Fear (11 page)

I tell this dutiful servant in no uncertain terms that no commandant in the world could make my guts stand to attention. His nose and the noises from my bowels convince him that I am telling the truth. He makes himself scarce.

We find the hurdles in a depot and assemble our load. Then we sit in a covered shelter, huddled close together to keep warm, and light up our cigarettes.

Heavy shells start landing not far off and make a terrible racket in this deserted spot. We squeeze down into the depth of the shadows, telling ourselves that our shelter is solid. Above all, we are thinking of what’s about to happen to the battalion up ahead. Better to be where we are.

And then the shelling stops and silence returns. We stop talking. We listen to the confused sounds from the front, off in the distance. We doze, we let the time pass. We feel like deserters.

‘I suppose we’d better go back,’ says the corporal.

Off we go again. It is quite a struggle moving forward with the wicker hurdles that are wider than the trenches so that we have to carry them at an angle. In normal times we would never have wanted such a task. But now we feel privileged.

We reach our positions.

The whole battalion is in the trench, bayonets fixed, in total silence.

‘What are you doing?’

‘We’re about to attack.’

So the attack hasn’t happened!

‘Tell the captain that the hurdles have arrived,’ says the corporal.

The message passes from man to man. I think of my rifle, and of going to get it . . . then an order comes:

‘The men from the fatigue party to the front. Leave the hurdles.’

This is the limit! What is that supposed to mean? But there’s no room for argument. We make our way through the battalion. Men move aside to let us pass, with unusual courtesy.

Beneath the parapet stands our captain, chinstrap in place, revolver in hand. He points to some boxes:

‘Take your grenades.’

‘I don’t know how they work, sir.’

This is the truth. These are cylindrical tin grenades of a type I’ve never seen before. ‘Just do it!’ he snaps.

Yes sir! I dutifully take five or six grenades and slip them into my haversack. He points to the parapet.

‘Over you go!’

I see a short ladder. I climb up. I straddle the sandbags and find myself on a level with the plain, above the trenches. I am blinded by flashes. Rockets, shells. Bullets whistling, whipping past me. I let myself drop down.

On the other side of the parapet . . .

A man is running in front of me. I am running behind him.

Thoughts flash through my mind: ‘OK, here I am, I’m going into the attack at the front of a battalion. My only weapons are five grenades of an unknown type and I am running towards the German Imperial Guard . . .’ That’s as far as I can think. I wish I had not left my well-oiled rifle behind.

Other men are running behind me. I mustn’t think of stopping, I don’t think of stopping. One flare after another bathes us in light. I spot a rifle on the edge of a trench and grab it. An old French rifle: bolt jammed, bayonet bent and rusty. Better than nothing.

I cannot imagine combat at all, I just can’t think like a soldier. I tell myself:

‘This is all stupid, utterly stupid!’ And I run, run like I’m in a hurry.

Am I afraid? My mind is afraid. But I’m not asking its advice.

Stupid, stupid!

Behind the second parapet, four maniacs are lobbing grenades, bellowing to work themselves up into a frenzy.

So here we are, five chaps attacking the German army with tin cans. Unbelievable!

‘Give me some grenades!’ one of these lunatics shouts at me.

‘With pleasure!’ I think. I hand him the contents of my bag.

‘More!’

The man behind hands me his. I pass them on. Others follow, passed along from hand to hand.

The four of them keep going like a machine: shout, ignite, throw . . . Can this go on forever?

I am lifted up, deaf, blinded by a cloud of smoke, pierced by a sharp smell. Something is clawing at me, tearing me. I must be shouting without hearing myself.

A sudden shaft of clarity. ‘Your legs are blown off!’ For a start . . .

My body leaps and runs. The explosion has set it off like some machine. Behind me, someone is shouting, ‘faster!’ in a voice of pain and madness. Only then do I actually realise I am running.

Some part of my reason returns, amazed, and starts to check: ‘What are you running on?’ I think I must be running on the stumps of my legs . . . My reason tells me to look. I come to a halt in the trench while invisible men run past. Fearful of finding something horrible, my hand goes slowly down the length of my limbs: thighs, calves, shoes. I still have my two shoes! . . . So my legs must be intact! Joy, but such incomprehensible joy. Yet something has happened to me, I’ve been hit . . .

