Authors: Gabriel Chevallier
‘Are you mad?’ replies one of his compatriots.
‘It’s the commandant’s decision.’
‘Bastard! What good will it do?’
‘We’re all marching?’
‘No. Half of you will march with the companies. The other half will stay here to carry orders. How many are you?’
‘Not including signallers, cyclists and batmen, there are eight of us available.’
‘Who wants to march with the companies?’
No one answers. The adjutant divides us into two groups. But when he is about to indicate which ones will go, which ones are condemned, he feels the weight of eight pairs of eyes fixed on him. He lowers his head, he cannot make the decision.
‘Would you like to draw lots?’
There is nothing to say to that. We accept. He tears up two bits of paper into strips of different lengths and hides them behind his back.
‘How do we do it? The short strip means you go to the front, the long one you stay here. OK?’
‘Yes.’
He offers Frondet the two thin folds of paper sticking out of his fist. We stare at the fist which holds our fates, four lives. Frondet reaches out his hand, hesitates . . .
The explosion of a trench mortar which has landed outside blows out the candle flame. We shudder. Frondet jumps back:
‘You, take one!’ he tells me.
I pull out a strip which the men in my group stare at dumbly: it’s the short one. Opening his fist, the adjutant confirms it. There is an agonising moment for everyone.
‘All right, the question is solved!’ I say with as much indifference as I can manage and a little smile that is supposed to mean: I couldn’t care less!
The winners move away, shamefacedly. So as not to have to witness our pathetic attempts to keep a stiff upper lip. So as to spare us the cruel spectacle of their relief.
My three comrades are Frondet, Ricci and Pasquino. I guess that they resent me because I drew the wrong number. I put on a nonchalant air one more time, as much for them as for the adjutant who is observing how we are taking it:
‘You’ll see, it’ll all turn out OK. We’ve made it back before, haven’t we?’
No one is fooled by these assurances and I go off and huddle down in my corner where I do not have to hide my trepidation.
It is three in the morning. We will soon leave the shelter. I concentrate on my gear, to give myself the best chance. I know that freedom of movement is of capital importance. Since it’s summer, I decide to leave behind my coat and second pack. I will march with my food pack, my canteen full of coffee, my gas mask and my pistol. The pistol is the best weapon for close combat. Mine holds seven rounds and I have a spare magazine in my left pocket. I am not so afraid of facing a German: it is a duel in which skill and cunning play their parts. But the shells, the barrage of fire, the machine guns . . .
If needs must, I could get some grenades in the trench. I do not like grenades. Still . . .
But I can’t believe this is happening! . . . Ah, my pack of field dressings . . .
All around me men are now also getting themselves ready, cursing loudly, in a clatter of weapons and kit.
Then suddenly, from god knows where, the order comes which turns the terrible thoughts that preoccupy us into an immediate reality, and puts an end to our last respite:
‘Outside!’
Frondet, very pale, is at my side: we must march together. We are swept into the ranks and drawn along with the irresistible force of the crowd. As I’m going up the steps I bang my leg against a box of grenades. The pain makes me pause for a moment.
‘What’s your problem? Shitting yourself?’ growls a voice behind me, and I’m shoved forward with the brutality that comes from furious resentment and makes soldiers seem brave.
I’m stung by this vulgarity, and reply:
‘Shut your mouth, you moron!’
The altercation does me good, spurs me on a bit.
Outside.
The fading darkness is still lit up by flares, cold shafts of light which dazzle us then leave us blundering in murky confusion. All our attention is focused on moving, marching. Force of habit is so strong, slavery so well organised that we go forward in good order, docilely, towards the one place on earth where we do not want to go, with mechanical haste.
We quickly reach the front line. Frondet and I go to meet Lieutenant Larcher, commander of the 9th. He calls to us from inside his shelter:
‘Stay there, in the trench, with my runners.’
The first light of dawn sadly reveals the silent, dreary, ravaged battlefields where there is nothing but destruction and putrescence, reveals the ashen, dismal faces of men in muddy, bloodstained rags, shivering in the cold of morning, the cold in their souls, terrified attackers, praying for time to stop.
