shelled at
+the last relief!"
+
+We go on through the tempest of wind and water. We seem to be going
+ever down and down, as in a pit. We slip and tumble, butt into the
+wall of the trench, into which we drive our elbows hard, so as to
+throw ourselves upright again. Our going is a sort of long slide, on
+which we keep up just how and where we can. What matters is to
+stumble only forward, and as straight as possible.
+
+Where are we? I lift my head, in spite of the billows of rain, out
+of this gulf where we are struggling. Against the hardly discernible
+background of the buried sky, I can make out the rim of the trench;
+and there, rising before my eyes all at once and towering over that
+rim, is something like a sinister doorway, made of two black posts
+that lean one upon the other, with something hanging from the middle
+like a torn-off scalp. It is the doorway.
+
+"Forward! Forward!"
+
+I lower my head and see no more; but again I hear the feet that sink
+in the mud and come out again, the rattle of the bayonets, the heavy
+exclamations, and the rapid breathing.
+
+Once more there is a violent back-eddy. We pull up sharply, and
+again I am thrown upon Poterloo and lean on his back, his strong
+back and solid, like the trunk of a tree, like healthfulness and
+like hope. He cries to me, "Cheer up, old man, we're there!"
+
+We are standing still. It is necessary to go hack a little--Nom de
+Dieu!--no, we are moving on again!
+
+Suddenly a fearful explosion falls on us. I tremble to my skull; a
+metallic reverberation fills my head; a scorching and suffocating
+smell of sulphur pierces my nostrils. The earth has opened in front
+of me. I feel myself lifted and hurled aside--doubled up, choked,
+and half blinded by this lightning and thunder. But still my
+recollection is clear; and in that moment when I looked wildly and
+desperately for my comrade-in-arms, I saw his body go up, erect and
+black, both his arms outstretched to their limit, and a flame in the
+place of his head!
+
+______
+
+[note 1:] All these high roads are stone-paved, and traffic is
+noisy.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+13
+
+The Big Words
+
+
+
+
+
+BARQUE notices that I am writing. He comes towards me on all fours
+through the straw and lifts his intelligent face to me, with its
+reddish forelock and the little quick eyes over which circumflex
+accents fold and unfold them-selves. His mouth is twisting in all
+directions, by reason of a tablet of chocolate that he crunches and
+chews, while he holds the moist stump of it in his fist.
+
+With his mouth full, and wafting me the odor of a sweetshop, he
+stammers--"Tell me, you writing chap, you'll be writing later about
+soldiers, you'll be speaking of us, eh?"
+
+"Why yes, sonny, I shall talk about you, and about the boys, and
+about our life."
+
+"Tell me, then"--he indicates with a nod the papers on which I have
+been making notes. With hovering pencil I watch and listen to him.
+He has a question to put to me--"Tell me, then, though you needn't
+if you don't want--there's something I want to ask you. This is it;
+if you make the common soldiers talk in your book, are you going to
+make them talk like they do talk, or shall you put it all
+straight--into pretty talk? It's about the big words that we use.
+For after all, now, besides falling out sometimes and blackguarding
+each other, you'll never hear two poilus open their heads for a
+minute without saying and repeating things that the printers
+wouldn't much like to print. Then what? If you don't say 'em, your
+portrait won't be a lifelike one it's as if you were going to paint
+them and then left out one of the gaudiest colors wherever you found
+it. All the same, it isn't usually done."
+
+"I shall put the big words in their place, dadda, for they're the
+truth."
+
+"But tell me, if you put 'em in, won't the people of your sort say
+you're swine, without worrying about the truth?"
+
+"Very likely, but I shall do it all the same, without worrying about
+those people."
+
+"Do you want my opinion? Although I know nothing about books, it's
+brave to do that, because it isn't usually done, and it'll be spicy
+if you dare do it--but you'll find it hard when it comes to it,
+you're too polite. That's just one of the faults I've found in you
+since we've known each other; that, and also that dirty habit you've
+got, when they're serving brandy out to us, you pretend it'll do you
+harm, and instead of giving your share to a pal, you go and pour it
+on your head to wash your scalp."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+14
+
+Of Burdens
+
+
+
+
+
+AT the end of the yard of the Muets farm, among the outbuildings,
+the barn gapes like a cavern. It is always caverns for us, even in
+houses! When you have crossed the yard, where the manure yields
+underfoot with a spongy sound or have gone round it instead on the
+narrow paved path of difficult equilibrium, and when you have
+arrived at the entrance to the barn, you can see nothing at all.
+
+Then, if you persist, you make out a misty hollow where equally
+misty and dark lumps are asquat or prone or wandering from one
+corner to another. At the back, on the right and on the left, the
+pale gleams of two candles, each with the round halo of a distant
+moon allow you at last to make out the human shape of these masses,
+whose mouths emit either steam or thick smoke.
+
+Our hazy retreat, which I allow carefully to swallow me whole, is a
+scene of excitement this evening. We leave for the trenches
+to-morrow morning, and the nebulous tenants of the barn are
+beginning to pack up.
+
+Although darkness falls on my eyes and chokes them as I come in from
+the pallid evening, I still dodge the snares spread over the ground
+by water-bottles, mess-tins and weapons, but I butt full into the
+loaves that are packed together exactly in the middle, like the
+paving of a yard. I reach my corner. Something alive is there with a
+huge back, fleecy and rounded, squatting and stooping over a
+collection of little things that glitter on the ground, and I tap
+the shoulder upholstered in sheepskin. The being turns round, and by
+the dull and fitful gleam of a candle which a bayonet stuck in the
+ground upholds, I see one half of a face, an eye, the end of a
+mustache, and the corner of a half-open mouth. It growls in a
+friendly way, and resumes the inspection of its possessions.
+
+"What are you doing there?"
+
+"I'm fixing things, and clearing up."
+
+The quasi-brigand who appears to be checking his booty, is my
+comrade Volpatte. He has folded his tent-cloth in four and placed it
+on his bed--that is, on the truss of straw assigned to him--and on
+this carpet he has emptied and displayed the contents of his
+pockets.
+
+And it is quite a shop that he broods over with a housewife's
+solicitous eyes, watchful and jealous, lest some one walks over him.
+With my eye I tick off his copious exhibition.
+
+Alongside his handkerchief, pipe, tobacco-pouch (which also contains
+a note-book), knife, purse, and pocket pipe-lighter, which comprise
+the necessary and indispensable groundwork, here are two leather
+laces twisted like earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of
+transparent celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with
+age. Then a little round mirror, and another square one; this last,
+though broken, is of better quality, and bevel-edged. A flask of
+essence of turpentine, a flask of mineral oil nearly empty, and a
+third flask, empty. A German belt-plate, bearing the device, "Gott
+mit uns"; a dragoon's tassel of similar origin; half wrapped in
+paper, an aviator's arrow in the form of a steel pencil and pointed
+like a needle; folding scissors and a combined knife and fork of
+similar pliancy; a stump of pencil and one of candle; a tube of
+aspirin, also containing opium tablets, and several tin boxes.
+
+Observing that my inspection of his personal possessions is
+detailed, Volpatte helps me to identify certain items--
+
+"That, that's a leather officer's glove. I cut the fingers off to
+stop up the mouth of my blunderbuss with; that, that's telephone
+wire, the only thing to fasten buttons on your greatcoat with if you
+want 'em to stay there; and here, inside here, d'you know what that
+is? White thread, good stuff, not what you're put off with when they
+give you new things, a sort of macaroni au fromage that you pull out
+with a fork; and there's a set of needles on a post-card. The
+safety-pins, they're there, separate."
+
+"And here, that's the paper department. Quite a library."
+
+There is indeed a surprising collection of papers among the things
+disgorged by Volpatte's pockets--the violet packet of writing-paper,
+whose unworthy printed envelope is out at heels; an Army squad-book,
+of which the dirty and desiccated binding, like the skin of an old
+tramp, has perished and shrunk all over: a note-book with a chafed
+moleskin cover, and packed with papers and photographs, those of his
+wife and children enthroned in the middle.
+
+Out of this bundle of yellowed and darkened papers Volpatte extracts
+this photograph and shows it to me once more. I renew acquaintance
+with Madame Volpatte and her generous bosom, her mild and mellow
+features; and with the two little boys in white collars, the elder
+slender, the younger round as a ball.
+
+"I've only got photos of old people," says Biquet, who is twenty
+years old. He shows us a portrait holding it close to the candle, of
+two aged people who look at us with the same well-behaved air as
+Volpatte's children.
+
+"I've got mine with me, too," says another; "I always stick to the
+photo of the nestlings."
+
+"Course! Every man carries his crowd along," adds another.
+
+"It's funny," Barque declares, "a portrait wears itself out just
+with being looked at. You haven't got to gape at it too often, or be
+too long about it; in the long run, I don't know what happens, but
+the likeness mizzles."
+
+"You're right," says Blaire, "I've found it like that too,
+exactly.''
+
+"I've got a map of the district as well, among my papers," Volpatte
+continues. He unfolds it to the light. Illegible and transparent at
+the creases, it looks like one of those window-blinds made of
+squares sewn together.
+
+"I've some newspaper too"--he unfolds a newspaper article upon
+poilus--"and a book"--a twopence-half-penny novel, called Twice a
+Maid--"Tiens, another newspaper cutting from the Etampes Bee. Don't
+know why I've kept that, but there must be a reason somewhere. I'll
+think about it when I have time. And then, my pack of cards, and a
+set of draughts, with a paper board and the pieces made of
+sealing-wax."
+
+Barque comes up, regards the scene, and says, "I've a lot more
+things than that in my pockets." He addresses himself to Volpatte.
+"Have you got a Boche pay-book, louse-head, some phials of iodine,
+and a Browning? I've all that, and two knives."
+
+"I've no revolver," says Volpatte, "nor a Boche pay-book, but I
+could have had two knives or even ten knives; but I only need one."
+
+"That depends," says Barque. "And have you any mechanical buttons,
+fathead?"
+
+"I haven't any," cries Becuwe.
+
+"The private can't do without 'em," Lamuse asserts. "Without them,
+to make your braces stick to your breeches, the game's up."
+
+"And I've always got in my pocket," says Blaire, "so's they're
+within reach, my case of rings." He brings it cut, wrapped up in a
+gas-mask bag, and shakes it. The files ring inside, and we hear the
+jingle of aluminium rings in the rough.
+
+"I've always got string," says Biquet, "that's the useful stuff!"
+
+"Not so useful as nails," says Pepin, and he shows three in
+his hand, big, little, and average.
+
+One by one the others come to join in the conversation. to chaffer
+and cadge. We are getting used to the half-darkness. But Corporal
+Salavert, who has a well-earned reputation for dexterity, makes a
+banging lamp with a candle and a tray, the latter contrived from a
+Camembert box and some wire. We light up, and around its
+illumination each man tells what he has in his pockets, with
+parental preferences and bias.
+
+"To begin with, how many have we?"
+
+"How many pockets? Eighteen," says some one--Cocon, of course, the
+man of figures.
+
+"Eighteen pockets! You're codding, rat-nose," says big Lamuse.
+
+"Exactly eighteen," replies Cocon. "Count them, if you're as clever
+as all that."
+
+Lamuse is willing to be guided by reason in the matter, and putting
+his two hands near the light so as to count accurately, he tells off
+his great brick-red fingers: Two pockets in the back of the
+greatcoat; one for the first-aid packet, which is used for tobacco;
+two inside the greatcoat in front; two outside it on each side, with
+flaps; three in the trousers, and even three and a half, counting
+the little one in front.
+
+"I'll bet a compass on it," says Farfadet.
+
+'And I, my bits of tinder."
+
+"I," says Tirloir, "I'll bet a teeny whistle that my wife sent me
+when she said, 'If you're wounded in the battle you must whistle, so
+that your comrades will come and save your life.'"
+
+We laugh at the artless words. Tulacque intervenes, and says
+indulgently to Tiloir, "They don't know what war is back there; and
+if you started talking about the rear, it'd be you that'd talk rot."
+
+"We won't count that pocket," says Salavert, "it's too small. That
+makes ten."
+
+"In the jacket, four. That only makes fourteen after all."
+
+"There are the two cartridge pockets, the two new ones that fasten
+with straps."
+
+"Sixteen," says Salavert.
+
+"Now, blockhead and son of misery, turn my jacket back. You haven't
+counted those two pockets. Now then, what more do you want? And yet
+they're just in the usual place. They're your civilian pockets,
+where you shoved your nose-rag, your tobacco, and the address where
+you'd got to deliver your parcel when you were a messenger."
+
+"Eighteen!" says Salavert, as grave as a judge. "There are eighteen,
+and no mistake; that's done it."
+
+At this point in the conversation, some one makes a series of noisy
+stumbles on the stones of the threshold with the sound of a horse
+pawing the ground--and blaspheming. Then, after a silence, the
+barking of a sonorous and authoritative voice--"Hey, inside there!
+Getting ready? Everything must be fixed up this evening and packed
+tight and solid, you know. Going into the first line this time, and
+we may have a hot time of it."
+
+"Right you are, right you are, mon adjutant." heedless voices
+answer.
+
+"How do you write 'Arnesse'?" asks Benech, who is on all fours, at
+work with a pencil and an envelope. While Cocon spells "Ernest" for
+him and the voice of the vanished adjutant is heard afar repeating
+his harangue, Blaire picks up the thread, and says--
+
+"You should always, my children--listen to what I'm telling you--put
+your drinking-cup in your pocket. I've tried to stick it everywhere
+else, but only the pocket's really practical, you take my word. If
+you're in marching order, or if you've doffed your kit to navigate
+the trenches either, you've always got it under your fist when
+chances come, like when a pal who's got some gargle, and feels good
+towards you says, 'Lend us your cup,' or a peddling wine-seller,
+either. My young bucks, listen to what I tell you; you'll always
+find it good--put your cup in your pocket."
+
+"No fear," says Lamuse, "you won't see me put my cup in my pocket;
+damned silly idea, no more or less. I'd a sight sooner sling it on a
+strap with a hook."
+
+"Fasten it on a greatcoat button, like the gas-helmet bag, that's a
+lot better; for suppose you take off your accouterments and there's
+any wine passing, you look soft."
+
+"I've got a Boche drinking-cup," says Barque; "it's flat, so it goes
+into a side pocket if you like, or it goes very well into a
+cartridge-pouch, once you've fired the damn things off or pitched
+them into a bag."
+
+"A Boche cup's nothing special," says Pepin; "it won't stand
+up, it's just lumber."
+
+"You wait and see, maggot-snout," says Tirette, who is something of
+a psychologist. "If we attack this time, same as the adjutant seemed
+to hint, perhaps you'll find a Boche cup, and then it'll be
+something special!"
+
+"The adjutant may have said that," Eudore observes. "but he doesn't
+know."
+
+"It holds more than a half-pint, the Boche cup," remarks Cocon,
+"seeing that the exact capacity of the half-pint is marked in the
+cup three-quarters way up; and it's always good for you to have a
+big one, for if you've got a cup that only just holds a half-pint,
+then so that you can get your half-pint of coffee or wine or holy
+water or what not, it's get to be filled right up, and they don't
+ever do it at serving-out, and if they do, you spill it."
+
+"I believe you that they don't fill it," says Paradis, exasperated
+by the recollection of that ceremony. "The quartermaster-sergeant,
+he pours it with his blasted finger in your cup and gives it two
+raps on its bottom. Result, you get a third, and your cup's in
+mourning with three black bands on top of each other."
+
+"Yes," says Barque, "that's true; but you shouldn't have a cup too
+big either, because the chap that's pouring it out for you, he
+suspects you, and let's it go in damned drops, and so as not to give
+you more than your measure he gives you less, and you can whistle
+for it. with your tureen in your fists."
+
+Volpatte puts back in his pockets, one by one, the items of his
+display. When he came to the purse, he looked at it with an air of
+deep compassion.
+
+"He's damnably flat, poor chap!" He counted the contents. "Three
+francs! My boy, I most set about feathering this nest again or I
+shall be stony when we get back."
+
+"You're not the only one that's broken-backed in the treasury."
+
+"The soldier spends more than he earns, and don't you forget it. I
+wonder what'd become of a man that only had his pay?"
+
+Paradis replies with concise simplicity, "He'd kick the bucket."
+
+"And see here, look what I've got in my pocket and never let go
+of"--Pepin, with merry eyes, shows us some silver
+table-things. "They belonged," he says, "to the ugly trollop where
+we were quartered at Grand-Rozoy."
+
+"Perhaps they still belong to her?"
+
+Pepin made an uncertain gesture, in which pride mingled with
+modesty; then, growing bolder, he smiled and said, "I knew her, the
+old sneak. Certainly, she'll spend the rest of her life looking in
+every corner for her silver things."
+
+"For my part," says Volpatte, "I've never been able to rake in more
+than a pair of scissors. Some people have the luck. I haven't. So
+naturally I watch 'em close, though I admit I've no use for 'em."
+
+"I've pinched a few bits of things here and there, but what of it?
+The sappers have always left me behind in the matter of pinching; so
+what about it?"
+
+"You can do what you like, you're always got at by some one in your
+turn, eh, my boy? Don't fret about it."
+
+"I keep my wife's letters," says Blaire.
+
+"And I send mine back to her."
+
+"And I keep them, too. Here they are." Eudore exposes a packet of
+worn and shiny paper, whose grimy condition the twilight modestly
+veils. "I keep them. Sometimes I read them again. When I'm cold and
+humpy, I read 'em again. It doesn't actually warm you up, but it
+seems to."
+
+There must be a deep significance in the curious expression, for
+several men raise their heads and say, "Yes, that's so."
+
+By fits and starts the conversation goes on in the bosom of this
+fantastic barn and the great moving shadows that cross it; night is
+heaped up in its corners, and pointed by a few scattered and sickly
+candles.
+
+I watch these busy and burdened flitters come and go, outline
+themselves strangely, then stoop and slide down to the ground; they
+talk to themselves and to each other. their feet are encumbered by
+the litter. They are showing their riches to each other. "Tiens,
+look!"--"Great!" they reply enviously.
+
+What they have not got they want. There are treasures among the
+squad long coveted by all; the two-liter water-bottle, for instance,
+preserved by Barque, that a skillful rifle-shot with a blank
+cartridge has stretched to the capacity of two and a half liters;
+and Bertrand's famous great knife with the horn handle.
+
+Among the heaving swarm there are sidelong glances that skim these
+curiosities, and then each man resumes "eyes right," devotes himself
+to his belongings, and concentrates upon getting it in order.
+
+They are mournful belongings, indeed. Everything made for the
+soldier is commonplace, ugly, and of bad quality; from his cardboard
+boots, attached to the uppers by a criss-cross of worthless thread,
+to his badly cut, badly shaped, and badly sewn clothes, made of
+shoddy and transparent cloth--blotting-paper--that one day of
+sunshine fades and an hour of rain wets through, to his emaciated
+leathers, brittle as shavings and torn by the buckle spikes, to his
+flannel underwear that is thinner than cotton, to his straw-like
+tobacco.
+
+Marthereau is beside me, and he points to our comrades: "Look at
+them, these poor chaps gaping into their bags o' tricks. You'd say
+it was a mothers' meeting, ogling their kids. Hark to 'em. They're
+calling for their knick-knacks. Tiens, that one, the times he says
+'My knife!' same as if be was calling 'Lon,' or 'Charles,' or
+'Dolphus.' And you know it's impossible for them to make their load
+any less. Can't be did. It isn't that they don't want--our job isn't
+one that makes us any stronger, eh? But they can't. Too proud of
+'em."
+
+The burdens to be borne are formidable, and one knows well enough,
+parbleu, that every item makes them more severe, each little
+addition is one bruise more.
+
+For it is not merely a matter of what one buries in his pockets and
+pouches. To complete the burden there is what one carries on his
+back. The knapsack is the trunk and even the cupboard; and the old
+soldier is familiar with the art of enlarging it almost miraculously
+by the judicious disposal of his household goods and provisions.
+Besides the regulation and obligatory contents--two tins of pressed
+beef, a dozen biscuits, two tablets of coffee and two packets of
+dried soup, the bag of sugar, fatigue smock, and spare boots--we
+find a way of getting in some pots of jam, tobacco, chocolate,
+candles, soft-soled shoes; and even soap, a spirit lamp, some
+solidified spirit, and some woolen things. With the blanket, sheet,
+tentcloth, trenching-tool, water-bottle, and an item of the
+field-cooking kit, [note 1] the burden gets heavier and taller and
+wider, monumental and crushing. And my neighbor says truly that
+every time he reaches his goal after some miles of highway and
+communication trenches, the poilu swears hard that the next time
+he'll leave a heap of things behind and give his shoulders a little
+relief from the yoke of the knapsack. But every time he is preparing
+for departure, he assumes again the same overbearing and almost
+superhuman load; he never lets it go, though he curses it always.
+
+"There are some bad boys," says Lamuse, "among the shirkers, that
+find a way of keeping something in the company wagon or the medical
+van. I know one that's got two shirts and a pair of drawers in an
+adjutant's canteen [note 2]--but, you see, there's two hundred and
+fifty chaps in the company, and they're all up to the dodge and not
+many of 'em can profit by it; it's chiefly the non-coms.; the more
+stripes they've got, the easier it is to plant their luggage, not
+forgetting that the commandant visits the wagons sometimes without
+warning and fires your things into the middle of the road if he
+finds 'em in a horse-box where they've no business--Be off with
+you!--not to mention the bully-ragging and the clink."
+
+"In the early days it was all right, my boy. There were some
+chaps--I've seen 'em--who stuck their bags and even their knapsacks
+in baby-carts and pushed 'em along the road."
+
+"Ah, not half! Those were the good times of the war. But all that's
+changed."
+
+Volpatte, deaf to all the talk, muffled in his blanket as if in a
+shawl which makes him look like an old witch, revolves round an
+object that lies on the ground. "I'm wondering," lie says,
+addressing no one, "whether to take away this damned tin stove. It's
+the only one in the squad and I've always carried it. Oui, but it
+leaks like a cullender." He cannot decide, and makes a really
+pathetic picture of separation.
+
+Barque watches him obliquely, and makes fun of him. We hear him say,
+"Senile dodderer!" But he pauses in his chaffing to say, "After all,
+if we were in his shoes we should be equally fatheaded."
+
+Volpatte postpones his decision till later. "I'll see about it in
+the morning, when I'm loading the camel's back."
+
+After the inspection and recharging of pockets, it is the turn of
+the bags, and then of the cartridge-pouches, and Barque holds forth
+on the way to make the regulation two hundred cartridges go into the
+three pouches. In the lump it is impossible. They must be unpacked
+and placed side by side upright, head against foot. Thus can one
+cram each pouch without leaving any space, and make himself a
+waistband that weighs over twelve pounds.
+
+Rifles have been cleaned already. One looks to the swathing of the
+breech and the plugging of the muzzle, precautions which trench-dirt
+renders indispensable.
+
+How every rifle can easily be recognized is discussed. "I've made
+some nicks in the sling. See, I've cut into the edge."
+
+"I've twisted a bootlace round the top of the sling, and that way, I
+can tell it by touch as well as seeing."
+
+"I use a mechanical button. No mistake about that. In the dark I can
+find it at once and say, 'That's my pea-shooter. Because, you know,
+there are some boys that don't bother themselves; they just roll
+around while the pals are cleaning theirs, and then they're devilish
+quick at putting a quiet fist on a popgun that's been cleaned; and
+then after they've even the cheek to go and say, 'Mon capitaine,
+I've got a rifle that's a bit of all right.' I'm not on in that act.
+It's the D system, my old wonder--a damned dirty dodge, and there
+are times when I'm fed up with it, and more."
+
+And thus, though their rifles are all alike, they are as different
+as their handwriting.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"It's curious and funny," says Marthereau to me "we're going up to
+the trenches to-morrow, and there's nobody drunk yet, nor that way
+inclined. Ah, I don't say," he concedes at once, "but what those two
+there aren't a bit fresh, nor a little elevated; without being
+absolutely blind, they're somewhat boozed, pr'aps--"
+
+"It's Poitron and Poilpot, of Broyer's squad."
+
+They are lying down and talking in a low voice. We can make out the
+round nose of one, which stands out equally with his mouth, close by
+a candle, and with his hand, whose lifted finger makes little
+explanatory signs, faithfully followed by the shadow it casts.
+
+"I know how to light a fire, but I don't know how to light it again
+when it's gone out," declares Poitron.
+
+"Ass!" says Poilpot, "if you know how to light it you know how to
+relight it, seeing that if you light it, it's because it's gone out,
+and you might say that you're relighting it when you're lighting
+it."
+
+"That's all rot. I'm not mathematical, and to hell with the
+gibberish you talk. I tell you and I tell you again that when it
+comes to lighting a fire, I'm there, but to light it again when it's
+gone out, I'm no good. I can't speak any straighter than that."
+
+I do not catch the insistent retort of Poilpot, but--"But, you
+damned numskull," gurgles Poitron, "haven't I told you thirty times
+that I can't? You must have a pig's head, anyway!"
+
+Marthereau confides to me, "I've heard about enough of that."
+Obviously he spoke too soon just now.
+
+A sort of fever, provoked by farewell libations, prevails in the
+wretched straw-spread hole where our tribe--some upright and
+hesitant, others kneeling and hammering like colliers--is mending,
+stacking, and subduing its provisions, clothes, and tools. There is
+a wordy growling, a riot of gesture. From the smoky glimmers,
+rubicund faces start forth in relief, and dark hands move about in
+the shadows like marionettes. In the barn next to ours, and
+separated from it only by a wall of a man's height, arise tipsy
+shouts. Two men in there have fallen upon each other with fierce
+violence and anger. The air is vibrant with the coarsest expressions
+the human ear ever hears. But one of the disputants, a stranger from
+another squad, is ejected by the tenants, and the flow of curses
+from the other grows feebler and expires.
+
+"Same as us," says Marthereau with a certain pride, "they hold
+themselves in!"
+
+It is true. Thanks to Bertrand, who is possessed by a hatred of
+drunkenness, of the fatal poison that gambles with multitudes, our
+squad is one of the least befouled by wine and brandy.
+
+They are shouting and singing and talking all around. And they laugh
+endlessly, for in the human mechanism laughter is the sound of
+wheels that work, of deeds that are done.
+
+One tries to fathom certain faces that show up in provocative relief
+among this menagerie of shadows, this aviary of reflections. But one
+cannot. They are visible, but you can see nothing in the depth of
+them.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"Ten o'clock already, friends," says Bertrand. "We'll finish the
+camel's humps off to-morrow. Time for by-by." Each one then slowly
+retires to rest, but the jabbering hardly pauses. Man takes all
+things easily when he is under no obligation to hurry. The men go to
+and fro, each with some object in his hand, and along the wall I
+watch Eudore's huge shadow gliding, as he passes in front of a
+candle with two little bags of camphor hanging from the end of his
+fingers.
+
+Lamuse is throwing himself about in search of a good position; he
+seems ill at ease. To-day, obviously. and whatever his capacity may
+be, he has eaten too much.
+
+"Some of us want to sleep! Shut them up, you lot of louts!" cries
+Mesnil Joseph from his litter.
+
+This entreaty has a subduing effect for a moment, but does not stop
+the burble of voices nor the passing to and fro.
+
+"We're going up to-morrow, it's true," says Paradis, "and in the
+evening we shall go into the first line. But nobody's thinking about
+it. We know it, and that's all."
+
+Gradually each has regained his place. I have stretched myself on
+the straw, and Marthereau wraps himself up by my side.
+
+Enter an enormous bulk, taking great pains not to make a noise. It
+is the field-hospital sergeant, a Marist Brother, a huge bearded
+simpleton in spectacles. When he has taken off his greatcoat and
+appears in his jacket, you are conscious that he feels awkward about
+showing his legs. We see that it hurries discreetly, this silhouette
+of a bearded hippopotamus. He blows, sighs, and mutters.
+
+Marthereau indicates him with a nod of his bead, and says to me,
+"Look at him. Those chaps have always got to be talking fudge. When
+we ask him what he does in civil life, he won't say 'I'm a school
+teacher' he says, leering at you from under his specs with the half
+of his eyes, 'I'm a professor.' When he gets up very early to go to
+mass, he says, 'I've got belly-ache, I must go and take a turn round
+the corner and no mistake.'"
+
+A little farther off, Papa Ramure is talking of his homeland: "Where
+I live, it's just a bit of a hamlet, no great shakes. There's my old
+man there, seasoning pipes all day long; whether he's working or
+resting, he blows his smoke up to the sky or into the smoke of the
+stove."
+
+I listen to this rural idyll, and it takes suddenly a specialized
+and technical character: "That's why he makes a paillon. D'you know
+what a paillon is? You take a stalk of green corn and peel it. You
+split it in two and then in two again, and you have different sizes.
+Then with a thread and the four slips of straw, he goes round the
+stem of his pipe--"
+
+The lesson ceases abruptly, there being no apparent audience.
+
+There are only two candles alight. A wide wing of darkness
+overspreads the prostrate collection of men.
+
+Private conversation still flickers along the primitive dormitory,
+and some fragments of it reach my ears. Just now, Papa Ramure is
+abusing the commandant.
+
+"The commandant, old man, with his four bits of gold string, I've
+noticed he don't know how to smoke. He sucks all out at his pipes,
+and he burns 'em. It isn't a mouth he's got in his head, it's a
+snout. The wood splits and scorches, and instead of being wood, it's
+coal. Clay pipes, they'll stick it better, but he roasts 'em brown
+all the same. Talk about a snout! So, old man, mind what I'm telling
+you, he'll come to what doesn't ever happen often; through being
+forced to get white-hot and baked to the marrow, his pipe'll explode
+in his nose before everybody. You'll see."
+
+Little by little, peace, silence, and darkness take possession of
+the barn and enshroud the hopes and the sighs of its occupants. The
+lines of identical bundles formed by these beings rolled up side by
+side in their blankets seem a sort of huge organ, which sends forth
+diversified snoring.
+
+With his nose already in his blanket, I hear Marthereau talking to
+me about himself: "I'm a buyer of rags, you know," he says, "or to
+put it better, a rag merchant. But me, I'm wholesale; I buy from the
+little rag-and-bone men of the streets, and I have a shop--a
+warehouse mind you!--which I use as a depot. I deal in all kinds of
+rags, from linen to jam-pots, but principally brush-handles, sacks,
+and old shoes; and naturally, I make a specialty of rabbit-skins."
+
+And a little later I still hear him: "As for me, little and
+queer-shaped as I am, all the same I can carry a bin of two hundred
+pounds' weight to the warehouse. up the steps, and my feet in
+sabots. Once I had a to-do with a person--"
+
+"What I can't abide," cries Fouillade, all of a sudden, "is the
+exercises and marches they give us when we're resting. My back's
+mincemeat, and I can't get a snooze even, I'm that cramped."
+
+There is a metallic noise in Volpatte's direction. He has decided to
+take the stove, though he chides it constantly for the fatal fault
+of its perforations.
+
+One who is but half asleep groans, "Oh, la, la! When will this war
+finish!"
+
+A cry of stubborn and mysterious rebellion bursts forth--"They'd
+take the very skin off us!"
+
+There follows a single, "Don't fret yourself!" as darkly
+inconsequent as the cry of revolt.
+
+I wake up a long time afterwards, as two o'clock is striking; and in
+a pallor of light which doubtless comes from the moon, I see the
+agitated silhouette of Pinegal. A cock has crowed afar.
+Pinegal raises himself halfway to a sitting position, and I
+hear his husky voice: "Well now, it's the middle of the night, and
+there's a cock loosing his jaw. He's blind drunk, that cock." He
+laughs, and repeats, "He's blind, that cock," and he twists himself
+again into the woolens, and resumes his slumber with a gurgle in
+which snores are mingled with merriment.
+
+Cocon has been wakened by Pinegal. The man of figures
+therefore thinks aloud, and says: "The squad had seventeen men when
+it set off for the war. It has seventeen also at present, with the
+stop-gaps. Each man has already worn out four greatcoats, one of the
+original blue, and three cigar-smoke blue, two pairs of trousers and
+six pairs of boots. One must count two rifles to each man, but one
+can't count the overalls. Our emergency rations have been renewed
+twenty-three times. Among us seventeen, we've been mentioned
+fourteen times in Army Orders, of which two were to the Brigade,
+four to the Division, and one to the Army. Once we stayed sixteen
+days in the trenches without relief. We've been quartered and lodged
+in forty-seven different villages up to now. Since the beginning of
+the campaign, twelve thousand men have passed through the regiment,
+which consists of two thousand."
+
+A strange lisping noise interrupts him. It comes from Blaire, whose
+new ivories prevent him from talking as they also prevent him from
+eating. But he puts them in every evening, and retains them all
+night with fierce determination, for he was promised that in the end
+he would grow accustomed to the object they have put into his head.
+
+I raise myself on my elbow, as on a battlefield, and look once more
+on the beings whom the scenes and happenings of the times have
+rolled up all together. I look at them all, plunged in the abyss of
+passive oblivion, some of them seeming still to be absorbed in their
+pitiful anxieties, their childish instincts, and their slave-like
+ignorance.
+
+The intoxication of sleep masters me. But I recall what they have
+done and what they will do; and with that consummate picture of a
+sorry human night before me, a shroud that fills our cavern with
+darkness, I dream of some great unknown light.
+
+______
+
+[note 1] There is a complete set for each squad--stoves, canvas
+buckets, coffee-mill, pan, etc--and each man carries some item on
+march.--Tr.
+
+[note 2] Cantine vivres, chest containing two days' rations and
+cooking utensils for four or five officers.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+15
+
+The Egg
+
+
+
+
+
+WE were badly off, hungry and thirsty; and in these wretched
+quarters there was nothing!
+
+Something had gone wrong with the revictualing department and our
+wants were becoming acute. Where the sorry place surrounded them,
+with its empty doors, its bones of houses, and its bald-headed
+telegraph posts. a crowd of hungry men were grinding their teeth and
+confirming the absence of everything:--"The juice has sloped and the
+wine's up the spout, and the bully's zero. Cheese? Nix. Napoo jam,
+napoo butter on skewers."
+
+"We've nothing, and no error, nothing; and play hell as you like, it
+doesn't help."
+
+"Talk about rotten quarters! Three houses with nothing inside but
+draughts and damp."
+
+"No good having any of the filthy here, you might as well have only
+the skin of a bob in your purse, as long as there's nothing to buy."
+
+"You might be a Rothschild, or even a military tailor, but what
+use'd your brass be?"
+
+"Yesterday there was a bit of a cat mewing round where the 7th are.
+I feel sure they've eaten it."
+
+"Yes, there was; you could see its ribs like rocks on the
+sea-shore."
+
+"There were some chaps," says Blaire, "who bustled about when they
+got here and managed to find a few bottles of common wine at the
+bacca-shop at the corner of the street."
+
+"Ah, the swine! Lucky devils to be sliding that down their necks."
+
+"It was muck, all the same, it'd make your cup as black as your
+baccy-pipe."
+
+"There are some, they say, who've swallowed a fowl."
+
+"Damn," says Fouillade.
+
+"I've hardly had a bite. I had a sardine left, and a little tea in
+the bottom of a bag that I chewed up with some sugar."
+
+"You can't even have a bit of a drunk--it's off the map."
+
+"And that isn't enough either, even when you're not a big eater and
+you're got a communication trench as flat as a pancake."
+
+"One meal in two days--a yellow mess, shining like gold, no broth
+and no meat--everything left behind."
+
+"And worst of all we've nothing to light a pipe with."
+
+"True, and that's misery. I haven't a single match. I had several
+bits of ends, but they've gone. I've hunted in vain through all the
+pockets of my flea-case--nix. As for buying them it's hopeless, as
+you say."
+
+"I've got the head of a match that I'm keeping." It is a real
+hardship indeed, and the sight is pitiful of the poilus who cannot
+light pipe or cigarette but put them away in their pockets and
+stroll in resignation. By good fortune, Tirloir has his petrol
+pipe-lighter and it still contains a little spirit. Those who are
+aware of it gather round him, bringing their pipes packed and cold.
+There is not even any paper to light, and the flame itself must be
+used until the remaining spirit in its tiny insect's belly is
+burned.
+
+As for me, I've been lucky, and I see Paradis wandering about, his
+kindly face to the wind, grumbling and chewing a bit of wood.
+"Tiens," I say to him, "take this."
