Chapter XI: The Touch of Death 200 (3)

Then the train started. We exchanged hearty adieus as we went away--only to stop a little farther on for another lapse of time. After three full days of this we reached our destination. We had traversed half of France, and were now going to recuperate for new hardships.

Our camp was located in a little village buried in verdure, in the midst of a calm countryside, as far from the war as possible. Very little news reached this out-of-the-way spot; newspapers were old when they arrived. The populace lived as usual, groaning a bit to keep in countenance, but not suffering any real inconvenience.

We were soon bored to death. In spite of the daily exercises, in spite of the drills, in spite of the preparations and small side comedy of war, we longed for the tempest, for the great whirlwind which was sweeping away our brothers over yonder, toward the east. Only its echoes reached us. There was the Marne; there was the German retreat; there was the digging of trenches, the line stretched to the sea; there was the Yser.

Yet here we stayed. Time passed heavily. We felt much aggrieved: it seemed that the war was bound to be too short to offer us a sufficient revenge. We gave up hope of returning to the front, so long did the days seem while our comrades were doing the fighting.

Berthet and I never ceased to fret. Inertia crushed us. We would have accepted no matter what offer of an errand in order to go away, to have action, to quit the tranquil country where we were vegetating, to find again adventure, to run risks: in short, to live. It seemed to us that we spent months there, stagnating. In reality it was six weeks.

In that apparent inaction the regiment was putting itself in condition. One day twelve hundred men were selected for reinforcements to join a neighboring division of the army. There were touching farewells. Those who were leaving, feverish with joy, shook hands proudly with those who remained behind, and who were envious to the last man. None of these, however, was destined to return unharmed. All were mowed down on the plains of Champagne in their first engagement, and their places were filled by new comrades from other camps.

That also is an aspect of war. One does not keep constantly the same comrades, nor even the same officers. The army is a living organism which undergoes constant wear and rebuilding. At first, one gladly believes that he will always have the same neighbors, that he will be with the same sergeant, that he will be surrounded by the same faces until the end. Then one comrade is transferred to another regiment, another merely disappears. Another is called to a distance: he goes and never returns. Soon one finds himself the only man remaining of the original group. The company has not fought, it has not suffered murderous losses, and still its personnel has been renewed.

Yo is gone. Amelus is gone. Happily, Berthet remains for me, and I for him. We will not leave each other. We believe it since we desire it, and we are almost sure that we will be able to mould the future to our wish; such is the immense vanity of man.

Thus we spent our days, soldiers without being soldiers, soldiers of time of peace, tied down to puerile exercises, to imaginary assaults, to supposititious battles. We champed our bits. We longed for the struggle, we awaited our turn with growing impatience.

It came at last. One evening the order to go forward arrived. The regiment was ready, solid, high-spirited, complete. It set out: all felt a secret thrill. At last we were going to the Front, we were going to know, to fight, and to die!

V

LA PIOCHE

It is night. It is raining. The train stops at a station. We have arrived. But where? No one knows. All is black. All is sombre. All is sinister. All is threatening. We alight from the carriages to stretch our legs.

“Silence!” growl the officers. “In two ranks, quick!” Along the platform we fall in line as well as possible in the dark, our knapsacks on our backs, and, over all, the rain.

“Forward.”

We reach a road; a road that feels hard under the feet. A damp chill arises from the invisible earth and the rain glues our clothing to our skins. Our shoes are heavy with mud. We march. Each follows the comrade who stumbles along ahead, and whom one can hardly see. One hears only the rustling of the trees, the confused sound of steps, a brief exclamation, an oath. We go straight ahead where we are led; through the dark toward the unknown.

“Silence!” hiss the chiefs, “we are close to the enemy. Not a word; not a cigarette.”

A sort of apprehension grips us. The fear of the unknown binds us. It is not the certainty of danger: it is worse. It is an inexpressible anguish. One is in danger from invisible blows that will fall unawares. We mount a hill. At the summit one has a view, a darkly shut-in view, whose walls of black are pierced by flashes of fire; mere sparks in the distance. Artillery! This which we look down upon is the Front. There, below us, at a considerable distance still, they are fighting. With throbbing hearts, eager to advance, to arrive at the place destined for us, we peer into the cannon-starred curtain of the night.

But the march continues to be slow. One slips on the muddy ground, one skids, one swears. As we go down the hill the stirring sight is blotted out like dying fireworks, and we are once more in a shut-in road, whose embankments add to the blackness and cut off all outlook.

Nevertheless, the confused sounds of the battle carry up the slope to our marching troop. Somewhere, down there, a lively artillery duel crashes in fury and the brilliant flashes of light dart their resplendent triangles into the heavens. Is it there we are going? No one knows. One feels his heart thrilled and a little shaken by the nearness. Instinctively one touches elbows with his neighbor, tightens his grip on his rifle; becomes silent.

All the time we advance. Occasionally there are stops; sudden, unlooked-for stops. Then one starts on. Soon we reach some houses. We are entering the street of a village and the shaded lanterns cast weird shadows on the walls. The column crowds together. We catch our breath.

“We camp here,” say the sergeants.