My reason continues. ‘You’re running away . . . Have you the right to run away?’ A new anxiety. I no longer know if I am hurt, or where. I examine my body, feeling it in the darkness. I discover that my right hand no longer works, the fingers don’t close. A warm liquid is running out of my wrist. ‘OK, good, I’m wounded, I can go now!’

This discovery calms me down and also makes me aware of pain. I groan quietly. I am dazed and dumbfounded.

I make it back to the first parapet where a gap has been opened to speed the advance. The captain is still there. No one stops me. Soldiers from my battalion, with their gleaming bayonets, turn their pale, frightened faces to see this, the first of the wounded. I recognise men from class 15. ‘Lucky bastard!’ they call out.

One comes forward. It’s Bernard. He relieves me of my kit.

‘Is it serious?’ he asks.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Is it going OK out there?’

‘I didn’t have the time to find out.’

‘Good luck!’

‘You too, mate!’

‘I only wish I was in your place.’

Their anxiety, their words, make me aware of my luck.

Now all I have to do is get to the rear, not get lost in the trenches, or hit by a shell . . . ‘Lucky bastard!’ I keep telling myself.

I’m starting to feel cold. My legs are stiffening and I’m limping on my right foot, which hurts. I move forward with difficulty through the network of dark, deserted trenches. We only passed through this sector at night and I don’t know it. And now night covers it once more, and stretches to infinity. All I can do is to follow the most heavily trodden paths, the ones where more troops have passed. So I concentrate on the state of the ground and make sure I keep my back to the flares which must mark the front. I am alone and running out of strength.

My watch tells me it’s three in the morning. I find a broken rifle to use as a stick to keep myself up. I feel more and more tired but if I stop to rest I don’t think I’ll get up again. I had the good fortune to be the first to get out of the attack, without the aid of stretcher-bearers. I must profit from this and avoid being caught in artillery fire. In fact the bombardments seem quite a way off, on the front lines.

Four o’clock. I still don’t know where I am or where I am heading and I still haven’t met anyone. Some shells fall nearby. I find myself on a sunken path. I hear footsteps, voices, and then bump into a supply party. The men give me something to drink, some coffee and brandy, point me in the direction of the village and the first-aid post beside it. They tell me it’ll take an hour to get there.

An hour for them but a lot longer for me. In the village I leave the trenches and take the road, to save time. It’s one of those typical Pas-de-Calais villages, stretching out in a long line, a mournful spot. And now there are shells coming down on my right, high explosives that go off above ground level, and shrapnel shells that throw rocks everywhere. If they get to me I cannot run or shelter; I am hobbling like a cripple. Now I am truly afraid, afraid I’ll be finished off . . .

A red cross. I go down into a cellar. A medical officer gives me some first aid, is amazed at the number of shrapnel wounds I have, but is reassuring. The bottom of my coat is shredded and my leggings ripped apart. I haven’t the strength left to move again. An orderly takes me on his back to the nearby clearing station. Daylight comes. It’s now after six o’clock.

Outside the clearing station there are two stretchers, one of them occupied. I lie down on the other. I immediately feel a sense of well-being and safety; the worst is over, now I only have to let myself go, people will look after me.

A young priest with a pleasant face comes over and asks us kindly if we want anything. I ask for a cigarette. Once it’s lit I give him a smile of gratitude. He spreads his arms in a somewhat liturgical gesture, and says:

‘Such a spirit of self-sacrifice in our soldiers. Even in pain they have the courage to laugh!’

While he’s off looking for something for us to drink, my wounded neighbour says:

‘The old padre hasn’t got a clue! Only reason we’re laughing is that we’re getting the hell out!’

We’re taken down into a cellar that is still empty, with supports in place to take three rows of stretchers, one on top of the other. I am amazed that I have got here, at my incredible adventure . . . But I’m tired out and soon fall into a heavy sleep.