+
+"A box of matches!" he exclaims amazed, looking at it as one looks
+at a jewel. "Egad! That's capital! Matches!"
+
+A moment later we see him lighting his pipe, his face saucily
+sideways and splendidly crimsoned by the reflected flame, and
+everybody shouts, "Paradis' got some matches!"
+
+Towards evening I meet Paradis near the ruined triangle of a
+house-front at the corner of the two streets of this most miserable
+among villages.
+
+He beckons to me. "Hist!" He has a curious and rather awkward air.
+
+"I say," he says to me affectionately, but looking at his feet, "a
+bit since, you chucked me a box of flamers. Well, you're going to
+get a bit of your own back for it. Here!"
+
+He puts something in my hand. "Be careful!" he whispers, "it's
+fragile!"
+
+Dazzled by the resplendent purity of his present. hardly even daring
+to believe my eyes, I see--an egg!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+16
+
+An Idyll
+
+
+
+
+
+"REALLY and truly," said Paradis, my neighbor in the ranks, "believe
+me or not, I'm knocked out--I've never before been so paid on a
+march as I have been with this one, this evening."
+
+His feet were dragging, and his square shoulders bowed under the
+burden of the knapsack, whose height and big irregular outline
+seemed almost fantastic. Twice he tripped and stumbled.
+
+Paradis is tough. But he had been running up and down the trench all
+night as liaison man while the others were sleeping, so he had good
+reason to be exhausted and to growl "Quoi? These kilometers must be
+made of india-rubber, there's no way out of it."
+
+Every three steps he hoisted his knapsack roughly up with a hitch of
+his hips, and panted under its dragging; and all the heap that he
+made with his bundles tossed and creaked like an overloaded wagon.
+
+"We're there," said a non-com.
+
+Non-coms. always say that, on every occasion. But--in spite of the
+non-com.'s declaration--we were really arriving in a twilight
+village which seemed to be drawn in white chalk and heavy strokes of
+black upon the blue paper of the sky, where the sable silhouette of
+the church--a pointed tower flanked by two turrets more slender and
+more sharp--was that of a tall cypress.
+
+But the soldier, even when he enters the village where he is to be
+quartered, has not reached the end of his troubles. It rarely
+happens that either the squad or the section actually lodges in the
+place assigned to them, and this by reason of misunderstandings and
+cross purposes which tangle and disentangle themselves on the spot;
+and it is only after several quarter-hours of tribulation that each
+man is led to his actual shelter of the moment.
+
+So after the usual wanderings we were admitted to our night's
+lodging--a roof supported by four posts, and with the four quarters
+of the compass for its walls. But it was a good roof--an advantage
+which we could appreciate. It was already sheltering a cart and a
+plow, and we settled ourselves by them. Paradis, who had fumed and
+complained without ceasing during the hour we had spent in tramping
+to and fro, threw down his knapsack and then himself, and stayed
+there awhile, weary to the utmost, protesting that his limbs were
+benumbed, that the soles of his feet were painful, and indeed all
+the rest of him.
+
+But now the house to which our hanging roof was subject, the house
+which stood just in front of us, was lighted up. Nothing attracts a
+soldier in the gray monotony of evening so much as a window whence
+beams the star of a lamp.
+
+"Shall we have a squint?" proposed Volpatte.
+
+"So be it," said Paradis. He gets up gradually, and hobbling with
+weariness, steers himself towards the golden window that has
+appeared in the gloom, and then towards the door. Volpatte follows
+him, and I Volpatte.
+
+We enter, and ask the old man who has let us in and whose twinkling
+head is as threadbare as an old hat, if he has any wine to sell.
+
+"No," replies the old man, shaking his head, where a little white
+fluff crops out in places.
+
+"No beer? No coffee? Anything at all--"
+
+"No, mes amis, nothing of anything. We don't belong here; we're
+refugees, you know."
+
+"Then seeing there's nothing, we'll be off." We right-about face. At
+least we have enjoyed for a moment the warmth which pervades the
+house and a sight of the lamp. Already Volpatte has gained the
+threshold and his back is disappearing in the darkness.
+
+But I espy an old woman, sunk in the depths of a chair in the other
+corner of the kitchen, who appears to have some busy occupation.
+
+I pinch Paradis' arm. "There's the belle of the house. Shall we pay
+our addresses to her?"
+
+Paradis makes a gesture of lordly indifference. He has lost interest
+in women--all those he has seen for a year and a half were not for
+him; and moreover, even when they would like to be his, he is
+equally uninterested.
+
+"Young or old--pooh!" he says to me, beginning to yawn. For want of
+something to do and to lengthen the leaving, he goes up to the
+goodwife. "Good-evening, gran'ma," he mumbles, finishing his yawn.
+
+"Good-evening, mes enfants," quavers the old dame. So near, we see
+her in detail. She is shriveled, bent and bowed in her old bones,
+and the whole of her face is white as the dial of a clock.
+
+And what is she doing? Wedged between her chair and the edge of the
+table she is trying to clean some boots. It is a heavy task for her
+infantile hands; their movements are uncertain, and her strokes with
+the brush sometimes go astray. The boots, too, are very dirty
+indeed.
+
+Seeing that we are watching her, she whispers to us that she must
+polish them well, and this evening too, for they are her little
+girl's boots, who is a dressmaker in the town and goes off first
+thing in the morning.
+
+Paradis has stooped to look at the boots more closely, and suddenly
+he puts his hand out towards them. "Drop it, gran'ma; I'll spruce up
+your lass's trotter-cases for you in three secs."
+
+The old woman lodges an objection by shaking her head and her
+shoulders. But Paradis takes the boots with authority, while the
+grandmother, paralyzed by her weakness, argues the question and
+opposes us with shadowy protest.
+
+Paradis has taken a boot in each hand; he holds them gingerly and
+looks at them for a moment, and you would even say that he was
+squeezing them a little.
+
+"Aren't they small!" he says in a voice which is not what we hear in
+the usual way.
+
+He has secured the brushes as well, and sets himself to wielding
+them with zealous carefulness. I notice that he is smiling, with his
+eyes fixed on his work.
+
+Then, when the mud has gone from the boots, he takes some polish on
+the end of the double-pointed brush and caresses them with it
+intently.
+
+They are dainty boots--quite those of a stylish young lady; rows of
+little buttons shine on them.
+
+"Not a single button missing," he whispers to me, and there is pride
+in his tone.
+
+He is no longer sleepy; he yawns no more. On the contrary, his lips
+are tightly closed; a gleam of youth and spring-time lights up his
+face; and he who was on the point of going to sleep seems just to
+have woke up.
+
+And where the polish has bestowed a beautiful black his fingers move
+over the body of the boot, which opens widely in the upper part and
+betrays--ever such a little--the lower curves of the leg. His
+fingers, so skilled in polishing, are rather awkward all the same as
+they turn the boots over and turn them again, as he smiles at them
+and ponders--profoundly and afar--while the old woman lifts her arms
+in the air and calls me to witness "What a very kind soldier!" he
+is.
+
+It is finished. The boots are cleaned and finished off in style;
+they are like mirrors. Nothing is left to do.
+
+He puts them on the edge of the table, very carefully, as if they
+were saintly relics; then at last his hands let them go. But his
+eyes do not at once leave them. He looks at them, and then lowering
+his head, he looks at his own boots. I remember that while he made
+this comparison the great lad--a hero by destiny, a Bohemian, a
+monk--smiled once more with all his heart.
+
+The old woman was showing signs of activity in the depths of her
+chair; she had an idea. "I'll tell her! She shall thank you herself,
+monsieur! Hey, Josephine!" she cried, turning towards a door.
+
+But Paradis stopped her with an expansive gesture which I thought
+magnificent. "No, it's not worth while, gran'ma; leave her where she
+is. We're going. We won't trouble her, allez!"
+
+Such decision sounded in his voice that it carried authority, and
+the old woman obediently sank into inactivity and held her peace.
+
+We went away to our bed under the wall-less roof, between the arms
+of the plow that was waiting for us. And then Paradis began again to
+yawn; but by the light of the candle in our crib, a full minute
+later, I saw that the happy smile remained yet on his face.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+17
+
+In the Sap
+
+
+
+
+
+IN the excitement of a distribution of letters from which the squad
+were returning--some with the delight of a letter, some with the
+semi-delight of a postcard, and others with a new load (speedily
+reassumed) of expectation and hope--a comrade comes with a
+brandished newspaper to tell us an amazing story--"Tu sais, the
+weasel-faced ancient at Gauchin?"
+
+"The old boy who was treasure-seeking?"
+
+"Well, he's found it!"
+
+"Gerraway!"
+
+"It's just as I tell you, you great lump! What would you like me to
+say to you? Mass? Don't know it. Anyway, the yard of his place has
+been bombed, and a chest full of money was turned up out of the
+ground near a wall. He got his treasure full on the back. And now
+the parson's quietly cut in and talks about claiming credit for the
+miracle"
+
+We listen open-mouthed. "A treasure--well! well! The old bald-head!"
+
+The sudden revelation plunges us in an abyss of reflection. "And to
+think how damned sick we were of the old cackler when he made such a
+song about his treasure and dinned it into our ears!"
+
+"We were right enough down there, you remember, when we were saying
+'One never knows.' Didn't guess how near we were to being right,
+either."
+
+"All the same, there are some things you can be sure of," says
+Farfadet, who as soon as Gauchin was mentioned had remained dreaming
+and distant, as though a lovely face was smiling on him. "But as for
+this," he added, "I'd never have believed it either! Shan't I find
+him stuck up, the old ruin, when I go back there after the war!"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"They want a willing man to help the sappers with a job," says the
+big adjutant.
+
+"Not likely!" growl the men, without moving.
+
+"It'll be of use in relieving the boys," the adjutant goes on.
+
+With that the grumbling ceases, and several heads are raised.
+"Here!" says Lamuse.
+
+"Get into your harness, big 'un, and come with me." Lamuse buckles
+on his knapsack, rolls up his blanket, and fetters his pouches.
+Since his seizure of unlucky affection was allayed, he has become
+more melancholy than before, and although a sort of fatality makes
+him continually stouter, he has become engrossed and isolated, and
+rarely speaks.
+
+In the evening something comes along the trench, rising and falling
+according to the lumps and holes in the ground; a shape that seems
+in the shadows to be swimming, that outspreads its arms sometimes,
+as though appealing for help. It is Lamuse.
+
+He is among us again, covered with mold and mud. He trembles and
+streams with sweat, as one who is afraid. His lips stir, and he
+gasps, before they can shape a word.
+
+"Well, what is there?" we ask him vainly.
+
+He collapses in a corner among us and prostrates himself. We offer
+him wine, and he refuses it with a sign. Then he turns towards me
+and beckons me with a movement of his head.
+
+When I am by him he whispers to me, very low, and as if in church,
+"I have seen Eudoxie again." He gasps for breath, his chest wheezes,
+and with his eyeballs fast fixed upon a nightmare, he says, "She was
+putrid."
+
+"It was the place we'd lost," Lamuse went on, "and that the
+Colonials took again with the bayonet ten days ago.
+
+"First we made a hole for the sap, and I was in at it. since I was
+scooping more than the others I found myself in front. The others
+were widening and making solid behind. But behold I find a jumble of
+beams. I'd lit on an old trench, caved in, 'vidently; half caved
+in--there was some space and room. In the middle of those stumps of
+wood all mixed together that I was lifting away one by one from in
+front of me, there was something like a big sandbag in height.
+upright, and something on the top of it hanging down.
+
+"And behold a plank gives way, and the queer sack falls on me, with
+its weight on top. I was pegged down, and the smell of a corpse
+filled my throat--on the top of the bundle there was a head, and it
+was the hair that I'd seen hanging down.
+
+"You understand, one couldn't see very well; but I recognized the
+hair 'cause there isn't any other like it in the world, and then the
+rest of the face, all stove in and moldy, the neck pulped, and all
+the lot dead for a month perhaps. It was Eudoxie, I tell you.
+
+"Yes, it was the woman I could never go near before, you know--that
+I only saw a long way off and couldn't ever touch, same as diamonds.
+She used to run about everywhere, you know. She used even to wander
+in the lines. One day she must have stopped a bullet, and stayed
+there, dead and lost, until the chance of this sap.
+
+"You clinch the position? I was forced to hold her up with one arm
+as well as I could, and work with the other. She was trying to fall
+on me with all her weight. Old man, she wanted to kiss me, and I
+didn't want--it was terrible. She seemed to be saying to me, 'You
+wanted to kiss me, well then, come, come now!' She had on her--she
+had there, fastened on, the remains of a bunch of flowers, and that
+was rotten, too, and the posy stank in my nose like the corpse of
+some little beast. "I had to take her in my arms, in both of them,
+and turn gently round so that I could put her down on the other
+side. The place was so narrow and pinched that as we turned, for a
+moment, I hugged her to my breast and couldn't help it. with all my
+strength, old chap, as I should have hugged her once on a time if
+she'd have let me.
+
+"I've been half an hour cleaning myself from the touch of her and
+the smell that she breathed on me in spite of me and in spite of
+herself. Ah, lucky for me that I'm as done up as a wretched
+cart-horse!"
+
+He turns over on his belly, clenches his fists, and slumbers, with
+his face buried in the ground and his dubious dream of passion and
+corruption.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+18
+
+A Box of Matches
+
+
+
+
+
+IT is five o'clock in the evening. Three men are seen moving in the
+bottom of the gloomy trench. Around their extinguished fire in the
+dirty excavation they are frightful to see, black and sinister. Rain
+and negligence have put their fire out, and the four cooks are
+looking at the corpses of brands that are shrouded in ashes and the
+stumps of wood whence the flame has flown.
+
+Volpatte staggers up to the group and throws down the black mass
+that he had on his shoulder. "I've pulled it out of a dug-out where
+it won't show much."
+
+"We have wood," says Blaire, "but we've got to light it. Otherwise,
+how are we going to cook this cab-horse?"
+
+"It's a fine piece," wails a dark-faced man, "thin flank. In my
+belief, that's the best bit of the beast, the flank."
+
+"Fire?" Volpatte objects, "there are no more matches, no more
+anything."
+
+"We must have fire," growls Poupardin, whose indistinct bulk has the
+proportions of a bear as he rolls and sways in the dark depths of
+our cage.
+
+"No two ways about it, we've got to have it," Pepin agrees.
+He is coming out of a dug-out like a sweep out of a chimney. His
+gray mass emerges and appears, like night upon evening.
+
+"Don't worry; I shall get some," declares Blaire in a concentrated
+tone of angry decision. He has not been cook long, and is keen to
+show himself quite equal to adverse conditions in the exercise of
+his functions.
+
+He spoke as Martin Cesar used to speak when he was alive. His
+aim is to resemble the great legendary figure of the cook who always
+found ways for a fire, just as others, among the non-coms., would
+fain imitate Napoleon.
+
+"I shall go if it's necessary and fetch every bit of wood there is
+at Battalion H.Q. I shall go and requisition the colonel's
+matches--I shall go--"
+
+"Let's go and forage." Poupardin leads the way. His face is like the
+bottom of a saucepan that the fire has gradually befouled. As it is
+cruelly cold, he is wrapped up all over. He wears a cape which is
+half goatskin and half sheepskin, half brown and half whitish, and
+this twofold skin of tints geometrically cut makes him like some
+strange occult animal.
+
+Pepin has a cotton cap so soiled and so shiny with grease
+that it might be made of black silk. Volpatte, inside his Balaklava
+and his fleeces, resembles a walking tree-trunk. A square opening
+betrays a yellow face at the top of the thick and heavy bark of the
+mass he makes, which is bifurcated by a couple of legs.
+
+"Let's look up the 10th. They've always got the needful. They're on
+the Pylones road, beyond the Boyau-Neuf."
+
+The four alarming objects get under way, cloud-shape, in the trench
+that unwinds itself sinuously before them like a blind alley,
+unsafe, unlighted, and unpaved. It is uninhabited, too, in this
+part, being a gangway between the second lines and the first lines.
+
+In the dusty twilight two Moroccans meet the fire-questing cooks.
+One has the skin of a black boot and the other of a yellow shoe.
+Hope gleams in the depths of the cooks' hearts.
+
+"Matches, boys?"
+
+"Napoo," replies the black one, and his smile reveals his long
+crockery-like teeth in his cigar-colored mouth of moroccan leather.
+
+In his turn the yellow one advances and asks, "Tobacco? A bit of
+tobacco?" And be holds out his greenish sleeve and his great hard
+paw, in which the cracks are full of brown dirt, and the nails
+purplish.
+
+Pepin growls, rummages in his clothes, and pulls out a pinch
+of tobacco, mixed with dust, which he hands to the sharpshooter.
+
+A little farther they meet a sentry who is half asleep--in the
+middle of the evening--on a heap of loose earth. The drowsy soldier
+says, "It's to the right, and then again to the right, and then
+straight forward. Don't go wrong about it."
+
+They march--for a long time. "We must have come a long way," says
+Volpatte, after half an hour of fruitless paces and encloistered
+loneliness.
+
+"I say, we're going downhill a hell of a lot, don't you think?" asks
+Blaire.
+
+"Don't worry, old duffer," scoffs Pepin, "but if you've got
+cold feet you can leave us to it."
+
+Still we tramp on in the falling night. The ever-empty trench--a
+desert of terrible length--has taken a shabby and singular
+appearance. The parapets are in ruins; earthslides have made the
+ground undulate in hillocks.
+
+An indefinite uneasiness lays hold of the four huge fire-hunters,
+and increases as night overwhelms them in this monstrous road.
+
+Pepin, who is leading just now, stands fast and holds up his
+hand as a signal to halt. "Footsteps," they say in a sobered tone.
+
+Then, and in the heart of them, they are afraid. It was a mistake
+for them all to leave their shelter for so long. They are to blame.
+And one never knows.
+
+"Get in there, quick, quick!" says Pepin, pointing to a
+right-angled cranny on the ground level.
+
+By the test of a hand, the rectangular shadow is proved to be the
+entry to a funk-hole. They crawl in singly; and the last one,
+impatient, pushes the others; they become an involuntary carpet in
+the dense darkness of the hole.
+
+A sound of steps and of voices becomes distinct and draws nearer.
+From the mass of the four men who tightly hung up the burrow,
+tentative hands are put out at a venture. All at once Pepin
+murmurs in a stifled voice, "What's this?"
+
+"What?" ask the others, pressed and wedged against him.
+
+"Clips!" says Pepin under his breath, "Boche cartridge-clips
+on the shelf! We're in the Boche trench!"
+
+"Let's hop it." Three men make a jump to get out.
+
+"Look out, bon Dieu! Don't stir!--footsteps--"
+
+They hear some one walking, with the quick step of a solitary man.
+They keep still and bold their breath. With their eyes fixed on the
+ground level, they see the darkness moving on the right, and then a
+shadow with legs detaches itself, approaches, and passes. The shadow
+assumes an outline. It is topped by a helmet covered with a cloth
+and rising to a point. There is no other sound than that of his
+passing feet.
+
+Hardly has the German gone by when the four cooks, with no concerted
+plan and with a single movement, burst forth, jostling each other,
+run like madmen, and hurl themselves on him.
+
+"Kamerad, messieurs!" he says.
+
+But the blade of a knife gleams and disappears. The man collapses as
+if he would plunge into the ground. Pepin seizes the helmet
+as the Boche is failing and keeps it in his hand.
+
+"Let's leg it," growls the voice of Poupardin.
+
+"Got to search him first!"
+
+They lift him and turn him over, and set the soft, damp and warm
+body up again. Suddenly he coughs.
+
+"He isn't dead!"--"Yes, he is dead; that's the air."
+
+They shake him by the pockets; with hasty breathing the four black
+men stoop over their task. "The helmet's mine," says Pepin.
+"It was me that knifed him, I want the helmet."
+
+They tear from the body its pocket-book of still warm papers, its
+field-glass, purse, and leggings.
+
+"Matches!" shouts Blaire, shaking a box, "he's got some!"
+
+"Ah, the fool that you are!" hisses Volpatte.
+
+"Now let's be off like hell." They pile the body in a corner and
+break into a run, prey to a sort of panic, and regardless of the row
+their disordered flight makes.
+
+"It's this way!--This way!--Hurry, lads--for all you're worth!"
+
+Without speaking they dash across the maze of the strangely empty
+trench that seems to have no end.
+
+"My wind's gone," says Blaire, "I'm--" He staggers and stops.
+
+"Come on, buck up, old chap," gasps Pepin, hoarse and
+breathless. He takes him by the sleeve and drags him forward like a
+stubborn shaft-horse.
+
+'We're right!" says Poupardin suddenly. "Yes, I remember that tree.
+It's the Pylones road!"
+
+"Ah!" wails Blaire, whose breathing is shaking him like an engine.
+He throws himself forward with a last impulse--and sits down on the
+ground.
+
+"Halt!" cries a sentry--"Good Lord!" he stammers as he sees the four
+poilus. "Where the--where are you coming from, that way?"
+
+They laugh, jump about like puppets, full-blooded and streaming with
+perspiration, blacker than ever in the night. The German officer's
+helmet is gleaming in the hands of Pepin. "Oh, Christ!"
+murmurs the sentry, with gaping mouth, "but what's been up?"
+
+An exuberant reaction excites and bewitches them. All talk at once.
+In haste and confusion they act again the drama which hardly yet
+they realize is over. They had gone wrong when they left the sleepy
+sentry and had taken the International Trench, of which a part is
+ours and another part German. Between the French and German sections
+there is no barricade or division. There is merely a sort of neutral
+zone, at the two ends of which sentries watch ceaselessly. No doubt
+the German watcher was not at his post, or likely he hid himself
+when he saw the four shadows, or perhaps be doubled back and had not
+time to bring up reinforcements. Or perhaps, too, the German officer
+had strayed too far ahead in the neutral zone. In short, one
+understands what happened without understanding it.
+
+"The funny part of it," says Pepin, "is that we knew all
+about that, and never thought to be careful about it when we set
+off."
+
+"We were looking for matches," says Volpatte.
+
+"And we've got some!" cries Pepin. "You've not lost the
+flamers, old broomstick?"
+
+"No damned fear!" says Blaire; "Boche matches are better stuff than
+ours. Besides, they're all we've got to light our fire! Lose my box?
+Let any one try to pinch it off me!"
+
+"We're behind time--the soup-water'll be freezing. Hurry up, so far.
+Afterwards there'll be a good yarn to tell in the sewer where the
+boys are, about what we did to the Boches."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+19
+
+Bombardment
+
+
+
+
+
+WE are in the flat country, a vast mistiness, but above it is dark
+blue. The end of the night is marked by a little falling snow which
+powders our shoulders and the folds in our sleeves. We are marching
+in fours, hooded. We seem in the turbid twilight to be the wandering
+survivors of one Northern district who are trekking to another.
+
+We have followed a road and have crossed the ruins of
+Ablain-Saint-Nazaire. We have had confused glimpses of its whitish
+heaps of houses and the dim spider-webs of its suspended roofs. The
+village is so long that although full night buried us in it we saw
+its last buildings beginning to pale in the frost of dawn. Through
+the grating of a cellar on the edge of this petrified ocean's waves,
+we made out the fire kept going by the custodians of the dead town.
+We have paddled in swampy fields, lost ourselves in silent places
+where the mud seized us by the feet, we have dubiously regained our
+balance and our bearings again on another road, the one which leads
+from Carency to Souchez. The tall bordering poplars are shivered and
+their trunks mangled; in one place the road is an enormous colonnade
+of trees destroyed. Then, marching with us on both sides, we see
+through the shadows ghostly dwarfs of trees, wide-cloven like
+spreading palms; botched and jumbled into round blocks or long
+strips; doubled upon themselves, as if they knelt. From time to time
+our march is disordered and bustled by the yielding of a swamp. The
+road becomes a marsh which we cross on our heels, while our feet
+make the sound of sculling. Planks have been laid in it here and
+there. Where they have so far sunk in the mud as to proffer their
+edges to us we slip on them. Sometimes there is enough water to
+float them, and then under the weight of a man they splash and go
+under, and the man stumbles or falls, with frenzied imprecations.
+
+It must be five o'clock. The stark and affrighting scene unfolds
+itself to our eyes, but it is still encircled by a great fantastic
+ring of mist and of darkness. We go on and on without pause, and
+come to a place where we can make out a dark hillock, at the foot of
+which there seems to be some lively movement of human beings.
+
+"Advance by twos," says the leader of the detachment. "Let each team
+of two take alternately a plank and a hurdle." We load ourselves up.
+One of the two in each couple assumes the rifle of his partner as
+well as his own. The other with difficulty shifts and pulls out from
+the pile a long plank, muddy and slippery, which weighs full eighty
+pounds, or a hurdle of leafy branches as big as a door, which he can
+only just keep on his back as he bends forward with his hands aloft
+and grips its edges.
+
+We resume our march, very slowly and very ponderously, scattered
+over the now graying road, with complaints and heavy curses which
+the effort strangles in our throats. After about a hundred yards,
+the two men of each team exchange loads, so that after two hundred
+yards, in spite of the bitter blenching breeze of early morning, all
+but the non-coms. are running with sweat.
+
+Suddenly a vivid star expands down yonder in the uncertain direction
+that we are taking--a rocket. Widely it lights a part of the sky
+with its milky nimbus, blots out the stars, and then falls
+gracefully, fairy-like.
+
+There is a swift light opposite us over there; a flash and a
+detonation. It is a shell! By the flat reflection that the explosion
+instantaneously spreads over the lower sky we see a ridge clearly
+outlined in front of us from east to west, perhaps half a mile away.
+
+That ridge is ours--so much of it as we can see from here and up to
+the top of it, where our troops are. On the other slope, a hundred
+yards from our first line, is the first German line. The shell fell
+on the summit, in our lines; it is the others who are firing.
+Another shell another and yet another plant trees of faintly violet
+light on the top of the rise, and each of them dully illumines the
+whole of the horizon.
+
+Soon there is a sparkling of brilliant stars and a sudden jungle of
+fiery plumes on the hill; and a fairy mirage of blue and white hangs
+lightly before our eyes in the full gulf of night.
+
+Those among us who must devote the whole buttressed power of their
+arms and legs to prevent their greasy loads from sliding off their
+backs and to prevent themselves from sliding to the ground, these
+neither see nor hear anything. The others, sniffing and shivering
+with cold, wiping their noses with limp and sodden handkerchiefs,
+watch and remark, cursing the obstacles in the way with fragments of
+profanity. "It's like watching fireworks," they say.
+
+And to complete the illusion of a great operatic scene, fairy-like
+but sinister, before which our bent and black party crawls and
+splashes, behold a red star, and then a green; then a sheaf of red
+fire, very much tardier. In our ranks, as the available half of our
+pairs of eyes watch the display, we cannot help murmuring in idle
+tones of popular admiration, "Ah, a red one!"--"Look, a green one!"
+It is the Germans who are sending up signals, and our men as well
+who are asking for artillery support.
+
+Our road turns and climbs again as the day at last decides to
+appear. Everything looks dirty. A layer of stickiness, pearl-gray
+and white, covers the road, and around it the real world makes a
+mournful appearance. Behind us we leave ruined Souchez, whose houses
+are only flat heaps of rubbish and her trees but humps of
+bramble-like slivers. We plunge into a hole on our left, the
+entrance to the communication trench. We let our loads fall in a
+circular enclosure prepared for them, and both hot and frozen we
+settled in the trench and wait our hands abraded, wet, and stiff
+with cramp.
+
+Buried in our holes up to the chin, our chests heaving against the
+solid bulk of the ground that protects us, we watch the dazzling and
+deepening drama develop. The bombardment is redoubled. The trees of
+light on the ridge have melted into hazy parachutes in the pallor of
+dawn, sickly heads of Medusae with points of fire; then, more
+sharply defined as the day expands, they become bunches of
+smoke-feathers, ostrich feathers white and gray, which come suddenly
+to life on the jumbled and melancholy soil of Hill 119, five or six
+hundred yards in front of us, and then slowly fade away. They are
+truly the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, circling as one
+and thundering together. On the flank of the bill we see a party of
+men running to earth. One by one they disappear, swallowed up in the
+adjoining anthills.
+
+Now, one can better make out the form of our "guests." At each shot
+a tuft of sulphurous white underlined in black forms sixty yards up
+in the air, unfolds and mottles itself, and we catch in the
+explosion the whistling of the charge of bullets that the yellow
+cloud hurls angrily to the ground. It bursts in sixfold squalls, one
+after another--bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It is the 77 mm.
+gun.
+
+We disdain the 77 mm. shrapnel, in spite of the fact that Blesbois
+was killed by one of them three days ago. They nearly always burst
+too high. Barque explains it to us, although we know it well: "One's
+chamber-pot protects one's nut well enough against the bullets. So
+they can destroy your shoulder and damn well knock you down, but
+they don't spread you about. Naturally, you've got to be fly, all
+the same. Got to be careful you don't lift your neb in the air as
+long as they're buzzing about, nor put your hand out to see if it's
+raining. Now, our 75 mm.--"
+
+"There aren't only the 77's," Mesnil Andre broke in, "there's
+all damned sorts. Spell those out for me--" Those are shrill and
+cutting whistles, trembling or rattling; and clouds of all shapes
+gather on the slopes yonder whose vastness shows through them,
+slopes where our men are in the depths of the dug-outs. Gigantic
+plumes of faint fire mingle with huge tassels of steam, tufts that
+throw out straight filaments, smoky feathers that expand as they
+fall--quite white or greenish-gray, black or copper with gleams of
+gold, or as if blotched with ink.
+
+The two last explosions are quite near. Above the battered ground
+they take shape like vast balls of black and tawny dust; and as they
+deploy and leisurely depart at the wind's will, having finished
+their task, they have the outline of fabled dragons.
+
+Our line of faces on the level of the ground turns that way, and we
+follow them with our eyes from the bottom of the trench in the
+middle of this country peopled by blazing and ferocious apparitions,
+these fields that the sky has crushed.
+
+"Those, they're the 150 mm. howitzers."--"They're the 210's,
+calf-head."--"There go the regular guns, too; the hogs! Look at that
+one!" It was a shell that burst on the ground and threw up earth and
+debris in a fan-shaped cloud of darkness. Across the cloven land it
+looked like the frightful spitting of some volcano, piled up in the
+bowels of the earth.
+
+A diabolical uproar surrounds us. We are conscious of a sustained
+crescendo, an incessant multiplication of the universal frenzy. A
+hurricane of hoarse and hollow banging, of raging clamor, of
+piercing and beast-like screams, fastens furiously with tatters of
+smoke upon the earth where we are buried up to our necks, and the
+wind of the shells seems to set it heaving and pitching.
+
+"Look at that," bawls Barque, "and me that said they were short of
+munitions!"
+
+"Oh, la, la! We know all about that! That and the other fudge the
+newspapers squirt all over us!"
+
+A dull crackle makes itself audible amidst the babel of noise. That
+slow rattle is of all the sounds of war the one that most quickens
+the heart.
+
+"The coffee-mill! [note 1] One of ours, listen. The shots come
+regularly, while the Boches' haven't got the same length of time
+between the shots; they go
+crack--crack-crack-crack--crack-crack--crack--"
+
+"Don't cod yourself, crack-pate; it isn't an unsewing-machine at
+all; it's a motor-cycle on the road to 31 dugout, away yonder."
+
+"Well, I think it's a chap up aloft there, having a look round from
+his broomstick," chuckles Pepin, as he raises his nose and
+sweeps the firmament in search of an aeroplane.
+
+A discussion arises, but one cannot say what the noise is, and
+that's all. One tries in vain to become familiar with all those
+diverse disturbances. It even happened the other day in the wood
+that a whole section mistook for the hoarse howl of a shell the
+first notes of a neighboring mule as he began his whinnying bray.
+
+"I say, there's a good show of sausages in the air this morning,"
+says Lamuse. Lifting our eyes, we count them.
+
+"There are eight sausages on our side and eight on the Boches',"
+says Cocon, who has already counted them.
+
+There are, in fact, at regular intervals along the horizon, opposite
+the distance-dwindled group of captive enemy balloons, the eight
+long hovering eyes of the army, buoyant and sensitive, and joined to
+the various headquarters by living threads.
+
+"They see us as we see them. how the devil can one escape from that
+row of God Almighties up there?"
+
+There's our reply!
+
+Suddenly, behind our backs, there bursts the sharp and deafening
+stridor of the 75's. Their increasing crackling thunder arouses and
+elates us. We shout with our guns, and look at each other without
+hearing our shouts--except for the curiously piercing voice that
+comes from Barque's great mouth--amid the rolling of that fantastic
+drum whose every note is the report of a cannon.
+
+Then we turn our eyes ahead and outstretch our necks, and on the top
+of the hill we see the still higher silhouette of a row of black
+infernal trees whose terrible roots are striking down into the
+invisible slope where the enemy cowers.
+
+While the "75" battery continues its barking a hundred yards behind
+us--the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy
+scream of force and fury--a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish
+oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side. "It's a gran'pa, that
+one!"
+
+The shell cleaves the air at perhaps a thousand yards above us; the
+voice of its gun covers all as with a pavilion of resonance. The
+sound of its travel is sluggish, and one divines a projectile
+bigger-boweled, more enormous than the others. We can hear it
+passing and declining in front with the ponderous and increasing
+vibration of a train that enters a station under brakes; then, its
+heavy whine sounds fainter. We watch the hill opposite. and after
+several seconds it is covered by a salmon-pink cloud that the wind
+spreads over one-half of the horizon. "It's a 220 mm."
+
+"One can see them," declares Volpatte, "those shells, when they come
+out of the gun. If you're in the right line, you can even see them a
+good long away from the gun."
+
+Another follows: "There! Look, look! Did you see that one? You
+didn't look quick enough, you missed it. Get a move on! Look,
+another! Did you see it?"
+
+"I did not see it."--"Ass! Got to be a bedstead for you to see it!
+Look, quick, that one, there! Did you see it, unlucky
+good-for-nothing?"--" I saw it; is that all?"
+
+Some have made out a small black object, slender and pointed as a
+blackbird with folded wings, pricking a wide curve down from the
+zenith.
+
+"That weighs 240 lb., that one, my old bug," says Volpatte proudly,
+"and when that drops on a funk-hole it kills everybody inside it.
+Those that aren't picked off by the explosion are struck dead by the
+wind of it, or they're gas-poisoned before they can say 'ouf!'"
+
+"The 270 mm. shell can be seen very well, too--talk about a bit of
+iron--when the howitzer sends it up--allez, off you go!"
+
+"And the 155 Rimailho, too; but you can't see that one because it
+goes too straight and too far; the more you look for it the more it
+vanishes before your eyes."
+
+In a stench of sulphur amid black powder, of burned stuffs and
+calcined earth which roams in sheets about the country, all the
+menagerie is let loose and gives battle. Bellowings, roarings,
+growlings, strange and savage; feline caterwaulings that fiercely
+rend your ears and search your belly, or the long-drawn piercing
+hoot like the siren of a ship in distress. At times, even, something
+like shouts cross each other in the air-currents, with curious
+variation of tone that make the sound human. The country is bodily
+lifted in places and falls back again. From one end of the horizon
+to the other it seems to us that the earth itself is raging with
+storm and tempest.
+
+And the greatest guns, far away and still farther, diffuse growls
+much subdued and smothered, but you know the strength of them by the
+displacement of air which comes and raps you on the ear.
+
+Now, behold a heavy mass of woolly green which expands and hovers
+over the bombarded region and draws out in every direction. This
+touch of strangely incongruous color in the picture summons
+attention, and all we encaged prisoners turn our faces towards the
+hideous outcrop.
+
+"Gas, probably. Let's have our masks ready."--"The hogs!"
+
+"They're unfair tricks, those," says Farfadet.
+
+"They're what?" asks Barque jeeringly.
+
+"Why, yes, they're dirty dodges, those gases--"
+
+"You make me tired," retorts Barque, "with your fair ways and your
+unfair ways. When you've seen men squashed, cut in two, or divided
+from top to bottom, blown into showers by an ordinary shell, bellies
+turned inside out and scattered anyhow, skulls forced bodily into
+the chest as if by a blow with a club, and in place of the head a
+bit of neck, oozing currant jam of brains all over the chest and
+back--you've seen that and yet you can say 'There are clean ways!'"
+
+"Doesn't alter the fact that the shell is allowed, it's
+recognized--"
+
+"Ah, la, la! I'll tell you what--you make me blubber just as much as
+you make me laugh!" And he turns his back.