The orders are sent along the line. There is a moment of rest; then the squads break up. Every one seeks his place of shelter. We are quartered in the buildings of a large farm. I and my companions are billeted in a barn and we stamp our feet on the unthreshed wheat which has been stored there. Each begins hollowing out a place to sleep.

“Make no lights,” order the sergeants, “you will be spotted.”

“Eh, boys!” calls a voice, “where do you come from?”

And from between the bundles of straw we see the up-lifted heads of several soldiers. Approaching them, we find that they have been comfortably sleeping in their straw nests, and that our arrival has awakened them. We question them:

“What is this place, here?”

“It is Taissy.”

“Ah!”

“Is it far from the trenches?”

“Oh, no, mon garçon; only about fifteen hundred metres.”

Then they tell their story. They are cripples, mostly lame, who are waiting for vehicles to take them back to the dressing-stations. They have been in the trenches for a month; they have fought; they give details of their battles. We do not see them. We hear only detached phrases which come to us confusedly out of the night.

“A dirty hole. We lost a heap of men.”

“There’s a fort up there which we recaptured.”

“There were three counter-attacks.”

“Then, a dirty canal full of rotten meat. What a stink!”

Suddenly some furious detonations rend the air. Every one is silent. We listen.

“That’s nothing,” say the old-timers, “it’s only our battery firing. But if the Boches answer you will see something!”

“Do they often reply?”

“Hell, yes! Every day. Half of the village is already pounded to pieces.”

“Ouf!”

It is true. A comrade who has been prowling around outside comes back:

“The next farmhouse is demolished. The roof is gone and the walls are like a sieve.”

“Silence!” growl the sergeants. “Go to sleep. You must fall in at five o’clock to-morrow morning.”

The conversations cease. Each one picks out a place, buries himself in the straw, and sinks into sleep as a ship is engulfed by the waves.

It is our first night under fire. Perhaps some of us do not find untroubled slumber, but there is no alarm and to stay awake is useless. Besides, there is nothing to do but sleep. So we sleep.

At dawn we are afoot. We can see that the war is not far distant. The near-by houses are disembowelled, and such walls as still stand are pierced by great round holes where the shells passed. Certain roofs seem like lace, their rafters blackened by fire and rain. We are curious, and run about that we may not miss seeing any of the damage done by the bombardment.

“Back to your quarters!” cry the non-coms. “To go out is forbidden.”

We hardly heard them, and they had to use force to hold back the men and prevent their scattering in the village streets. The officers came to the rescue. Then we obeyed. Soon came the order to fall in, the roll was called, and as soon as the knapsacks were buckled to the shoulders we started on. We were going to the trenches.

The cannonade incessantly grew louder. We followed a road bordered with trees and masked by underbrush; a road leading toward the noise. Every eye sought for signs of this unknown thing into which we were marching. They were not lacking. Everywhere broken branches hung from the trees, and frequently we passed ruined houses whose peasant owners dumbly watched our marching troop. On we marched. We crossed a bridge and entered another village, a hamlet entirely deserted, mutilated, horrible to look at, like a wounded man lying on the ground. Its houses, after their years of tranquillity, had suffered a terrible assault. They were riddled with shells; their walls were like a moth-eaten garment. We could see the interiors still fully furnished; curtains still hanging at windows where all the glass had been shattered; half-open buffets, occasionally with their mirrors intact. Only a glimpse did we catch as we passed. Then we left the ruins and, for a time, followed a canal. This we crossed by a frail foot-bridge and found ourselves in a narrow ditch--a communication-trench--the first we had seen. We descended into the earth, following this narrow chink which reached to our shoulders and, at times, entirely concealed us. This boyau wound its way about, turning and zigzagging apparently without reason. We traversed it in single file, seeing nothing but the back of the man in front and the two walls of smooth clay cut perpendicularly to the bottom.

It was a sight unfamiliar to all: an extraordinary journey, a thing of mystery, the entering of an infernal region where feelings of humanity were left behind.

Suddenly a rapid whistling passed over our heads, which were lowered in one simultaneous movement. Another followed, then another and, a little behind us, three explosions resounded with a noise like the tearing of silk amid a jangling of metals. We had received our baptism of fire.

We advanced more quickly in an eagerness to reach our underground home. We bumped the walls, sometimes so close together that our knapsacks stuck fast, so that we had to tear them loose with a considerable effort. All the time we shuddered at the nasty whistle of the shells, which passed to fall and crash behind. One felt that he must escape; must get out of this place where, if he remained, he was sure to be mashed like a strawberry in a marmalade. The march quickened so that we almost ran, staggering against the trench walls at every sudden turn of its meandering course and always, above us, that terrible screaming and those crashing explosions.

Lord! But our cheeks were pale and our looks anxious. Later we stood it better as we became accustomed to it. This, however, was our first moment under fire, our first meeting with the foe, and we felt crushed by the narrow confines of this fissure in which we could only follow the column--a column without end, which straggled over too great a length in spite of the efforts of the officers to hurry the men and to close up the distances.

Suddenly we emerged into open ground. A railroad-embankment with its rails in place, its telegraph-poles still standing and occasionally a flagman’s house still in good condition, hid us from the enemy. At one bound we glued ourselves to this embankment, flattening our bodies on the ground; for the German shells continued to lash the air, while out on the plain gray puffs marked their explosions.