When I wake up some hours later the cellar is full of wounded men, screaming. All the places are full. Their occupants cover the whole range of expression of pain and despair. Some feel death approaching and struggle with it fiercely with imprecations and wild gestures. Others on the contrary let their lives slip away in a thin stream of liquid, with muffled sighs. Others try to soothe their suffering with measured, hoarse groans. Others plead for someone to stop their pain; others still beg to be finished off. Some call for help from beings we do not know. Some in their delirium are still fighting, uttering inhuman battle cries. Others confront us with their suffering and blame us for doing nothing for them. Some call upon God; some curse him, insult him, tell him to intervene if he is all-powerful.

To my left I recognise the young sub-lieutenant who led our section. From his flaccid mouth comes the monotonous, feeble cry of a little child. He is dying. He was a decent lad, and everyone liked him.

There isn’t enough room. The most unfortunate are laid out on the ground, muddy lumps crowned with haggard faces, bearing that terrible expression of resignation that pain brings with it. They look like beaten dogs. Holding their shattered limbs, they intone a mournful chant that rises up from the depths of their flesh. One has a broken jaw hanging down that he dares not touch. The hideous hole of his mouth, blocked by an enormous tongue, is a well of thick blood. A man who has been blinded, walled up behind the bandage around his face, raises his head to heaven in the hope of catching some faint glimmer of light through the loophole of his eye sockets then slumps back down sadly into the darkness of his cell. He gropes around in the emptiness like someone scrabbling at the damp, slippery walls of a dungeon. A third has lost both his hands, the hands of a farmer or a worker, his tools, his means of earning a living; once he would have said, proclaiming his independence: ‘When a man has two good, strong hands he’ll always find work.’ And now they are not even there to help him in his pain, to meet that most basic, habitual need of bringing them to the place that hurts, which they should hold, which they should calm. No hands to wring, no hands to clench, no hands to pray. Never again will he be able to
touch
. It occurs to me then that this is perhaps the most precious of all the senses.

They had also brought in a piece of human scrap so monstrous that everyone recoiled at the sight, that it shocked men who were no longer shockable. I shut my eyes; I had already seen far too much and I wanted to be able to forget eventually. This thing, this being, screamed in a corner like a maniac. The revulsion that turned our stomachs told us that it would an act of generosity, a fraternal act, to finish him off.

The German artillery has cut the road; we can hear the dull thud of the shells. We cannot be evacuated. Outside, more and more new batches of wounded men wait in the rain for us to die so they can come in. The nurses are overwhelmed. They go from one berth to another, checking the death-rattles. Once these subside into faint murmurs, indicating that the moribund is on the threshold of oblivion, the man is taken outside, where he can die just as well, and his place is filled by another wounded man who still has a chance of life. No doubt the choices are not always right, but the nurses are doing their best, and in war everything is a lottery. This is how our sub-lieutenant makes his exit.

All those who are removed are destined to become corpses, battlefield debris that no longer evokes pity in anyone. The dead get in the way of the living, wear them out. They are forgotten completely during periods of high activity, until their smell becomes insistent. The gravediggers really find them too much, and moan about all the extra work that is costing them sleep. Anything dead is irrelevant. To feel sympathy would weaken us.

An overworked, preoccupied doctor, with no medicine to offer, moves through the rows. With rough words, he brings whatever comfort he can, displaying his badges of rank to the more credulous to convince them they’ll survive. His weariness is obvious, and you can smell the alcohol he uses to keep himself going. His face is streaked by so many splashes of blood that his smile, which he wants to be strong and kind, looks as cruel as an executioner’s.

Most of the wounded bear the number of my regiment but I haven’t been in it long enough to recognise them, and many of them are unrecognisable. From snatches of conversation I gather that the assault from the parapet had been murderous. It had cost the lives of more than a hundred and fifty men. After an initial advance we had been forced to retire to the positions we had started from. The Germans, less exhausted than we were, and well dug in to positions on the ridge, had then launched a vigorous counter-attack, profiting from the fact that our flanks were unprotected. I was curious to know the result of this action in which I had taken part in such an odd way. I also wanted to know what had become of my friends from class 15 and the men from my squad. We were such a disparate bunch in that squad, had so little in common, and quarrelled so often, but we were nonetheless a little family and I would have been distressed if harm had come to any one of them, especially to our young corporal. But I’m in a bad position, down at ground level, and can only see the wounded lying by the wall. They are too far away, too absorbed in their own suffering, for me to question them. And my wish to know more is less strong than my desire to avoid any effort.