+
+"Hey, look out, boys!"
+
+We strain our eyes, and one of us has thrown himself flat on the
+ground; others look instinctively and frowning towards the shelter
+that we have not time to reach. and during these two seconds each
+one bends his head. It is a grating noise as of huge scissors which
+comes near and nearer to us, and ends at last with a ringing crash
+of unloaded iron.
+
+That ore fell not far from us--two hundred yards away, perhaps. We
+crouch in the bottom of the trench and remain doubled up while the
+place where we are is lashed by a shower of little fragments.
+
+"Don't want this in my tummy, even from that distance," says
+Paradis, extracting from the earth of the trench wall a morsel that
+has just lodged there. It is like a bit of coke, bristling with
+edged and pointed facets, and he dances it in his hand so as not to
+burn himself.
+
+There is a hissing noise. Paradis sharply bows his head and we
+follow suit. "The fuse!--it has gone over." The shrapnel fuse goes
+up and then comes down vertically; but that of the percussion shell
+detaches itself from the broken mass after the explosion and usually
+abides buried at the point of contact, but at other times it flies
+off at random like a big red-hot pebble. One must beware of it. It
+may hurl itself on you a very long time after the detonation and by
+incredible paths, passing over the embankment and plunging into the
+cavities.
+
+"Nothing so piggish as a fuse. It happened to me once--"
+
+"There's worse things," broke in Bags of the 11th, "The Austrian
+shells, the 130's and the 74's. I'm afraid of them. They're
+nickel-plated, they say, but what I do know, seeing I've been there,
+is they come so quick you can't do anything to dodge them. You no
+sooner hear em snoring than they burst on you.
+
+"The German 105's, neither, you haven't hardly the time to flatten
+yourself. I once got the gunners to tell me all about them."
+
+"I tell you, the shells from the naval guns, you haven't the time to
+hear 'em. Got to pack yourself up before they come."
+
+"And there's that new shell, a dirty devil, that breaks wind after
+it's dodged into the earth and out of it again two or three times in
+the space of six yards. When I know there's one of them about, I
+want to go round the corner. I remember one time--"
+
+"That's all nothing, my lads," said the new sergeant, stopping on
+his way past, "you ought to see what they chucked us at Verdun,
+where I've come from. Nothing but whoppers, 380's and 420's and
+244's. When you've been shelled down there you know all about
+it--the woods are sliced down like cornfields, the dug-outs marked
+and burst in even when they've three thicknesses of beams, all the
+road-crossings sprinkled, the roads blown into the air and changed
+into long heaps of smashed convoys and wrecked guns, corpses twisted
+together as though shoveled up. You could see thirty chaps laid out
+by one shot at the cross-roads; you could see fellows whirling
+around as they went up, always about fifteen yards, and bits of
+trousers caught and stuck on the tops of the trees that were left.
+You could see one of these 380's go into a house at Verdun by the
+roof, bore through two or three floors, and burst at the bottom, and
+all the damn lot's got to go aloft; and in the fields whole
+battalions would scatter and lie flat under the shower like poor
+little defenseless rabbits. At every step on the ground in the
+fields you'd got lumps as thick as your arm and as wide as that, and
+it'd take four poilus to lift the lump of iron. The fields looked as
+if they were full of rocks. And that went on without a halt for
+months on end, months on end!" the sergeant repeated as he passed
+on, no doubt to tell again the story of his souvenirs somewhere
+else.
+
+"Look, look, corporal, those chaps over there--are they soft in the
+head?" On the bombarded position we saw dots of human beings emerge
+hurriedly and run towards the explosions.
+
+"They're gunners," said Bertrand; "as soon as a shell's burst they
+sprint and rummage for the fuse is the hole, for the position of the
+fuse gives the direction of its battery, you see, by the way it's
+dug itself in; and as for the distance, you've only got to read
+it--it's shown on the range-figures cut on the time-fuse which is
+set just before firing."
+
+"No matter--they're off their onions to go out under such shelling."
+
+"Gunners, my boy," says a man of another company who was strolling
+in the trench, "are either quite good or quite bad. Either they're
+trumps or they're trash. I tell you--"
+
+"That's true of all privates, what you're saying."
+
+"Possibly; but I'm not talking to you about all privates; I'm
+talking to you about gunners, and I tell you too that--"
+
+"Hey, my lads! Better find a hole to dump yourselves in, before you
+get one on the snitch!"
+
+The strolling stranger carried his story away, and Cocon, who was in
+a perverse mood, declared: "We can be doing our hair in the dug-out,
+seeing it's rather boring outside."
+
+"Look, they're sending torpedoes over there!" said Paradis,
+pointing. Torpedoes go straight up, or very nearly so, like larks,
+fluttering and rustling; then they stop, hesitate, and come straight
+down again, heralding their fall in its last seconds by a "baby-cry"
+that we know well. From here, the inhabitants of the ridge seem like
+invisible players, lined up for a game with a ball.
+
+"In the Argonne," says Lamuse, "my brother says in a letter that
+they get turtle-doves, as he calls them. They're big heavy things,
+fired off very close. They come in cooing, really they do, he says,
+and when they break wind they don't half make a shindy, he says."
+
+"There's nothing worse than the mortar-toad, that seems to chase
+after you and jump over the top of you, and it bursts in the very
+trench, just scraping over the bank."
+
+"Tiens, tiens, did you hear it?" A whistling was approaching us when
+suddenly it ceased. The contrivance has not burst. "It's a shell
+that cried off," Paradis asserts. And we strain our ears for the
+satisfaction of hearing--or of not hearing--others.
+
+Lamuse says: "All the fields and the roads and the villages about
+here, they're covered with dud shells of all sizes--ours as well, to
+say truth. The ground must be full of 'em, that you can't see. I
+wonder how they'll go on, later, when the time comes to say, 'That's
+enough of it, let's start work again.'"
+
+And all the time, in a monotony of madness, the avalanche of fire
+and iron goes on; shrapnel with its whistling explosion and its
+overcharged heart of furious metal and the great percussion shells,
+whose thunder is that of the railway engine which crashes suddenly
+into a wall, the thunder of loaded rails or steel beams, toppling
+down a declivity. The air is now glutted and viewless, it is crossed
+and recrossed by heavy blasts, and the murder of the earth continues
+all around, deeply and more deeply, to the limit of completion.
+
+There are even other guns which now join in--they are ours. Their
+report is like that of the 75's, but louder, and it has a prolonged
+and resounding echo, like thunder reverberating among mountains.
+
+"They're the long 120's. They're on the edge of the wood half a mile
+away. Fine guns, old man, like gray-hounds. They're slender and
+fine-nosed, those guns--you want to call them 'Madame.' They're not
+like the 220's--they're all snout, like coal-scuttles, and spit
+their shells out from the bottom upwards. The 120's get there just
+the same, but among the teams of artillery they look like kids in
+bassinettes."
+
+Conversation languishes; here and there are yawns. The dimensions
+and weight of this outbreak of the guns fatigue the mind. Our voices
+flounder in it and are drowned.
+
+"I've never seen anything like this for a bombardment," shouts
+Barque.
+
+"We always say that," replies Paradis.
+
+"Just so," bawls Volpatte. "There's been talk of an attack lately; I
+should say this is the beginning of something."
+
+The others say simply, "Ah!"
+
+Volpatte displays an intention of snatching a wink of sleep. He
+settles himself on the ground with his back against one wall of the
+trench and his feet buttressed against the other wall.
+
+We converse together on divers subjects. Biquet tells the story of a
+rat he has seen: "He was cheeky and comical, you know. I'd taken off
+my trotter-cases, and that rat, he chewed all the edge of the uppers
+into embroidery. Of course, I'd greased 'em."
+
+Volpatte, who is now definitely out of action, moves and says, "I
+can't get to sleep for your gabbling."
+
+"You can't make me believe, old fraud," says Marthereau, "that you
+can raise a single snore with a shindy like this all round you."
+
+Volpatte replies with one.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Fall in! March!
+
+We are changing our spot. Where are they taking us to? We have no
+idea. The most we know is that we are in reserve, and that they may
+take us round to strengthen certain points in succession, or to
+clear the communication trenches, in which the regulation of passing
+troops is as complicated a job, if blocks and collisions are to be
+avoided, as it is of the trains in a busy station. It is impossible
+to make out the meaning of the immense maneuver in which the rolling
+of our regiment is only that of a little wheel, nor what is going on
+in all the huge area of the sector. But, lost in the network of
+deeps where we go and come without end, weary, harassed and
+stiff-jointed by prolonged halts, stupefied by noise and delay,
+poisoned by smoke, we make out that our artillery is becoming more
+and more active; the offensive seems to have changed places.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Halt! A fire of intense and incredible fury was threshing the
+parapets of the trench where we were halted at the moment: "Fritz is
+going it strong; he's afraid of an attack, he's going dotty. Ah,
+isn't he letting fly!"
+
+A heavy hail was pouring over us, hacking terribly at atmosphere and
+sky, scraping and skimming all the plain.
+
+I looked through a loophole and saw a swift and strange vision. In
+front of us, a dozen yards away at most, there were motionless forms
+outstretched side by side--a row of mown-down soldiers--and the
+countless projectiles that hurtled from all sides were riddling this
+rank of the dead!
+
+The bullets that flayed the soil in straight streaks amid raised
+slender stems of cloud were perforating and ripping the bodies so
+rigidly close to the ground, breaking the stiffened limbs, plunging
+into the wan and vacant faces. bursting and bespattering the
+liquefied eyes; and even did that file of corpses stir and budge out
+of line under the avalanche.
+
+We could hear the blunt sound of the dizzy copper points as they
+pierced cloth and flesh, the sound of a furious stroke with a knife,
+the harsh blow of a stick upon clothing. Above us rushed jets of
+shrill whistling. with the declining and far more serious hum of
+ricochets. And we bent our heads under the enormous flight of noises
+and voices.
+
+"Trench must be cleared--Gee up!" We leave this most infamous corner
+of the battlefield where even the dead are torn, wounded, and slain
+anew.
+
+We turn towards the right and towards the rear. The communication
+trench rises, and at the top of the gully we pass in front of a
+telephone station and a group of artillery officers and gunners.
+Here there is a further halt. We mark time, and hear the artillery
+observer shout his commands, which the telephonist buried beside him
+picks up and repeats: "First gun, same sight; two-tenths to left;
+three a minute!"
+
+Some of us have risked our heads over the edge of the bank and have
+glimpsed for the space of the lightning's flash all the field of
+battle round which our company has uncertainly wandered since the
+morning. I saw a limitless gray plain, across whose width the wind
+seemed to be driving faint and thin waves of dust, pierced in places
+by a more pointed billow of smoke.
+
+Where the sun and the clouds trail patches of black and of white,
+the immense space sparkles dully from point to point where our
+batteries are firing, and I saw it one moment entirely spangled with
+short-lived flashes. Another minute, part of the field grew dark
+under a steamy and whitish film, a sort of hurricane of snow.
+
+Afar, on the evil, endless, and half-ruined fields, caverned like
+cemeteries, we see the slender skeleton of a church, like a bit of
+torn paper; and from one margin of the picture to the other, dim
+rows of vertical marks, close together and underlined, like the
+straight strokes of a written page--these are the roads and their
+trees. Delicate meandering lines streak the plain backward and
+forward and rule it in squares, and these windings are stippled with
+men.
+
+We can make out some fragments of lines made up of these human
+points who have emerged from the hollowed streaks and are moving on
+the plain in the horrible face of the flying firmament. It is
+difficult to believe that each of those tiny spots is a living thing
+with fragile and quivering flesh, infinitely unarmed in space, full
+of deep thoughts, full of far memories and crowded pictures. One is
+fascinated by this scattered dust of men as small as the stars in
+the sky.
+
+Poor unknowns, poor fellow-men, it is your turn to give battle.
+Another time it will be ours. Perhaps to-morrow it will be ours to
+feel the heavens burst over our heads or the earth open under our
+feet, to be assailed by the prodigious plague of projectiles, to be
+swept away by the blasts of a tornado a hundred thousand times
+stronger than the tornado.
+
+They urge us into the rearward shelters. For our eyes the field of
+death vanishes. To our ears the thunder is deadened on the great
+anvil of the clouds. The sound of universal destruction is still.
+The squad surrounds itself with the familiar noises of life, and
+sinks into the fondling littleness of the dug-outs.
+
+______
+
+[note 1] Military slang for machine-gun--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+20
+
+Under Fire
+
+
+
+
+
+RUDELY awakened in the dark, I open my eyes: "What? What's up?"
+
+"Your turn on guard--it's two o'clock in the morning," says Corporal
+Bertrand at the opening into the hole where I am prostrate on the
+floor. I hear him without seeing him.
+
+"I'm coming," I growl, and shake myself, and yawn in the little
+sepulchral shelter. I stretch my arms, and my hands touch the soft
+and cold clay. Then I cleave the heavy odor that fills the dug-out
+and crawl out in the middle of the dense gloom between the collapsed
+bodies of the sleepers. After several stumbles and entanglements
+among accouterments, knapsacks and limbs stretched out in all
+directions, I put my hand on my rifle and find myself upright in the
+open air, half awake and dubiously balanced, assailed by the black
+and bitter breeze.
+
+Shivering, I follow the corporal; he plunges in between the dark
+embankments whose lower ends press strangely and closely on our
+march. He stops; the place is here. I make out a heavy mass half-way
+up the ghostly wail which comes loose and descends from it with a
+whinnying yawn, and I hoist myself into the niche which it had
+occupied.
+
+The moon is hidden by mist, but a very weak and uncertain light
+overspreads the scene, and one's sight gropes its way. Then a wide
+strip of darkness, hovering and gliding up aloft, puts it out. Even
+after touching the breastwork and the loophole in front of my face I
+can hardly make them out, and my inquiring hand discovers, among an
+ordered deposit of things, a mass of grenade handles.
+
+"Keep your eye skinned, old chap," says Bertrand in a low voice.
+"Don't forget that our listening-post is in front there on the left.
+Allons, so long." His steps die away, followed by those of the
+sleepy sentry whom I am relieving.
+
+Rifle-shots crackle all round. Abruptly a bullet smacks the earth of
+the wall against which I am leaning. I peer through the loophole.
+Our line runs along the top of the ravine, and the land slopes
+downward in front of me, plunging into an abyss of darkness where
+one can see nothing. One's sight ends always by picking out the
+regular lines of the stakes of our wire entanglements, planted on
+the shore of the waves of night, and here and there the circular
+funnel-like wounds of shells, little, larger, or enormous, and some
+of the nearest occupied by mysterious lumber. The wind blows in my
+face, and nothing else is stirring save the vast moisture that drain
+from it. It is cold enough to set one shivering in perpetual motion.
+I look upwards, this way and that; everything is borne down by
+dreadful gloom. I might be derelict and alone in the middle of a
+world destroyed by a cataclysm.
+
+There is a swift illumination up above--a rocket. The scene in which
+I am stranded is picked out in sketchy incipience around me. The
+crest of our trench stands forth, jagged and dishevelled, and I see,
+stuck to the outer wall every five paces like upright caterpillars,
+the shadows of the watchers. Their rifles are revealed beside them
+by a few spots of light. The trench is shored with sandbags. It is
+widened everywhere, and in many places ripped up by landslides. The
+sandbags, piled up and dislodged, appear in the starlike light of
+the rocket like the great dismantled stones of ancient ruined
+buildings. I look through the loophole, and discern in the misty and
+pallid atmosphere expanded by the meteor the rows of stakes and even
+the thin lines of barbed wire which cross and recross between the
+posts. To my seeing they are like strokes of a pen scratched upon
+the pale and perforated ground. Lower down, the ravine is filled
+with the motionless silence of the ocean of night.
+
+I come down from my look-out and steer at a guess towards my
+neighbor in vigil, and come upon him with outstretched hand. "Is
+that you?" I say to him in a subdued voice, though I don't know him.
+
+"Yes," he replies, equally ignorant who I am, blind like myself.
+"It's quiet at this time," he adds "A bit since I thought they were
+going to attack, and they may have tried it on, on the right, where
+they chucked over a lot of bombs. There's been a barrage of
+75's--vrrrran, vrrrran--Old man, I said to myself, 'Those 75's,
+p'raps they've good reason for firing. If they did come out, the
+Boches, they must have found something.' Tiens, listen, down there,
+the bullets buffing themselves!"
+
+He opens his flask and takes a draught, and his last words, still
+subdued, smell of wine: "Ah, la, la! Talk about a filthy war! Don't
+you think we should be a lot better at home!--Hullo! What's the
+matter with the ass?" A rifle has rung out beside us, making a brief
+and sudden flash of phosphorescence. Others go off here and there
+along our line. Rifle-shots are catching after dark.
+
+We go to inquire of one of the shooters, guessing our way through
+the solid blackness that has fallen again upon us like a roof.
+Stumbling, and thrown anon on each other, we reach the man and touch
+him--"Well, what's up?"
+
+He thought he saw something moving, but there is nothing more. We
+return through the density, my unknown neighbor and I, unsteady, and
+laboring along the narrow way of slippery mud, doubled up as if we
+each carried a crushing burden. At one point of the horizon and then
+at another all around, a gun sounds, and its heavy din blends with
+the volleys of rifle-fire, redoubled one minute and dying out the
+next, and with the clusters of grenade-reports, of deeper sound than
+the crack of Lebel or Mauser, and nearly like the voice of the old
+classical rifles. The wind has again increased; it is so strong that
+one must protect himself against it in the darkness; masses of huge
+cloud are passing in front of the moon.
+
+So there we are, this man and I, jostling without knowing each
+other, revealed and then hidden from each other in sudden jerks by
+the flashes of the guns. oppressed by the opacity, the center of a
+huge circle of fires that appear and disappear in the devilish
+landscape.
+
+"We're under a curse," says the man.
+
+We separate, and go each to his own loophole, to weary our eyes upon
+invisibility. Is some frightful and dismal storm about to break? But
+that night it did not. At the end of my long wait, with the first
+streaks of day, there was even a lull.
+
+Again I saw, when the dawn came down on us like a stormy evening,
+the steep banks of our crumbling trench as they came to life again
+under the sooty scarf of the low-hanging clouds, a trench dismal and
+dirty, infinitely dirty, humped with debris and filthiness. Under
+the livid sky the sandbags are taking the same hue, and their
+vaguely shining and rounded shapes are like the bowels and viscera
+of giants, nakedly exposed upon the earth.
+
+In the trench-wall behind me, in a hollowed recess, there is a heap
+of horizontal things like logs. Tree-trunks? No, they are corpses.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+As the call of birds goes up from the furrowed ground, as the
+shadowy fields are renewed, and the light breaks and adorns each
+blade of grass, I look towards the ravine. Below the quickening
+field and its high surges of earth and burned hollows, beyond the
+bristling of stakes, there is still a lifeless lake of shadow, and
+in front of the opposite slope a wall of night still stands.
+
+Then I turn again and look upon these dead men whom the day is
+gradually exhuming, revealing their stained and stiffened forms.
+There are four of them. They are our comrades, Lamuse, Barque,
+Biquet, and little Eudore. They rot there quite near us, blocking
+one half of the wide, twisting, and muddy furrow that the living
+must still defend.
+
+They have been laid there as well as may be, supporting and crushing
+each other. The topmost is wrapped in a tent-cloth. Handkerchiefs
+had been placed on the faces of the others; but in brushing against
+them in the dark without seeing them, or even in the daytime without
+noticing them, the handkerchiefs have fallen, and we are living face
+to face with these dead, heaped up there like a wood-pile.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+It was four nights ago that they were all killed together. I
+remember the night myself indistinctly--it is like a dream. We were
+on patrol--they, I, Mesnil Andre, and Corporal Bertrand; and
+our business was to identify a new German listening-post marked by
+the artillery observers. We left the trench towards midnight and
+crept down the slope in line, three or four paces from each other.
+Thus we descended far into the ravine, and saw, lying before our
+eyes, the embankment of their International Trench. After we had
+verified that there was no listening-post in this slice of the
+ground we climbed back, with infinite care. Dimly I saw my neighbors
+to right and left, like sacks of shadow, crawling, slowly sliding,
+undulating and rocking in the mud and the murk, with the projecting
+needle in front of a rifle. Some bullets whistled above us, but they
+did not know we were there, they were not looking for us. When we
+got within sight of the mound of our line, we took a breather for a
+moment; one of us let a sigh go, another spoke. Another turned round
+bodily, and the sheath of his bayonet rang out against a stone.
+Instantly a rocket shot redly up from the International Trench. We
+threw ourselves flat on the ground, closely, desperately, and waited
+there motionless, with the terrible star hanging over us and
+flooding us with daylight, twenty-five or thirty yards from our
+trench. Then a machine-gun on the other side of the ravine swept the
+zone where we were. Corporal Bertrand and I had had the luck to find
+in front of us, just as the red rocket went up and before it burst
+into light, a shell-hole, where a broken trestle was steeped in the
+mud. We flattened ourselves against the edge of the hole, buried
+ourselves in the mud as much as possible, and the poor skeleton of
+rotten wood concealed us. The jet of the machine-gun crossed several
+times. We heard a piercing whistle in the middle of each report, the
+sharp and violent sound of bullets that went into the earth, and
+dull and soft blows as well, followed by groans, by a little cry,
+and suddenly by a sound like the heavy snoring of a sleeper, a sound
+which slowly ebbed. Bertrand and I waited, grazed by the horizontal
+hail of bullets that traced a network of death an inch or so above
+us and sometimes scraped our clothes, driving us still deeper into
+the mud, nor dared we risk a movement which might have lifted a
+little some part of our bodies. The machine-gun at last held its
+peace in an enormous silence. A quarter of an hour later we two slid
+out of the shell-hole, and crawling on our elbows we fell at last
+like bundles into our listening-post. It was high time, too, for at
+that moment the moon shone out. We were obliged to stay in the
+bottom of the trench till morning, and then till evening, for the
+machine-gun swept the approaches without pause. We could not see the
+prostrate bodies through the loop-holes of the post, by reason of
+the steepness of the ground--except, just on the level of our field
+of vision, a lump which appeared to be the back of one of them. In
+the evening, a sap was dug to reach the place where they had fallen.
+The work could not be finished in one night and was resumed by the
+pioneers the following night, for, overwhelmed with fatigue, we
+could no longer keep from falling asleep.
+
+Awaking from a leaden sleep, I saw the four corpses that the sappers
+had reached from underneath, hooking and then hauling them into the
+sap with ropes. Each of them had several adjoining wounds,
+bullet-holes an inch or so apart--the mitrailleuse had fired fast.
+The body of Mesnil Andre was not found, and his brother
+Joseph did some mad escapades in search of it. He went out quite
+alone into No Man's Land, where the crossed fire of machine-guns
+swept it three ways at once and constantly. In the morning, dragging
+himself along like a slug, he showed over the bank a face black with
+mud and horribly wasted. They pulled him in again, with his face
+scratched by barbed wire, his hands bleeding, with heavy clods of
+mud in the folds of his clothes, and stinking of death. Like an
+idiot be kept on saying, "He's nowhere." He buried himself in a
+corner with his rifle, which he set himself to clean without hearing
+what was said to him, and only repeating "He's nowhere."
+
+It is four nights ago since that night, and as the dawn comes once
+again to cleanse the earthly Gehenna, the bodies are becoming
+definitely distinct.
+
+Barque in his rigidity seems immoderately long, his arms lie closely
+to the body, his chest has sunk, his belly is hollow as a basin.
+With his head upraised by a lump of mud, he looks over his feet at
+those who come up on the left; his face is dark and polluted by the
+clammy stains of disordered hair, and his wide and scalded eyes are
+heavily encrusted with blackened blood. Eudore seems very small by
+contrast, and his little face is completely white, so white as to
+remind you of the be-flowered face of a pierrot, and it is touching
+to see that little circle of white paper among the gray and bluish
+tints of the corpses. The Breton Biquet, squat and square as a
+flagstone, appears to be under the stress of a huge effort; he might
+be trying to uplift the misty darkness; and the extreme exertion
+overflows upon the protruding cheek-bones and forehead of his
+grimacing face, contorts it hideously, sets the dried and dusty hair
+bristling, divides his jaws in a spectral cry, and spreads wide the
+eyelids from his lightless troubled eyes, his flinty eyes; and his
+hands are contracted in a clutch upon empty air.
+
+Barque and Biquet were shot in the belly; Eudore in the throat. In
+the dragging and carrying they were further injured. Big Lamuse, at
+last bloodless, had a puffed and creased face, and the eyes were
+gradually sinking in their sockets, one more than the other. They
+have wrapped him in a tent-cloth, and it shows a dark stain where
+the neck is. His right shoulder has been mangled by several bullets,
+and the arm is held on only by strips of the sleeve and by threads
+that they have put in since. The first night he was placed there,
+this arm hung outside the heap of dead, and the yellow hand, curled
+up on a lump of earth, touched passers-by in the face; so they
+pinned the arm to the greatcoat.
+
+A pestilential vapor begins to hover about the remains of these
+beings with whom we lived so intimately and suffered so long.
+
+When we see them we say, "They are dead, all four"; but they are too
+far disfigured for us to say truly, "It is they," and one must turn
+away from the motionless monsters to feel the void they have left
+among us and the familiar things that have been wrenched away.
+
+Men of other companies or regiments, strangers who come this way by
+day--by night one leans unconsciously on everything within reach of
+the hand, dead or alive-give a start when faced by these corpses
+flattened one on the other in the open trench. Sometimes they are
+angry--"What are they thinking about to leave those stiffs
+there?"--"It's shameful." Then they add, "It's true they can't be
+taken away from there." And they were only buried in the night.
+
+Morning has come. Opposite us we see the other slope of the ravine,
+Hill 119, an eminence scraped, stripped, and scratched, veined with
+shaken trenches and lined with parallel cuttings that vividly reveal
+the clay and the chalky soil. Nothing is stirring there; and our
+shells that burst in places with wide spouts of foam like huge
+billows seem to deliver their resounding blows upon a great
+breakwater, ruined and abandoned.
+
+My spell of vigil is finished, and the other sentinels, enveloped in
+damp and trickling tent-cloths, with their stripes and plasters of
+mud and their livid jaws, disengage themselves from the soil wherein
+they are molded, bestir themselves, and come down. For us, it is
+rest until evening.
+
+We yawn and stroll. We see a comrade pass and then another. Officers
+go to and fro, armed with periscopes and telescopes. We feel our
+feet again, and begin once more to live. The customary remarks cross
+and clash; and were it not for the dilapidated outlook, the sunken
+lines of the trench that buries us on the hillside, and the veto on
+our voices, we might fancy ourselves in the rear lines. But
+lassitude weighs upon all of us, our faces are jaundiced and the
+eyelids reddened; through long watching we look as if we had been
+weeping. For several days now we have all of us been sagging and
+growing old.
+
+One after another the men of my squad have made a confluence at a
+curve in the trench. They pile themselves where the soil is only
+chalky, and where, above the crust that bristles with severed roots,
+the excavations have exposed some beds of white stones that had lain
+in the darkness for over a hundred thousand years.
+
+There in the widened fairway, Bertrand's squad beaches itself. It is
+much reduced this time, for beyond the losses of the other night, we
+no longer have Poterloo, killed in a relief, nor Cadilhac. wounded
+in the leg by a splinter the same evening as Poterloo, nor Tirioir
+nor Tulacque who have been sent back, the one for dysentery, and the
+other for pneumonia, which is taking an ugly turn--as he says in the
+postcards which he sends us as a pastime from the base hospital
+where he is vegetating.
+
+Once more I see gathered and grouped, soiled by contact with the
+earth and dirty smoke, the familiar faces and poses of those who
+have not been separated since the beginning, chained and riveted
+together in fraternity. But there is less dissimilarity than at the
+beginning in the appearance of the cave-men.
+
+Papa Blaire displays in his well-worn mouth a set of new teeth, so
+resplendent that one can see nothing in all his poor face except
+those gayly-dight jaws. The great event of these foreign teeth's
+establishment, which he is taming by degrees and sometimes uses for
+eating, has profoundly modified his character and his manners. He is
+rarely besmeared with grime, he is hardly slovenly. Now that he has
+become handsome he feels it necessary to become elegant. For the
+moment he is dejected, because--a miracle--he cannot wash himself.
+Deeply sunk in a corner, he half opens a lack-luster eye, bites and
+masticates his old soldier's mustache--not long ago the only
+ornament on his face--and from time to time spits out a hair.
+
+Fouillade is shivering, cold-smitten, or yawns, depressed and
+shabby. Marthereau has not changed at all. He is still as always
+well-bearded, his eye round and blue, and his legs so short that his
+trousers seem to be slipping continually from his waist and dropping
+to his feet. Cocon is always Cocon by the dried and parchment-like
+head wherein sums are working; but a recurrence of lice, the ravages
+of which we see overflowing on to his neck and wrists, has isolated
+him for a week now in protracted tussles which leave him surly when
+he returns among us. Paradis retains unimpaired the same quantum of
+good color and good temper; he is unchanging, perennial. We smile
+when he appears in the distance, placarded on the background of
+sandbags like a new poster. Nothing has changed in Pepin
+either, whom we can just see taking a stroll--we can tell him behind
+by his red-and-white squares of an oilcloth draught-board, and in
+front by his blade-like face and the gleam of a knife in his cold
+gray look. Nor has Volpatte changed, with his leggings, his
+shouldered blanket, and his face of a Mongolian tatooed with dirt;
+nor Tirette, although he has been worried for some time by blood-red
+streaks in his eyes--for some unknown and mysterious reason.
+Farfadet keeps himself aloof, in pensive expectation. When the post
+is being given out he awakes from his reverie to go so far, and then
+retires into himself. His clerkly hands indite numerous and careful
+postcards. He does not know of Eudoxie's end. Lamuse said no more to
+any one of the ultimate and awful embrace in which he clasped her
+body. He regretted--I knew it--his whispered confidence to me that
+evening, and up to his death he kept the horrible affair sacred to
+himself, with tenacious bashfulness. So we see Farfadet continuing
+to live his airy existence with the living likeness of that fair
+hair, which he only leaves for the scarce monosyllables of his
+contact with us. Corporal Bertrand has still the same soldierly and
+serious mien among us; he is always ready with his tranquil smile to
+answer all questions with lucid explanations, to help each of us to
+do his duty.
+
+We are chatting as of yore, as not long since. But the necessity of
+speaking in low tones distinguishes our remarks and imposes on them
+a lugubrious tranquillity.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Something unusual has happened. For the last three months the
+sojourn of each unit in the first-line trenches has been four days.
+Yet we have now been five days here and there is no mention of
+relief. Some rumors of early attack are going about, brought by the
+liaison men and those of the fatigue-party that renews our rations
+every other night--without regularity or guarantee. Other portents
+are adding themselves to the whispers of offensive--the stopping of
+leave, the failure of the post, the obvious change in the officers,
+who are serious and closer to us. But talk on this subject always
+ends with a shrug of the shoulders; the soldier is never warned what
+is to be done with him; they put a bandage on his eyes, and only
+remove it at the last minute. So, "We shall see."--"We can only
+wait."
+
+We detach ourselves from the tragic event foreboded. Is this because
+of the impossibility of a complete understanding, or a despondent
+unwillingness to decipher those orders that are sealed letters to
+us, or a lively faith that one will pass through the peril once
+more? Always, in spite of the premonitory signs and the prophecies
+that seem to be coming true, we fall back automatically upon the
+cares of the moment and absorb ourselves in them--hunger, thirst,
+the lice whose crushing ensanguines all our nails, the great
+weariness that saps us all.
+
+"Seen Joseph this morning?" says Volpatte. "He doesn't look very
+grand, poor lad."
+
+"He'll do something daft, certain sure. He's as good as a goner,
+that lad, mind you. First chance he has he'll jump in front of a
+bullet. I can see he will."
+
+"It'd give any one the pip for the rest of his natural. There were
+six brothers of 'em, you know; four of 'em killed; two in Alsace,
+one in Champagne, one in Argonne. If Andre's killed he's the
+fifth."
+
+"If he'd been killed they'd have found his body--they'd have seen it
+from the observation-post; you can't lose the rump and the thighs.
+My idea is that the night they went on patrol he went astray coming
+back--crawled right round, poor devil, and fell right into the Boche
+lines."
+
+"Perhaps he got sewn up in their wire."
+
+"I tell you they'd have found him if he'd been done in; you know
+jolly well the Boches wouldn't have brought the body in. And we
+looked everywhere. As long as he's not been found you can take it
+from me that he's got away somewhere on his feet, wounded or
+unwounded."
+
+This so logical theory finds favor, and now it is known that Mesnil
+Andre is a prisoner there is less interest in him. But his
+brother continues to be a pitiable object--"Poor old chap, he's so
+young!" And the men of the squad look at him secretly.
+
+"I've got a twist!" says Cocon suddenly. The hour of dinner has gone
+past and we are demanding it. There appears to be only the remains
+of what was brought the night before.
+
+"What's the corporal thinking of to starve us? There he is--I'll go
+and get hold of him. Hey, corporal! Why can't you get us something
+to eat?"--"Yes, yes--something to eat!" re-echoes the destiny of
+these eternally hungry men.
+
+"I'm coming," says bustling Bertrand, who keeps going both day and
+night.
+
+"What then?" says Pepin, always hot-headed. "I don't feel
+like chewing macaroni again; I shall open a tin of meat in less than
+two secs?" The daily comedy of dinner steps to the front again in
+this drama.
+
+"Don't touch your reserve rations!" says Bertrand; "as soon as I'm
+back from seeing the captain I'll get you something."
+
+When he returns he brings and distributes a salad of potatoes and
+onions, and as mastication proceeds our features relax and our eyes
+become composed.
+
+For the ceremony of eating, Paradis has hoisted a policeman's hat.
+It is hardly the right place or time for it, but the hat is quite
+new, and the tailor, who promised it for three months ago, only
+delivered it the day we came up. The pliant two-cornered hat of
+bright blue cloth on his flourishing round head gives him the look
+of a pasteboard gendarme with red-painted cheeks. Nevertheless, all
+the while he is eating, Paradis looks at me steadily. I go up to
+him. "You've a funny old face."
+
+"Don't worry about it," he replies. "I want a chat with you. Come
+with me and see something."
+
+His hand goes out to his half-full cup placed beside his dinner
+things; he hesitates, and then decides to put his wine in a safe
+place down his gullet, and the cup in his pocket. He moves off and I
+follow him.
+
+In passing he picks up his helmet that gapes on the earthen bench.
+After a dozen paces he comes close to me and says in a low voice and
+with a queer air, without looking at me--as he does when he is
+upset--"I know where Mesnil Andre is. Would you like to see
+him? Come, then."
+
+So saying, he takes off his police hat, folds and pockets it. and
+puts on his helmet. He sets off again and I follow him without a
+word.
+
+He leads me fifty yards farther, towards the place where our common
+dug-out is, and the footbridge of sandbags under which one always
+slides with the impression that the muddy arch will collapse on
+one's back. After the footbridge, a hollow appears in the wall of
+the trench, with a step made of a hurdle stuck fast in the clay.
+Paradis climbs there, and motions to me to follow him on to the
+narrow and slippery platform. There was recently a sentry's loophole
+here, and it has been destroyed and made again lower down with a
+couple of bullet-screens. One is obliged to stoop low lest his head
+rise above the contrivance.
+
+Paradis says to me, still in the same low voice, "It's me that fixed
+up those two shields, so as to see--for I'd got an idea, and I
+wanted to see. Put your eye to this--"
+
+"I don't see anything; the hole's stopped up. What's that lump of
+cloth?"
+
+"It's him," says Paradis.
+
+Ah! It was a corpse, a corpse sitting in a hole, and horribly
+near--
+
+Having flattened my face against the steel plate and glued my eye to
+the hole in the bullet-screen, I saw all of it. He was squatting,
+the head hanging forward between the legs, both arms placed on his
+knees, his hands hooked and half closed. He was easily
+identifiable--so near, so near!--in spite of his squinting and
+lightless eyes, by the mass of his muddy beard and the distorted
+mouth that revealed the teeth. He looked as if he were both smiling
+and grimacing at his rifle, stuck straight up in the mud before him.
+His outstretched hands were quite blue above and scarlet underneath,
+crimsoned by a damp and hellish reflection.