Some comrades, whose easy gait showed their familiarity with the place, were already advancing toward us. They motioned to us and pointed out the dugouts.

“This way. Don’t stay there.”

We followed their directions on the run and entered by groups into the shelters they had indicated. Here, packed together so closely that we could not budge, we waited for the storm to pass. In the abri were some wounded on their way to the dressing-station, and we felt the deepest emotion at seeing the stretchers with their mangled and groaning burdens.

At last the firing stopped. We waited for orders. The sergeants were called together for instruction. Soon they came back and then our work began. We first laid aside our knapsacks and grouped ourselves by squads. Then we picked out tools from a long pile of shovels and pickaxes, and followed the non-coms along the embankment, a little nervous, it is true, but curious about the work we were to do.

“Two picks, one shovel,” came the order. “Two picks, one shovel,” repeated the sergeants as they placed us at our distances.

“Voilà! You are going to dig here. Loosen the ground with the picks and clear it away with the shovels. Do you understand?”

Then we went at the work. It was the beginning of our first trench. Gradually we heated up; we hacked at the soil; we shovelled it away; we spat on our hands; we struck again; we wiped away the perspiration. Occasionally some shells seemed to leap over the embankment and passed, screeching, on their way. We dodged at the sound and then laughed at our involuntary movement. Then we straightened up to catch our breath, and in the moment inspected our workyard and glimpsed the neighborhood. The embankment of the _chemin de fer_ entirely protected us from the enemy. At a little distance two rows of trees marked the way of the canal we had crossed. Between the parallel lines of the canal and the railroad was a field of beets, humped in places with bodies of men that one had not had time to bury; while here and there crosses marked the fallen of the earlier days of the struggle.

We saw all this at a glance, and quickly bent ourselves back to the earth and our toil. Our rifles hampered us in our work, and we laid them on the freshly heaped-up earth, taking care to protect them from sand. We did not know why they were making us do this digging, or what good purpose was to be served by our labor; but we worked on unremittingly, proud to accomplish the necessary task, proud to be at work and to feel so calm in the midst of war.

“You are lucky,” said one of the veterans standing near by. “The sector is calm to-day. You would not have been able to do that yesterday.”

“Lively, was it?”

“You’ve said something. But tell me, have you come to relieve us? It’s not a bit too soon.”

“We don’t know.”

“It’s likely that is what we’re here for,” added some one.

In reality, no; we did not know. They had sent us there and there we stayed. After all, no one seemed able to give us an explanation, and we didn’t try to explain things ourselves. They told us to hurry and we hurried. That was all. In the meantime our tracks were burying themselves. The ditch was already knee-deep, and by so much it diminished the stature of each of the diggers. No one stopped us, so we kept on, digging furiously, as if the final victory depended on our effort of this moment.

When evening came and twilight enveloped us in her soft, purple mantle, the violent note of the cannon barked only intermittently, and the gusts of bullets, wailing in the air, sounded like swarms of musical insects swiftly regaining their homes. We believed the hour of repose was near. But we were mistaken: another task awaited us. It was necessary to take advantage of the night to cross the embankment, gain the first line and take our position.

In these first weeks of intrenched warfare, movements of this sort were relatively easy. We were hidden in the darkness: we had only to leap the embankment and move to our places. The enemy replied only when he heard a noise, and fired quite at random. His commonest field-piece was the light seventy-seven, which barked loudly but did little damage, and the workmen of the two camps matched their skill at only a hundred metres’ distance, without hurting each other very much.

This evening they placed us behind some trees at a roadside.

“Fire only on order,” said the officers. “One of our companies is out in front fixing the wire. If you fire, you risk wounding your comrades.”

They repeated their instructions to the sergeants and thus began our first night at the front. Each one watched as well as he could, straining his eyes in the effort to pierce the blackness, hearing the blows of the mallets on the stakes and thrilling at the fusillade.

A night is long. A night in November is cold. It freezes. We shivered out there in the dark, but we did not dare to budge. The noise of shooting was almost constant, and bullets were striking everywhere about us, ringing on the stones, clipping twigs from the trees or sinking dully into the soil. Our teeth chattered; we shivered; we tried to warm our hands by rubbing them. Some rash ones stamped their feet to restore the circulation, and from time to time we heard a muffled conversation. We didn’t know where we were nor the distance which separated us from the enemy. We feared a possible ambush, a surprise attack maybe, and we pinched ourselves to keep awake. The hours seemed deadly long.

At last we saw the dirty gray of dawn overspread the sky and slowly dissipate the thick mist that rose from the earth. Clumps of trees and underwood, little by little, took form. No sooner were they fully visible than a terrible fusillade broke out, lashing the air like a thousand hisses; a crackling shower of bullets that rolled and rattled like hail. They cut the branches just above us and made the pebbles fly. We crouched to the ground; buckling our sacks, gripping our guns, hunching our shoulders and tensing our legs to be ready for the expected attack.

“Get ready to go back,” whispered the sergeants and the order was repeated along the line. We crept, we crawled like slugs, profiting by the smallest tuft of grass, the shallowest recess in the ground that might serve as a shield, but with little hope of escape.

