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.”
Emmanuel Bourcier at the front in the sector of Rheims in 1915.
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?