+
+It was he, rain-washed and besmeared with a sort of scum, polluted
+and dreadfully pale, four days dead, and close up to our embankment
+into which the shell-hole where he had burrowed had bitten. We had
+not found him because he was too near!
+
+Between this derelict dead in its unnatural solitude and the men who
+inhabited the dug-out there was only a slender partition of earth,
+and I realize that the place in it where I lay my head corresponds
+to the spot buttressed by this dreadful body.
+
+I withdraw my face from the peep-hole and Paradis and I exchange
+glances. "Mustn't tell him yet," my companion whispers. "No, we
+mustn't, not at once--" "I spoke to the captain about rooting him
+out, and he said, too, we mustn't mention it now to the lad.'" A
+light breath of wind goes by. "I can smell it!"--"Rather!" The odor
+enters our thoughts and capsizes our very hearts.
+
+"So now," says Paradis, "Joseph's left alone, out of six brothers.
+And I'll tell you what--I don't think he'll stop long. The lad won't
+take care of himself--he'll get himself done in. A lucky wound's got
+to drop on him from the sky, otherwise he's corpsed. Six
+brothers--it's too bad, that! Don't you think it's too bad?" He
+added, "It's astonishing that he was so near us."
+
+"His arm's just against the spot where I put my head."
+
+"Yes," says Paradis, "his right arm, where there's a wrist-watch."
+
+The watch--I stop short--is it a fancy, a dream? It seems to
+me--yes, I am sure now--that three days ago, the night when we were
+so tired out, before I went to sleep I heard what sounded like the
+ticking of a watch and even wondered where it could come from.
+
+"It was very likely that watch you heard all the same, through the
+earth," says Paradis, whom I have told some of my thoughts; "they go
+on thinking and turning round even when the chap stops. Damn, your
+own ticker doesn't know you--it just goes quietly on making little
+circles."
+
+I asked, "There's blood on his hands; but where was be hit?"
+
+"Don't know; in the belly, I think; I thought there was something
+dark underneath him. Or perhaps in the face--did you notice the
+little stain on the cheek?"
+
+I recall the hairy and greenish face of the dead man. "Yes, there
+was something on the cheek. Yes, perhaps it went in there--"
+
+"Look out!" says Paradis hurriedly, "there he is! We ought not to
+have stayed here."
+
+But we stay all the same, irresolutely wavering, as Mesnil Joseph
+comes straight up to us. Never did he seem so frail to us. We can
+see his pallor afar off, his oppressed and unnatural expression; he
+is bowed as be walks, and goes slowly, borne down by endless fatigue
+and his immovable notion.
+
+"What's the matter with your face?" he asks me--he has seen me point
+out to Paradis the possible entry of the bullet. I pretend not to
+understand and then make some kind of evasive reply. All at once I
+have a torturing idea--the smell! It is there, and there is no
+mistaking it. It reveals a corpse; and perhaps he will guess rightly
+
+It seems to me that he has suddenly smelt the sign--the pathetic,
+lamentable appeal of the dead. But he says nothing, continues his
+solitary walk, and disappears round the corner.
+
+"Yesterday," says Paradis to me, "be came just here, with his
+mess-tin full of rice that he didn't want to eat. Just as if he knew
+what he was doing, the fool stops here and talks of pitching the
+rest of his food over the bank, just on the spot where--where the
+other was. I couldn't stick that, old chap. I grabbed his arm just
+as he chucked the rice into the air, and it flopped down here in the
+trench. Old man, he turned round on me in a rage and all red in the
+face, 'What the hell's up with you now?' he says. I looked as
+fat-headed as I could, and mumbled some rot about not doing it on
+purpose. He shrugs his shoulders, and looks at me same as if I was
+dirt. He goes off, saying to himself, 'Did you see him, the
+blockhead?' He's bad-tempered, you know, the poor chap, and I
+couldn't complain. 'All right, all right,' he kept saying; and I
+didn't like it, you know, because I did wrong all the time, although
+I was right."
+
+We go back together in silence and re-enter the dugout where the
+others are gathered. It is an old headquarters post, and spacious.
+Just as we slide in, Paradis listens. "Our batteries have been
+playing extra hell for the last hour, don't you think?"
+
+I know what he means, and reply with an empty gesture, "We shall
+see, old man, we shall see all right!"
+
+In the dug-out, to an audience of three, Tirette is again pouring
+out his barrack-life tales. Marthereau is snoring in a corner; he is
+close to the entry, and to get down we have to stride over his short
+legs, which seem to have gone back into his trunk. A group of
+kneeling men around a folded blanket are playing with cards--
+
+"My turn!"--"40, 42--48--49!--Good!"
+
+"Isn't he lucky, that game-bird; it's imposs', I've got stumped
+three times I want nothing more to do with you. You're skinning me
+this evening, and you robbed me the other day, too, you infernal
+fritter!"--"What did you revoke for, mugwump?"--"I'd only the king,
+nothing else."
+
+"All the same," murmurs some one who is eating in a corner, "this
+Camembert, it cost twenty-five sous, but you talk about muck!
+Outside there's a layer of sticky glue, and inside it's plaster that
+breaks."
+
+Meanwhile Tirette relates the outrages inflicted on him during his
+twenty-one days of training owing to the quarrelsome temper of a
+certain major: "A great hog he was, my boy. everything rotten on
+this earth. All the lot of us looked foul when he went by or when we
+saw him in the officers' room spread out on a chair that you
+couldn't see underneath him, with his vast belly and huge cap. and
+circled round with stripes from top to bottom, like a barrel--he was
+hard on the private! They called him Loeb--a Boche, you see!"
+
+"I knew him!" cried Paradis; "when war started he was declared unfit
+for active service, naturally. While I was doing my term he was a
+dodger already--but he dodged round all the street corners to pinch
+you--you got a day's clink for an unbuttoned button, and he gave it
+you over and above if there was some bit of a thing about you that
+wasn't quite O.K.--and everybody laughed. He thought they were
+laughing at you, and you knew they were laughing at him, but you
+knew it in vain, you were in it up to your head for the clink."
+
+"He had a wife," Tirette goes on, "the old--"
+
+"I remember her, too," Paradis exclaimed. "You talk about a bitch!"
+
+"Some of 'em drag a little pug-dog about with 'em, but him, he
+trailed that yellow minx about everywhere, with her broom-handle
+hips and her wicked look. It was her that worked the old sod up
+against us. He was more stupid than wicked, but as soon as she was
+there he got more wicked than stupid. So you bet they were some
+nuisance--"
+
+Just then, Marthereau wakes up from his sleep by the entry with a
+half-groan. He straightens himself up, sitting on his straw like a
+gaol-bird, and we see his bearded silhouette take the vague outline
+of a Chinese, while his round eye rolls and turns in the shadows. He
+is looking at his dreams of a moment ago. Then he passes his hand
+over his eyes and--as if it had some connection with his
+dream--recalls the scene that night when we came up to the
+trenches--"For all that," he says, in a voice weighty with slumber
+and reflection, "there were some half-seas-over that night! Ah, what
+a night! All those troops, companies and whole regiments, yelling
+and surging all the way up the road! In the thinnest of the dark you
+could see the jumble of poilus that went on and up--like the sea
+itself, you'd say--and carrying on across all the convoys of
+artillery and ambulance wagons that we met that night. I've never
+seen so many, so many convoys in the night, never!" Then he deals
+himself a thump on the chest, settles down again in self-possession,
+groans, and says no more.
+
+Blaire's voice rises, giving expression to the haunting thought that
+wakes in the depths of the men: "It's four o'clock. It's too late
+for there to be anything from our side."
+
+One of the gamesters in the other corner yelps a question at
+another: "Now then? Are you going to play or aren't you, worm-face?"
+
+Tirette continues the story of his major: "Behold one day they'd
+served us at the barracks with some suetty soup. Old man, a disease,
+it was! So a chap asks to speak to the captain, and holds his
+mess-tin up to his nose."
+
+"Numskull!" some one shouts in the other corner. "Why didn't you
+trump, then?"
+
+"'Ah, damn it,' said the captain, 'take it away from my nose, it
+positively stinks.'"
+
+"It wasn't my game," quavers a discontented but unconvinced voice.
+
+"And the captain, he makes a report to the major. But behold the
+major, mad as the devil, he butts in shaking the paper in his paw:
+'What's this?' he says. 'Where's the soup that has caused this
+rebellion, that I may taste it?' They bring him some in a clean
+mess-tin and he sniffs it. 'What now!' he says, 'it smells good.
+They damned well shan't have it then, rich soup like this!'"
+
+"Not your game! And he was leading, too! Bungler! It's unlucky, you
+know."
+
+"Then at five o'clock as we were coming out of barracks, our two
+marvels butt in again and plank themselves in front of the swaddies
+coming out, trying to spot some little thing not quite so, and he
+said, 'Ah, my bucks, you thought you'd score off me by complaining
+of this excellent soup that I have consumed myself along with my
+partner here; just wait and see if I don't get even with you. Hey,
+you with the long hair, the tall artist, come here a minute!' And
+all the time the beast was jawing, his bag-o'-bones--as straight and
+thin as a post--went 'oui, oui' with her head."
+
+"That depends; if he hadn't a trump, it's another matter."
+
+"But all of a sudden we see her go white as a sheet, she puts her
+fist on her tummy and she shakes like all that, and then suddenly,
+in front of all the fellows that filled the square, she drops her
+umbrella and starts spewing!"
+
+"Hey, listen!" says Paradis, sharply, "they're shouting in the
+trench. Don't you hear? Isn't it 'alarm!' they're shouting?"
+
+"Alarm? Are you mad?"
+
+The words were hardly said when a shadow comes in through the low
+doorway of our dug-out and cries--"Alarm, 22nd! Stand to arms!"
+
+A moment of silence and then several exclamations. "I knew it,"
+murmurs Paradis between his teeth, and he goes on his knees towards
+the opening into the molehill that shelters us. Speech then ceases
+and we seem to be struck dumb. Stooping or kneeling we bestir
+ourselves; we buckle on our waist-belts; shadowy arms dart from one
+side to another; pockets are rummaged. And we issue forth pell-mell,
+dragging our knapsacks behind us by the straps, our blankets and
+pouches.
+
+Outside we are deafened. The roar of gunfire has increased a
+hundredfold, to left, to right, and in front of us. Our batteries
+give voice without ceasing.
+
+"Do you think they're attacking?" ventures a man. "How should I
+know?" replies another voice with irritated brevity.
+
+Our jaws are set and we swallow our thoughts, hurrying, bustling,
+colliding, and grumbling without words.
+
+A command goes forth--"Shoulder your packs."--"There's a
+counter-command--" shouts an officer who runs down the trench with
+great strides, working his elbows, and the rest of his sentence
+disappears with him. A counter-command! A visible tremor has run
+through the files, a start which uplifts our heads and holds us all
+in extreme expectation.
+
+But no; the counter-order only concerns the knapsacks. No pack; but
+the blanket rolled round the body, and the trenching-tool at the
+waist. We unbuckle our blankets, tear them open and roll them up.
+Still no word is spoken; each has a steadfast eye and the mouth
+forcefully shut. The corporals and sergeants go here and there,
+feverishly spurring the silent haste in which the men are bowed:
+"Now then, hurry up! Come, come, what the hell are you doing? Will
+you hurry, yes or no?"
+
+A detachment of soldiers with a badge of crossed axes on their
+sleeves clear themselves a fairway and swiftly delve holes in the
+wall of the trench. We watch them sideways as we don our equipment.
+
+"What are they doing, those chaps?"--"It's to climb up by."
+
+We are ready. The men marshal themselves, still silently, their
+blankets crosswise, the helmet-strap on the chin, leaning on their
+rifles. I look at their pale, contracted, and reflective faces. They
+are not soldiers, they are men. They are not adventurers, or
+warriors, or made for human slaughter, neither butchers nor cattle.
+They are laborers and artisans whom one recognizes in their
+uniforms. They are civilians uprooted, and they are ready. They
+await the signal for death or murder; but you may see, looking at
+their faces between the vertical gleams of their bayonets, that they
+are simply men.
+
+Each one knows that he is going to take his head, his chest, his
+belly, his whole body, and all naked, up to the rifles pointed
+forward, to the shells, to the bombs piled and ready, and above all
+to the methodical and almost infallible machine-guns--to all that is
+waiting for him yonder and is now so frightfully silent--before he
+reaches the other soldiers that he must kill. They are not careless
+of their lives, like brigands, nor blinded by passion like savages.
+In spite of the doctrines with which they have been cultivated they
+are not inflamed. They are above instinctive excesses. They are not
+drunk, either physically or morally. It is in full consciousness, as
+in full health and full strength, that they are massed there to hurl
+themselves once more into that sort of madman's part imposed on all
+men by the madness of the human race. One sees the thought and the
+fear and the farewell that there is in their silence, their
+stillness, in the mask of tranquillity which unnaturally grips their
+faces. They are not the kind of hero one thinks of, but their
+sacrifice has greater worth than they who have not seen them will
+ever be able to understand.
+
+They are waiting; a waiting that extends and seems eternal. Now and
+then one or another starts a little when a bullet, fired from the
+other side, skims the forward embankment that shields us and plunges
+into the flabby flesh of the rear wall.
+
+The end of the day is spreading a sublime but melancholy light on
+that strong unbroken mass of beings of whom some only will live to
+see the night. It is raining--there is always rain in my memories of
+all the tragedies of the great war. The evening is making ready,
+along with a vague and chilling menace; it is about to set for men
+that snare that is as wide as the world.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+New orders are peddled from mouth to mouth. Bombs strung on wire
+hoops are distributed--"Let each man take two bombs!"
+
+The major goes by. He is restrained in his gestures, in undress,
+girded, undecorated. We hear him say, "There's something good, mes
+enfants, the Boches are clearing out. You'll get along all right,
+eh?"
+
+News passes among us like a breeze. "The Moroccans and the 21st
+Company are in front of us. The attack is launched on our right."
+
+The corporals are summoned to the captain, and return with armsful
+of steel things. Bertrand is fingering me; he hooks something on to
+a button of my greatcoat. It is a kitchen knife. "I'm putting this
+on to your coat," he says.
+
+"Me too!" says Pepin.
+
+"No," says Bertrand, "it's forbidden to take volunteers for these
+things."
+
+"Be damned to you!" growls Pepin.
+
+We wait, in the great rainy and shot-hammered space that has no
+other boundary than the distant and tremendous cannonade. Bertrand
+has finished his distribution and returns. Several soldiers have sat
+down, and some of them are yawning.
+
+The cyclist Billette slips through in front of us, carrying an
+officer's waterproof on his arm and obviously averting his face.
+"Hullo, aren't you going too?" Cocon cries to him.
+
+"No, I'm not going," says the other. "I'm in the 17th. The Fifth
+Battalion's not attacking!"
+
+"Ah, they've always got the luck, the Fifth. They've never got to
+fight like we have!" Billette is already in the distance, and a few
+grimaces follow his disappearance.
+
+A man arrives running, and speaks to Bertrand, and then Bertrand
+turns to us--
+
+"Up you go," he says, "it's our turn."
+
+All move at once. We put our feet on the steps made by the sappers,
+raise ourselves, elbow to elbow, beyond the shelter of the trench,
+and climb on to the parapet.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Bertrand is out on the sloping ground. He covers us with a quick
+glance, and when we are all there he says, "Allons, forward!"
+
+Our voices have a curious resonance. The start has been made very
+quickly, unexpectedly almost, as in a dream. There is no whistling
+sound in the air. Among the vast uproar of the guns we discern very
+clearly this surprising silence of bullets around us--
+
+We descend over the rough and slippery ground with involuntary
+gestures, helping ourselves sometimes with the rifle. Mechanically
+the eye fastens on some detail of the declivity, of the ruined
+ground, on the sparse and shattered stakes pricking up, at the
+wreckage in the holes. It is unbelievable that we are upright in
+full daylight on this slope where several survivors remember sliding
+along in the darkness with such care, and where the others have only
+hazarded furtive glances through the loopholes. No, there is no
+firing against us. The wide exodus of the battalion out of the
+ground seems to have passed unnoticed! This truce is full of an
+increasing menace, increasing. The pale light confuses us.
+
+On all sides the slope is covered by men who, like us, are bent on
+the descent. On the right the outline is defined of a company that
+is reaching the ravine by Trench 97--an old German work in ruins. We
+cross our wire by openings. Still no one fires on us. Some awkward
+ones who have made false steps are getting up again. We form up on
+the farther side of the entanglements and then set ourselves to
+topple down the slope rather faster--there is an instinctive
+acceleration in the movement. Several bullets arrive at last among
+us. Bertrand shouts to us to reserve our bombs and wait till the
+last moment.
+
+But the sound of his voice is carried away. Abruptly, across all the
+width of the opposite slope, lurid flames burst forth that strike
+the air with terrible detonations. In line from left to right fires
+emerge from the sky and explosions from the ground. It is a
+frightful curtain which divides us from the world, which divides us
+from the past and from the future. We stop, fixed to the ground,
+stupefied by the sudden host that thunders from every side; then a
+simultaneous effort uplifts our mass again and throws it swiftly
+forward. We stumble and impede each other in the great waves of
+smoke. With harsh crashes and whirlwinds of pulverized earth,
+towards the profundity into which we hurl ourselves pell-mell, we
+see craters opened here and there, side by side, and merging in each
+other. Then one knows no longer where the discharges fall. Volleys
+are let loose so monstrously resounding that one feels himself
+annihilated by the mere sound of the downpoured thunder of these
+great constellations of destruction that form in the sky. One sees
+and one feels the fragments passing close to one's head with their
+hiss of red-hot iron plunged in water. The blast of one explosion so
+burns my hands that I let my rifle fall. I pick it up again,
+reeling, and set off in the tawny-gleaming tempest with lowered
+head, lashed by spirits of dust and soot in a crushing downpour like
+volcanic lava. The stridor of the bursting shells hurts your ears,
+beats you on the neck, goes through your temples, and you cannot
+endure it without a cry. The gusts of death drive us on, lift us up,
+rock us to and fro. We leap, and do not know whither we go. Our eyes
+are blinking and weeping and obscured. The view before us is blocked
+by a flashing avalanche that fills space.
+
+It is the barrage fire. We have to go through that whirlwind of fire
+and those fearful showers that vertically fall. We are passing
+through. We are through it, by chance. Here and there I have seen
+forms that spun round and were lifted up and laid down, illumined by
+a brief reflection from over yonder. I have glimpsed strange faces
+that uttered some sort of cry--you could see them without hearing
+them in the roar of annihilation. A brasier full of red and black
+masses huge and furious fell about me, excavating the ground,
+tearing it from under my feet, throwing me aside like a bouncing
+toy. I remember that I strode over a smoldering corpse, quite black,
+with a tissue of rosy blood shriveling on him; and I remember, too,
+that the skirts of the greatcoat flying next to me had caught fire,
+and left a trail of smoke behind. On our right, all along Trench 97,
+our glances were drawn and dazzled by a rank of frightful flames,
+closely crowded against each other like men.
+
+Forward!
+
+Now, we are nearly running. I see some who fall solidly flat, face
+forward, and others who founder meekly, as though they would sit
+down on the ground. We step aside abruptly to avoid the prostrate
+dead, quiet and rigid, or else offensive, and also--more perilous
+snares!--the wounded that hook on to you, struggling.
+
+The International Trench! We are there. The wire entanglements have
+been torn up into long roots and creepers, thrown afar and coiled
+up, swept away and piled in great drifts by the guns. Between these
+big bushes of rain-damped steel the ground is open and free.
+
+The trench is not defended. The Germans have abandoned it, or else a
+first wave has already passed over it. Its interior bristles with
+rifles placed against the bank. In the bottom are scattered corpses.
+From the jumbled litter of the long trench, hands emerge that
+protrude from gray sleeves with red facings, and booted legs. In
+places the embankment is destroyed and its woodwork splintered--all
+the flank of the trench collapsed and fallen into an indescribable
+mixture. In other places, round pits are yawning. And of all that
+moment I have best retained the vision of a whimsical trench covered
+with many-colored rags and tatters. For the making of their sandbags
+the Germans had used cotton and woolen stuffs of motley design
+pillaged from some house-furnisher's shop; and all this hotch-potch
+of colored remnants, mangled and frayed, floats and flaps and dances
+in our faces.
+
+We have spread out in the trench. The lieutenant, who has jumped to
+the other side, is stooping and summoning us with signs and
+shouts--"Don't stay there; forward, forward!"
+
+We climb the wall of the trench with the help of the sacks, of
+weapons, and of the backs that are piled up there. In the bottom of
+the ravine the soil is shot-churned, crowded with jetsam, swarming
+with prostrate bodies. Some are motionless as blocks of wood; others
+move slowly or convulsively. The barrage fire continues to increase
+its infernal discharge behind us on the ground that we have crossed.
+But where we are at the foot of the rise it is a dead point for the
+artillery.
+
+A short and uncertain calm follows. We are less deafened and look at
+each other. There is fever in the eyes, and the cheek-bones are
+blood-red. Our breathing snores and our hearts drum in our bodies.
+
+In haste and confusion we recognize each other, as if we had met
+again face to face in a nightmare on the uttermost shores of death.
+Some hurried words are cast upon this glade in hell--"It's you!
+"--"Where's Cocon?"--"Don't know."--"Have you seen the captain?
+"--"No."--"Going strong?"--"Yes."
+
+The bottom of the ravine is crossed and the other slope rises
+opposite. We climb in Indian file by a stairway rough-hewn in the
+ground: "Look out!" The shout means that a soldier half-way up the
+steps has been struck in the loins by a shell-fragment; he falls
+with his arms forward, bareheaded, like the diving swimmer. We can
+see the shapeless silhouette of the mass as it plunges into the
+gulf. I can almost see the detail of his blown hair over the black
+profile of his face.
+
+We debouch upon the height. A great colorless emptiness is outspread
+before us. At first one can see nothing but a chalky and stony
+plain, yellow and gray to the limit of sight. No human wave is
+preceding ours; in front of us there is no living soul, but the
+ground is peopled with dead--recent corpses that still mimic agony
+or sleep, and old remains already bleached and scattered to the
+wind, half assimilated by the earth.
+
+As soon as our pushing and jolted file emerges, two men close to me
+are hit, two shadows are hurled to the ground and roll under our
+feet, one with a sharp cry, and the other silently, as a felled ox.
+Another disappears with the caper of a lunatic, as if he had been
+snatched away. Instinctively we close up as we hustle
+forward--always forward--and the wound in our line closes of its
+own accord. The adjutant stops, raises his sword, lets it fall, and
+drops to his knees. His kneeling body slopes backward in jerks, his
+helmet drops on his heels, and he remains there, bareheaded, face to
+the sky. Hurriedly the rush of the rank has split open to respect
+his immobility.
+
+But we cannot see the lieutenant. No more leaders then--Hesitation
+checks the wave of humanity that begins to beat on the plateau.
+Above the trampling one hears the hoarse effort of our lungs.
+"Forward!" cries some soldier, and then all resume the onward race
+to perdition with increasing speed.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"Where's Bertrand?" comes the laborious complaint of one of the
+foremost runners. "There! Here!" He had stooped in passing over a
+wounded man, but he leaves him quickly, and the man extends his arms
+towards him and seems to sob.
+
+It is just at the moment when he rejoins us that we hear in front of
+us, coming from a sort of ground swelling, the crackle of a
+machine-gun. It is a moment of agony--more serious even than when we
+were passing through the flaming earthquake of the barrage. That
+familiar voice speaks to us across the plain, sharp and horrible.
+But we no longer stop. "Go on, go on!"
+
+Our panting becomes hoarse groaning, yet still we hurl ourselves
+toward the horizon.
+
+"The Boches! I see them!" a man says suddenly. "Yes--their heads,
+there--above the trench--it's there, the trench, that line. It's
+close, Ah, the hogs!"
+
+We can indeed make out little round gray caps which rise and then
+drop on the ground level, fifty yards away, beyond a belt of dark
+earth, furrowed and humped. Encouraged they spring forward, they who
+now form the group where I am. So near the goal, so far unscathed,
+shall we not reach it? Yes, we will reach it! We make great strides
+and no longer hear anything. Each man plunges straight ahead,
+fascinated by the terrible trench, bent rigidly forward, almost
+incapable of turning his head to right or to left. I have a notion
+that many of us missed their footing and fell to the ground. I jump
+sideways to miss the suddenly erect bayonet of a toppling rifle.
+Quite close to me, Farfadet jostles me with his face bleeding,
+throws himself on Volpatte who is beside me and clings to him.
+Volpatte doubles up without slackening his rush and drags him along
+some paces, then shakes him off without looking at him and without
+knowing who be is, and shouts at him in a breaking voice almost
+choked with exertion: "Let me go, let me go, nom de Dieu! They'll
+pick you up directly--don't worry."
+
+The other man sinks to the ground, and his face, plastered with a
+scarlet mask and void of all expression, turns in every direction;
+while Volpatte, already in the distance, automatically repeats
+between his teeth, "Don't worry," with a steady forward gaze on the
+line.
+
+A shower of bullets spirts around me, increasing the number of those
+who suddenly halt, who collapse slowly, defiant and gesticulating,
+of those who dive forward solidly with all the body's burden, of the
+shouts, deep, furious, and desperate, and even of that hollow and
+terrible gasp when a man's life goes bodily forth in a breath. And
+we who are not yet stricken, we look ahead, we walk and we run,
+among the frolics of the death that strikes at random into our
+flesh.
+
+The wire entanglements--and there is one stretch of them intact. We
+go along to where it has been gutted into a wide and deep opening.
+This is a colossal funnel-hole, formed of smaller funnels placed
+together, a fantastic volcanic crater, scooped there by the guns.
+
+The sight of this convulsion is stupefying; truly it seems that it
+must have come from the center of the earth. Such a rending of
+virgin strata puts new edge on our attacking fury, and none of us
+can keep from shouting with a solemn shake of the head--even just
+now when words are but painfully torn from our throats--"Ah, Christ!
+Look what hell we've given 'em there! Ah, look!"
+
+Driven as if by the wind, we mount or descend at the will of the
+hollows and the earthy mounds in the gigantic fissure dug and
+blackened and burned by furious flames. The soil clings to the feet
+and we tear them out angrily. The accouterments and stuffs that
+cover the soft soil, the linen that is scattered about from sundered
+knapsacks, prevent us from sticking fast in it, and we are careful
+to plant our feet in this debris when we jump into the holes or
+climb the hillocks.
+
+Behind us voices urge us--Forward, boys, forward, nome de Dieu!"
+
+"All the regiment is behind us!" they cry. We do not turn round to
+see, but the assurance electrifies our rush once more.
+
+No more caps are visible behind the embankment of the trench we are
+nearing. Some German dead are crumbling in front of it, in pinnacled
+heaps or extended lines. We are there. The parapet takes definite
+and sinister shape and detail; the loopholes--we are prodigiously,
+incredibly close!
+
+Something falls in front of us. It is a bomb. With a kick Corporal
+Bertrand returns it so well that it rises and bursts just over the
+trench.
+
+With that fortunate deed the squad reaches the trench.
+
+Pepin has hurled himself flat on the ground and is involved
+with a corpse. He reaches the edge and plunges in--the first to
+enter. Fouillade, with great gestures and shouts, jumps into the pit
+almost at the same moment that Pepin rolls down it.
+Indistinctly I see--in the time of the lightning's flash--a whole
+row of black demons stooping and squatting for the descent, on the
+ridge of the embankment, on the edge of the dark ambush.
+
+A terrible volley bursts point-blank in our faces, flinging in front
+of us a sudden row of flames the whole length of the earthen verge.
+After the stunning shock we shake ourselves and burst into devilish
+laughter--the discharge has passed too high. And at once, with
+shouts and roars of salvation, we slide and roll and fall alive into
+the belly of the trench!
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We are submerged in a mysterious smoke, and at first I can only see
+blue uniforms in the stifling gulf. We go one way and then another,
+driven by each other, snarling and searching. We turn about, and
+with our hands encumbered by knife, bombs, and rifle, we do not know
+at first what to do.
+
+"They're in their funk-holes, the swine!" is the cry. Heavy
+explosions are shaking the earth--underground, in the dug-outs. We
+are all at once divided by huge clouds of smoke so thick that we are
+masked and can see nothing more. We struggle like drowning men
+through the acrid darkness of a fallen fragment of night. One
+stumbles against barriers of cowering clustered beings who bleed and
+howl in the bottom. Hardly can one make out the trench walls,
+straight up just here and made of white sandbags, which are
+everywhere torn like paper. At one time the heavy adhesive reek
+sways and lifts, and one sees again the swarming mob of the
+attackers. Torn out of the dusty picture, the silhouette of a
+hand-to-hand struggle is drawn in fog on the wall, it droops and
+sinks to the bottom. I hear several shrill cries of "Kamarad!"
+proceeding from a pale-faced and gray-clad group in the huge corner
+made by a rending shell. Under the inky cloud the tempest of men
+flows back, climbs towards the right, eddying, pitching and falling,
+along the dark and ruined mole.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+And suddenly one feels that it is over. We see and hear and
+understand that our wave, rolling here through the barrage fire, has
+not encountered an equal breaker. They have fallen back on our
+approach. The battle has dissolved in front of us. The slender
+curtain of defenders has crumbled into the holes, where they are
+caught like rats or killed. There is no more resistance, but a void,
+a great void. We advance in crowds like a terrible array of
+spectators.
+
+And here the trench seems all lightning-struck. With its tumbled
+white walls it might be just here the soft and slimy bed of a
+vanished river that has left stony bluffs, with here and there the
+flat round hole of a pool, also dried up; and on the edges, on the
+sloping banks and in the bottom, there is a long trailing glacier of
+corpses--a dead river that is filled again to overflowing by the new
+tide and the breaking wave of our company. In the smoke vomited by
+dug-outs and the shaking wind of subterranean explosions, I come
+upon a compact mass of men hooked onto each other who are describing
+a wide circle. Just as we reach them the entire mass breaks up to
+make a residue of furious battle. I see Blaire break away, his
+helmet hanging on his neck by the chin-strap and his face flayed,
+and uttering a savage yell. I stumble upon a man who is crouching at
+the entry to a dug-out. Drawing back from the black hatchway,
+yawning and treacherous, he steadies himself with his left hand on a
+beam. In his right hand and for several seconds he holds a bomb
+which is on the point of exploding. It disappears in the hole,
+bursts immediately, and a horrible human echo answers him from the
+bowels of the earth. The man seizes another bomb.
+
+Another man strikes and shatters the posts at the mouth of another
+dug-out with a pickax he has found there, causing a landslide, and
+the entry is blocked. I see several shadows trampling and
+gesticulating over the tomb.
+
+Of the living ragged band that has got so far and has reached this
+long-sought trench after dashing against the storm of invincible
+shells and bullets launched to meet them, I can hardly recognize
+those whom I know, just as though all that had gone before of our
+lives had suddenly become very distant. There is some change working
+in them. A frenzied excitement is driving them all out of
+themselves.
+
+"What are we stopping here for?" says one, grinding his teeth.
+
+"Why don't we go on to the next?" a second asks me in fury. "Now
+we're here, we'd be there in a few jumps!'
+
+"I, too, I want to go on."--"Me, too. Ah, the hogs!" They shake
+themselves like banners. They carry the luck of their survival as it
+were glory; they are implacable, uncontrolled, intoxicated with
+themselves.
+
+We wait and stamp about in the captured work, this strange
+demolished way that winds along the plain and goes from the unknown
+to the unknown.
+
+Advance to the right!
+
+We begin to flow again in one direction. No doubt it is a movement
+planned up there, back yonder, by the chiefs. We trample soft bodies
+underfoot, some of which are moving and slowly altering their
+position; rivulets and cries come from them. Like posts and heaps of
+rubbish, corpses are piled anyhow on the wounded, and press them
+down, suffocate them, strangle them. So that I can get by, I must
+push at a slaughtered trunk of which the neck is a spring of
+gurgling blood.
+
+In the cataclysm of earth and of massive wreckage blown up and blown
+out, above the hordes of wounded and dead that stir together,
+athwart the moving forest of smoke implanted in the trench and in
+all its environs, one no longer sees any face but what is inflamed,
+blood-red with sweat, eyes flashing. Some groups seem to be dancing
+as they brandish their knives. They are elated, immensely confident,
+ferocious.
+
+The battle dies down imperceptibly. A soldier says, "Well, what's to
+be done now?" ft flares up again suddenly at one point. Twenty yards
+away in the plain, in the direction of a circle that the gray
+embankment makes, a cluster of rifle-shots crackles and hurls its
+scattered missiles around a hidden machine-gun, that spits
+intermittently and seems to be in difficulties.
+
+Under the shadowy wing of a sort of yellow and bluish nimbus I see
+men encircling the flashing machine and closing in on it. Near to me
+I make out the silhouette of Mesnil Joseph, who is steering straight
+and with no effort of concealment for the spot whence the barking
+explosions come in jerky sequence.
+
+A flash shoots out from a corner of the trench between us two.
+Joseph halts, sways, stoops, and drops on one knee. I run to him and
+he watches me coming. "It's nothing--my thigh. I can crawl along by
+myself." He seems to have become quiet, childish, docile; and sways
+slowly towards the trench.
+
+I have still in my eyes the exact spot whence rang the shot that hit
+him, and I slip round there by the left, making a detour. No one
+there. I only meet another of our squad on the same errand--Paradis.
+
+We are bustled by men who are carrying on their shoulders pieces of
+iron of all shapes. They block up the trench and separate us. "The
+machine-gun's taken by the 7th," they shout, "it won't bark any
+more. It was a mad devil--filthy beast! Filthy beast!"
+
+"What's there to do now?"--"Nothing."
+
+We stay there, jumbled together, and sit down. The living have
+ceased to gasp for breath, the dying have rattled their last,
+surrounded by smoke and lights and the din of the guns that rolls to
+all the ends of the earth. We no longer know where we are. There is
+neither earth nor sky--nothing but a sort of cloud. The first period
+of inaction is forming in the chaotic drama, and there is a general
+slackening in the movement and the uproar. The cannonade grows less;
+it still shakes the sky as a cough shakes a man, but it is farther
+off now. Enthusiasm is allayed, and there remains only the infinite
+fatigue that rises and overwhelms us, and the infinite waiting that
+begins over again.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Where is the enemy? He has left his dead everywhere, and we have
+seen rows of prisoners. Yonder again there is. one, drab,
+ill-defined and smoky, outlined against the dirty sky. But the bulk
+seem to have dispersed afar. A few shells come to us here and there
+blunderingly, and we ridicule them. We are saved, we are quiet, we
+are alone, in this desert where an immensity of corpses adjoins a
+line of the living.
+
+Night has come. The dust has flown away, but has yielded place to
+shadow and darkness over the long-drawn multitude's disorder. Men
+approach each other, sit down, get up again and walk about, leaning
+on each other or hooked together. Between the dug-outs, which are
+blocked by the mingled dead, we gather in groups and squat. Some
+have laid their rifles on the ground and wander on the rim of the
+trench with their arms balancing; and when they come near we can see
+that they are blackened and scorched, their eyes are red and slashed
+with mud. We speak seldom, but are beginning to think.
+
+We see the stretcher-bearers, whose sharp silhouettes stoop and
+grope; they advance linked two and two together by their long
+burdens. Yonder on our right one hears the blows of pick and shovel.
+
+I wander into the middle of this gloomy turmoil. In a place where
+the embankment has crushed the embankment of the trench into a
+gentle slope, some one is seated. A faint light still prevails. The
+tranquil attitude of this man as he looks reflectively in front of
+him is sculptural and striking. Stooping, I recognize him as
+Corporal Bertrand. He turns his face towards me, and I feel that he
+is looking at me through the shadows with his thoughtful smile.
+
+"I was coming to look for you," he says; "they're organizing a guard
+for the trench until we've got news of what the others have done and
+what's going on in front. I'm going to put you on double sentry with
+Paradis, in a listening-post that the sappers have just dug."
+
+We watch the shadows of the passers-by and of those who are seated,
+outlined in inky blots, bowed and bent in diverse attitudes under
+the gray sky, all along the ruined parapet. Dwarfed to the size of
+insects and worms, they make a strange and secret stirring among
+these shadow-hidden lands where for two years war has caused cities
+of soldiers to wander or stagnate over deep and boundless
+cemeteries.
+
+Two obscure forms pass in the dark, several paces from us; they are
+talking together in low voices--"You bet, old chap, instead of
+listening to him, I shoved my bayonet into his belly so that I
+couldn't haul it out."