Some furious discharges of seventy-fives cracked with such rapidity and precision that they comforted us. We felt sustained and protected and steadied ourselves. We were annoyingly hampered by our heavy equipment, our inconvenient cartridge-boxes and all our cumbersome accoutrement. Suddenly a man was wounded. He cried out, and, losing all prudence, arose, ran, crossed the embankment and fled to the shelter. Instinctively we followed his example. On the way another man was wounded and fell. Two of his companions seized him and, dragging him between them, struggled to safety, in the shelter of the railroad-bank. It was finished. We reassembled. We were muddy, bruised, and wounded; eyes red from loss of sleep, and mouths drawn, but, just the same, we were content. Thenceforth we were soldiers. We had faced danger. True, we had not fought, but we were ready.

Our rôle had just commenced. We had occupied this sector to fit it up as this novel thing, this underground war, demanded. This task achieved, we were to be its defenders. It was necessary to dig trenches that we might no longer watch from the scanty shelter of trees; to improve on these primitive holes that had been dug, to serve temporarily, at the beginning of the battle. Therefore we dug trenches. It was necessary to connect them with communication-channels. Therefore we dug boyaux. We had to install redans, build firing benches or banquettes[C] and construct dugouts. All these things we did. We dug in the earth day and night. We gathered up cubic metres of soil and threw them out in front to heighten our parapet. We used our shovels and picks; we sweat; we suffered; we froze.

The winter rolled on. December brought intense cold. Ice and snow covered the land, and while we watched the foe, our rifles froze in the loopholes. We ate when we were lucky. The kitchens were far in the rear, and when the soup and coffee arrived they were ice-cold. The service men started early with their mess-pails, but they stumbled in the trenches and often spilled more of the soup and wine than they brought. We ate badly; we slept little: we always dug. We never rested. There were heavy materials to be carried; the stakes for the entanglements, the spools of wire, the sheet iron, the posts, and the timbers. There was nightly patrol duty, the hours on guard, the attack to repulse, endless holes to be bored in the earth. In the daytime one slept where he could, curling up in the mud at the bottom of the trench or seeking to avoid the rain by crawling into some fissure. At night we stole out into No Man’s Land and stalked the foe or dug a listening-post. We watched the illuminating rockets. We plunged to shelter when they threatened to expose us to fire.

We lived there some strenuous hours, some terrible weeks. Some suffered from trench foot, some froze to death, some were killed. These are terrible things: these nights on guard, these nights hugging the ground when on patrol, these nights in the listening-post when the body chills, becomes numb, and loses all sensation. One goes on detail and loses one’s way. One falls, dumb with fatigue, and an alarm sounds. One starts to sleep and an attack rages.

War is a thing of horror. It is more. The very soil is hollowed out like dens of beasts; and into these creep human beings. The rain saturates the trench and rots legs and wood alike. The corpse hangs on the wire and serves as a target. War is cold, war is black, war is night. It is, in truth, such a horror that those who have lived these hours may say: “I was there. But to tell about it is to live it over again. And that is too much.”

As for us, we suffered. At first we had no dugouts and slept beneath the open sky. We had no trenches and stalked our foe while waist-deep in mud. In December’s cold we had no fire. This which we saw, which we defended, which the foe destroyed, was France. Our land was invaded, profaned by the German, and we could not retake it. These conquered forests, these occupied cities, these subjugated plains, these mountains polluted, were our native soil and we could not regain them. The sacred homeland was under the boot of the German. Was this the death-rattle in the throat of the republic?

VI

THE GAS

The severe winter ran its course. We had worked incessantly. We had a whole sector to ourselves. First, there was the tangled network of barbed-wire, a piece of work in which we all had a share. Each evening, as night fell, a company of men went out on No Man’s Land to work in the thick, treacherous darkness. One gang dug holes and put in the posts, another stretched the parallel wires, another attached the transverse wires. As this required great blows of a mallet, it made considerable noise, which drew down the enemy’s gun-fire. As they gained experience, the men went out rapidly, worked swiftly, and returned to our trenches only when their task was accomplished. At dawn, the Boches tried to destroy our work of the night before, by firing many volleys into the network. The damage was never considerable, and they stopped that game when, imitating them, we cut their barbed-wire to pieces.

Under that efficacious protection we contrived openings for listening and firing trenches. At the first, two men alternated in a constant lookout, with ear quick to catch any sound, with eyes strained to observe the most minute sign. Behind them, on the benches,[D] entire sections, with guns poised in the loopholes, waited and watched from twilight to dawn, while the others slept, down in the shelters underground.

This organization constituted the first lines in the spring of 1915, when we hoped for an early victory. So temporary did the work appear to be, we spent no more time and effort on our trench systems than seemed necessary for immediate purposes. The dugouts were of the most limited dimensions, really kennels, large enough for two men to sleep fairly comfortably, but which usually housed six, no one knows how. One came there overcome by sleep. One threw himself on the ground without removing his accoutrement, and was asleep almost before touching the earth. To afford some protection against the bitter wind, a cloth was stretched in front of the opening. While this shut out the unwelcome breezes, it also shut in a concentrated, hot and malodorous steam, composed of the mouldy moisture from the earth itself, of human perspiration and panting exhalations, of wet leather and clothing. However, one breathed somehow. When the time was up, and one went out to resume work or watching, the icy air enveloped one like a sepuchral winding-sheet, and the night blinded one’s eyes. One followed the communication-trench, took up gun or shovel, as the order might happen to be, and became either soldier or laborer; or, more often, both at once. Everything was done at night. Everything was dismal, dangerous, frightful. There was no real repose, no relaxation. The incessant shell-fire added its horror to our other discomforts and dangers. The shell! that insensate creature of chance, which bursts over the innocent, scatters its fragments over the plain, and in stupid indifference crushes a clod of earth or snuffs out the lives of a hundred human beings. The shell! that monster which comes with a moaning wail, invisible as a beast of darkness, and dies in a shower of fire.

