the next day reinforcements arrived from our dep?t. there were forty men for the company, one of whom was an n.c.o. called langlois—seven men for the section.
the poor wretches were very much depressed. they had been detrained at bar-le-duc, and sent off to find us, in charge of a subaltern. they had been wandering about for three days, with little or no food. they were worn out when they joined us. their feet were bleeding, and in their eyes was the reflection of horrible visions. oh, those fields of corpses! and the smell! several of them were sick once more at the mere recollection of it. or again, in other places—those bodies buried in haste—the arms and feet sticking out of the ground! and then, on the second evening they had suddenly found themselves in the firing line. bullets whizzed past their ears—zzp, zzp—and shells surrounded them. several of their men had already been killed.
[pg 380]
it must be added that these men left f—— five days before under a gloomy impression. news had just got through of our regiment of regulars who since the very beginning had been fighting a few miles away from us, though we had never come across them. and what news it was! leaving longuyon on the morning of the 21st, engaged that evening at ethes, and thrown back on tellencourt, they had been, so to speak, volatilised, during those two days. their losses had been enormous. one battalion had been wiped out and another was missing—the only hope was that the whole of it might have been taken prisoners—the third had been saved by the self-possession of a company commander.
when one thought of the recruiting, to a great extent local—the regulars! all the young harvest! the flower of the country! a great many of our poilus had a younger brother, sometimes two or three, among these troops which were said to be exterminated. they were to be seen with anxious eyes, and quivering nostrils, hazarding some name or other, in an agony of suspense. details were generally lacking, but a trenchant reply would sometimes come:
"killed, killed!"
"killed?"
"exactly."
what a blow it was. some of them staggered, but most of them bowed their heads and said nothing. then seized with compassion, i would go up to them.
"poor old chap!" i soothed them with a vague hope—how many of the missing would turn up again?
what i was more anxious about than anything else was, as may be imagined, the general situation. what was happening? i feverishly questioned langlois.
[pg 381]
he was a school-master too, but from paris. playoust's set had immediately tried to get hold of him, but he made it quite clear that he intended to remain neutral, on good terms with us. he had an interesting head. he was sunburnt, and had intensely blue eyes, a big nose with a narrow bridge, and a determined chin. besides that, he was slim and muscular, and had a graceful carriage. there was a look of a musketeer or condottiere about him—a look which was deceptive for that matter, as i soon realised. he was a good sort, but nothing beyond that. his intelligence was limited.
during his weeks at the dep?t everything seemed to have rolled off him, like water off a duck's back, without making the faintest impression. he was eager for news, no doubt, but he was far from attaching to it the tragic and capital importance which clothed the least occurrence in this hour of our history.
it was disappointing and exasperating to me. i would have given a lot to meet fortin and have a talk with him. we had just heard that he had become a humble private again, and was with the reinforcement detachment.
however, i set about extracting all the news from langlois, bit by bit, and finished by attaining my end.
to begin with, the period of optimism had continued. the enemy had been intercepted on the meuse, and at liège, namur, and dinant. our offensive was developing at mulhouse and towards morhange. that had gone on until friday, the 21st. that day's communiqué still gave a favourable picture of the situation. there were two shadows on it, however: the day was described as having been "less fortunate" in lorraine, and the occupation of brussels. the next[pg 382] day, there was nothing very new. a huge battle was going on. the guns were talking.
complete silence for two days. on the third—it was tuesday—the communiqué announced, in terms very flattering to our troops, that the attack had had no decisive results and that we had fallen back on our covering positions. the casualties were heavy on both sides. one paper claimed to see a second valmy in the engagement.
but since then things had been going from bad to worse! to how great an extent? i pressed langlois, and implored him to try and recall the smallest details—the text even of the bulletins. we were holding out? apparently. towards nancy our luck seemed to be re-establishing itself. in the north? oh. langlois admitted that he really knew nothing about the north. i pretended to be as calm as possible in order to encourage him. come along! the daily reports? what did they point to? they were perplexing—"the english have lost a little ground on our extreme left...." "we have had to bring our line slightly farther back...." what else? ever since the day following "charleroi" they had talked of german patrol parties venturing right up to near douai and valenciennes. a note which had an official twang about it had appeared on this subject. there was no cause for alarm! merely isolated instances! that was all very well! but the same day we read in the socialistic manifesto that "our richest and most cultivated regions are invaded."
"and what about the russians?" i asked. "haven't they come in yet?"
"yes—things are going all right down there apparently."
[pg 383]
there were no details, of course.
the detachment had left f——, langlois continued, at midday on the 29th,—the paris dailies had just arrived.
this time there was a communiqué which was undeniably odd. even he had been startled. he quoted the exact text: "the situation on our front, from the somme to the vosges, is exactly the same to-day as it was yesterday."
from the somme to the vosges! it was my turn to get a shock. what! then the huns were at amiens! yes, everything went to prove it. even nearer perhaps? they had heard a rumour on their train journey, of sanguinary engagements at bapaume and at peronne. other reports were circulating. soisson and st. quentin were said to have been cut off, the compiègne forest on fire.
i would not believe it all. i clung to the communiqué of the 27th. but in any case it was a terrible awakening. even guillaumin, who joined us, was not incredulous, for once. an orderly had just confirmed the news of the investment of la fère. we put this fortress down as being about half-way between the frontier and paris. was the capital in danger? not yet, after all! we pictured a huge force barring the way to the intrenched camp.
what worried me most was public opinion which, with us, is so nervous and impressionable. there was good reason to be calm about the morale of the army. but the departments in the background. we were given a gloomy reflection of the spirit reigning there now....
and the government especially? i had a vague dread of some faltering, some lack of real energy in[pg 384] this coterie of middle-aged bourgeois, who had grown up amid the dejection which had followed the defeat, and had been softened by forty years of enjoyable egoism. would they hold out? what did we know of it? we had got no more letters since the game had been played and lost in the north.
certain facts which i learnt from langlois were not calculated to reassure me. the cabinet had been modified! socialists in the ministry. if it should mean the road to some humiliating pact? there was still a fear of civil war, in which france would drown herself in a fratricidal struggle or, worse than all else, fling herself into the arms of the infamous wretch who would speak of peace!
i kept my anxiety to myself in my continuous endeavour not to shake any one's courage. i watched my poilus with delight as they exerted themselves to cheer up the new-comers. the judsis and lamalous laughed at their glum looks.
"like to know wot they'd say, if they'd seen any real fightin'!..."
they pulled their legs, inventing fantastic feats of prowess by the regiment, or the company. the taking of "beauclair" for instance! judsi often returned to the subject of that exploit. they had found more burnt and spitted bosches in there than you'd believe possible. a carpet, no a pile, of them rising right up to the first storey. maddening for the ground-floor people of whom there was not a sign to be seen.
the audience was greatly tickled.
"now you'll do. w'en a man knows 'ow to laugh, 'e'll make a soldier!"
[pg 385]
thereupon, news arrived. we had been attached to the 4th corps again, and were to be entrained. what for? paris. we were to form a part of the troops constituting the mobile defence.
there was general rejoicing. paris! a certain number of the men came from the city or the suburbs, and even for the others the magic syllables evoked endless delights. what ho! for the picture palaces and the pretty girls, in their first free hour....
it opened up a perspective of repose for everyone, after so much toil.