+
+"There were four in the bottom of the hole. I called to 'em to come
+out, and as soon as one came out I stuck him. Blood ran down me up
+to the elbow and stuck up my sleeves."
+
+"Ah!" the first speaker went on, "when we are telling all about it
+later, if we get back, to the other people at home, by the stove and
+the candle, who's going to believe it? It's a pity, isn't it?"
+
+"I don't care a damn about that, as long as we do get back," said
+the other; "I want the end quickly, and only that."
+
+Bertrand was used to speak very little ordinarily, and never of
+himself. But he said, "I've got three of them on my hands. I struck
+like a madman. Ah, we were all like beasts when we got here!"
+
+He raised his voice and there was a restrained tremor in it: "it was
+necessary," he said, "it was necessary, for the future's sake."
+
+He crossed his arms and tossed his head: "The future!" he cried all
+at once as a prophet might. "How will they regard this slaughter,
+they who'll live after us, to whom progress--which comes as sure as
+fate--will at last restore the poise of their conscience? How will
+they regard these exploits which even we who perform them don't know
+whether one should compare them with those of Plutarch's and
+Corneille's heroes or with those of hooligans and apaches?
+
+"And for all that, mind you," Bertrand went on. "there is one figure
+that has risen above the war and will blaze with the beauty and
+strength of his courage--"
+
+I listened, leaning on a stick and towards him, drinking in the
+voice that came in the twilight silence from the lips that so rarely
+spoke. He cried with a clear voice--"Liebknecht!"
+
+He stood up with his arms still crossed. His face, as profoundly
+serious as a statue's, drooped upon his chest. But he emerged once
+again from his marble muteness to repeat, "The future, the future!
+The work of the future will be to wipe out the present, to wipe it
+out more than we can imagine, to wipe it out like something
+abominable and shameful. And yet--this present--it had to be, it
+had to be! Shame on military glory, shame on armies, shame on the
+soldier's calling, that changes men by turns into stupid victims or
+ignoble brutes. Yes, shame. That's the true word, but it's too true;
+it's true in eternity, but it's not yet true for us. It will be true
+when there is a Bible that is entirely true, when it is found
+written among the other truths that a purified mind will at the same
+time let us understand. We are still lost, still exiled far from
+that time. In our time of to-day, in these moments, this truth is
+hardly more than a fallacy, this sacred saying is only blasphemy!"
+
+A kind of laugh came from him, full of echoing dreams--"To think I
+once told them I believed in prophecies, just to kid them!"
+
+I sat down by Bertrand's side. This soldier who had always done more
+than was required of him and survived notwithstanding, stood at that
+moment in my eyes for those who incarnate a lofty moral conception,
+who have the strength to detach themselves from the hustle of
+circumstances, and who are destined, however little their path may
+run through a splendor of events, to dominate their time.
+
+"I have always thought all those things," I murmured.
+
+"Ah!" said Bertrand. We looked at each other without a word, with a
+little surprised self-communion. After this full silence he spoke
+again. "It's time to start duty; take your rifle and come."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+From our listening-post we see towards the east a light spreading
+like a conflagration, but bluer and sadder than buildings on fire.
+It streaks the sky above a long black cloud which extends suspended
+like the smoke of an extinguished fire, like an immense stain on the
+world. It is the returning morning.
+
+It is so cold that we cannot stand still in spite of our fettering
+fatigue. We tremble and shiver and shed tears, and our teeth
+chatter. Little by little, with dispiriting tardiness, day escapes
+from the sky into the slender framework of the black clouds. All is
+frozen, colorless and empty; a deathly silence reigns everywhere.
+There is rime and snow under a burden of mist. Everything is white.
+Paradis moves--a heavy pallid ghost, for we two also are all white.
+I had placed my shoulder-bag on the other side of the parapet, and
+it looks as if wrapped in paper. In the bottom of the hole a little
+snow floats, fretted and gray in the black foot-bath. Outside the
+hole, on the piled-up things, in the excavations, upon the crowded
+dead, snow rests like muslin.
+
+Two stooping protuberant masses are crayoned on the mist; they grow
+darker as they approach and hail us. They are the men who come to
+relieve us. Their faces are ruddy and tearful with cold, their
+cheek-bones like enameled tiles; but their greatcoats are not
+snow-powdered, for they have slept underground.
+
+Paradis hoists himself out. Over the plain I follow his Father
+Christmas back and the duck-like waddle of the boots that pick up
+white-felted soles. Bending deeply forward we regain the trench; the
+footsteps of those who replaced us are marked in black on the scanty
+whiteness that covers the ground.
+
+Watchers are standing at intervals in the trench, over which
+tarpaulins are stretched on posts here and there, figured in white
+velvet or mottled with rime, and forming great irregular tents; and
+between the watchers are squatting forms who grumble and try to
+fight against the cold. to exclude it from the meager fireside of
+their own chests, or who are simply frozen. A dead man has slid
+down. upright and hardly askew, with his feet in the trench and his
+chest and arms resting on the bank. He was clasping the earth when
+life left him. His face is turned skyward and is covered with a
+leprosy of ice, the eyelids are white as the eyes, the mustache
+caked with hard slime. Other bodies are sleeping, less white than
+that one; the snowy stratum is only intact on lifeless things.
+
+"We must sleep." Paradis and I are looking for shelter, a hole where
+we may hide ourselves and shut our eyes. "It can't be helped if
+there are stiffs in the dugouts," mutters Paradis; "in a cold like
+this they'll keep, they won't be too bad." We go forward, so weary
+that we can only see the ground.
+
+I am alone. Where is Paradis? He must have lain down in some hole,
+and perhaps I did not hear his call. I meet Marthereau. "I'm looking
+where I can sleep, I've been on guard," he says.
+
+"I, too; let's look together."
+
+"What's all the row and to-do?" says Marthereau. A mingled hubbub of
+trampling and voices overflows from the communication trench that
+goes off here. "The communication trenches are full of men. Who are
+you?"
+
+One of those with whom we are suddenly mixed up replies, "We're the
+Fifth Battalion." The newcomers stop. They are in marching order.
+The one that spoke sits down for a breathing space on the curves of
+a sand-bag that protrudes from the line. He wipes his nose with the
+back of his sleeve.
+
+"What are you doing here? Have they told you to come?"
+
+"Not half they haven't told us. We're coming to attack. We're going
+yonder, right up." With his head he indicates the north. The
+curiosity with which we look at them fastens on to a detail. "You've
+carried everything with you?"--"We chose to keep it, that's all."
+
+"Forward!" they are ordered. They rise and proceed, incompletely
+awake, their eyes puffy, their wrinkles underlined. There are young
+men among them with thin necks and vacuous eyes, and old men; and in
+the middle, ordinary ones. They march with a commonplace and pacific
+step. What they are going to do seems to us, who did it last night,
+beyond human strength. But still they go away towards the north.
+
+"The revally of the damned," says Marthereau.
+
+We make way for them with a sort of admiration and a sort of terror.
+When they have passed, Marthereau wags his head and murmurs, "There
+are some getting ready, too, on the other side, with their gray
+uniforms. Do you think those chaps are feeling it about the attack?
+Then why have they come? It's not their doing, I know, but it's
+theirs all the same, seeing they're here.--I know, I know, but it's
+odd, all of it."
+
+The sight of a passer-by alters the course of his ideas: "Tiens,
+there's Truc, the big one, d'you know him? Isn't he immense and
+pointed, that chap! As for me, I know I'm not quite hardly big
+enough; but him, he goes too far. He always knows what's going on,
+that two-yarder! For savvying everything, there's nobody going to
+give him the go-by! I'll go and chivvy him about a funk-hole."
+
+"If there's a rabbit-hole anywhere?" replies the elongated
+passer-by, leaning on Marthereau like a poplar tree, "for sure, my
+old Caparthe, certainly. Tiens, there"--and unbending his elbow he
+makes an indicative gesture like a flag-signaler--"'Villa von
+Hindenburg.' and there, 'Villa Glucks auf.' If that doesn't
+satisfy you, you gentlemen are hard to please. P'raps there's a few
+lodgers in the basement, but not noisy lodgers, and you can talk out
+aloud in front of them, you know!"
+
+"Ah, nom de Dieu!" cried Marthereau a quarter of an hour after we
+had established ourselves in one of these square-cut graves,
+"there's lodgers he didn't tell us about, that frightful great
+lightning-rod, that infinity!" His eyelids were just closing, but
+they opened again and he scratched his arms and thighs: "I want a
+snooze! It appears it's out of the question. Can't resist these
+things."
+
+We settled ourselves to yawning and sighing, and finally we lighted
+a stump of candle, wet enough to resist us although covered with our
+hands; and we watched each other yawn.
+
+The German dug-out consisted of several rooms. We were against a
+partition of ill-fitting planks; and on the other side, in Cave No.
+2, some men were also awake. We saw light trickle through the
+crannies between the planks and heard rumbling voices. "It's the
+other section," said Marthereau.
+
+Then we listened, mechanically. "When I was off on leave," boomed an
+invisible talker, "we had the hump at first, because we were
+thinking of my poor brother who was missing in March--dead, no
+doubt--and of my poor little Julien, of Class 1915, killed in the
+October attacks. And then bit by bit, her and me, we settled down to
+be happy at being together again, you see. Our little kid, the last,
+a five-year-old, entertained us a treat. He wanted to play soldiers
+with me, and I made a little gun for him. I explained the trenches
+to him; and he, all fluttering with delight like a bird, he was
+shooting at me and yelling. Ah, the damned young gentleman, he did
+it properly! He'll make a famous poilu later! I tell you, he's quite
+got the military spirit!"
+
+A silence; then an obscure murmur of talk, in the midst of which we
+catch the name of Napoleon; then another voice, or the same, saying,
+"Wilhelm, he's a stinking beast to have brought this war on. But
+Napoleon, he was a great man!"
+
+Marthereau is kneeling in front of me in the feeble and scanty rays
+of our candle, in the bottom of this dark ill-enclosed hole where
+the cold shudders through at intervals, where vermin swarm and where
+the sorry crowd of living men endures the faint but musty savor of a
+tomb; and Marthereau looks at me. He still hears, as I do, the
+unknown soldier who said, "Wilhelm is a stinking beast, but Napoleon
+was a great man," and who extolled the martial ardor of the little
+boy still left to him. Marthereau droops his arms and wags his weary
+head--and the shadow of the double gesture is thrown on the
+partition by the lean light in a sudden caricature.
+
+"Ah!" says my humble companion, "we're all of us not bad sorts, and
+we're unlucky, and we're poor devils as well. But we're too stupid,
+we're too stupid!"
+
+Again he turns his eyes on me. In his bewhiskered and poodle-like
+face I see his fine eyes shining in wondering and still confused
+contemplation of things which he is setting himself to understand in
+the innocence of his obscurity.
+
+We come out of the uninhabitable shelter; the weather has bettered a
+little; the snow has melted, and all is soiled anew. "The wind's
+licked up the sugar," says Marthereau.
+
+* * * * *
+
+I am deputed to accompany Mesnil Joseph to the refuge on the
+Pylones road. Sergeant Henriot gives me charge of the wounded
+man and hands me his clearing order. "If you meet Bertrand on the
+way," says Henriot, "tell him to look sharp and get busy, will you?"
+Bertrand went away on liaison duty last night and they have been
+waiting for him for an hour; the captain is getting impatient and
+threatens to lose his temper.
+
+I get under way with Joseph, who walks very slowly, a little paler
+than usual, and still taciturn. Now and again he halts, and his face
+twitches. We follow the communication trenches, and a comrade
+appears suddenly. It is Volpatte, and he says, "I'm going with you
+to the foot of the hill." As he is off duty, he is wielding a
+magnificent twisted walking-stick, and he shakes in his hand like
+castanets the precious pair of scissors that never leaves him.
+
+All three of us come out of the communication trench when the slope
+of the land allows us to do it without danger of bullets--the guns
+are not firing. As soon as we are outside we stumble upon a
+gathering of men. It is raining. Between the heavy legs planted
+there like little trees on the gray plain in the mist we see a dead
+man. Volpatte edges his way in to the horizontal form upon which
+these upright ones are waiting; then he turns round violently and
+shouts to us, "It's Pepin!"
+
+"Ah!" says Joseph, who is already almost fainting. He leans on me
+and we draw near. Pepin is full length, his feet and hands
+bent and shriveled, and his rain-washed face is swollen and horribly
+gray.
+
+A man who holds a pickax and whose sweating face is full of little
+black trenches, recounts to us the death of Pepin: "He'd gone
+into a funk-hole where the Boches had planked themselves, and behold
+no one knew he was there and they smoked the hole to make sure of
+cleaning it out, and the poor lad, they found him after the
+operation, corpsed, and all pulled out like a cat's innards in the
+middle of the Boche cold meat that he'd stuck--and very nicely stuck
+too, I may say, seeing I was in business as a butcher in the suburbs
+of Paris."
+
+"One less to the squad!" says Volpatte as we go away.
+
+We are now on the edge of the ravine at the spot where the plateau
+begins that our desperate charge traversed last evening, and we
+cannot recognize it. This plain, which had then seemed to me quite
+level, though it really slopes, is an amazing charnel-house. It
+swarms with corpses, and might be a cemetery of which the top has
+been taken away.
+
+Groups of men are moving about it, identifying the dead of last
+evening and last night, turning the remains over, recognizing them
+by some detail in spite of their faces. One of these searchers,
+kneeling, draws from a dead hand an effaced and mangled
+photograph--a portrait killed.
+
+In the distance, black shell-smoke goes up in scrolls. then
+detonates over the horizon. The wide and stippled flight of an army
+of crows sweeps the sky.
+
+Down below among the motionless multitude, and identifiable by their
+wasting and disfigurement, there are zouaves, tirailleurs, and
+Foreign Legionaries from the May attack. The extreme end of our
+lines was then on Berthonval Wood, five or six kilometers from here.
+In that attack, which was one of the most terrible of the war or of
+any war, those men got here in a single rush. They thus formed a
+point too far advanced in the wave of attack, and were caught on the
+flanks between the machine-guns posted to right and to left on the
+lines they had overshot. It is some months now since death hollowed
+their eyes and consumed their cheeks, but even in those
+storm-scattered and dissolving remains one can identify the havoc of
+the machine-guns that destroyed them, piercing their backs and loins
+and severing them in the middle. By the side of heads black and
+waxen as Egyptian mummies, clotted with grubs and the wreckage of
+insects, where white teeth still gleam in some cavities, by the side
+of poor darkening stumps that abound like a field of old roots laid
+bare, one discovers naked yellow skulls wearing the red cloth fez,
+whose gray cover has crumbled like paper. Some thigh-bones protrude
+from the heaps of rags stuck together with reddish mud; and from the
+holes filled with clothes shredded and daubed with a sort of tar, a
+spinal fragment emerges. Some ribs are scattered on the soil like
+old cages broken; and close by, blackened leathers are afloat, with
+water-bottles and drinking-cups pierced and flattened. About a
+cloven knapsack, on the top of some bones and a cluster of bits of
+cloth and accouterments, some white points are evenly scattered; by
+stooping one can see that they are the finger and toe constructions
+of what was once a corpse.
+
+Sometimes only a rag emerges from long mounds to indicate that some
+human being was there destroyed, for all these unburied dead end by
+entering the soil.
+
+The Germans, who were here yesterday, abandoned their soldiers by
+the side of ours without interring them--as witness these three
+putrefied corpses on the top of each other, in each other, with
+their round gray caps whose red edge is hidden with a gray band,
+their yellow-gray jackets, and their green faces. I look for the
+features of one of them. From the depth of his neck up to the tufts
+of hair that stick to the brim of his cap is just an earthy mass,
+the face become an anthill, and two rotten berries in place of the
+eyes. Another is a dried emptiness flat on its belly, the back in
+tatters that almost flutter, the hands, feet, and face enrooted in
+the soil.
+
+"Look! It's a new one, this--"
+
+In the middle of the plateau and in the depth of the rainy and
+bitter air, on the ghastly morrow of this debauch of slaughter,
+there is a head planted in the ground, a wet and bloodless head,
+with a heavy beard.
+
+It is one of ours, and the helmet is beside it. The distended
+eyelids permit a little to be seen of the dull porcelain of his
+eyes, and one lip shines like a slug in the shapeless beard. No
+doubt he fell into a shell-hole, which was filled up by another
+shell, burying him up to the neck like the cat's-head German of the
+Red Tavern at Souchez.
+
+"I don't know him," says Joseph, who has come up very slowly and
+speaks with difficulty.
+
+"I recognize him," replies Volpatte.
+
+"That bearded man?" says Joseph.
+
+"He has no beard. Look--" Stooping, Volpatte passes the end of his
+stick under the chin of the corpse and breaks off a sort of slab of
+mud in which the head was set, a slab that looked like a beard. Then
+he picks up the dead man's helmet and puts it on his head, and for a
+moment holds before the eyes the round handles of his famous
+scissors so as to imitate spectacles.
+
+"Ah!" we all cried together, "it's Cocon!"
+
+When you hear of or see the death of one of those who fought by your
+side and lived exactly the same life, you receive a direct blow in
+the flesh before even understanding. It is truly as if one heard of
+his own destruction. It is only later that one begins to mourn.
+
+We look at the hideous head that is murder's jest, the murdered head
+already and cruelly effacing our memories of Cocon. Another comrade
+less. We remain there around him, afraid.
+
+"He was--"
+
+We should like to speak a little, but do not know what to say that
+would be sufficiently serious or telling or true.
+
+"Come," says Joseph, with an effort, wholly engrossed by his severe
+suffering, "I haven't strength enough to be stopping all the time."
+
+We leave poor Cocon, the ex-statistician, with a last look, a look
+too short and almost vacant.
+
+"One cannot imagine--" says Volpatte.
+
+No, one cannot imagine. All these disappearances at once surpass the
+imagination. There are not enough survivors now. But we have vague
+idea of the grandeur of these dead. They have given all; by degrees
+they have given all their strength, and finally they have given
+themselves, en bloc. They have outpaced life, and their effort has
+something of superhuman perfection.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"Tiens, he's just been wounded, that one, and yet--" A fresh wound
+is moistening the neck of a body that is almost a skeleton.
+
+"It's a rat," says Volpatte. "The stiffs are old ones, but the rats
+talk to 'em. You see some rats laid out--poisoned, p'raps--near
+every body or under it. Tiens, this poor old chap shall show us
+his." He lifts up the foot of the collapsed remains and reveals two
+dead rats.
+
+"I should like to find Farfadet again," says Volpatte. "I told him
+to wait just when we started running and he clipped hold of me. Poor
+lad, let's hope he waited!"
+
+So he goes to and fro, attracted towards the dead by a strange
+curiosity; and these, indifferent, bandy him about from one to
+another, and at each step he looks on the ground. Suddenly he utters
+a cry of distress. With his hand he beckons us as he kneels to a
+dead man.
+
+Bertrand!
+
+Acute emotion grips us. He has been killed; he, too, like the rest,
+he who most towered over us by his energy and intelligence. By
+virtue of always doing his duty. he has at last got killed. He has
+at last found death where indeed it was.
+
+We look at him, and then turn away from the sight and look upon each
+other.
+
+The shock of his loss is aggravated by the spectacle that his
+remains present, for they are abominable to see. Death has bestowed
+a grotesque look and attitude on the man who was so comely and so
+tranquil. With his hair scattered over his eyes, his mustache
+trailing in his mouth, and his face swollen--he is laughing. One eye
+is widely open, the other shut, and the tongue lolls out. His arms
+are outstretched in the form of a cross: the hands open, the fingers
+separated. The right leg is straight. The left, whence flowed the
+hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is
+twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful
+irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance
+of a clown's antic.
+
+We arrange him, and lay him straight, and tranquillize the horrible
+masks. Volpatte has taken a pocket-book from him and places it
+reverently among his own papers, by the side of the portrait of his
+own wife and children. That done, he shakes his head: "He--he was
+truly a good sort, old man. When he said anything, that was the
+proof that it was true. Ah, we needed him badly!"
+
+"Yes," I said, "we had need of him always."
+
+"Ah, la, la!" murmurs Volpatte. and he trembles. Joseph repeats in a
+weak voice, "Ah, nom de Dieu! Ah, nom de Dieu!"
+
+The plateau is as covered with people as a public square;
+fatigue-parties in detachments, and isolated men. Here and there,
+the stretcher-bearers are beginning (patiently and in a small way)
+their huge and endless task.
+
+Volpatte leaves us, to return to the trench and announce our new
+losses, and above all the great gap left by Bertrand. He says to
+Joseph, "We shan't lose sight of you, eh? Write us a line now and
+again--just, 'All goes well; signed, Camembert,' eh?" He disappears
+among the people who cross each other's path in the expanse now
+completely possessed by a mournful and endless rain.
+
+Joseph leans on me and we go down into the ravine. The slope by
+which we descend is known as the Zouaves' Cells. In the May attack,
+the Zouaves had all begun to dig themselves individual shelters, and
+round these they were exterminated. Some are still seen, prone on
+the brim of an incipient hole, with their trenching-tools in their
+fleshless hands or looking at them with the cavernous hollows where
+shrivel the entrails of eyes. The ground is so full of dead that the
+earth-falls uncover places that bristle with feet, with half-clothed
+skeletons, and with ossuaries of skulls placed side by side on the
+steep slope like porcelain globe-jars.
+
+In the ground here there are several strata of dead and in many
+places the delving of the shells has brought out the oldest and set
+them out in display on the top of the new ones. The bottom of the
+ravine is completely carpeted with debris of weapons, clothing, and
+implements. One tramples shell fragments, old iron, loaves and even
+biscuits that have fallen from knapsacks and are not yet dissolved
+by the rain. Mess-tins, pots of jam. and helmets are pierced and
+riddled by bullets--the scrapings and scum of a hell-broth; and the
+dislocated posts that survive are stippled with holes.
+
+The trenches that run in this valley have a look of earthquake
+crevasses, and as if whole tombs of uncouth things had been emptied
+on the ruins of the earth's convulsion. And there, where no dead
+are, the very earth is cadaverous.
+
+We follow the International Trench, still fluttering with rainbow
+rags--a shapeless trench which the confusion of torn stuffs invests
+with an air of a trench assassinated--to a place where the irregular
+and winding ditch forms an elbow. All the way along, as far as an
+earthwork barricade that blocks the way, German corpses are
+entangled and knotted as in a torrent of the damned, some of them
+emerging from muddy caves in the middle of a bewildering
+conglomerate of beams, ropes, creepers of iron, trench-rollers,
+hurdles, and bullet-screens. At the barrier itself, one corpse
+stands upright, fixed in the other dead, while another, planted in
+the same spot, stands obliquely in the dismal place, the whole
+arrangement looking like part of a big wheel embedded in the mud, or
+the shattered sail of a windmill. And over all this, this
+catastrophe of flesh and filthiness, religious images are broadcast,
+post-cards, pious pamphlets, leaflets on which prayers are written
+in Gothic lettering--they have scattered themselves in waves from
+gutted clothing. The paper words seem to bedeck with blossom these
+shores of pestilence, this Valley of Death, with their countless
+pallors of barren lies.
+
+I seek a solid footway to guide Joseph in--his wound is paralyzing
+him by degrees, and he feels it extending throughout his body. While
+I support him, and he is looking at nothing, I look upon the ghastly
+upheaval through which we are escaping.
+
+A German sergeant is seated, here where we tread, supported by the
+riven timbers that once formed the shelter of a sentry. There is a
+little hole under his eye; the thrust of a bayonet has nailed him to
+the planks through his face. In front of him, also sitting, with his
+elbows on his knees and his fists on his chin, there is a man who
+has all the top of his skull taken off like a boiled egg. Beside
+them--an awful watchman!--the half of a man is standing, a man
+sliced in two from scalp to stomach, upright against the earthen
+wall. I do not know where the other half of this human post may be,
+whose eye hangs down above and whose bluish viscera curl spirally
+round his leg.
+
+Down below, one's foot detaches itself from a matrix of blood,
+stiffened with French bayonets that have been bent, doubled, and
+twisted by the force of the blow. Through a gap in the mutilated
+wall one espies a recess where the bodies of soldiers of the
+Prussian Guard seem to kneel in the pose of suppliants, run through
+from behind, with blood-stained gaps, impaled. Out of this group
+they have pulled to its edge a huge Senegalese tirailleur, who,
+petrified in the contorted position where death seized him, leans
+upon empty air and holds fast by his feet, staring at his two
+severed wrists. No doubt a bomb had exploded in his hands; and since
+all his face is alive, he seems to be gnawing maggots.
+
+"It was here," says a passing soldier of an Alpine regiment, "that
+they did the white flag trick; and as they'd got Africans to deal
+with, you bet they got it hot!--Tiens, there's the white flag itself
+that these dunghills used."
+
+He seizes and shakes a long handle that lies there. A square of
+white stuff is nailed to it, and unfolds itself innocently.
+
+A procession of shovel-bearers advances along the battered trench.
+They have an order to shovel the earth into the relics of the
+trenches, to stop everything up, so that the bodies may be buried on
+the spot. Thus these helmeted warriors will here perform the work of
+the redresser of wrongs as they restore their full shape to the
+fields and make level the cavities already half filled by cargoes of
+invaders.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Some one calls me from the other side of the trench, a man sitting
+on the ground and leaning against a stake. It is Papa Ramure.
+Through his unbuttoned greatcoat and jacket I see bandages around
+his chest. "The ambulance men have been to tuck me up," he says, in
+a weak and stertorous voice, "but they can't take me away from here
+before evening. But I know all right that I'm petering out every
+minute."
+
+He jerks his head. "Stay a bit," he asks me. He is much moved, and
+the tears are flowing. He offers his hand and holds mine. He wants
+to say a lot of things to me and almost to make confession. "I was a
+straight man before the war," he says, with trickling tears; "I
+worked from morning to night to feed my little lot. And then I came
+here to kill Boches. And now, I've got killed. Listen, listen,
+listen, don't go away, listen to me--"
+
+"I must take Joseph back--he's at the end of his strength. I'll come
+back afterwards."
+
+Ramure lifted his streaming eyes to the wounded man. "Not only
+living, but wounded! Escaped from death! Ah, some women and children
+are lucky! All right, take him, take him, and come back--I hope I
+shall be waiting for you--"
+
+Now we must climb the other slope of the ravine, and we enter the
+deformed and maltreated ditch of the old Trench 97.
+
+Suddenly a frantic whistling tears the air and there is a shower of
+shrapnel above us. Meteorites flash and scatter in fearful flight in
+the heart of the yellow clouds. Revolving missiles rush through the
+heavens to break and burn upon the bill, to ransack it and exhume
+the old bones of men; and the thundering flames multiply themselves
+along an even line.
+
+It is the barrage fire beginning again. Like children we cry,
+"Enough, enough!"
+
+In this fury of fatal engines, this mechanical cataclysm that
+pursues us through space, there is something that surpasses human
+strength and will, something supernatural. Joseph, standing with his
+hand in mine, looks over his shoulder at the storm of rending
+explosions. He bows his head like an imprisoned beast, distracted:
+"What, again! Always, then!" he growls; "after all we've done and
+all we've seen--and now it begins again! Ah, non, non!"
+
+He falls on his knees, gasps for breath, and throws a futile look of
+full hatred before him and behind him. He repeats, "It's never
+finished, never!"
+
+I take him by the arm and raise him. "Come; it'll be finished for
+you."
+
+We must dally there awhile before climbing, so I will go and bring
+back Ramure in extremis, who is waiting for me. But Joseph clings to
+me, and then I notice a movement of men about the spot where I left
+the dying man. I can guess what it means; it is no longer worth
+while to go there.
+
+The ground of the ravine where we two are closely clustered to abide
+the tempest is quivering, and at each shot we feel the deep simoom
+of the shells. But in the hole where we are there is scarcely any
+risk of being hit. At the first lull, some of the men who were also
+waiting detach themselves and begin to go up; stretcher-bearers
+redouble their huge efforts to carry a body and climb, making one
+think of stubborn ants pushed back by successive grains of sand;
+wounded men and liaison men move again.
+
+"Let's go on," says Joseph, with sagging shoulders, as he measures
+the hill with his eye--the last stage of his Gethsemane.
+
+There are trees here; a row of excoriated willow trunks, some of
+wide countenance, and others hollowed and yawning, like coffins on
+end. The scene through which we are struggling is rent and
+convulsed, with hills and chasms, and with such somber swellings as
+if all the clouds of storm had rolled down here. Above the tortured
+earth, this stampeded file of trunks stands forth against a striped
+brown sky, milky in places and obscurely sparkling--a sky of agate.
+
+Across the entry to Trench 97 a felled oak twists his great body,
+and a corpse stops up the trench. Its head and legs are buried in
+the ground. The dirty water that trickles in the trench has covered
+it with a sandy glaze, and through the moist deposit the chest and
+belly bulge forth, clad in a shirt. We stride over the frigid
+remains, slimy and pale, that suggest the belly of a stranded
+crocodile; and it is difficult to do so, by reason of the soft and
+slippery ground. We have to plunge our hands up to the wrists in the
+mud of the wall.
+
+At this moment an infernal whistle falls on us and we bend like
+bushes. The shell bursts in the air in front of us, deafening and
+blinding, and buries us under a horribly sibilant mountain of dark
+smoke. A climbing soldier has churned the air with his arms and
+disappeared, hurled into some hole. Shouts have gone up and fallen
+again like rubbish. While we are looking, through the great black
+veil that the wind tears from the ground and dismisses into the sky,
+at the bearers who are putting down a stretcher, running to the
+place of the explosion and picking up something inert--I recall the
+unforgettable scene when my brother-in-arms, Poterloo, whose heart
+was so full of hope, vanished with his arms outstretched in the
+flame of a shell.
+
+We arrive at last on the summit, which is marked as with a signal by
+a wounded and frightful man. He is upright in the wind, shaken but
+upright, enrooted there. In his uplifted and wind-tossed cape we see
+a yelling and convulsive face. We pass by him, and he is like a sort
+of screaming tree.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We have arrived at our old first line, the one from which we set off
+for the attack. We sit down on a firing-step with our backs to the
+holes cut for our exodus at the last minute by the sappers. Euterpe,
+the cyclist, passes and gives us good-day. Then he turns in his
+tracks and draws from the cuff of his coat-sleeve an envelope, whose
+protruding edge had conferred a white stripe on him.
+
+"It's you, isn't it," he says to me, "that takes Biquet's letters
+that's dead?"--"Yes."--" Here's a returned one; the address has
+hopped it."
+
+The envelope was exposed, no doubt, to rain on the top of a packet,
+and the address is no longer legible among the violet mottlings on
+the dried and frayed paper. Alone there survives in a corner the
+address of the sender. I pull the letter out gently--"My dear
+mother"--Ah, I remember! Biquet, now lying in the open air in the
+very trench where we are halted, wrote that letter not long ago in
+our quarters at Gauchin-l'Abbe, one flaming and splendid
+afternoon, in reply to a letter from his mother, whose fears for him
+had proved groundless and made him laugh--"You think I'm in the cold
+and rain and danger. Not at all; on the contrary, all that's
+finished. It's hot, we're sweating, and we've nothing to do only to
+stroll about in the sunshine. I laughed to read your letter--"
+
+I return to the frail and damaged envelope the letter which, if
+chance had not averted this new irony, would have been read by the
+old peasant woman at the moment when the body of her son is a wet
+nothing in the cold and the storm, a nothing that trickles and flows
+like a dark spring on the wall of the trench.
+
+Joseph has leaned his head backwards. His eyes close for a moment,
+his mouth half opens, and his breathing is fitful.
+
+"Courage!" I say to him, and he opens his eyes again.
+
+"Ah!" he replies, "it isn't to me you should say that. Look at those
+chaps, there, they're going back yonder, and you too, you're going
+back. It all has to go on for you others. Ah, one must be really
+strong to go on, to go on!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+21
+
+The Refuge
+
+
+
+
+
+FROM this point onwards we are in sight of the enemy
+observation-posts, and must no longer leave the communication
+trenches. First we follow that of the Pylones road. The trench
+is cut along the side of the road, and the road itself is wiped out;
+so are its trees. Half of it, all the way along, has been chewed and
+swallowed by the trench; and what is left of it has been invaded by
+the earth and the grass, and mingled with the fields in the fullness
+of time. At some places in the trench--there, where a sandbag has
+burst and left only a muddy cell--you may see again on the level of
+your eyes the stony ballast of the ex-road, cut to the quick, or
+even the roots of the bordering trees that have been cut down to
+embody in the trench wall. The latter is as slashed and uneven as if
+it were a wave of earth and rubbish and dark scum that the immense
+plain has spat out and pushed against the edge of the trench.
+
+We arrive at a junction of trenches, and on the top of the
+maltreated hillock which is outlined on the cloudy grayness, a
+mournful signboard stands crookedly in the wind. The trench system
+becomes still more cramped and close, and the men who are flowing
+towards the clearing-station from all parts of the sector multiply
+and throng in the deep-dug ways.
+
+These lamentable lanes are staked out with corpses. At uneven
+intervals their walls are broken into by quite recent gaps,
+extending to their full depth, by funnelholes of fresh earth which
+trespass upon the unwholesome land beyond, where earthy bodies are
+squatting with their chins on their knees or leaning against the
+wall as straight and silent as the rifles which wait beside them.
+Some of these standing dead turn their blood-bespattered faces
+towards the survivors; others exchange their looks with the sky's
+emptiness.
+
+Joseph halts to take breath. I say to him as to a child, "We're
+nearly there, we're nearly there."
+
+The sinister ramparts of this way of desolation contract still more.
+They impel a feeling of suffocation, of a nightmare of falling which
+oppresses and strangles: and in these depths where the walls seem to
+be coming nearer and closing in, you are forced to halt, to wriggle
+a path for yourself, to vex and disturb the dead, to be pushed about
+by the endless disorder of the files that flow along these hinder
+trenches, files made up of messengers, of the maimed, of men who
+groan and who cry aloud, who hurry frantically, crimsoned by fever
+or pallid and visibly shaken by pain.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+All this throng at last pulls up and gathers and groans at the
+crossways where the burrows of the Refuge open out.
+
+A doctor is trying with shouts and gesticulations to keep a little
+space clear from the rising tide that beats upon the threshold of
+the shelter, where he applies summary bandages in the open air; they
+say he has not ceased to do it, nor his helpers either, all the
+night and all the day, that he is accomplishing a superhuman task.
+
+When they leave his hands, some of the wounded are swallowed up by
+the black hole of the Refuge; others are sent back to the bigger
+clearing-station contrived in the trench on the Bethune road.
+
+In this confined cavity formed by the crossing of the ditches, in
+the bottom of a sort of robbers' den, we waited two hours, buffeted,
+squeezed, choked and blinded, climbing over each other like cattle,
+in an odor of blood and butchery. There are faces that become more
+distorted and emaciated from minute to minute. One of the patients
+can no longer hold back his tears; they come in floods, and as he
+shakes his head he sprinkles his neighbors. Another, bleeding like a
+fountain, shouts, "Hey, there! have a look at me!" A young man with
+burning eyes yells like a soul in hell, "I'm on fire!" and he roars
+and blows like a furnace.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Joseph is bandaged. He thrusts a way through to me and holds out his
+hand: "It isn't serious, it seems; good-by," he says.
+
+At once we are separated in the mob. With my last glance I see his
+wasted face and the vacant absorption in his trouble as he is meekly
+led away by a Divisional stretcher-bearer whose hand is on his
+shoulder; and suddenly I see him no more. In war, life separates us
+just as death does, without our having even the time to think about
+it.
+
+They tell me not to stay there, but to go down into the Refuge to
+rest before returning. There are two entries, very low and very
+narrow, on the level of the ground. This one is flush with the mouth
+of a sloping gallery, narrow as the conduit of a sewer. In order to
+penetrate the Refuge, one must first turn round and work backwards
+with bent body into the shrunken pipe, and here the feet discover
+steps. Every three paces there is a deep step.
+
+Once inside you have a first impression of being trapped--that there
+is not room enough either to descend or climb out. As you go on
+burying yourself in the gulf, the nightmare of suffocation continues
+that you progressively endured as you advanced along the bowels of
+the trenches before foundering in here. On all sides you bump and
+scrape yourself, you are clutched by the tightness of the passage,
+you are wedged and stuck. I have to change the position of my
+cartridge pouches by sliding them round the belt and to take my bags
+in my arms against my chest. At the fourth step the suffocation
+increases still more and one has a moment of agony; little as one
+may lift his knee for the rearward step, his back strikes the roof.