One easily becomes familiar with its sound. At first, every shot was terrifying. Then we learned to know approximately what course a shell would follow, at what point it would fall. Then we ceased to listen to or fear any but those coming our way. No others counted. They were non-existent.

Before we reached this point of familiarity, the salvos of that plaything, the seventy-five, made us shudder. They came so fast that we scarcely had time to distinguish the individual shots. Immediately the deadly whistling object skimmed the ground, and the explosion resounded. Some men turned pale, others paid little attention.

Berthet and I found much in this life to interest us. We ran about to see whatever could be seen. As soon as a cannonade began, we went in that direction for the pleasure of observing it. We volunteered for all sorts of difficult tasks, tempted by the risk, enticed by the eternal charm of adventure. He was brave, was Berthet, but knew not how brave he was. Sometimes I sought to restrain him, at which he was always astonished. “I wish to know,” he said, “if I will be afraid.” And he had his way. He went out on the embankment, where he inspected the horizon regardless of the projectiles which saluted his silhouette as soon as he appeared.

We had some magnificent spectacles. One evening there was a bombardment followed by infantry attack. The German uneasiness had been evident in the morning. It expressed itself by a storm of projectiles which fell aimlessly and did little damage. The shells cut the grass, exploded like a sheaf of fireworks, sent the dirt flying high into the air. It worried us at first, then, as we found ourselves safe in the shelter of our deep trenches, assurance returned. Each man went about his business. Some were detailed to dig a tunnel, one must go to the kitchens to fetch soup and bread, another cleaned the arms, rusted during the night by the fog, or in the morning by the dew. All the same, this violent bombardment troubled our officers not a little; they feared a surprise. We had a visit from our general toward evening. He gave some orders, took a look at the loopholes of observation, and went away apparently content. His calm was most reassuring.

Calm is not everything in war. The plans of the enemy must also be taken into account. The Boche artillery became violent. Over our trenches streamed a fire of shells of all calibers mingled. They fell tearing away whole banks of earth at once; they exploded thunderously, in a cloud of dust and stinking smoke. We looked for the worst; we suspected a close attack, a hand-to-hand clash. Suddenly a great cry rang out:

“The gas!”

It was true. Over there, from the enemy’s lines, came great greenish balls, rolling close to the earth, rolling deliberately yet swiftly, rolling straight toward us. Gas! That horrible thing, still almost unknown, which had been used for the first time only recently on the Yser. It was coming with deadly surety amidst a tornado of artillery. Orders were shouted back and forth:

“The gas! Put on the masks!”

Each man spread over his face the protecting cloth. The shelters were closed. The telephone, whose wires ran the length of the communication-trenches, gave the warning: “Look out! The gas!”

We did not yet know what manner of horror it was. None of us had experienced an attack of the sort. We ran to and fro like ants whose hill has been molested. Some fired their guns at random, others awaited orders. The frightful, livid thing came on, expanded to a cloud, crept upon us, glided into the trenches. The air was quickly obscured. We were swimming in an atmosphere stained a venomous color, uncanny, indescribable. The sky appeared greenish, the earth disappeared. The men staggered about for a moment, took a gasping breath, and rolled on the ground, stifled. There were some knots of soldiers who had been asleep in their beds when overtaken by the gas. They writhed in convulsions, with vitals burning, with froth on the lips, calling for their mothers or cursing the German. We gathered them up as best we could; we took them to the doctors, who, thus confronted by an unknown condition, found themselves powerless. They tried the application of oxygen and ether in an effort to save the lives of the victims, only to see them die, already decomposed, in their hands.

The masks had not yet been perfected and were a poor protection. Some ran about like madmen, shrieking in terror, the throat choked with saliva, and fell in heaps, in contortions of agony. Some filled the mouth with handfuls of grass and struggled against asphyxiation. Others, down in the shelters, sprinkled face and neck with brackish water, and awaited a death all too long in coming.[E] Over all this the artillery shrieked in unchained madness. The sky was of steel, quivering and molten. There were no longer any distinctly heard shots, but a storm of fire. It roared, it whistled, it exploded without respite, as if all the furies of hell were yelping, in a thick, metallic sky. At the left, little by little, an ever-reddening glow showed the neighboring city of Rheims, which the Boches were bombarding in a mad rage of destruction. We saw the flames leap up, the houses kindle like torches and throw toward the sky clouds of sparks and streams of black and red smoke. Everything seemed flaming and tottering and falling in a wild delirium. The earth itself opened to swallow the last survivors. In the trenches the bodies of the dead were heaped, and twisted or bleeding corpses choked the passageways.