We drink eau-de-vie that has the sickly taste of blood and burns the stomach like acid. A foul chloroform to numb our brains, as we endure the torture of apprehension while waiting for the torture of our bodies, the living autopsy, the jagged scalpels of steel.
4.40 am. These minutes before the bombardment starts are the last of life for many among us. Looking at each other we dread already guessing who the victims will be. In a few moments some men will be ripped apart, flattened on the ground, will be corpses, objects of horror or indifference, scattered in shell holes, trampled underfoot, their pockets emptied, buried in haste. And yet, we want to live . . .
One of my neighbours offers us cigarettes, insists that we empty the packet. We try to refuse:
‘What about you? Keep some for yourself.’
‘I’m going to cop it!’ he answers stubbornly, gasping like a dying man.
‘Don’t be so bloody daft.’
We take the cigarettes and smoke feverishly, before the inevitable. All possibility of retreat is gone.
A few trench mortar shells burst behind us. Machine guns rattle, bullets ping against the parapet that we must cross.
Our future is in front of us, on the ploughed-up, lifeless soil over which we must run, offering our chests, our stomachs . . .
We wait for zero hour, for our crucifixion, abandoned by God, condemned by man.
Desert! But it’s too late . . .
‘I’ve been hit!’
The shell just exploded there, on my right. I got a blow on the head that left me dizzy. I put my hand to my face, and took it away, covered in blood, and I do not dare assess how bad it is. I must have a hole in my cheek . . .
I am surrounded by whistling shells, explosions, smoke. Screaming soldiers barge into me, madness in their eyes, and I see trails of blood. But I am only thinking of myself, of my own calamity, my head down, hands on the embankment, like a man who is vomiting. I don’t feel any pain.
Something detaches itself from me and falls at my feet: a flabby, red piece of flesh. Mine? My hand goes back to my face in horror, hesitates, starts with the neck, the jaw bone . . . I clench my teeth and feel the muscles working . . . Nothing. And then I understand: the shell has blown a man to pieces and slapped a human poultice on my cheek. I shudder with disgust. I spit on my hand and wipe it on my jacket. I spit on my handkerchief and rub at my sticky face.
The artillery thunders, obliterates, disembowels, terrifies. Everything is roaring, flashing, shuddering. The sky has disappeared. We are in the middle of a monstrous maelstrom, pieces of sky come crashing down and cover us with rubble, comets collide and crumble, sparking like a short circuit. We are caught in the end of a world. The earth is a burning building and all the exits have been bricked up. We are going to roast in this inferno . . .
Bodies whimper, dribble, soil themselves in shame. Thought prostrates itself, begs the cruel powers, the demonic forces. Tormented minds throb weakly. We are worms, writhing to escape the spade.
This is the consummation of ignominy. There is no disgrace we will not accept. To be a man is the depth of horror.
Just let me get away. Let me live in shame and infamy, but let me get away . . . Am I still me? Is this piece of jelly, this stagnant human puddle, really me? Am I alive?
‘Get ready, we’re going over!’
Ashen-faced, stupefied, the men draw themselves up a little, check their bayonets. The NCOs bark out commands, like sobs.
‘Frondet!’
My comrade’s teeth are chattering, shameful: my own image! Lieutenant Larcher stands in our midst, tense, holding himself up by his rank, his pride. He climbs up on the fire-step, looks at his watch, turns:
‘Ready, lads, here we go . . .’
The final seconds, before the leap into the unknown, before the holocaust.
‘Forward!’
The line shudders, the men clamber up. We repeat the shout, ‘Forward’, with all our might, like a cry for help. We throw ourselves behind that cry, into the stampede of the charge . . .
Standing upright on the plain.
The feeling of being suddenly naked, the feeling that there is nothing to protect you.
A rumbling vastness, a dark ocean with waves of earth and fire, chemical clouds that suffocate. Through it can be seen ordinary, everyday objects, a rifle, a mess tin, ammunition belts, a fence post, inexplicable presences in this zone of unreality.