+In this spot it is necessary to go on all fours, still backwards. As
+you go down into the depth, a pestilent atmosphere and heavy as
+earth buries you. Your hands touch only the cold, sticky and
+sepulchral clay of the wall, which bears you down on all sides and
+enshrouds you in a dismal solitude; its blind and moldy breath
+touches your face. On the last steps, reached after long labor, one
+is assailed by a hot, unearthly clamor that rises from the hole as
+from a sort of kitchen.
+
+When you reach at last the bottom of this laddered sap that elbows
+and compresses you at every step, the evil dream is not ended, for
+you find yourself in a lone but very narrow cavern where gloom
+reigns, a mere corridor not more than five feet high. If you cease
+to stoop and to walk with bended knees, your head violently strikes
+the planks that roof the Refuge, and the newcomers are heard to
+growl--more or less forcefully, according to their temper and
+condition--"Ah, lucky I've got my tin hat on:"
+
+One makes out the gesture of some one who is squatting in an angle.
+It is an ambulance man on guard, whose monotone says to each
+arrival, "Take the mud off your boots before going in." So you
+stumble into an accumulating pile of mud; it entangles you at the
+foot of the steps on this threshold of hell.
+
+In the hubbub of lamentation and groaning, in the strong smell of a
+countless concentration of wounds, in this blinking cavern of
+confused and unintelligible life, I try first to get my bearings.
+Some weak candle flames are shining along the Refuge, but they only
+relieve the darkness in the spots where they pierce it. At the
+farthest end faint daylight appears, as it might to a dungeon
+prisoner at the bottom of an oubliette. This obscure vent-hole
+allows one to make out some big objects ranged along the corridor;
+they are low stretchers, like coffins. Around and above them one
+then dimly discerns the movement of broken and drooping shadows, and
+the stirring of ranks and groups of specters against the walls.
+
+I turn round. At the end opposite that where the faraway light leaks
+through, a mob is gathered in front of a tent-cloth which reaches
+from the ceiling to the ground, and thus forms an apartment, whose
+illumination shines through the oily yellow material. In this
+retreat, anti-tetanus injections are going on by the light of an
+acetylene lamp. When the cloth is lifted to allow some one to enter
+or leave, the glare brutally besplashes the disordered rags of the
+wounded stationed in front to await their treatment. Bowed by the
+ceiling, seated, kneeling or groveling, they push each other in the
+desire not to lose their turn or to steal some other's, and they
+bark like dogs, "My turn!"--"Me!"--"Me!" In this corner of
+modified conflict the tepid stinks of acetylene and bleeding men are
+horrible to swallow.
+
+I turn away from it and seek elsewhere to find a place where I may
+sit down. I go forward a little, groping, still stooping and curled
+up, and my hands in front.
+
+By grace of the flame which a smoker holds over his pipe I see a
+bench before me, full of beings. My eyes are growing accustomed to
+the gloom that stagnates in the cave, and I can make out pretty well
+this row of people whose bandages and swathings dimly whiten their
+beads and limbs. Crippled, gashed, deformed, motionless or restless,
+fast fixed in this kind of barge, they present an incongruous
+collection of suffering and misery.
+
+One of them cries out suddenly, half rises, and then sits down
+again. His neighbor, whose greatcoat is torn and his head bare,
+looks at him and says to him--"What's the use of worrying?"
+
+And he repeats the sentence several times at random, gazing straight
+in front of him, his hands on his knees. A young man in the middle
+of the seat is talking to himself. He says that he is an aviator.
+There are burns down one side of his body and on his face. In his
+fever he is still burning; it seems to him that he is still gnawed
+by the pointed flames that leaped from his engine. He is muttering,
+"Gott mit uns!" and then, "God is with us!"
+
+A zouave with his arm in a sling, who sits awry and seems to carry
+his shoulder like a torturing burden, speaks to him: "You're the
+aviator that fell, aren't you?"
+
+"I've seen--things," replies the flying-man laboriously.
+
+"I too, I've seen some!" the soldier interrupts; "some people
+couldn't stick it, to see what I've seen."
+
+"Come and sit here," says one of the men on the seat to me, making
+room as he speaks. "Are you wounded?"
+
+"No; I brought a wounded man here, and I'm going back."
+
+"You're worse than wounded then; come and sit down."
+
+"I was mayor in my place," explains one of the sufferers, "but when
+I go back no one will know me again, it's so long now that I've been
+in misery."
+
+"Four hours now have I been stuck on this bench," groans a sort of
+mendicant, whose shaking hand holds his helmet on his knees like an
+alms-bowl, whose head is lowered and his back rounded.
+
+"We're waiting to be cleared, you know," I am informed by a big man
+who pants and sweats--all the bulk of him seems to be boiling. His
+mustache hangs as if it had come half unstuck through the moisture
+of his face. He turns two big and lightless eyes on me, and his
+wound is not visible.
+
+"That's so," says another; "all the wounded of the Brigade come and
+pile themselves up here one after another, without counting them
+from other places. Yes, look at it now; this hole here, it's the
+midden for the whole Brigade."
+
+"I'm gangrened, I'm smashed, I'm all in bits inside," droned one who
+sat with his head in his hands and spoke through his fingers; "yet
+up to last week I was young and I was clean. They've changed me.
+Now, I've got nothing but a dirty old decomposed body to drag
+along."
+
+"Yesterday," says another, "I was twenty-six years old. And now how
+old am I?" He tries to get up, so as to show us his shaking and
+faded face, worn out in a night, to show us the emaciation, the
+depression of cheeks and eye-sockets, and the dying flicker of light
+in his greasy eye.
+
+"It hurts!" humbly says some one invisible.
+
+"What's the use of worrying?" repeats the other mechanically.
+
+There was a silence, and then the aviator cried, "The padres were
+trying on both sides to hide their voices."
+
+"What's that mean?" said the astonished zouave.
+
+"Are you taking leave of 'em, old chap?" asked a chasseur wounded in
+the hand and with one arm bound to his body, as his eyes left the
+mummified limb for a moment to glance at the flying-man.
+
+The latter's looks were distraught; he was trying to interpret a
+mysterious picture which everywhere he saw before his eyes--"Up
+there, from the sky, you don't see much, you know. Among the squares
+of the fields and the little heaps of the villages the roads run
+like white cotton. You can make out, too, some hollow threads that
+look as if they'd been traced with a pin-point and scratched through
+fine sand. These nets that festoon the plain with regularly wavy
+marks, they're the trenches. Last Sunday morning I was flying over
+the firing-line. Between our first lines and their first lines,
+between their extreme edges, between the fringes of the two huge
+armies that are up against each other, looking at each other and not
+seeing, and waiting--it's not very far; sometimes forty yards,
+sometimes sixty. To me it looked about a stride, at the great height
+where I was planing. And behold I could make out two crowds, one
+among the Boches, and one of ours, in these parallel lines that
+seemed to touch each other; each was a solid, lively lump, and all
+around 'em were dots like grains of black sand scattered on gray
+sand, and these hardly budged--it didn't look like an alarm! So I
+went down several turns to investigate.
+
+"Then I understood. It was Sunday, and there were two religious
+services being held under my eyes--the altar, the padre, and all the
+crowd of chaps. The more I went down the more I could see that the
+two things were alike--so exactly alike that it looked silly. One of
+the services--whichever you like--was a reflection of the other, and
+I wondered if I was seeing double. I went down lower; they didn't
+fire at me. Why? I don't know at all. Then I could hear. I heard one
+murmur. one only. I could only gather a single prayer that came up
+to me en bloc, the sound of a single chant that passed by me on its
+way to heaven. I went to and fro in space to listen to this faint
+mixture of hymns that blended together just the same although they
+were one against the other; and the more they tried to get on top of
+each other, the more they were blended together up in the heights of
+the sky where I was floating.
+
+"I got some shrapnel just at the moment when, very low down, I made
+out the two voices from the earth that made up the one--'Gott mit
+uns!' and 'God is with us!'--and I flew away."
+
+The young man shook his bandage-covered head; he seemed deranged by
+the recollection. "I said to myself at the moment, 'I must be mad!'"
+
+"It's the truth of things that's mad," said the zouave.
+
+With his eyes shining in delirium, the narrator sought to express
+and convey the deep disturbing idea that was besieging him, that he
+was struggling against.
+
+"Now think of it!" he said. "Fancy those two identical crowds
+yelling things that are identical and yet opposite, these identical
+enemy cries! What must the good God think about it all? I know well
+enough that He knows everything, but even if He knows everything, He
+won't know what to make of it."
+
+"Rot!" cried the zouave.
+
+"He doesn't care a damn for us, don't fret yourself."
+
+"Anyway, what is there funny about it? That doesn't prevent people
+from quarreling with each other--and don't they! And rifle-shots
+speak jolly well the same language, don't they?"
+
+"Yes," said the aviator, "but there's only one God. It isn't the
+departure of prayers that I don't understand; it's their arrival."
+
+The conversation dropped.
+
+"There's a crowd of wounded laid out in there," the man with the
+dull eyes said to me, "and I'm wondering all ways how they got 'em
+down here. It must have been a terrible job, tumbling them in here."
+
+Two Colonials, hard and lean, supporting each other like tipsy men,
+butted into us and recoiled, looking on the ground for some place to
+fall on.
+
+"Old chap, in that trench I'm telling you of," the hoarse voice of
+one was relating, "we were three days without rations, three full
+days without anything--anything. Willy-nilly, we had to drink our
+own water, and no help for it."
+
+The other explained that once on a time he had cholera. "Ah, that's
+a dirty business--fever, vomiting, colics; old man, I was ill with
+that lot!"
+
+"And then, too," suddenly growled the flying-man, still fierce to
+pursue the answer to the gigantic conundrum, "what is this God
+thinking of to let everybody believe like that that He's with them?
+Why does He let us all--all of us--shout out side by side, like
+idiots and brutes, 'God is with us!'--'No, not at all, you're wrong;
+God is with us'?"
+
+A groan arose from a stretcher, and for a moment fluttered lonely in
+the silence as if it were an answer.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Then, "I don't believe in God," said a pain-racked voice; "I know He
+doesn't exist--because of the suffering there is. They can tell us
+all the clap-trap they like, and trim up all the words they can rind
+and all they can make up, but to say that all this innocent
+suffering could come from a perfect God, it's damned
+skull-stuffing."
+
+"For my part," another of the men on the seat goes on, "I don't
+believe in God because of the cold. I've seen men become corpses bit
+by bit, just simply with cold. If there was a God of goodness, there
+wouldn't be any cold. You can't get away from that."
+
+"Before you can believe in God, you've got to do away with
+everything there is. So we've got a long way to go!"
+
+Several mutilated men, without seeing each other, combine in
+head-shakes of dissent "You're right," says another, "you're right."
+
+These men in ruins, vanquished in victory, isolated and scattered,
+have the beginnings of a revelation. There come moments in the
+tragedy of these events when men are not only sincere, but
+truth-telling, moments when you see that they and the truth are face
+to face.
+
+"As for me," said a new speaker, "if I don't believe in God,
+it's--" A fit of coughing terribly continued his sentence.
+
+When the fit passed and his cheeks were purple and wet with tears,
+some one asked him, "Where are you wounded?"
+
+"I'm not wounded; I'm ill."
+
+"Oh, I see!" they said, in a tone which meant "You're not
+interesting."
+
+He understood, and pleaded the cause of his illness:
+
+"I'm done in, I spit blood. I've no strength left, and it doesn't
+come back, you know, when it goes away like that."
+
+"Ah, ah!" murmured the comrades--wavering, but secretly convinced
+all the same of the inferiority of civilian ailments to wounds.
+
+In resignation he lowered his head and repeated to himself very
+quietly, "I can't walk any more; where would you have me go?"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+A commotion is arising for some unknown reason in. the horizontal
+gulf which lengthens as it contracts from stretcher to stretcher as
+far as the eye can see, as far as the pallid peep of daylight, in
+this confused corridor where the poor winking flames of candles
+redden and seem feverish, and winged shadows cast themselves. The
+odds and ends of heads and limbs are agitated, appeals and cries
+arouse each other and increase in number like invisible ghosts. The
+prostrate bodies undulate, double up, and turn over.
+
+In the heart of this den of captives, debased and punished by pain,
+I make out the big mass of a hospital attendant whose heavy
+shoulders rise and fall like a knapsack carried crosswise, and whose
+stentorian voice reverberates at speed through the cave. "You've
+been meddling with your bandage again, you son of a lubber, you
+varmint!" he thunders. "I'll do it up again for you, as long as it's
+you, my chick, but if you touch it again, you'll see what I'll do to
+you!"
+
+Behold him then in the obscurity, twisting a bandage round the
+cranium of a very little man who is almost upright, who has
+bristling hair and a beard which puffs out in front. With dangling
+arms, he submits in silence. But the attendant abandons him, looks
+on the ground and exclaims sonorously, "What the--? Eh, come now,
+my friend, are you cracked? There's manners for you, to lie down on
+the top of a patient!" And his capacious hand disengages a second
+limp body on which the first had extended himself as on a mattress;
+while the mannikin with the bandaged head alongside, as soon as he
+is let alone, puts his hands to his head without saying a word and
+tries once more to remove the encircling lint.
+
+There is an uproar, too, among some shadows that are visible against
+a luminous background; they seem to be wildly agitated in the gloom
+of the crypt. The light of a candle shows us several men shaken with
+their efforts to hold a wounded soldier down on his stretcher. It is
+a man whose feet are gone. At the end of his legs are terrible
+bandages, with tourniquets to restrain the hemorrhage. His stumps
+have bled into the linen wrappings, and he seems to wear red
+breeches. His face is devilish, shining and sullen, and he is
+raving. They are pressing down on his shoulders and knees, for this
+man without feet would fain jump from the stretcher and go away.
+
+"Let me go!" he rattles in breathless, quavering rage. His voice is
+low, with sudden sonorities, like a trumpet that one tries to blow
+too softly. "By God, let me go, I tell you! Do you think I'm going
+to stop here? Allons, let me be, or I'll jump over you on my hands!"
+
+So violently he contracts and extends himself that he pulls to and
+fro those who are trying to restrain him by their gripping weight,
+and I can see the zigzags of the candle held by a kneeling man whose
+other arm engirdles the mutilated maniac, who shouts so fiercely
+that he wakes up the sleepers and dispels the drowsiness of the
+rest. On all sides they turn towards him; half rising, they listen
+to the incoherent lamentations which end by dying in the dark. At
+the same moment, in another corner, two prostrate wounded, crucified
+on the ground, so curse each other that one of them has to be
+removed before the frantic dialogue is broken up.
+
+I go farther away, towards the point where the light from outside
+comes through among the tangled beams as through a broken grating,
+and stride over the interminable stretchers that take up all the
+width of the underground alley whose oppressive confinement chokes
+me. The human forms prone on the stretchers are now hardly stirring
+under the Jack-o'-lanterns of the candles; they stagnate in their
+rattling breath and heavy groans.
+
+On the edge of a stretcher a man is sitting, leaning against the
+wall. His clothes are torn apart, and in the middle of their
+darkness appears the white, emaciated breast of a martyr. His head
+is bent quite back and veiled in shadow, but I can see the beating
+of his heart.
+
+The daylight that is trickling through at the end, drop by drop,
+comes in by an earth-fall. Several shells. falling on the same spot,
+have broken through the heavy earthen roof of the Refuge.
+
+Here, some pale reflections are cast on the blue of the greatcoats,
+on the shoulders and along the folds. Almost paralyzed by the
+darkness and their own weakness, a group of men is pressing towards
+the gap, like dead men half awaking, to taste a little of the pallid
+air and detach themselves from the sepulcher. This corner at the
+extremity of the gloom offers itself as a way of escape, an oasis
+where one may stand upright, where one is lightly, angelically
+touched by the light of heaven.
+
+"There were some chaps there that were blown to bits when the shells
+burst," said some one to me who was waiting there in the sickly ray
+of entombed light. "You talk about a mess! Look, there's the padre
+hooking down what was blown up."
+
+The huge Red Cross sergeant, in a hunter's chestnut waistcoat which
+gives him the chest of a gorilla, is detaching the pendent entrails
+twisted among the beams of the shattered woodwork. For the purpose
+he is using a rifle with fixed bayonet, since he could not find a
+stick long enough; and the heavy giant, bald, bearded and asthmatic,
+wields the weapon awkwardly. He has a mild face, meek and unhappy,
+and while he tries to catch the remains of intestines in the
+corners, he mutters a string of "Oh's!" like sighs. His eyes are
+masked by blue glasses; his breathing is noisy. The top of his head
+is of puny dimensions, and the huge thickness of his neck has a
+conical shape. To see him thus pricking and unhanging from the air
+strips of viscera and rags of flesh, you could take him for a
+butcher at some fiendish task.
+
+But I let myself fall in a corner with my eyes half closed, seeing
+hardly anything of the spectacle that lies and palpitates and falls
+around me. Indistinctly I gather some fragments of sentences--still
+the horrible monotony of the story of wounds: "Nom de Dieu! In that
+place I should think the bullets were touching each other.--"His
+head was bored through from one temple to the other. You could have
+passed a thread through."
+
+"Those beggars were an hour before they lifted their fire and
+stopped peppering us." Nearer to me some one gabbles at the end of
+his story, "When I'm sleeping I dream that I'm killing him over
+again!"
+
+Other memories are called up and buzz about among the buried
+wounded; it is like the purring of countless gear-wheels in a
+machine that turns and turns. And I hear afar him who repeats from
+his seat, "What's the use of worrying?" in all possible tones,
+commanding a pitiful, sometimes like a prophet and anon like one
+shipwrecked; he metrifies with his cry the chorus of choking and
+plaintive voices that try so terribly to extol their suffering.
+
+Some one comes forward, blindly feeling the wall with his stick, and
+reaches me. It is Farfadet! I call him, and he turns nearly towards
+me to tell me that one eye is gone, and the other is bandaged as
+well. I give him my place, take him by the shoulders and make him
+sit down. He submits, and seated at the base of the wall waits
+patiently, with the resignation of his clerkly calling, as if in a
+waiting-room.
+
+I come to anchor a little farther away, in an empty space where two
+prostrate men are talking to each other in low voices; they are so
+near to me that I hear them without listening. They are two soldiers
+of the Foreign Legion; their helmets and greatcoats are dark yellow.
+
+"It's not worth while to make-believe about it," says one of them
+banteringly. "I'm staying here this time. It's finished--my bowels
+are shot through. If I were in a hospital, in a town, they'd operate
+on me in time, and it might stick up again. But here! It was
+yesterday I got it. We're two or three hours from the Bethune
+road, aren't we? And how many hours, think you, from the road to an
+ambulance where they can operate? And then, when are they going to
+pick us up? It's nobody's fault, I dare say; but you've got to look
+facts in the face. Oh, I know it isn't going to be any worse from
+now than it is, but it can't be long, seeing I've a hole all the way
+through my parcel of guts. You, your foot'll get all right, or
+they'll put you another one on. But I'm going to die."
+
+"Ah!" said the other, convinced by the reasoning of his neighbor.
+The latter goes on--"Listen, Dominique. You've led a bad life. You
+cribbed things, and you were quarrelsome when drunk. You've dirtied
+your ticket in the police register, properly."
+
+"I can't say it isn't true, because it is," says the other; "but
+what have you got to do with it?"
+
+"You'll lead a bad life again after the war, inevitably; and then
+you'll have bother about that affair of the cooper."
+
+The other becomes fierce and aggressive. "What the hell's it to do
+with you? Shut your jaw!"
+
+"As for me, I've no more family than you have. I've nobody, except
+Louise--and she isn't a relation of mine, seeing we're not married.
+And there are no convictions against me, beyond a few little
+military jobs. There's nothing on my name."
+
+"Well, what about it? I don't care a damn."
+
+"I'm going to tell you. Take my name. Take it--I give it you; as
+long as neither of us has any family."
+
+"Your name?"
+
+"Yes; you'll call yourself Leonard Carlotti, that's all. 'Tisn't a
+big job. What harm can it do you? Straight off, you've no more
+convictions. They won't hunt you out, and you can be as happy as I
+should have been if this bullet hadn't gone through my magazine."
+
+"Oh Christ!" said the other, "you'd do that? You'd--that--well, old
+chap, that beats all!"
+
+"Take it. It's there in my pocket-book in my greatcoat. Go on, take
+it, and hand yours over to me--so that I can carry it all away with
+me. You'll be able to live where you like, except where I come from,
+where I'm known a bit, at Longueville in Tunis. You'll remember
+that? And anyway, it's written down. You must read it, the
+pocket-book. I shan't blab to anybody. To bring the trick off
+properly, mum's the word, absolutely."
+
+He ponders a moment, and then says with a shiver "I'll p'raps tell
+Louise, so's she'll find I've done the right thing, and think the
+better of me, when I write to her to say good-by."
+
+But he thinks better of it, and shakes his head with an heroic
+effort. "No--I shan't let on, even to her. She's her, of course, but
+women are such chatterers!"
+
+The other man looks at him, and repeats, "Ah, nome de Dieu!"
+
+Without being noticed by the two men I leave the drama narrowly
+developing in this lamentable corner and its jostling and traffic
+and hubbub.
+
+Now I touch the composed and convalescent chat of two poor
+wretches--"Ah, my boy, the affection he had for that vine of his!
+You couldn't find anything wrong among the branches of it--"
+
+"That little nipper, that wee little kid, when I went out with him,
+holding his tiny fist, it felt as if I'd got hold of the little warm
+neck of a swallow, you know."
+
+And alongside this sentimental avowal, here is the passing
+revelation of another mind: "Don't I know the 547th! Rather! Listen,
+it's a funny regiment. They've got a poilu in it who's called
+Petitjean, another called Petitpierre, and another called
+Petitlouis. Old man, it's as I'm telling you; that's the kind of
+regiment it is."
+
+As I begin to pick out a way with a view to leaving the cavern,
+there is a great noise down yonder of a fall and a chorus of
+exclamations. It is the hospital sergeant who has fallen. Through
+the breach that he was clearing of its soft and bloody relics, a
+bullet has taken him in the throat, and he is spread out full length
+on the ground. His great bewildered eyes are rolling and his breath
+comes foaming. His mouth and the lower part of his face are quickly
+covered with a cloud of rosy bubbles. They place his head on a bag
+of bandages, and the bag is instantly soaked with blood. An
+attendant cries that the packets of lint will be spoiled, and they
+are needed. Something else is sought on which to put the head that
+ceaselessly makes a light and discolored froth. Only a loaf can be
+found, and it is slid under the spongy hair.
+
+While they hold the sergeant's hand and question him, he only
+slavers new heaps of bubbles, and we see his great black-bearded
+head across this rosy cloud. Laid out like that, he might be a
+deep-breathing marine monster, and the transparent red foam gathers
+and creeps up to his great hazy eyes, no longer spectacled.
+
+Then his throat rattles. It is a childish rattle, and he dies moving
+his head to right and to left as though he were trying very gently
+to say "No."
+
+Looking on the enormous inert mass, I reflect that he was a good
+man. He had an innocent and impressionable heart. How I reproach
+myself that I sometimes abused him for the ingenuous narrowness of
+his views, and for a certain clerical impertinence that he always
+had! And how glad I am in this distressing scene--yes, happy enough
+to tremble with joy--that I restrained myself from an angry protest
+when I found him stealthily reading a letter I was writing, a
+protest that would unjustly have wounded him! I remember the time
+when he exasperated me so much by his dissertation on France and the
+Virgin Mary. It seemed impossible to me that he could utter those
+thoughts sincerely. Why should he not have been sincere? Has he not
+been really killed today? I remember, too, certain deeds of
+devotion, the kindly patience of the great man, exiled in war as in
+life--and the rest does not matter. His ideas themselves are only
+trivial details compared with his heart--which is there on the
+ground in ruins in this corner of Hell. With what intensity I
+lamented this man who was so far asunder from me in everything!
+
+Then fell the thunder on us! We were thrown violently on each other
+by the frightful shaking of the ground and the walls. It was as if
+the overhanging earth had burst and hurled itself down. Part of the
+armor-plate of beams collapsed, enlarging the hole that already
+pierced the cavern. Another shock--another pulverized span fell in
+roaring destruction. The corpse of the great Red Cross sergeant went
+rolling against the wall like the trunk of a tree. All the timber in
+the long frame-work of the cave, those heavy black vertebrae,
+cracked with an ear-splitting noise, and all the prisoners in the
+dungeon shouted together in horror.
+
+Blow after blow, the explosions resound and drive us in all
+directions as the bombardment mangles and devours the sanctuary of
+pierced and diminished refuge. As the hissing flight of shells
+hammers and crushes the gaping end of the cave with its
+thunderbolts, daylight streams in through the clefts. More sharply
+now, and more unnaturally, one sees the flushed faces and those
+pallid with death, the eyes which fade in agony or burn with fever,
+the patched-up white-bound bodies, the monstrous bandages. All that
+was hidden rises again into daylight. Haggard, blinking and
+distorted, in face of the flood of iron and embers that the
+hurricanes of light bring with them, the wounded arise and scatter
+and try to take flight. All the terror-struck inhabitants roll about
+in compact masses across the miserable tunnel, as if in the pitching
+hold of a great ship that strikes the rocks.
+
+The aviator, as upright as he can get and with his neck on the
+ceiling, waves his arms and appeals to God, asks Him what He is
+called, what is His real name. Overthrown by the blast and cast upon
+the others, I see him who, bare of breast and his clothes gaping
+like a wound, reveals the heart of a Christ. The greatcoat of the
+man who still monotonously repeats, "What's the use of worrying?"
+now shows itself all green, bright green, the effect of the picric
+acid no doubt released by the explosion that has staggered his
+brain. Others--the rest, indeed--helpless and maimed, move and creep
+and cringe, worm themselves into the corners. They are like moles.
+poor, defenseless beasts, hunted by the hellish hounds of the guns.
+
+The bombardment slackens, and ends in a cloud of smoke that still
+echoes the crashes, in a quivering and burning after-damp. I pass
+out through the breach; and still surrounded and entwined in the
+clamor of despair, I arrive under the free sky, in the soft earth
+where mingled planks and legs are sunk. I catch myself on some
+wreckage; it is the embankment of the trench. At the moment when I
+plunge into the communication trenches they are visible a long way;
+they are still gloomily stirring, still filled by the crowd that
+overflows from the trenches and flows without end towards the
+refuges. For whole days, for whole nights, you will see the long
+rolling streams of men plucked from the fields of battle, from the
+plain over there that also has feelings of its own, though it bleeds
+and rots without end.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+22
+
+Going About
+
+
+
+
+
+WE have been along the Boulevard de la Republique and then
+the Avenue Gambetta, and now we are debouching into the Place du
+Commerce. The nails in our polished boots ring on the pavements of
+the capital. It is fine weather, and the shining sky glistens and
+flashes as if we saw it through the frames of a greenhouse; it sets
+a-sparkle all the shop-fronts in the square. The skirts of our
+well-brushed greatcoats have been let down, and as they are usually
+fastened back, you can see two squares on the floating lappets where
+the cloth is bluer.
+
+Our sauntering party halts and hesitates for a moment in front of
+the Cafe de la Sous-Prefecture, also called the
+Grand-Cafe.
+
+"We have the right to go in!" says Volpatte.
+
+"Too many officers in there," replies Blaire, who has lifted his
+chin over the guipure curtains in which the establishment is dressed
+up and risked a glance through the window between its golden
+letters.
+
+"Besides," says Paradis, "we haven't seen enough yet."
+
+We resume our walk and, simple soldiers that we are, we survey the
+sumptuous shops that encircle the Place du Commerce; the drapers,
+the stationers, the chemists, and--like a General's decorated
+uniform--the display of the jeweler. We have put forth our smiles
+like ornaments, for we are exempt from all duty until the evening,
+we are free, we are masters of our own time. Our steps are gentle
+and sedate; our empty and swinging hands are also promenading, to
+and fro.
+
+"No doubt about it, you get some good out of this rest," remarks
+Paradis.
+
+It is an abundantly impressive city which expands before our steps.
+One is in touch with life, with the life of the people, the life of
+the Rear, the normal life. How we used to think, down yonder, that
+we should never get here!
+
+We see gentlemen, ladies, English officers, aviators-recognizable
+afar by their slim elegance and their decorations--soldiers who are
+parading their scraped clothes and scrubbed skins and the solitary
+ornament of their engraved identity discs, flashing in the sunshine
+on their greatcoats; and these last risk themselves carefully in the
+beautiful scene that is clear of all nightmares.
+
+We make exclamations as they do who come from afar: "Talk about a
+crowd!" says Tirette in wonder. "Ah, it's a wealthy town!" says
+Blaire.
+
+A work-girl passes and looks at us. Volpatte gives me a jog with his
+elbow and swallows her with his eyes, then points out to me two
+other women farther away who are coming up, and with beaming eye he
+certifies that the town is rich in femininity--"Old man, they are
+plump!" A moment ago Paradis had a certain timidity to overcome
+before he could approach a cluster of cakes of luxurious lodging,
+and touch and eat them; and every minute we are obliged to halt in
+the middle of the pavement and wait for Blaire, who is attracted and
+detained by the displays of fancy jumpers and caps, neck-ties in
+pale blue drill, slippers as red and shiny as mahogany. Blaire has
+reached the final height of his transformation. He who held the
+record for negligence and grime is certainly the best groomed of us
+all, especially since the further complication of his ivories, which
+were broken in the attack and had to be remade. He affects an
+off-hand demeanor. "He looks young and youthful," says Marthereau.
+
+We find ourselves suddenly face to face with a toothless creature
+who smiles to the depth of her throat. Some black hair bristles
+round her hat. Her big, unpleasant features, riddled with
+pock-marks, recalls the ill-painted faces that one sees on the
+coarse canvas of a traveling show. 'She's beautiful,'' says
+Volpatte. Marthereau. at whom she smiled, is dumb with shock.
+
+Thus do the poilus converse who are suddenly placed under the spell
+of a town. More and more they rejoice in the beautiful scene, so
+neat and incredibly clean. They resume possession of life tranquil
+and peaceful, of that conception of comfort and even of happiness
+for which in the main houses were built.
+
+"We should easily get used to it again, you know, old man, after
+all!"
+
+Meanwhile a crowd is gathered around an outfitter's shop-window
+where the proprietor has contrived, with the aid of mannikins in
+wood and wax, a ridiculous tableau. On a groundwork of little
+pebbles like those in an aquarium, there is a kneeling German, in a
+suit so new that the creases are definite, and punctuated with an
+Iron Cross in cardboard. He holds up his two wooden pink hands to a
+French officer, whose curly wig makes a cushion for a juvenile cap,
+who has bulging, crimson cheeks, and whose infantile eye of adamant
+looks somewhere else. Beside the two personages lies a rifle
+bar-rowed from the odd trophies of a box of toys. A card gives the
+title of the animated group--"Kamarad!"
+
+"Ah, damn it, look!"
+
+We shrug our shoulders at sight of the puerile contrivance, the only
+thing here that recalls to us the gigantic war raging somewhere
+under the sky. We begin to laugh bitterly, offended and even wounded
+to the quick in our new impressions. Tirette collects himself, and
+some abusive sarcasm rises to his lips; but the protest lingers and
+is mute by reason of our total transportation, the amazement of
+being somewhere else.
+
+Our group is then espied by a very stylish and rustling lady,
+radiant in violet and black silk and enveloped in perfumes. She puts
+out her little gloved hand and touches Volpatte's sleeve and then
+Blaire's shoulder, and they instantly halt, gorgonized by this
+direct contact with the fairy-like being.
+
+"Tell me, messieurs, you who are real soldiers from the front, you
+have seen that in the trenches, haven't you?"
+
+"Er--yes--yes." reply the two poor fellows, horribly frightened and
+gloriously gratified.
+
+"Ah!" the crowd murmurs, "did you hear? And they've been there, they
+have!"
+
+When we find ourselves alone again on the flagged perfection of the
+pavement, Volpatte and Blaire look at each other and shake their
+heads.
+
+"After all," says Volpatte, "it is pretty much like that you know!"
+
+"Why, yes, of course!"
+
+And these were their first words of false swearing that day.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We go into the Cafe de l'Industrie et des Fleurs. A roadway
+of matting clothes the middle of the floor. Painted all the way
+along the walls, all the way up the square pillars that support the
+roof, and on the front of the counter, there is purple convolvulus
+among great scarlet poppies and roses like red cabbages.
+
+"No doubt about it, we've got good taste in France," says Tirette.
+
+"The chap that did all that had a cartload of patience," Blaire
+declares as he looks at the rainbow embellishments.
+
+"In these places," Volpatte adds, "the pleasure of drinking isn't
+the only one."
+
+Paradis informs us that he knows all about cafes. On Sundays
+formerly, he frequented cafes as beautiful as this one and
+even more beautiful. Only, he explains, that was a long time ago,
+and he has lost the flavor that they've got. He indicates a little
+enameled wash-hand basin hanging on the wall and decorated with
+flowers: "There's where one can wash his hands." We steer politely
+towards the basin. Volpatte signs to Paradis to turn the tap, and
+says, "Set the waterworks going!"
+
+Then all six of us enter the saloon, whose circumference is already
+adorned with customers, and install ourselves at a table.
+
+"We'll have six currant-vermouths, shall we?"
+
+"We could very easily get used to it again, after all," they repeat.
+
+Some civilians leave their places and come near us. They whisper,
+"They've all got the Croix de Guerre, Adolphe, you
+see---"--"Those are real poilus!"
+
+Our comrades overhear, and now they only talk among themselves
+abstractedly, with their ears elsewhere, and an unconscious air of
+importance appears.
+
+A moment later, the man and woman from whom the remarks proceeded
+lean towards us with their elbows on the white marble and question
+us: "Life in the trenches, it's very rough, isn't it?"
+
+"Er--yes--well, of course, it isn't always pleasant."
+
+"What splendid physical and moral endurance you have! In the end you
+get used to the life, don't you?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course, one gets used to it--one gets used to it all
+right."
+
+"All the same, it's a terrible existence--and the suffering!"
+murmurs the lady, turning over the leaves of an illustrated paper
+which displays gloomy pictures of destruction. "They ought not to
+publish these things, Adolphe, about the dirt and the vermin and the
+fatigues! Brave as you are, you must be unhappy?"
+
+Volpatte, to whom she speaks, blushes. He is ashamed of the misery
+whence he comes, whither he must return. He lowers his head and
+lies, perhaps without realizing the extent of his mendacity: "No,
+after all, we're not unhappy, it isn't so terrible as all that!"
+
+The lady is of the same opinion. "I know," she says, "there are
+compensations! How superb a charge must be, eh? All those masses of
+men advancing like they do in a holiday procession, and the trumpets
+playing a rousing air in the fields! And the dear little soldiers
+that can't be held back and shouting, 'Vive la France!' and even
+laughing as they die! Ah! we others, we're not in honor's way like
+you are. My husband is a clerk at the Prefecture, and just
+now he's got a holiday to treat his rheumatism."
+
+"I should very much have liked to be a soldier," said the gentleman,
+"but I've no luck. The head of my office can't get on without me."
+
+People go and come, elbowing and disappearing behind each other. The
+waiters worm their way through with their fragile and sparkling
+burdens--green, red or bright yellow, with a white border. The
+grating of feet on the sanded floor mingles with the exclamations of
+the regular customers as they recognize each other, some standing,
+others leaning on their elbows, amid the sound of glasses and
+dominoes pushed along the tables. In the background, around the
+seductive shock of ivory balls, a crowding circle of spectators
+emits classical pleasantries.
+
+"Every man to his trade, mon brave," says a man at the other end of
+the table whose face is adorned with powerful colors, addressing
+Tirette directly; "you are heroes. On our side, we are working in
+the economic life of the country. It is a struggle like yours. I am
+useful--I don't say more useful than you, but equally so."
+
+And I see Tirette through the cigar-smoke making round eyes, and in
+the hubbub I can hardly hear the reply of his humble and dumbfounded
+voice--Tirette, the funny man of the squad!--"Yes, that's true;
+every man to his trade."