Fiercely, convulsively, desperately, the comrades who were unhurt fought at their loopholes. Reinforcements came from the rear in haste, and took their places. Their eyes were those of madmen, their breath was panting.

“The assault will be here in a minute, boys,” I said to my nearest neighbors. “Look out for yourselves. Have your cartridges ready. You, there, lift your gun higher, or you will fire badly! And you, aim toward that corner you see over there!”

Berthet helped me, with a tragic manner of responsibility; the underofficers ran from one man to another crying: “Keep cool! We will get them! Just let them come on!”

Then the action rushed on even more furiously, more demoniac. In the midst of the increased cannonade the gun-fire rattled. It commenced at the left, gained the centre, reached the right. The whole line crackled like the beginning of a roll of thunder. We could no longer see ahead of us. We fired as fast as possible, without knowing where, cutting into space.

“Here they are! Keep cool!”

In the dim light a gray mass was oscillating. As it rapidly advanced, we could distinguish small objects on the plain, like moving blades of grass. We fired: cries could be heard. We fired more rapidly. The gas was dissipating, but the night was becoming thick. Our only light was the blazing city of Rheims and the glow of shells. The pandemonium increased. One could distinguish only his immediate neighbor, lifting his gun, firing, recoiling from the discharge, replacing the spent cartridge with a full one. The pungent taste of burnt powder penetrated the throat. We sweat. We no longer feared. We pulled the trigger; we were fighting, we were defending the soil, the trench, the sector, in a blind rage. _They should not take it!_ They should give up; they should fall back. We would kill them all rather than permit their feet to contaminate the spot we were guarding.

This endured for more than an hour, this insane uproar of shrieking voices, crashing cannon, cracking rifles; while Rheims, in flames threw to the wind her streamers of light.

We had no accurate idea of the battle as a whole. Each man acted for himself, for the little corner of ground in range of his rifle, for the piece of trench which he was holding. At one side, the Boches jumped into the trench, cut the throats of the nearest men, then fell, themselves stabbed by bayonets. At another point they penetrated the barbed-wire entanglements, remained caught there, struggling to free themselves, and were cut to pieces by our fire. Farther on, our shells crushed them. We were scarcely conscious of it. We elbowed our neighbors, we exchanged encouragement, we shrieked when we would speak. We were so intense, so full of fury, that many were frothing when commanded to desist. The underofficers exhausted themselves in crying halt, and had to shake each man to awaken him, to bring him to himself, to make him understand. We felt exasperated.

However, the cannonade was decreasing in violence. The gun-fire ceased, reviving only at intervals. The stretcher-bearers ran up, took away the wounded, picked up the tortured gas victims, whose lungs creaked like the bellows of a forge. The battle was over. The Boches were repulsed. In spite of their gas, in spite of the surprise, in spite of their cannon, they left on the field before us almost a battalion: sprawling corpses, dismembered like broken puppets; dead men who gaped at the stars; wounded who soon were dead. Our losses were considerable, theirs were much greater. Twenty of their number remained with us as prisoners. Haggard and stunned, they were led to the rear for the interrogatory.

* * * * *

“Well, how has it been?” I asked Berthet, as I gripped his hand. “It was superb!” he responded. There was a hole in his coat. “Not touched?” “No, a ball just missed taking me off.” He said it with a calm which I admired. He concealed from me the fact that he had breathed the abominable vapors.

After all, it was only a local action on our line. It was not, in the generally accepted sense, a battle. All of us have seen much greater since then. However, on account of the gas, this first engagement is vividly present in our memory, a recollection never to be effaced. It was an encounter so strange! That foul vapor which enveloped the earth, which ate its way into the fibre of the clothing we wore, corroded and withered the leaves on the trees, and changed the aspect of God’s sane creation into a distorted image of hell, will remain forever one of the deepest infamies of the Germans. After contact with this poisoned cloud, nothing retained its original appearance. The arms were red without being rusty, the color of uniforms was changed. There were very few of our men suffering from gun or bayonet wounds, but whole mounds of those who died in convulsions: poor, twisted dead, who agonized in dying; so disfigured their own mothers could not have recognized them. Some of them were wringing their hands, others were swallowing stones, others seemed to be rammed into the earth like stakes. This was not war; it was worse. This was not the rain of bullets which pierce the flesh, or break a skull in passing. This was not the brutal shell, which bursts to fragments, scatters in a thousand directions and mows down a group of men as gayly as a child knocks down a house of cards. This was another matter. It was the very air turned accomplice of the enemy; blinded eyes, frothing mouth, rotted lungs, a breast on fire; every effort exerted redoubling the torture; the rescuer struck down above the man he attempted to save; the officer suffering like his men; the telephone-operator seized in his shelter, the courier arrested in his course, all alike smothered and struggling with death. This was a breath from the depths of hell, this diabolic invention, which that monster, the German Junker, forced men to choose: weapon of meanness and treachery, which sets at naught the valor of both defender and assailant!

VII

RHEIMS

When the life fantastic becomes the life ordinary, when one is at the centre of prodigious events which unroll more rapidly than the picture on the screen, and appear in ever-new guise, the astonishing thing becomes a natural thing; the unheard-of becomes the expected. A distortion of sensation is produced; the brain registers only that which surpasses the climax of what has already been experienced; as on mountain heights, peaks which have been surmounted appear low, and the climber feels that only those are high which are still above him.