Heads or tails for our lives! A kind of unconsciousness. The brain stops working, stops understanding. The soul separates from the body to accompany it, like an impotent, weeping guardian angel. The body seems suspended from a thread, like a puppet. Shrunken up, it rushes forward and totters on its soft little legs. The eyes distinguish only the immediate details of the surroundings and the act of running absorbs every faculty.
Men are falling, opening up, splitting, shattering. Shrapnel misses us, blasts of hot air envelop us. We hear the impact of bullets hitting
others
, their strangled cries. Every man for himself. We are running, each of us marked out. Now fear acts as a spring, multiplies our animal powers, makes us insensible.
The maddening chatter of a machine gun on the left. Where to go? Forward! There lies safety. We are charging to capture a shelter. The human machine is set in action and will only stop when pulverised.
Moments of madness. At ground level we can see flames, rifles, men. The sight of men enrages us. In that instant our fear is transformed into hatred, into the desire to kill.
‘Boche! Boche!’
We are there. The Germans wave their arms about. They flee their trench and escape down a communication sap. A few desperate ones are still firing. I see one, threatening.
‘You bastard! I’ll get you!’
I spring like a tiger, with admirable agility and coordination. I jump down in the trench next to the German, who turns to face me. He raises one arm, or two, I don’t know how many, or with what intention. My flying body dives, with unstoppable force, helmet first, into the stomach of the man in grey who falls on his back. And now I jump on this stomach, heels together, with all my weight. It buckles, gives way under me, like crushing an insect. Only then do I remember my pistol . . .
Now there is a second German in front of me, gaping with fear, open hands raised to his shoulders. OK, good, he’s surrendering, leave him be. Perhaps I should not have hurt the other one but he was taking aim at me when I was already only twenty metres away, the fool! And it all happened so fast!
I stare at the prisoner, my fury suddenly calmed, not knowing what to do. At that moment, a bayonet, forcefully thrust from above on the plain, goes through his throat, and sticks into the side of the trench, so that the rifle’s sights bang against the parapet. One of our men follows the weapon. The German remains suspended there, knees bent, mouth open, tongue hanging out, blocking the trench. It is ghastly. The one I stamped on is groaning. I step over him without looking down and get away as fast and far as I can.
Our assault wave has swarmed into the trench screaming. The
poilus
are like wild beasts in a cage. Chassignole shouts:
‘There’s one, over there! Let’s give him a lesson!’
Another soldier grabs at my arm, pulls me along and, pointing at a corpse, tells me proudly:
‘Look, that one was
mine
!’
It is an instinctive reaction, joyful savagery born of extreme stress. Fear has made us cruel. We need to kill to comfort ourselves and take revenge. Yet those Germans who escaped the first blows will come out of this unscathed. We cannot set upon unarmed enemies. We concentrate on rounding them up. From one sap where they had thought they’d die, twenty of them emerge, jabbering ‘
Kamerad
!’ We notice their skin, green from terror and grey from malnutrition, their shifty, nervous glances like those of animals accustomed to ill-treatment, their excessive submissiveness. Our men push them about a bit, not with malice any more but with the astonished pride of conquerors. Naturally, we go through their pockets. We feel a degree of contempt for these pathetic enemies, a contempt that protects them:
‘So that’s all there is to the Boche!’
‘We really got the drop on them!’
The
poilus
all crowd round, eagerly searching for a bit of booty to calm their overexcitement. We expected more resistance and our fury suddenly has no object.
Lieutenant Larcher comes into the trench and gives orders to the sergeants:
‘Set up lookout positions straight away and post sentries. We must prepare to meet the counter-attack.’
‘Let them try, the bastards!’
Success has given us enormous strength and confidence. We feel extraordinarily resilient, which comes from our desire to live and our fierce will to defend ourselves. Our blood is up and right now, in broad daylight, we fear no man.
Our artillery is striking hard in front of us, to wipe out any reaction from the enemy. The German batteries haven’t shortened their range and continue to pound away at the positions we left. We are in a quiet zone. We take advantage of this to organise ourselves. Our fervour diminishes bit by bit, our courage vanishes like a drunkard’s stupor, anxiety about the future returns. The men demand to be relieved, since they have done what was expected of them. We are hoping we will be withdrawn from here tonight. But a lot of things can happen before nightfall.