+
+Furtively we stole away.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We are almost silent as we leave the Cafe des Fleurs. It
+seems as if we no longer know how to talk. Something like discontent
+irritates my comrades and knits their brows. They look as if they
+are becoming aware that they have not done their duty at an
+important juncture.
+
+"Fine lot of gibberish they've talked to us, the beasts!" Tirette
+growls at last with a rancor that gathers strength the more we unite
+and collect ourselves again.
+
+"We ought to have got beastly drunk to-day!" replies Paradis
+brutally.
+
+We walk without a word spoken. Then, after a time, "They're a lot of
+idiots, filthy idiots," Tirette goes on; "they tried to cod us, but
+I'm not on; if I see them again," he says, with a crescendo of
+anger, "I shall know what to say to them!"
+
+"We shan't see them again," says Blaire.
+
+"In eight days from now, p'raps we shall be laid out," says
+Volpatte.
+
+In the approaches to the square we run into a mob of people flowing
+out from the Hotel de Ville and from another big public
+building which displays the columns of a temple supporting a
+pediment. Offices are closing, and pouring forth civilians of all
+sorts and all ages, and military men both young and old, who seem at
+a distance to be dressed pretty much like us; but when nearer they
+stand revealed as the shirkers and deserters of the war, in spite of
+being disguised as soldiers, in spite of their brisques. [note 1]
+
+Women and children are waiting for them, in pretty and happy
+clusters. The commercial people are shutting up their shops with
+complacent content and a smile for both the day ended and for the
+morrow, elated by the lively and constant thrills of profits
+increased, by the growing jingle of the cash-box. They have stayed
+behind in the heart of their own firesides; they have only to stoop
+to caress their children. We see them beaming in the first
+starlights of the street, all these rich folk who are becoming
+richer, all these tranquil people whose tranquillity increases every
+day, people who are full, you feel. and in spite of all, of an
+unconfessable prayer. They all go slowly, by grace of the fine
+evening, and settle themselves in perfected homes, or in
+cafes where they are waited upon. Couples are forming, too,
+young women and young men, civilians or soldiers, with some badge of
+their preservation embroidered on their collars. They make haste
+into the shadows of security where the others go, where the dawn of
+lighted rooms awaits them; they hurry towards the night of rest and
+caresses.
+
+And as we pass quite close to a ground-floor window which is half
+open, we see the breeze gently inflate the lace curtain and lend it
+the light and delicious form of lingerie--and the advancing throng
+drives us back, poor strangers that we are!
+
+We wander along the pavement, all through the twilight that begins
+to glow with gold--for in towns Night adorns herself with jewels.
+The sight of this world has revealed a great truth to us at last,
+nor could we avoid it: a Difference which becomes evident between
+human beings, a Difference far deeper than that of nations and with
+defensive trenches more impregnable; the clean-cut and truly
+unpardonable division that there is in a country's inhabitants
+between those who gain and those who grieve, those who are required
+to sacrifice all, all, to give their numbers and strength and
+suffering to the last limit, those upon whom the others walk and
+advance, smile and succeed.
+
+Some items of mourning attire make blots in the crowd and have their
+message for us, but the rest is of merriment, not mourning.
+
+"It isn't one single country, that's not possible," suddenly says
+Volpatte with singular precision, "there are two. We're divided into
+two foreign countries. The Front, over there, where there are too
+many unhappy, and the Rear, here, where there are too many happy."
+
+"How can you help it? It serves its end--it's the background--but
+afterwards--"
+
+"Yes, I know; but all the same, all the same, there are too many of
+them, and they're too happy, and they're always the same ones, and
+there's no reason--"
+
+"What can you do?" says Tirette.
+
+"So much the worse," adds Blaire, still more simply.
+
+"In eight days from now p'raps we shall have snuffed it!" Volpatte
+is content to repeat as we go away with lowered heads.
+
+______
+
+[note 1] See p. 117.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+23
+
+The Fatigue-Party
+
+
+
+
+
+EVENING is falling upon the trench. All through the day it has been
+drawing near, invisible as fate, and now it encroaches on the banks
+of the long ditches like the lips of a wound infinitely great.
+
+We have talked, eaten, slept, and written in the bottom of the
+trench since the morning. Now that evening is here, an eddying
+springs up in the boundless crevice; it stirs and unifies the torpid
+disorder of the scattered men. It is the hour when we arise and
+work.
+
+Volpatte and Tirette approach each other. "Another day gone by,
+another like the rest of 'em," says Volpatte, looking at the
+darkening sky.
+
+"You're off it; our day isn't finished," replies Tirette, whose long
+experience of calamity has taught him that one must not jump to
+conclusions, where we are, even in regard to the modest future of a
+commonplace evening that has already begun.
+
+"Allons! Muster!" We join up with the laggard inattention of custom.
+With himself each man brings his rifle, his pouches of cartridges,
+his water-bottle, and a pouch that contains a lump of bread.
+Volpatte is still eating, with protruding and palpitating cheek.
+Paradis, with purple nose and chattering teeth, growls. Fouillade
+trails his rifle along like a broom. Marthereau looks at a mournful
+handkerchief, rumpled and stiff, and puts it back in his pocket. A
+cold drizzle is falling, and everybody shivers.
+
+Down yonder we hear a droning chant--"Two shovels, one pick, two
+shovels, one pick "The file trickles along to the tool-store,
+stagnates at the door, and departs, bristling with implements.
+
+"Everybody here? Gee up!" says the sergeant. Downward and rolling,
+we go forward. We know not where we go. We know nothing, except that
+the night and the earth are blending in the same abyss.
+
+As we emerge into the nude twilight from the trench, we see it
+already black as the crater of a dead volcano. Great gray clouds,
+storm-charged, hang from the sky. The plain, too, is gray in the
+pallid light; the grass is muddy, and all slashed with water. The
+things which here and there seem only distorted limbs are denuded
+trees. We cannot see far around us in the damp reek; besides, we
+only look downwards at the mud in which we slide--"Porridge!"
+
+Going across country we knead and pound a sticky paste which spreads
+out and flows back from every step--"Chocolate cream--coffee
+creams!"
+
+On the stony parts, the wiped-out ruins of roads that have become
+barren as the fields, the marching troop breaks through a layer of
+slime into a flinty conglomerate that grates and gives way under our
+iron-shod soles--"Seems as if we were walking on buttered toast!"
+
+On the slope of a knoll sometimes, the mud is black and thick and
+deep-rutted, like that which forms around the horse-ponds in
+villages, and in these ruts there are lakes and puddles and ponds,
+whose edges seem to be in rags.
+
+The pleasantries of the wags, who in the early freshness of the
+journey had cried, "Quack, quack," when they went through the water,
+are now becoming rare and gloomy; gradually the jokers are damped
+down. The rain begins to fall heavily. The daylight dwindles, and
+the confusion that is space contracts. The last lingering light
+welters on the ground and in the water.
+
+A steaming silhouette of men like monks appears through the rain in
+the west. It is a company of the 204th, wrapped in tent-cloths. As
+we go by we see the pale and shrunken faces and the dark noses of
+these dripping prowlers before they disappear. The track we are
+following through the faint grass of the fields is itself a sticky
+field streaked with countless parallel ruts, all plowed in the same
+line by the feet and the wheels of those who go to the front and
+those who go to the rear.
+
+We have to jump over gaping trenches, and this is not always easy,
+for the edges have become soft and slippery, and earth-falls have
+widened them. Fatigue, too, begins to bear upon our shoulders.
+Vehicles cross our path with a great noise and splashing. Artillery
+limbers prance by and spray us heavily. The motor lorries are borne
+on whirling circles of water around the wheels, with spirting
+tumultuous spokes.
+
+As the darkness increases, the jolted vehicles and the horses' necks
+and the profiles of the riders with their floating cloaks and slung
+carbines stand out still more fantastically against the misty floods
+from the sky. Here, there is a block of ammunition carts of the
+artillery. The horses are standing and trampling as we go by. We
+hear the creaking of axles, shouts, disputes, commands which
+collide, and the roar of the ocean of rain. Over the confused
+scuffle we can see steam rising from the buttocks of the teams and
+the cloaks of the horsemen.
+
+"Look out!" Something is laid out on the ground on our right--a row
+of dead. As we go by, our feet instinctively avoid them and our eyes
+search them. We see upright boot-soles, outstretched necks, the
+hollows of uncertain faces, hands half clenched in the air over the
+dark medley.
+
+We march and march, over fields still ghostly and foot-worn, under a
+sky where ragged clouds unfurl themselves upon the blackening
+expanse--which seems to have befouled itself by prolonged contact
+with so many multitudes of sorry humanity.
+
+Then we go down again into the communication trenches. To reach them
+we make a wide circuit, so that the rearguard can see the whole
+company, a hundred yards away, deployed in the gloom, little obscure
+figures sticking to the slopes and following each other in loose
+order, with their tools amid their rifles pricking up on each side
+of their heads, a slender trivial line that plunges in and raises
+its arms as if in entreaty.
+
+These trenches--still of the second lines--are populous. On the
+thresholds of the dug-outs, where cart-cloths and skins of animals
+hang and flap, squatting and bearded men watch our passing with
+expressionless eyes, as if they were looking at nothing. From
+beneath other cloths, drawn down to the ground, feet are projected,
+and snores.
+
+"Nom de Dieu! It's a long way!" the trampers begin to grumble. There
+is an eddy and recoil in the flow.
+
+"Halt!" The stop is to let others go by. We pile ourselves up,
+cursing, on the walls of the trench. It is a company of
+machine-gunners with their curious burdens.
+
+There seems to be no end to it, and the long halts are wearying.
+Muscles are beginning to stretch. The everlasting march is
+overwhelming us. We have hardly got going again when we have to
+recoil once more into a traverse to let the relief of the
+telephonists go by. We back like awkward cattle, and restart more
+heavily.
+
+"Look out for the wire!" The telephone wire undulates above the
+trench, and crosses it in places between two posts. When it is too
+slack, its curve sags into the trench and catches the rifles of
+passing men, and the ensnared ones struggle, and abuse the engineers
+who don't know how to fix up their threads.
+
+Then, as the drooping entanglement of precious wires increases, we
+shoulder our rifles with the butt in the air, carry the shovels
+under our arms, and go forward with lowered heads.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Our progress now is suddenly checked, and we only advance step by
+step, locked in each other. The head of the column must be in
+difficult case. We reach a spot where failing ground leads to a
+yawning hole--the Covered Trench. The others have disappeared
+through the low doorway. "We've got to go into this blackpudding.
+then?"
+
+Every man hesitates before ingulfing himself in the narrow
+underground darkness, and it is the total of these hesitations and
+lingerings that is reflected in the rear sections of the column in
+the form of wavering, obstruction, and sometimes abrupt shocks.
+
+From our first steps in the Covered Trench, a heavy darkness settles
+on us and divides us from each other. The damp odor of a swamped
+cave steals into us. In the ceiling of the earthen corridor that
+contains us, we can make out a few streaks and holes of pallor--the
+chinks and rents in the overhead planks. Little streams of water
+flow freely through them in places, and in spite of tentative
+groping we stumble on heaped-up timber. Alongside, our knocks
+discover the dim vertical presence of the supporting beams.
+
+The air in this interminable tunnel is vibrating heavily. It is the
+searchlight engine that is installed there--we have to pass in front
+of it.
+
+After we have felt our deep-drowned way for a quarter of an hour,
+some one who is overborne by the darkness and the wet, and tired of
+bumping into unknown people, growls, "I don't care--I'm going to
+light up."
+
+The brilliant beam of a little electric lamp flashes out, and
+instantly the sergeant bellows, "Ye gods! Who's the complete ass
+that's making a light? Are you daft? Don't you know it can be seen,
+you scab, through the roof?"
+
+The flash-lamp, after revealing some dark and oozing walls in its
+cone of light, retires into the night. "Not much you can't see it!"
+jeers the man, "and anyway we're not in the first lines." "Ah, that
+can't be seen!"
+
+The sergeant, wedged into the file and continuing to advance,
+appears to be turning round as he goes and attempting some forceful
+observations--"You gallows-bird! You damned dodger!" But suddenly he
+starts a new roar--"What! Another man smoking now! Holy hell!" This
+time he tries to halt, but in vain he rears himself against the wall
+and struggles to stick to it. He is forced precipitately to go with
+the stream and is carried away among his own shouts, which return
+and swallow him up, while the cigarette, the cause of his rage,
+disappears in silence.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+The jerky beat of the engine grows louder, and an increasing heat
+surrounds us. The overcharged air of the trench vibrates more and
+more as we go forward. The engine's jarring note soon hammers our
+ears and shakes us through. Still it gets hotter; it is like some
+great animal breathing in our faces. The buried trench seems to be
+leading us down and down into the tumult of some infernal workshop,
+whose dark-red glow is sketching out our huge and curving shadows in
+purple on the walls.
+
+In a diabolical crescendo of din, of hot wind and of lights, we flow
+deafened towards the furnace. One would think that the engine itself
+was hurling itself through the tunnel to meet us, like a frantic
+motor-cyclist drawing dizzily near with his headlight and
+destruction.
+
+Scorched and half blinded, we pass in front of the red furnace and
+the black engine, whose flywheel roars like a hurricane, and we have
+hardly time to make out the movements of men around it. We shut our
+eyes, choked by the contact of this glaring white-hot breath.
+
+Now, the noise and the heat are raging behind us and growing
+feebler, and my neighbor mutters in his beard, "And that idiot that
+said my lamp would be seen!"
+
+And here is the free air! The sky is a very dark blue, of the same
+color as the earth and little lighter. The rain becomes worse and
+worse, and walking is laborious in the heavy slime. The whole boot
+sinks in, and it is a labor of acute pain to withdraw the foot every
+time. Hardly anything is left visible in the night, but at the exit
+from the hole we see a disorder of beams which flounder in the
+widened trench--some demolished dugout.
+
+Just at this moment, a searchlight's unearthly arm that was swinging
+through space stops and falls on us, and we find that the tangle of
+uprooted and sunken posts and shattered framing is populous with
+dead soldiers. Quite close to me, the head of a kneeling body hangs
+on its back by an uncertain thread; a black veneer, edged with
+clotted drops, covers the cheek. Another body so clasps a post in
+its arms that it has only half fallen. Another, lying in the form of
+a circle, has been stripped by the shell, and his back and belly are
+laid bare. Another, outstretched on the edge of the heap, has thrown
+his hand across our path; and in this place where there no traffic
+except by night--for the trench is blocked just there by the
+earth-fall and inaccessible by day--every one treads on that hand.
+By the searchlight's shaft I saw it clearly, fleshless and worn, a
+sort of withered fin.
+
+The rain is raging and the sound of its streaming dominates
+everything--a horror of desolation. We feel the water on our flesh
+as if the deluge had washed our clothes away.
+
+We enter the open trench, and the embrace of night and storm resumes
+the sole possession of this confusion of corpses, stranded and
+cramped on a square of earth as on a raft.
+
+The wind freezes the drops of sweat on our foreheads. It is near
+midnight. For six hours now we have marched in the increasing burden
+of the mud. This is the time when the Paris theaters are
+constellated with electroliers and blossoming with lamps; when they
+are filled with luxurious excitement, with the rustle of skirts,
+with merrymaking and warmth; when a fragrant and radiant multitude,
+chatting, laughing, smiling, applauding, expanding. feels itself
+pleasantly affected by the cleverly graduated emotions which the
+comedy evokes, and lolls in contented enjoyment of the rich and
+splendid pageants of military glorification that crowd the stage of
+the music-hall.
+
+"Aren't we there? Nom de Dieu, shan't we ever get there?" The groan
+is breathed by the long procession that tosses about in these
+crevices of the earth, carrying rifles and shovels and pickaxes
+under the eternal torrent. We march and march. We are drunk with
+fatigue, and roll to this side and that. Stupefied and soaked, we
+strike with our shoulders a substance as sodden as ourselves.
+
+"Halt!"--"Are we there?"--"Ah, yes, we're there!"
+
+For the moment a heavy recoil presses us back and then a murmur runs
+along: "We've lost ourselves." The truth dawns on the confusion of
+the wandering horde. We have taken the wrong turn at some fork, and
+it will be the deuce of a job to find the right way again.
+
+Then, too, a rumor passes from mouth to mouth that a fighting
+company on its way to the lines is coming up behind us. The way by
+which we have come is stopped up with men. It is the block absolute.
+
+At all costs we must try to regain the lost trench--which is alleged
+to be on our left--by trickling through some sap or other. Utterly
+wearied and unnerved, the men break into gesticulations and violent
+reproaches. They trudge awhile, then drop their tools and halt. Here
+and there are compact groups--you can glimpse them by the light of
+the star-shells--who have let themselves fall to the ground.
+Scattered afar from south to north, the troop waits in the merciless
+rain.
+
+The lieutenant who is in charge and has led us astray, wriggles his
+way along the men in quest of some lateral exit. A little trench
+appears, shallow and narrow.
+
+"We most go that way, no doubt about it," the officer hastens to
+say. "Come, forward, boys."
+
+Each man sulkily picks up his burden. But a chorus of oaths and
+curses rises from the first who enter the little sap: "It's a
+latrine!"
+
+A disgusting smell escapes from the trench, and those inside halt
+butt into each other, and refuse to advance. We are all jammed
+against each other and block up the threshold.
+
+"I'd rather climb out and go in the open!" cries a man. But there
+are flashes rending the sky above the embankments on all sides, and
+the sight is so fearsome of these jets of resounding flame that
+overhang our pit and its swarming shadows that no one responds to
+the madman's saying.
+
+Willing or unwilling, since we cannot go back, we must even take
+that way. "Forward into the filth!" cries the leader of the troop.
+We plunge in, tense with repulsion. Bullets are whistling over.
+"Lower your heads!" The trench has little depth; one must stoop very
+low to avoid being hit, and the stench becomes intolerable. At last
+we emerge into the communication trench that we left in error. We
+begin again to march. Though we march without end we arrive nowhere.
+
+While we wander on, dumb and vacant, in the dizzy stupefaction of
+fatigue, the stream which is running in the bottom of the trench
+cleanses our befouled feet.
+
+The roars of the artillery succeed each other faster and faster,
+till they make but a single roar upon all the earth. From all sides
+the gunfire and the bursting shells hurl their swift shafts of light
+and stripe confusedly the black sky over our heads. The bombardment
+then becomes so intense that its illumination has no break. In the
+continuous chain of thunderbolts we can see each other clearly--our
+helmets streaming like the bodies of fishes, our sodden leathers,
+the shovel-blades black and glistening; we can even see the pale
+drops of the unending rain. Never have I seen the like of it; in
+very truth it is moonlight made by gunfire.
+
+Together there mounts from our lines and from the enemy's such a
+cloud of rockets that they unite and mingle in constellations; at
+one moment, to light us on our hideous way, there was a Great Bear
+of star-shells in the valley of the sky that we could see between
+the parapets.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+We are lost again, and this time we must be close to the first
+lines; but a depression in this part of the plain forms a sort of
+basin, overrun by shadows. We have marched along a sap and then back
+again. In the phosphorescent vibration of the guns, shimmering like
+a cinematograph, we make out above the parapet two stretcher-bearers
+trying to cross the trench with their laden stretcher.
+
+The lieutenant, who at least knows the place where he should guide
+the team of workers, questions them, "Where is the New
+Trench?"--"Don't know." From the ranks another question is put to
+them, "How far are we from the Boches?" They make no reply, as they
+are talking among themselves.
+
+"I'm stopping," says the man in front; "I'm too tired."
+
+"Come, get on with you, nom de Dieu!" says the other in a surly tone
+and floundering heavily, his arms extended by the stretcher. "We
+can't step and rust here."
+
+They put the stretcher down on the parapet, the edge of it
+overhanging the trench, and as we pass underneath we can see the
+prostrate man's feet. The rain which falls on the stretcher drains
+from it darkened.
+
+"Wounded?" some one asks down below.
+
+"No, a stiff," growls the bearer this time, "and he weighs twelve
+stone at least. Wounded I don't mind--for two days and two nights we
+haven't left off carrying 'em--but it's rotten, breaking yourself up
+with lugging dead men about." And the bearer, upright on the edge of
+the bank, drops a foot to the base of the opposite bank across the
+cavity, and with his legs wide apart, laboriously balanced, he grips
+the stretcher and begins to draw it across, calling on his companion
+to help him.
+
+A little farther we see the stooping form of a hooded officer, and
+as he raises his hand to his face we see two gold lines on his
+sleeve. He, surely, will tell us the way. But he addresses us, and
+asks if we have not seen the battery he is looking for. We shall
+never get there!
+
+But we do, all the same. We finish up in a field of blackness where
+a few lean posts are bristling. We climb up to it, and spread out in
+silence. This is the spot.
+
+The placing of us is an undertaking. Four separate times we go
+forward and then retire, before the company is regularly echeloned
+along the length of the trench to be dug, before an equal interval
+is left between each team of one striker and two shovelers. "Incline
+three paces more--too much--one pace to the rear. Come, one pace to
+the rear--are you deaf?--Halt! There!"
+
+This adjustment is done by the lieutenant and a noncom. of the
+Engineers who has sprung up out of the ground. Together or
+separately they run along the file and give their muttered orders
+into the men s ears as they take them by the arm, sometimes, to
+guide them. Though begun in an orderly way, the arrangement
+degenerates, thanks to the ill temper of the exhausted men, who must
+continually be uprooting themselves from the spot where the
+undulating mob is stranded.
+
+"We're in front of the first lines," they whisper round me. "No."
+murmur other voices, "we're just behind."
+
+No one knows. The rain still falls, though less fiercely than at
+some moments on the march. But what matters the rain! We have spread
+ourselves out on the ground. Now that our backs and limbs rest in
+the yielding mud, we are so comfortable that we are unconcerned
+about the rain that pricks our faces and drives through to our
+flesh, indifferent to the saturation of the bed that contains us.
+
+But we get hardly time enough to draw breath. They are not so
+imprudent as to let us bury ourselves in sleep. We must set
+ourselves to incessant labor. It is two o'clock of the morning; in
+four hours more it will be too light for us to stay here. There is
+not a minute to lose.
+
+"Every man," they say to us, "must dig five feet in length, two and
+a half feet in width, and two and three-quarter feet in depth. That
+makes fifteen feet in length for each team. And I advise you to get
+into it; the sooner it's done, the sooner you'll leave."
+
+We know the pious claptrap. It is not recorded in the annals of the
+regiment that a trenching fatigue-party ever once got away before
+the moment when it became absolutely necessary to quit the
+neighborhood if they were not to be seen, marked and destroyed along
+with the work of their hands.
+
+We murmur, "Yes, yes--all right; it's not worth saying. Go easy."
+
+But everybody applies himself to the job courageously, except for
+some invincible sleepers whose nap will involve them later in
+superhuman efforts.
+
+We attack the first layer of the new line--little mounds of earth,
+stringy with grass. The ease and speed with which the work
+begins--like all entrenching work in free soil--foster the illusion
+that it will soon be finished, that we shall be able to sleep in the
+cavities we have scooped: and thus a certain eagerness revives.
+
+But whether by reason of the noise of the shovels, or because some
+men are chatting almost aloud, in spite of reproofs, our activity
+wakes up a rocket, whose flaming vertical line rattles suddenly on
+our right.
+
+"Lie down!" Every man flattens himself, and the rocket balances and
+parades its huge pallor over a sort of field of the dead.
+
+As soon as it is out one hears the men, in places and then all
+along, detach themselves from their secretive stillness, get up, and
+resume the task with more discretion.
+
+Soon another star-shell tosses aloft its long golden stalk, and
+still more brightly illuminates the flat and motionless line of
+trenchmakers. Then another and another.
+
+Bullets rend the air around us, and we hear a cry, "Some one
+wounded!" He passes, supported by comrades. We can just see the
+group of men who are going away, dragging one of their number.
+
+The place becomes unwholesome. We stoop and crouch, and some are
+scratching at the earth on their knees. Others are working full
+length; they toil, and turn, and turn again, like men in nightmares.
+The earth, whose first layer was light to lift, becomes muddy and
+sticky; it is hard to handle, and clings to the tool like glue.
+After every shovelful the blade must be scraped.
+
+Already a thin heap of earth is winding along, and each man has the
+idea of reinforcing the incipient breastwork with his pouch and his
+rolled-up greatcoat, and he hoods himself behind the slender pile of
+shadow when a volley comes--
+
+While we work we sweat, and as soon as we stop working we are
+pierced through by the cold. A spell seems to be cast on us,
+paralyzing our arms. The rockets torment and pursue us, and allow us
+but little movement. After every one of them that petrifles us with
+its light we have to struggle against a task still more stubborn.
+The hole only deepens into the darkness with painful and despairing
+tardiness.
+
+The ground gets softer; each shovelful drips and flows, and spreads
+from the blade with a flabby sound. At last some one cries, "Water!"
+The repeated cry travels all along the row of
+diggers--"Water--that's done it!"
+
+"Melusson's team's dug deeper, and there's water. They've
+struck a swamp."--"No help for it."
+
+We stop in confusion. In the bosom of the night we hear the sound of
+shovels and picks thrown down like empty weapons. The non-coms. go
+gropingly after the officer to get instructions. Here and there,
+with no desire for anything better, some men are going deliciously
+to sleep under the caress of the rain, under the radiant rockets.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+It was very nearly at this minute, as far as I can remember, that
+the bombardment began again. The first shell fell with a terrible
+splitting of the air, which seemed to tear itself in two; and other
+whistles were already converging upon us when its explosion uplifted
+the ground at the head of the detachment in the heart of the
+magnitude of night and rain, revealing gesticulations upon a sudden
+screen of red.
+
+No doubt they had seen us, thanks to the rockets, and had trained
+their fire on us.
+
+The men hurled and rolled themselves towards the little flooded
+ditch that they had dug, wedging, burying, and immersing themselves
+in it, and placed the blades of the shovels over their heads. To
+right, to left, in front and behind, shells burst so near that every
+one of them shook us in our bed of clay; and it became soon one
+continuous quaking that seized the wretched gutter, crowded with men
+and scaly with shovels, under the strata of smoke and the falling
+fire. The splinters and debris crossed in all directions with a
+network of noise over the dazzling field. No second passed but we
+all thought what some stammered with their faces in the earth,
+"We're done, this time!"
+
+A little in front of the place where I am. a shape has arisen and
+cried, "Let's be off!" Prone bodies half rose out of the shroud of
+mud that dripped in tails and liquid rags from their limbs, and
+these deathful apparitions cried also, "Let's go!" They were on
+their knees, on all-fours, crawling towards the way of retreat: "Get
+on, allez, get on!"
+
+But the long file stayed motionless, and the frenzied complaints
+were in vain. They who were down there at the end would not budge,
+and their inactivity immobilized the rest. Some wounded passed over
+the others, crawling over them as over debris, and sprinkling the
+whole company with their blood.
+
+We discovered at last the cause of the maddening inactivity of the
+detachment's tail--"There's a barrage fire beyond."
+
+A weird imprisoned panic seized upon the men with cries inarticulate
+and gestures stillborn. They writhed upon the spot. But little
+shelter as the incipient trench afforded, no one dared leave the
+ditch that saved us from protruding above the level of the ground,
+no one dared fly from death towards the traverse that should be down
+there. Great were the risks of the wounded who had managed to crawl
+over the others, and every moment some were struck and went down
+again.
+
+Fire and water fell blended everywhere. Profoundly entangled in the
+supernatural din, we shook from neck to heels. The most hideous of
+deaths was falling and bounding and plunging all around us in waves
+of light, its crashing snatched our fearfulness in all
+directions--our flesh prepared itself for the monstrous sacrifice!
+In that tense moment of imminent destruction, we could only remember
+just then how often we had already experienced it, how often
+undergone this outpouring of iron, and the burning roar of it, and
+the stench. It is only during a bombardment that one really recalls
+those he has already endured.
+
+And still, without ceasing, newly-wounded men crept over us, fleeing
+at any price. In the fear that their contact evoked we groaned
+again, "We shan't get out of this; nobody will get out of it."
+
+Suddenly a gap appeared in the compressed humanity, and those behind
+breathed again, for we were on the move.
+
+We began by crawling, then we ran, bowed low in the mud and water
+that mirrored the flashes and the crimson gleams, stumbling and
+falling over submerged obstructions, ourselves resembling heavy
+splashing projectiles, thunder-hurled along the ground. We arrive at
+the starting-place of the trench we had begun to dig.
+
+"There's no trench--there's nothing."
+
+In truth the eye could discern no shelter in the plain where our
+work had begun. Even by the stormy flash of the rockets we could
+only see the plain, a huge and raging desert. The trench could not
+be far away, for it had brought us here. But which way must we steer
+to find it?
+
+The rain redoubled. We lingered a moment in mournful disappointment,
+gathered on a lightning-smitten and unknown shore--and then the
+stampede.
+
+Some bore to the left, some to the right, some went straight
+forward--tiny groups that one only saw for a second in the heart of
+the thundering rain before they were separated by sable avalanches
+and curtains of flaming smoke.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+The bombardment over our heads grew less; it was chiefly over the
+place where we had been that it was increasing. But it might any
+minute isolate everything and destroy it.
+
+The rain became more and more torrential--a deluge in the night. The
+darkness was so deep that the star-shells only lit up slices of
+water-seamed obscurity, in the depths of which fleeing phantoms came
+and went and ran round in circles.
+
+I cannot say how long I wandered with the group with which I had
+remained. We went into morasses. We strained our sight forward in
+quest of the embankment and the trench of salvation, towards the
+ditch that was somewhere there, as towards a harbor.
+
+A cry of consolation was heard at last through the vapors of war and
+the elements--"A trench!" But the embankment of that trench was
+moving; it was made of men mingled in confusion, who seemed to be
+coming out and abandoning it.
+
+"Don't stay there, mates!" cried the fugitives; "clear off, don't
+come near. It's hell--everything's collapsing--the trenches are
+legging it and the dug-outs are bunged up--the mud's pouring in
+everywhere. There won't be any trenches by the morning--it's all up
+with them about here!"
+
+They disappeared. Where? We forgot to ask for some little direction
+from these men whose streaming shapes had no sooner appeared than
+they were swallowed up in the dark.
+
+Even our little group crumbled away among the devastation, no longer
+knowing where they were. Now one, now another, faded into the night,
+disappearing towards his chance of escape.
+
+We climbed slopes and descended them. I saw dimly in front of me men
+bowed and hunchbacked, mounting a slippery incline where mud held
+them back, and the wind and rain repelled them under a dome of
+cloudy lights.
+
+Then we flowed back, and plunged into a marsh up to our knees. So
+high must we lift our feet that we walked with a sound of swimming.
+Each forward stride was an enormous effort which slackened in agony.
+
+It was there that we felt death drawing near. But we beached
+ourselves at last on a sort of clay embankment that divided the
+swamp. As we followed the slippery back of this slender island
+along, I remember that once we had to stoop and steer ourselves by
+touching some half-buried corpses, so that we should not be thrown
+down from the soft and sinuous ridge. My hand discovered shoulders
+and hard backs, a face cold as a helmet, and a pipe still
+desperately bitten by dead jaws.
+
+As we emerged and raised our heads at a venture we heard the sound
+of voices not far away. "Voices! Ah, voices!" They sounded tranquil
+to us, as though they called us by our names, and we all came close
+together to approach this fraternal murmuring of men.
+
+The words became distinct. They were quite near--in the hillock that
+we could dimly see like an oasis: and yet we could not hear what
+they said. The sounds were muddled, and we did not understand them.
+
+"What are they saying?" asked one of us in a curious tone.
+
+Instinctively we stopped trying to find a way in. A doubt, a painful
+idea was seizing us. Then, clearly enunciated, there rang out these
+words--"Achtung!--Zweites Geschutz--Schuss--"Farther back,
+the report of a gun answered the telephonic command.
+
+Horror and stupefaction nailed us to the spot at first--"Where are
+we? Oh, Christ, where are we?" Turning right about face, slowly in
+spite of all, borne down anew by exhaustion and dismay, we took
+flight, as overwhelmed by weariness as if we had many wounds, pulled
+back by the mud towards the enemy country, and retaining only just
+enough energy to repel the thought of the sweetness it would have
+been to let ourselves die.
+
+We came to a sort of great plain. We halted and threw ourselves on
+the ground on the side of a mound, and leaned back upon it, unable
+to make another step.
+
+And we moved no more, my shadowy comrades nor I. The rain splashed
+in our faces, streamed down our backs and chests, ran down from our
+knees and filled our boots.
+
+We should perhaps be killed or taken prisoners when day came. But we
+thought no more of anything. We could do no more; we knew no more.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+24
+
+The Dawn
+
+
+
+
+
+WE are waiting for daylight in the place where we sank to the
+ground. Sinister and slow it comes, chilling and dismal, and expands
+upon the livid landscape.
+
+The rain has ceased to fall--there is none left in the sky. The
+leaden plain and its mirrors of sullied water seem to issue not only
+from the night but from the sea.
+
+Drowsy or half asleep, sometimes opening our eyes only to close them
+again, we attend the incredible renewal of light, paralyzed with
+cold and broken with fatigue.
+
+Where are the trenches?
+
+We see lakes, and between the lakes there are lines of milky and
+motionless water. There is more water even than we had thought. It
+has taken everything and spread everywhere, and the prophecy of the
+men in the night has come true. There are no more trenches; those
+canals are the trenches enshrouded. It is a universal flood. The
+battlefield is not sleeping; it is dead. Life may be going on down
+yonder perhaps, but we cannot see so far.
+
+Swaying painfully, like a sick man, in the terrible encumbering
+clasp of my greatcoat, I half raise myself to look at it all. There
+are three monstrously shapeless forms beside me. One of them--it is
+Paradis, in an amazing armor of mud, with a swelling at the waist
+that stands for his cartridge pouches--gets up also. The others are
+asleep, and make no movement.
+
+And what is this silence, too, this prodigious silence? There is no
+sound, except when from time to time a lump of earth slips into the
+water, in the middle of this fantastic paralysis of the world. No
+one is firing. There are no shells, for they would not burst. There
+are no bullets, either, for the men--
+
+Ah, the men! Where are the men?
+
+We see them gradually. Not far from us there are some stranded and
+sleeping hulks so molded in mud from head to foot that they are
+almost transformed into inanimate objects.
+
+Some distance away I can make out others, curled up and clinging
+like snails all along a rounded embankment, from which they have
+partly slipped back into the water. It is a motionless rank of
+clumsy lumps, of bundles placed side by side, dripping water and
+mud, and of the same color as the soil with which they are blended.
+
+I make an effort to break the silence. To Paradis, who also is
+looking that way, I say, "Are they dead?"
+
+"We'll go and see presently," he says in a low voice; "stop here a
+bit yet. We shall have the heart to go there by and by."
+
+We look at each other, and our eyes fall also on the others who came
+and fell down here. Their faces spell such weariness that they are
+no longer faces so much as something dirty, disfigured and bruised,
+with blood-shot eyes. Since the beginning we have seen each other in
+all manner of shapes and appearances, and yet--we do not know each
+other.
+
+Paradis turns his head and looks elsewhere.
+
+Suddenly I see him seized with trembling. He extends an arm
+enormously caked in mud. "There--there--" he says.
+
+On the water which overflows from a stretch particularly
+cross-seamed and gullied, some lumps are floating, some round-backed
+reefs.
+
+We drag ourselves to the spot. They are drowned men. Their arms and
+heads are submerged. On the surface of the plastery liquid appear
+their backs and the straps of their accouterments. Their blue cloth
+trousers are inflated, with the feet attached askew upon the
+ballooning legs, like the black wooden feet on the shapeless legs of
+marionettes. From one sunken head the hair stands straight up like
+water-weeds. Here is a face which the water only lightly touches;
+the head is beached on the marge, and the body disappears in its
+turbid tomb. The face is lifted skyward. The eyes are two white
+holes; the mouth is a black hole. The mask's yellow and puffed-up
+skin appears soft and creased, like dough gone cold.
+
+They are the men who were watching there, and could not extricate
+themselves from the mud. All their efforts to escape over the sticky
+escarpment of the trench that was slowly and fatally filling with
+water only dragged them still more into the depth. They died
+clinging to the yielding support of the earth.
+
+There, our first lines are; and there, the first German lines,
+equally silent and flooded. On our way to these flaccid ruins we
+pass through the middle of what yesterday was the zone of terror,
+the awful space on whose threshold the fierce rush of our last
+attack was forced to stop, the No Man's Land which bullets and
+shells had not ceased to furrow for a year and a half, where their
+crossed fire during these latter days had furiously swept the ground
+from one horizon to the other.