Thus it became the ordinary thing for Berthet and me, as for our companions, to live in the extraordinary and the supernatural. We felt quite at home in it, and moved at our ease in a situation which, for him at least, would have been untenable a few short months before. We had become soldiers like the others, eating, when we could, a meagre and coarse ration; sleeping when it was possible; in constant danger of death, but avoiding it apparently by instinct. We lived with no more care than the beasts of the field; with beards long, hands dirty. We dug in the earth, as did all the rest; we watched at the parapets with eyes puffed from lack of sleep. Uncouthness grew upon us, and we appeared, at dawn, in the glacial cold, muffled up in pieces of cloth and skins of animals; hairy, hideous, and fearsome.

We were on patrol duty one night. Creeping about, we passed the listening-post and advanced on No Man’s Land. Like savages, we stalked the enemy for hours, trying to surprise some unknown men: soldiers like ourselves, who might be lost between the lines; men anxious like ourselves, and like ourselves afraid of death and suffering. Then we returned, annoyed to come back without having bagged a foe; regretful that we had not been able to spill some man’s blood. However----

“However”--thus we reasoned.

Often, in the evening, when we were free between periods of sentry duty, we would delay our share of heavy sleep wherein one forgot all; when one lay stretched like a beast in a stable, on a little straw in the depth of a retreat, poorly protected from the wind and the shells. We would walk the hundred paces of the length of the communication-trench, conversing.

The night enveloped us; the night palpitating with the noise of battle. We could hear the crack of rifles and the roar of cannon. Sometimes the flying steel whirled over our heads with its weird whistle. Some corvées passed, heavily loaded, carrying materials for attack and defense. Habituated as we were to the sight and sound, oblivious to the familiar racket, we walked quite tranquilly, in spirit far removed from our surroundings, expanding our thoughts and confiding our dreams. All sorts of subjects shared our attention: art, history, literature, politics, we touched upon them all, commented upon all as if we had been a hundred leagues away from the war, as if no other occupation had the least claim upon us. The contrast was so vivid, the difference so striking, that sometimes we stopped and exclaimed in amazement at ourselves.

By this time we had no childish vanity in the matter. Our sense of pride was rather above it. We called no one’s attention to our calm indifference. No! It was night, we were lost in the shadows, no one could see us. We were simply relaxing our brains in withdrawing our thought from the present; in leading it, by means of conversation, toward the past and the future.

One particular desire which we held in common was frequently mentioned: we wished to visit Rheims, which was quite near. Our regiment formed a part of the troops of coverture of the city. However, we could not enter the town without permission, and this could not be obtained without good reason. We finally found an excuse, and the rest was easy.

One morning, armed with our permit, we set out. The expedition was not without danger. For several months, since we had occupied the trenches at the north of the city, we had known that the Boches were obstinately bent upon its destruction. Every day brought its rain of shells. We could see the flames shoot up, we could see writhing columns of smoke mount to the heavens. No matter; the visit tempted us, and the most violent storm of iron and fire would not have deterred us.

So we went. We prepared our minds, as we thought, for every possible surprise; we were not prepared for what we were destined to find. Approaching by the Faubourg Cires, we entered a ruin. We saw nothing but demolished houses, entire streets swept by machine fire, gnawed by flames, blackened by smoke. Tottering façades, holding their equilibrium by a miracle, supported the skeletons of apartment-buildings, in whose walls blackened shell-holes seemed like dead eyes opened on a void. Heaps of plaster and stone fallen from the walls rendered passage difficult and impeded our progress. Occasionally, an entire section of wall would swing slowly, balance for an instant, then fall in a cloud of dust. It was a house in its death-throes.

After passing this scene of desolation, we entered a quarter still intact, where, to our stupefaction, the city came to life again. There only a few injuries to buildings were visible. Here and there a shell had wounded a structure. The general appearance of everything was quite peaceful. The inhabitants followed the usual routine of life with apparent serenity. Open shops offered their merchandise. Young girls came and went smiling. A pastry-cook spread out his tarts and nougats; a stationer displayed his pencils and office supplies; a haberdasher’s window was filled with collars and cravats. Nothing indicated war. People went up and down about their business; old women gossiped on their door-step, and peddlers cried their wares.

Around the Place Royale, which was absolutely in ruins, cabmen awaited a fare, stroking the manes of their bony horses, or discussing the price received for the last trip. In the public gardens mothers watched their little ones at play, caressing them or scolding them, as if their entire life were assured, as if no thought of anything unusual entered their brain.

Was it bravery, indifference, habit? Who knows? We were dumbfounded. What! In a city crushed by shells, tortured by fire, subjected to the most barbarous treatment, how was it possible to be so matter-of-fact? Could the life of the populace continue in its usual channels, indifferent to danger, removed from fear, calm as in time of peace?

We must look closer to perceive under the surface the explanation of the anomaly; everywhere, people seated or standing observed a patient discipline in using only one side of the street: the one exposed to the direct shock of the shells. Only a city long exposed to bombardment could conceive such a mechanical precaution. It is a protection, because the shell, in falling, bursts; its splinters fly in the opposite direction to that taken by the projectile.

We soon saw the working out of the principle. Attracted by an open shop, we made some purchases at our leisure. A sinister shriek crossed the sky, and a racket followed. “They are bombarding,” calmly remarked the young woman who served us. She listened. “It is at the cathedral.” Then she continued, most unconcernedly: “Let us see! Some braid? It is at the other counter. You get the buttons here, and the wool and the thread. Is that all you wish? That makes a franc sixty.”

Another roar, this time nearer. The street was immediately deserted. So quickly that a stranger could not observe the action, every passer-by disappeared. Every one went underground, somewhere, into an open cellar. It happened as naturally and quickly as in ordinary times when people find shelter from a sudden shower. They knew that the hour to seek cover had arrived. The shower of steel would last until evening, and would not cease until a new quarter was obliterated. It was the turn of one _faubourg_, therefore the others would escape this time. Consequently, outside the zone attacked, existence might continue as usual.

Already the rescue squads were running in the direction of the falling shells, as resolute and well disciplined as when at drill. Duty called them. They responded, “Present,” without fear or hesitation: down there people were dying under the ruins of their homes. The stretcher-bearers rescued the injured in the midst of the tumult. If they had been praised for their heroism, they would have resented the praise as an insult.

When recovered from our first astonishment, Berthet and I set out. This martyred city, so tragic and so calm, seemed to us superhuman. We found it beautiful. We felt a desire to weep, to cry out, as we looked at its reddened walls, its yawning windows and wrecked roofs. We went about gently, as one walks in a place of suffering and sorrow. In our rather aimless wandering, reverent as in a sacred place, we came suddenly in front of the cathedral.

It rose before us like a queen, at the turn of the street. The lofty façade, stained by fire in shades of gold and blood, lifted its proud head to the sky. The towers were like two arms stretched imploringly toward heaven: one reddened by fire, the other clothed by the centuries in the blue veil which shrouds ancient monuments. Between them the shattered rose-window seemed to moan distractedly: a silent sob. That dumb mouth in that fire-reddened face seemed to cry with such hatred, with such anguish, that we stopped, gripped by the sight.

It was there that the great Crime had written its name! There, where France had inscribed the most sacred things of her history; there, by the cradle of the nation, on the book always open, the assassin had left his thumb-print; his infamy remained inscribed in each gaping wound, on each fallen statue. The high towers attested to heaven the execrable violence. The roof was gone, like the scalp which the savage tears from the head of his victim. The eyes of God could search to the flagstones and judge with one glance the foul deed.

Outside the church the _Place_ was gloomy, but sublime. By an effect of fatality, it had become the dwelling-place of the holy relics driven from the interior. The tabernacle was no longer in the heart of the cathedral, but scattered in fragments around it: the choir encircled the church. Fragments of stained-glass replaced the organ-pipes, and the wind moaned through the leaden groins, and chanted the dirge of the sacred spot.

Cathedral! Church thrice holy! The murderer tried to destroy thee: he has given thee eternal life. He tried to gag and choke thee: but the voice from thy tortured throat resounds higher and clearer throughout the world. In his stupidity he believed he could annihilate thee: instead, he has glorified thee. Cathedral! A song in stone, a hymn--hymn too ethereal for the human ear to catch; a poem of beauty and light, which the sodden Boche thought to efface, but which stands resplendent, a witness of his shame, before humanity and eternal righteousness. Divine, immortal cathedral! Men have never created a human prayer more sublime than art thou, bombarded. The German shell believed it had power to destroy thee. It has crushed thine arches and broken thy wings. Thou hadst no need of wings to soar. As a spirit of light thou hast floated above the city; now thou rulest over the city the war, and France; as a symbol, thou art resplendent over all the world. Rheims, thou wert the shrine of France; broken, thou art become her emblem. Thou art no longer ours alone. Thy majesty rises unshaken, triumphant, a divine intelligence facing savage cruelty; a barrier touched, but not destroyed, defying bestiality.

We had no words to express our emotions. We walked about, in silent exaltation. From its purple shroud, still smoking, the enormous basilique spoke to us. Great scenes in history were enacted in its sacred precincts: all the sacred kings, the noble sons of France; Clovis baptized by St. Remy; Charles VII led by Jeanne d’Arc, whose bronze image still defies the enemy from the porch of the church; Charles X, last king anointed in this august place--all, all were there as restless phantoms; powerful, saintly, silent, looking on. We were satiated with emotion, bewildered by a hundred beauties: the light through the broken arches, the fragments of art treasures in the dust at our feet, the scintillating glass on the flagstones. We went away, fairly giddy with its impassioned grandeur.

The increased cannonade directed our course. It was impossible to remain longer. We crossed the forsaken park and made a détour around the deserted station. Behind us lay a city of silence, but her martyrdom continued incessantly. Shrill whirrings made the air quiver. Shells growled above the roofs, leaped the streets, crossed the squares, threatened, fell and exploded. There was a sudden crash of collapsing floors and of tumbling masonry. A quarter, somewhere in the city, was being pounded to dust and débris; an entire quarter was being hammered out of existence. Clouds of plaster filled the air; great stones crumbled.