+
+Now, it is a field of rest. The ground is everywhere dotted with
+beings who sleep or who are on the way to die, slowly moving,
+lifting an arm, lifting the head.
+
+The enemy trench is completing the process of foundering into
+itself, among great marshy undulations and funnel-holes, shaggy with
+mud: it forms among them a line of pools and wells. Here and there
+we can see the still overhanging banks begin to move, crumble, and
+fail down. In one place we can lean against it.
+
+In this bewildering circle of filth there are no bodies. But there,
+worse than a body, a solitary arm protrudes, bare and white as a
+stone, from a hole which dimly shows on the other side of the water.
+The man has been buried in his dug-out and has had only the time to
+thrust out his arm.
+
+Quite near, we notice that some mounds of earth aligned along the
+ruined ramparts of this deep-drowned ditch are human. Are they
+dead--or asleep? We do not know; in any case, they rest.
+
+Are they German or French? We do not know. One of them has opened
+his eyes, and looks at us with swaying head. We say to him,
+"French?"--and then, "Deutsch?" He makes no reply, but shuts his
+eyes again and relapses into oblivion. We never knew what he was.
+
+We cannot decide the identity of these beings, either by their
+clothes, thickly covered with filth, or by their head-dress, for
+they are bareheaded or swathed in woolens under their liquid and
+offensive cowls; or by their weapons, for they either have no rifles
+or their hands rest lightly on something they have dragged along, a
+shapeless and sticky mass, like to a sort of fish.
+
+All these men of corpse-like faces who are before us and behind us,
+at the limit of their strength, void of speech as of will, all these
+earth-charged men who you would say were carrying their own
+winding-sheets, are as much alike as if they were naked. Out of the
+horror of the night apparitions are issuing from this side and that
+who are clad in exactly the same uniform of misery and mud.
+
+It is the end of all. For the moment it is the prodigious finish,
+the epic cessation of the war.
+
+I once used to think that the worst hell in war was the flame of
+shells; and then for long I thought it was the suffocation of the
+caverns which eternally confine us. But it is neither of these. Hell
+is water.
+
+The wind is rising, and its icy breath goes through our flesh. On
+the wrecked and dissolving plain, flecked with bodies between its
+worm-shaped chasms of water, among the islands of motionless men
+stuck together like reptiles, in this flattening and sinking chaos
+there are some slight indications of movement. We see slowly
+stirring groups and fragments of groups, composed of beings who bow
+under the weight of their coats and aprons of mud, who trail
+themselves along, disperse, and crawl about in the depths of the
+sky's tarnished light. The dawn is so foul that one would say the
+day was already done.
+
+These survivors are migrating across the desolated steppe, pursued
+by an unspeakable evil which exhausts and bewilders them. They are
+lamentable objects; and some, when they are fully seen, are
+dramatically ludicrous, for the whelming mud from which they still
+take flight has half unclothed them.
+
+As they pass by their glances go widely around. They look at us, and
+discovering men in us they cry through the wind, "It's worse down
+yonder than it is here. The chaps are falling into the holes, and
+you can't pull them out. All them that trod on the edge of a
+shell-hole last night, they're dead. Down there where we're coming
+from you can see a head in the ground, working its arms, embedded.
+There's a hurdle-path that's given way in places and the hurdles
+have sunk into holes, and it's a man-trap. Where there's no more
+hurdles there's two yards deep of water. Your rifle? You couldn't
+pull it out again when you'd stuck it in. Look at those men, there.
+They've cut off all the bottom half of their great-coats--hard lines
+on the pockets--to help 'em get clear, and also because they hadn't
+strength to drag a weight like that. Dumas' coat, we were able to
+pull it off him, and it weighed a good eighty pounds; we could just
+lift it, two of us, with both our hands. Look--him with the bare
+legs; it's taken everything off him, his trousers, his drawers, his
+boots, all dragged off by the mud. One's never seen that, never."
+
+Scattered and straggling, the herd takes flight in a fever of fear,
+their feet pulling huge stumps of mud out of the ground. We watch
+the human flotsam fade away, and the lumps of them diminish, immured
+in enormous clothes.
+
+We get up, and at once the icy wind makes us tremble like trees.
+Slowly we veer towards the mass formed by two men curiously joined,
+leaning shoulder to shoulder, and each with an arm round the neck of
+the other. Is it the hand-to-hand fight of two soldiers who have
+overpowered each other in death and still hold their own, who can
+never again lose their grip? No; they are two men who recline upon
+each other so as to sleep. As they might not spread themselves on
+the falling earth that was ready to spread itself on them, they have
+supported each other, clasping each other's shoulder; and thus
+plunged in the ground up to their knees, they have gone to sleep.
+
+We respect their stillness, and withdraw from the twin statue of
+human wretchedness.
+
+Soon we must halt ourselves. We have expected too much of our
+strength and can go no farther. It is not yet ended. We collapse
+once more in a churned corner, with a noise as if one shot a load of
+dung.
+
+From time to time we open our eyes. Some men are steering for us,
+reeling. They lean over us and speak in low and weary tones. One of
+them says, "Sie sind todt. Wir bleiben hier." (They're dead. We'll
+stay here.) The other says, "Ja," like a sigh.
+
+But they see us move, and at once they sink in front of us. The man
+with the toneless voice says to us in French, "We surrender," and
+they do not move. Then they give way entirely, as if this was the
+relief, the end of their torture; and one of them whose face is
+patterned in mud like a savage tattooed, smiles slightly.
+
+"Stay there," says Paradis, without moving the head that he leans
+backward upon a hillock; "presently you shall go with us if you
+want."
+
+"Yes," says the German, "I've had enough." We make no reply, and he
+says, "And the others too?"
+
+"Yes," says Paradis, "let them stop too, if they like." There are
+four of them outstretched on the ground. The death-rattle has got
+one of them. It is like a sobbing song that rises from him. The
+others then half straighten themselves, kneeling round him, and roll
+great eyes in their muck-mottled faces. We get up and watch the
+scene. But the rattle dies out, and the blackened throat which alone
+in all the big body pulsed like a little bird, is still.
+
+"Er ist todt!" (He's dead) says one of the men, beginning to cry.
+The others settle themselves again to sleep. The weeper goes to
+sleep as he weeps.
+
+Other soldiers have come, stumbling, gripped in sudden halts like
+tipsy men, or gliding along like worms, to take sanctuary here; and
+we sleep all jumbled together in the common grave.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Waking, Paradis and I look at each other, and remember. We return to
+life and daylight as in a nightmare. In front of us the calamitous
+plain is resurrected, where hummocks vaguely appear from their
+immersion, the steel-like plain that is rusty in places and shines
+with lines and pools of water, while bodies are strewn here and
+there in the vastness like foul rubbish, prone bodies that breathe
+or rot.
+
+Paradis says to me, "That's war."
+
+"Yes, that's it," he repeats in a far-away voice, "that's war. It's
+not anything else."
+
+He means--and I am with him in his meaning--"More than attacks that
+are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like
+banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting
+strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the
+belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and
+tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer like corpses
+even, floating on the ravenous earth. It is that, that endless
+monotony of misery, broken, by poignant tragedies; it is that, and
+not the bayonet glittering like silver, nor the bugle's chanticleer
+call to the sun!"
+
+Paradis was so full of this thought that he ruminated a memory, and
+growled, "D'you remember the woman in the town where we went about a
+bit not so very long ago? She talked some drivel about attacks, and
+said, 'How beautiful they must be to see!'"
+
+A chasseur who was full length on his belly, flattened out like a
+cloak, raised his bead out of the filthy background in which it was
+sunk, and cried, 'Beautiful? Oh, hell! It's just as if an ox were to
+say, 'What a fine sight it must be, all those droves of cattle
+driven forward to the slaughter-house!'" He spat out mud from his
+besmeared mouth, and his unburied face was like a beast's.
+
+"Let them say, 'It must be,'" he sputtered in a strange jerky voice,
+grating and ragged; "that's all right. But beautiful! Oh, hell!"
+
+Writhing under the idea, he added passionately, "It's when they say
+things like that that they hit us hardest of all!" He spat again,
+hut exhausted by his effort he fell back in his bath of mud, and
+laid his head in his spittle.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide
+unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his
+sentence, 'War is that. It is that everywhere. What are we, we
+chaps, and what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is
+only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three
+thousand kilometers of equal evils, or nearly equal, or worse."
+
+"And then," said the comrade at our side, whom we could not
+recognize even by his voice, "to-morrow it begins again. It began
+again the day before yesterday, and all the days before that!"
+
+With an effort as if he was tearing the ground, the chasseur dragged
+his body out of the earth where he had molded a depression like an
+oozing coffin, and sat in the hole. He blinked his eyes and tried to
+shake the balance of mud from his face, and said, "We shall come out
+of it again this time. And who knows, p'raps we shall come out of it
+again to-morrow! Who knows?"
+
+Paradis, with his back bent under mats of earth and clay, was trying
+to convey his idea that the war cannot be imagined or measured in
+terms of time and space. "When one speaks of the whole war," he
+said, thinking aloud, "it's as if you said nothing at all--the words
+are strangled. We're here, and we look at it all like blind men."
+
+A bass voice rolled to us from a little farther away, "No, one
+cannot imagine it."
+
+At these words a burst of harsh laughter tore itself from some one.
+"How could you imagine it, to begin with, if you hadn't been there?"
+
+"You'd have to be mad," said the chasseur.
+
+Paradis leaned over a sprawling outspread mass beside him and said,
+"Are you asleep?"
+
+"No, but I'm not going to budge." The smothered and terror-struck
+mutter issued instantly from the mass that was covered with a thick
+and slimy horse-cloth, so indented that it seemed to have been
+trampled. "I'll tell you why. I believe my belly's shot through. But
+I'm not sure, and I daren't find out."
+
+"Let's see--"
+
+"No, not yet," says the man. "I'd rather stop on a bit like this."
+
+The others, dragging themselves on their elbows, began to make
+splashing movements, by way of casting off the clammy infernal
+covering that weighed them down. The paralysis of cold was passing
+away from the knot of sufferers, though the light no longer made any
+progress over the great irregular marsh of the lower plain. The
+desolation proceeded, but not the day.
+
+Then he who spoke sorrowfully, like a bell, said. "It'll be no good
+telling about it, eh? They wouldn't believe you; not out of malice
+or through liking to pull your leg, but because they couldn't. When
+you say to 'em later, if you live to say it, 'We were on a night job
+and we got shelled and we were very nearly drowned in mud,' they'll
+say, 'Ah!' And p'raps they'll say. 'You didn't have a very spicy
+time on the job.' And that's all. No one can know it. Only us."
+
+"No, not even us, not even us!" some one cried.
+
+"That's what I say, too. We shall forget--we're forgetting already,
+my boy!"
+
+"We've seen too much to remember."
+
+"And everything we've seen was too much. We're not made to hold it
+all. It takes its damned hook in all directions. We're too little to
+hold it."
+
+"You're right, we shall forget! Not only the length of the big
+misery, which can't be calculated, as you say, ever since the
+beginning, but the marches that turn up the ground and turn it
+again, lacerating your feet and wearing out your bones under a load
+that seems to grow bigger in the sky, the exhaustion until you don't
+know your own name any more, the tramping and the inaction that
+grind you, the digging jobs that exceed your strength, the endless
+vigils when you fight against sleep and watch for an enemy who is
+everywhere in the night, the pillows of dung and lice--we shall
+forget not only those, but even the foul wounds of shells and
+machine-guns, the mines, the gas, and the counter-attacks. At those
+moments you're full of the excitement of reality, and you've some
+satisfaction. But all that wears off and goes away, you don't know
+how and you don't know where, and there's only the names left, only
+the words of it, like in a dispatch."
+
+"That's true what he says," remarks a man, without moving his head
+in its pillory of mud. When I was on leave, I found I'd already
+jolly well forgotten what had happened to me before. There were some
+letters from me that I read over again just as if they were a book I
+was opening. And yet in spite of that, I've forgotten also all the
+pain I've had in the war. We're forgetting-machines. Men are things
+that think a little but chiefly forget. That's what we are."
+
+"Then neither the other side nor us'll remember! So much misery all
+wasted!"
+
+This point of view added to the abasement of these beings on the
+shore of the flood, like news of a greater disaster, and humiliated
+them still more.
+
+"Ah, if one did remember!" cried some one.
+
+"If we remembered," said another, "there wouldn't be any more war."
+
+A third added grandly, "Yes, if we remembered, war would be less
+useless than it is."
+
+But suddenly one of the prone survivors rose to his knees, dark as a
+great bat ensnared, and as the mud dripped from his waving arms he
+cried in a hollow voice, "There must be no more war after this!"
+
+In that miry corner where, still feeble unto impotence, we were
+beset by blasts of wind which laid hold on us with such rude
+strength that the very ground seemed to sway like sea-drift, the cry
+of the man who looked as if he were trying to fly away evoked other
+like cries: "There must be no more war after this!"
+
+The sullen or furious exclamations of these men fettered to the
+earth, incarnate of earth, arose and slid away on the wind like
+beating wings--
+
+"No more war! No more war! Enough of it!"
+
+"It's too stupid--it's too stupid," they mumbled.
+
+"What does it mean, at the bottom of it, all this?--all this that
+you can't even give a name to?"
+
+They snarled and growled like wild beasts on that sort of ice-floe
+contended for by the elements, in their dismal disguise of ragged
+mud. So huge was the protest thus rousing them in revolt that it
+choked them.
+
+"We're made to live, not to be done in like this!"
+
+"Men are made to be husbands, fathers--men, what the devil!--not
+beasts that hunt each other and cut each other's throats and make
+themselves stink like all that."
+
+"And yet, everywhere--everywhere--there are beasts, savage beasts or
+smashed beasts. Look, look!"
+
+I shall never forget the look of those limitless lands wherefrom the
+water had corroded all color and form, whose contours crumbled on
+all sides under the assault of the liquid putrescence that flowed
+across the broken bones of stakes and wire and framing; nor, rising
+above those things amid the sullen Stygian immensity, can I ever
+forget the vision of the thrill of reason, logic and simplicity that
+suddenly shook these men like a fit of madness.
+
+I could see them agitated by this idea--that to try to live one's
+life on earth and to be happy is not only a right but a duty, and
+even an ideal and a virtue; that the only end of social life is to
+make easy the inner life of every one.
+
+"To live!"--"All of us!"--"You!"--"Me!"
+
+"No more war--ah, no!--it's too stupid--worse than that, it's
+too--"
+
+For a finishing echo to their half-formed thought a saying came to
+the mangled and miscarried murmur of the mob from a filth-crowned
+face that I saw arise from the level of the earth--"Two armies
+fighting each other--that's like one great army committing suicide!"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"And likewise, what have we been for two years now? Incredibly
+pitiful wretches, and savages as well, brutes, robbers, and dirty
+devils."
+
+"Worse than that!" mutters he whose only phrase it is.
+
+"Yes, I admit it!"
+
+In their troubled truce of the morning, these men whom fatigue had
+tormented, whom rain had scourged, whom night-long lightning had
+convulsed, these survivors of volcanoes and flood began not only to
+see dimly how war, as hideous morally as physically, outrages common
+sense, debases noble ideas and dictates all kind of crime, but they
+remembered how it had enlarged in them and about them every evil
+instinct save none, mischief developed into lustful cruelty,
+selfishness into ferocity, the hunger for enjoyment into a mania.
+
+They are picturing all this before their eyes as just now they
+confusedly pictured their misery. They are crammed with a curse
+which strives to find a way out and to come to light in words, a
+curse which makes them to groan and wail. It is as if they toiled to
+emerge from the delusion and ignorance which soil them as the mud
+soils them; as if they will at last know why they are scourged.
+
+"Well then?" clamors one.
+
+"Ay, what then?" the other repeats, still more grandly. The wind
+sets the flooded flats a-tremble to our eyes, and falling furiously
+on the human masses lying or kneeling and fixed like flagstones and
+grave-slabs, it wrings new shivering from them.
+
+"There will be no more war," growls a soldier, "when there is no
+more Germany."
+
+"That's not the right thing to say!" cries another. "It isn't
+enough. There'll be no more war when the spirit of war is defeated."
+The roaring of the wind half smothered his words, so he lifted his
+head and repeated them.
+
+"Germany and militarism"--some one in his anger precipitately cut
+in--"they're the same thing. They wanted the war and they'd planned
+it beforehand. They are militarism."
+
+"Militarism--" a soldier began again.
+
+"What is it?" some one asked.
+
+"It's--it's brute force that's ready prepared, and that lets fly
+suddenly, any minute."
+
+"Yes. To-day militarism is called Germany."
+
+"Yes, but what will it be called to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know," said a voice serious as a prophet's.
+
+"If the spirit of war isn't killed, you'll have struggle all through
+the ages."
+
+"We must--one's got to--"
+
+"We must fight!" gurgled the hoarse voice of a man who had lain
+stiff in the devouring mud ever since our awakening; "we've got to!"
+His body turned heavily over. "We've got to give all we have, our
+strength and our skins and our hearts, all our life and what
+pleasures are left us. The life of prisoners as we are, we've got to
+take it in both hands. You've got to endure everything, even
+injustice--and that's the king that's reigning now--and the shameful
+and disgusting sights we see, so as to come out on top, and win. But
+if we've got to make such a sacrifice," adds the shapeless man,
+turning over again, "it's because we're fighting for progress, not
+for a country; against error, not against a country."
+
+"War must be killed," said the first speaker, "war must be killed in
+the belly of Germany!"
+
+"Anyway," said one of those who sat enrooted there like a sort of
+shrub, "anyway, we're beginning to understand why we've got to march
+away."
+
+"All the same," grumbled the squatting chasseur in his turn, "there
+are some that fight with quite another idea than that in their
+heads. I've seen some of 'em, young men, who said, 'To hell with
+humanitarian ideas'; what mattered to them was nationality and
+nothing else, and the war was a question of fatherlands--let every
+man make a shine about his own. They were fighting, those chaps, and
+they were fighting well."
+
+"They're young, the lads you're talking about; they're young, and we
+must excuse 'em."
+
+"You can do a thing well without knowing what you are doing."
+
+"Men are mad, that's true. You'll never say that often enough."
+
+"The Jingoes--they're vermin," growled a shadow.
+
+Several times they repeated, as though feeling their way, "War must
+be killed; war itself."
+
+"That's all silly talk. What diff does it make whether you think
+this or that? We've got to be winners, that's all."
+
+But the others had begun to cast about. They wanted to know and to
+see farther than to-day. They throbbed with the effort to beget in
+themselves some light of wisdom and of will. Some sparse convictions
+whirled in their minds, and jumbled scraps of creeds issued from
+their lips.
+
+"Of course--yes--but we must look at facts--you've got to think
+about the object, old chap."
+
+"The object? To be winners in this war," the pillar-man insisted,
+"isn't that an object?"
+
+Two there were who replied together, "No!"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+At this moment there was a dull noise; cries broke out around us,
+and we shuddered. A length of earth had detached itself from the
+hillock on which--after a fashion--we were leaning back, and had
+completely exhumed in the middle of us a sitting corpse, with its
+legs out full length. The collapse burst a pool that had gathered on
+the top of the mound, and the water spread like a cascade over the
+body and laved it as we looked.
+
+Some one cried, "His face is all black!"
+
+"What is that face?" gasped a voice.
+
+Those who were able drew near in a circle, like frogs. We could not
+gaze upon the head that showed in low relief upon the trench-wall
+that the landslide had laid bare. "His face? It isn't his face!" In
+place of the face we found the hair, and then we saw that the corpse
+which had seemed to be sitting was broken, and folded the wrong way.
+In dreadful silence we looked on the vertical back of the dislocated
+dead, upon the hanging arms, backward curved, and the two
+outstretched legs that rested on the sinking soil by the points of
+the toes. Then the discussion began again, revived by this fearful
+sleeper. As though the corpse was listening they clamored--"No! To
+win isn't the object. It isn't those others we've got to get
+at--it's war."
+
+"Can't you see that we've got to finish with war? If we've got to
+begin again some day, all that's been done is no good. Look at it
+there!--and it would be in vain. It would be two or three years or
+more of wasted catastrophe."
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"Ah, my boy, if all we've gone through wasn't the end of this great
+calamity! I value my life; I've got my wife, my family, my home
+around them; I've got schemes for my life afterwards, mind you.
+Well, all the same, if this wasn't the end of it, I'd rather die."
+
+"I'm going to die." The echo came at that moment exactly from
+Paradis' neighbor, who no doubt had examined the wound in his belly.
+"I'm sorry on account of my children."
+
+"It's on account of my children that I'm not sorry," came a murmur
+from somewhere else. "I'm dying, so I know what I'm saying, and I
+say to myself, 'They'll have peace.'"
+
+"Perhaps I shan't die," said another, with a quiver of hope that he
+could not restrain even in the presence of the doomed, "but I shall
+suffer. Well, I say, 'more's the pity,' and I even say 'that's all
+right'; and I shall know how to stick more suffering if I know it's
+for something."
+
+"Then we'll have to go on fighting after the war?"
+
+"Yes, p'raps--"
+
+"You want more of it, do you?"
+
+"Yes, because I want no more of it," the voice grunted. "And p'raps
+it'll not be foreigners that we've got to fight?"
+
+"P'raps, yes--"
+
+A still more violent blast of wind shut our eyes and choked us. When
+it had passed, and we saw the volley take flight across the plain,
+seizing and shaking its muddy plunder and furrowing the water in the
+long gaping trenches--long as the grave of an army--we began again.
+
+"After all, what is it that makes the mass and the horror of war?"
+
+"It's the mass of the people."
+
+"But the people--that's us!"
+
+He who had said it looked at me inquiringly.
+
+"Yes," I said to him, "yes, old boy, that's true! It's with us only
+that they make battles. It is we who are the material of war. War is
+made up of the flesh and the souls of common soldiers only. It is we
+who make the plains of dead and the rivers of blood, all of us, and
+each of us is invisible and silent because of the immensity of our
+numbers. The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a
+wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us
+together."
+
+"Yes, that's true. It's the people who are war; without them, there
+would be nothing, nothing but some wrangling, a long way off. But it
+isn't they who decide on it; it's the masters who steer them."
+
+"The people are struggling to-day to have no more masters that steer
+them. This war, it's like the French Revolution continuing."
+
+"Well then, if that's so, we're working for the Prussians too?"
+
+"It's to be hoped so," said one of the wretches of the plain.
+
+"Oh, hell!" said the chasseur, grinding his teeth. But he shook his
+head and added no more.
+
+"We want to look after ourselves! You shouldn't meddle in other
+people's business," mumbled the obstinate snarler.
+
+"Yes, you should! Because what you call 'other people,' that's just
+what they're not--they're the same!"
+
+"Why is it always us that has to march away for everybody?"
+
+"That's it!" said a man, and he repeated the words he had used a
+moment before. "More's the pity, or so much the better."
+
+"The people--they're nothing, though they ought to be everything,"
+then said the man who had questioned me, recalling, though he did
+not know it, an historic sentence of more than a century ago, but
+investing it at last with its great universal significance. Escaped
+from torment, on all fours in the deep grease of the ground, he
+lifted his leper-like face and looked hungrily before him into
+infinity.
+
+He looked and looked. He was trying to open the gates of heaven.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"The peoples of the world ought to come to an understanding, through
+the hides and on the bodies of those who exploit them one way or
+another. All the masses ought to agree together."
+
+"All men ought to be equal."
+
+The word seems to come to us like a rescue.
+
+"Equal--yes--yes--there are some great meanings for justice and
+truth. There are some things one believes in, that one turns to and
+clings to as if they were a sort of light. There's equality, above
+all."
+
+"There's liberty and fraternity, too."
+
+"But principally equality!"
+
+I tell them that fraternity is a dream, an obscure and uncertain
+sentiment; that while it is unnatural for a man to hate one whom he
+does not know, it is equally unnatural to love him. You can build
+nothing on fraternity. Nor on liberty, either; it is too relative a
+thing in a society where all the elements subdivide each other by
+force.
+
+But equality is always the same. Liberty and fraternity are words
+while equality is a fact. Equality should be the great human
+formula--social equality, for while individuals have varying values,
+each must have an equal share in the social life; and that is only
+just, because the life of one human being is equal to the life of
+another. That formula is of prodigious importance. The principle of
+the equal rights of every living being and the sacred will of the
+majority is infallible and must be invincible; all progress will be
+brought about by it, all, with a force truly divine. It will bring
+first the smooth bed-rock of all progress--the settling of quarrels
+by that justice which is exactly the same thing as the general
+advantage.
+
+And these men of the people, dimly seeing some unknown Revolution
+greater than the other, a revolution springing from themselves and
+already rising, rising in their throats, repeat "Equality!"
+
+It seems as if they were spelling the word and then reading it
+distinctly on all sides--that there is not upon the earth any
+privilege, prejudice or injustice that does not collapse in contact
+with it. It is an answer to all, a word of sublimity. They revolve
+the idea over and over, and find a kind of perfection in it. They
+see errors and abuses burning in a brilliant light.
+
+"That would be fine!" said one.
+
+"Too fine to be true!" said another.
+
+But the third said, "It's because it's true that it's fine. It has
+no other beauty, mind! And it's not because it's fine that it will
+come. Fineness is not in vogue, any more than love is. It's because
+it's true that it has to be."
+
+"Then, since justice is wanted by the people, and the people have
+the power, let them do it."
+
+"They're beginning already!" said some obscure lips.
+
+"It's the way things are running," declared another.
+
+"When all men have made themselves equal, we shall be forced to
+unite."
+
+"And there'll no longer be appalling things done in the face of
+heaven by thirty million men who don't wish them."
+
+It is true, and there is nothing to reply to it. What pretended
+argument or shadow of an answer dare one oppose to it--"There'll no
+longer be the things done in the face of heaven by thirty millions
+of men who don't want to do them!"
+
+Such is the logic that I hear and follow of the words, spoken by
+these pitiful fellows cast upon the field of affliction, the words
+which spring from their bruises and pains, the words which bleed
+from them.
+
+Now, the sky is all overcast. Low down it is armored in steely blue
+by great clouds. Above, in a weakly luminous silvering, it is
+crossed by enormous sweepings of wet mist. The weather is worsening,
+and more rain on the way. The end of the tempest and the long
+trouble is not yet.
+
+"We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make
+war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for.
+We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the
+fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be
+lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could
+easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in
+armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely
+names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can
+contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and
+shops--and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the
+divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did
+believe in are not divisions."
+
+"Listen!" some one broke in suddenly.
+
+We hold our peace, and hear afar the sound of guns. Yonder, the
+growling is agitating the gray strata of the sky, and the distant
+violence breaks feebly on our buried ears. All around us, the waters
+continue to sap the earth and by degrees to ensnare its heights.
+
+"It's beginning again."
+
+Then one of us says, "Ah, look what we've got against us!"
+
+Already there is uneasy hesitation in these castaways' discussion of
+their tragedy, in the huge masterpiece of destiny that they are
+roughly sketching. It is not only the peril and pain, the misery of
+the moment, whose endless beginning they see again. It is the enmity
+of circumstances and people against the truth, the accumulation of
+privilege and ignorance, of deafness and unwillingness, the taken
+sides, the savage conditions accepted, the immovable masses, the
+tangled lines.
+
+And the dream of fumbling thought is continued in another vision, in
+which everlasting enemies emerge from the shadows of the past and
+stand forth in the stormy darkness of to-day.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Here they are. We seem to see them silhouetted against the sky,
+above the crests of the storm that beglooms the world--a cavalcade
+of warriors, prancing and flashing, the charges that carry armor and
+plumes and gold ornament, crowns and swords. They are burdened with
+weapons; they send forth gleams of light; magnificent they roll. The
+antiquated movements of the warlike ride divide the clouds like the
+painted fierceness of a theatrical scene.
+
+And far above the fevered gaze of them who are upon the ground,
+whose bodies are layered with the dregs of the earth and the wasted
+fields, the phantom cohort flows from the four corners of the
+horizon, drives back the sky's infinity and hides its blue deeps.
+
+And they are legion. They are not only the warrior caste who shout
+as they fight and have joy of it, not only those whom universal
+slavery has clothed in magic power, the mighty by birth, who tower
+here and there above the prostration of the human race and will take
+their sudden stand by the scales of justice when they think they see
+great profit to gain; not only these, but whole multitudes who
+minister consciously or unconsciously to their fearful privilege.
+
+"There are those who say," now cries one of the somber and
+compelling talkers, extending his hand as though he could see the
+pageant, "there are those who say, 'How fine they are!'"
+
+"And those who say, 'The nations hate each other!'"
+
+"And those who say, 'I get fat on war, and my belly matures on it!'"
+
+"And those who say, 'There has always been war, so there always will
+be!'"
+
+"There are those who say, 'I can't see farther than the end of my
+nose, and I forbid others to see farther!'"
+
+"There are those who say, 'Babies come into the world with either
+red or blue breeches on!'"
+
+"There are those," growled a hoarse voice, "who say, 'Bow your head
+and trust in God!'"
+
+* * * * * *
+
+Ah, you are right, poor countless workmen of the battles, you who
+have made with your bands all of the Great War, you whose
+omnipotence is not yet used for well-doing, you human host whose
+every face is a world of sorrows, you who dream bowed under the yoke
+of a thought beneath that sky where long black clouds rend
+themselves and expand in disheveled lengths like evil angels--yes,
+you are right. There are all those things against you. Against you
+and your great common interests which as you dimly saw are the same
+thing in effect as justice, there are not only the sword-wavers, the
+profiteers, and the intriguers.
+
+There is not only the prodigious opposition of interested
+parties--financiers, speculators great and small, armorplated in
+their banks and houses, who live on war and live in peace during
+war, with their brows stubbornly set upon a secret doctrine and
+their faces shut up like safes.
+
+There are those who admire the exchange of flashing blows, who hail
+like women the bright colors of uniforms; those whom military music
+and the martial ballads poured upon the public intoxicate as with
+brandy; the dizzy-brained, the feeble-minded, the superstitious, the
+savages.
+
+There are those who bury themselves in the past, on whose lips are
+the sayings only of bygone days, the traditionalists for whom an
+injustice has legal force because it is perpetuated, who aspire to
+be guided by the dead, who strive to subordinate progress and the
+future and all their palpitating passion to the realm of ghosts and
+nursery-tales.
+
+With them are all the parsons, who seek to excite you and to lull
+you to sleep with the morphine of their Paradise, so that nothing
+may change. There are the lawyers, the economists, the
+historians--and how many more?--who befog you with the rigmarole of
+theory, who declare the inter-antagonism of nationalities at a time
+when the only unity possessed by each nation of to-day is in the
+arbitrary map-made lines of her frontiers, while she is inhabited by
+an artificial amalgam of races; there are the worm-eaten
+genealogists, who forge for the ambitious of conquest and plunder
+false certificates of philosophy and imaginary titles of nobility.
+The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many
+cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the
+simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and
+trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not
+the great ones.
+
+And even while they are saying that they do not wish for war they
+are doing all they can to perpetuate it. They nourish national
+vanity and the love of supremacy by force. "We alone," they say,
+each behind his shelter, "we alone are the guardians of courage and
+loyalty, of ability and good taste!" Out of the greatness and
+richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease.
+Out of patriotism--which can be respected as long as it remains in
+the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the
+sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred--out of
+patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing
+the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force,
+spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which
+culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and
+suffocation of armed peace.
+
+They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are
+the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them
+with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the
+truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their
+national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they
+falsify and twist the truth.
+
+Those are your enemies. All those people whose childish and odiously
+ridiculous disputes you hear snarling above you--"It wasn't me that
+began, it was you!"--"No, it wasn't me, it was you!"--"Hit me
+then!"--"No, you hit me!"--those puerilities that perpetuate the
+world's huge wound, for the disputants are not the people truly
+concerned, but quite the contrary, nor do they desire to have done
+with it; all those people who cannot or will not make peace on
+earth; all those who for one reason or another cling to the ancient
+state of things and find or invent excuses for it--they are your
+enemies!
+
+They are your enemies as much as those German soldiers are to-day
+who are prostrate here between you in the mud, who are only poor
+dupes hatefully deceived and brutalized, domestic beasts. They are
+your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their
+names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the
+heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them
+once for all, and be mindful for ever!
+
+* * * * * *
+
+"They will say to you," growled a kneeling man who stooped with his
+two bands in the earth and shook his shoulders like a mastiff, 'My
+friend, you have been a wonderful hero!' I don't want them to say
+it!
+
+"Heroes? Some sort of extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been
+murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We
+shall do it again with all our might, because it's of great
+importance to follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it.
+The act of slaughter is always ignoble; sometimes necessary, but
+always ignoble. Yes, hard and persistent murderers, that's what
+we've been. But don't talk to me about military virtue because I've
+killed Germans."
+
+"Nor to me," cried another in so loud a voice that no one could have
+replied to him even had he dared; "nor to me, because I've saved the
+lives of Frenchmen! Why, we might as well set fire to houses for the
+sake of the excellence of life-saving!"
+
+"It would be a crime to exhibit the fine side of war, even if there
+were one!" murmured one of the somber soldiers.
+
+The first man continued. "They'll say those things to us by way of
+paying us with glory, and to pay themselves, too, for what they
+haven't done. But military glory--it isn't even true for us common
+soldiers. It's for some, but outside those elect the soldier's glory
+is a lie, like every other fine-looking thing in war. In reality,
+the soldier's sacrifice is obscurely concealed. The multitudes that
+make up the waves of attack have no reward. They run to hurl
+themselves into a frightful inglorious nothing. You cannot even heap
+up their names, their poor little names of nobodies."
+
+"To hell with it all," replies a man, "we've got other things to
+think about."
+
+"But all that," hiccupped a face which the mud concealed like a
+hideous hand, "may you even say it? You'd be cursed, and 'shot at
+dawn'! They've made around a Marshal's plumes a religion as bad and
+stupid and malignant as the other!"
+
+The man raised himself, fell down, and rose again. The wound that he
+had under his armor of filth was staining the ground, and when he
+had spoken, his wide-open eyes looked down at all the blood he had
+given for the healing of the world.
+
+* * * * * *
+
+The others, one by one, straighten themselves. The storm is falling
+more heavily on the expanse of flayed and martyred fields. The day
+is full of night. It is as if new enemy shapes of men and groups of
+men are rising unceasingly on the crest of the mountain-chain of
+clouds, round about the barbaric outlines of crosses, eagles,
+churches, royal and military palaces and temples. They seem to
+multiply there, shutting out the stars that are fewer than mankind;
+it seems even as if these apparitions are moving in all directions
+in the excavated ground, here, there, among the real beings who are
+thrown there at random, half buried in the earth like grains of
+corn.
+
+My still living companions have at last got up. Standing with
+difficulty on the foundered soil, enclosed in their bemired garb,
+laid out in strange upright coffins of mud, raising their huge
+simplicity out of the earth's depths--a profoundity like that of
+ignorance--they move and cry out, with their gaze, their arms and
+their fists extended towards the sky whence fall daylight and storm.
+They are struggling against victorious specters, like the Cyranos
+and Don Quixotes that they still are.
+
+One sees their shadows stirring on the shining sad expanse of the
+plain, and reflected in the pallid stagnant surface of the old
+trenches, which now only the infinite void of space inhabits and
+purifies, in the center of a polar desert whose horizons fume.
+
+But their eyes are opened. They are beginning to make out the
+boundless simplicity of things. And Truth not only invests them with
+a dawn of hope, but raises on it a renewal of strength and courage.
+
+"That's enough talk about those others!" one of the men commanded;
+"all the worse for them!--Us! Us all!" The understanding between
+democracies, the entente among the multitudes, the uplifting of the
+people of the world, the bluntly simple faith! All the rest, aye,
+all the rest, in the past, the present and the future, matters
+nothing at all.
+
+And a soldier ventures to add this sentence, though he begins it
+with lowered voice, "If the present war has advanced progress by one
+step, its miseries and slaughter will count for little."
+
+And while we get ready to rejoin the others and begin war again, the
+dark and storm-choked sky slowly opens above our heads. Between two
+masses of gloomy cloud a tranquil gleam emerges; and that line of
+light, so blackedged and beset, brings even so its proof that the
+sun is there.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of Under Fire, by Henri Barbusse
+
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