Fear (13 page)

Sergeant Nègre from Limoges lies on my right. He must be about thirty-five. Small head, almost bald, a mischievous glint in his eyes and a little goatee beard. A typical French reserve NCO: quick to blame but slow to punish, taking charge of his little world but taking care of it too, even against orders if necessary, an obliging man with a wicked tongue. Like me he appreciates his good fortune and indeed has been even luckier than me. He has a hole in his calf; the wound isn’t at all serious but a tendon has been damaged. He will need treatment so he can walk normally again. When he gets out of bed, he hops along on his good leg, down our row of beds by the windows, holding on to the frames. He stops at each one to inquire: ‘So, my old pal, how’s it going? We’ve made it to the hospital. And that’s a bloody sight better than getting a medal, believe you me!’ To those in pain, he points his finger to the north, cocks his ear as if listening to the gunfire: ‘But they didn’t get us! Think of all those fine bloated corpses, my lad, and give thanks to the god of armies!’ To distract them from their pain he shouts: ‘On your feet, the lot of you! Volunteers for patrol, get in line! Who can’t wait to go and make a nice hole in the wire with a good pair of cutters? . . . One at a time, now, don’t all rush!’

One day when we were all laughing at his antics as he hopped about, he explained: ‘This war’s given me bloody cramp. It comes from chasing after Glory. I’ve been chasing her ever since this war began, and then the bitch went to find General Baron de Poculotte who was at that precise moment planning his seventy-third Final Offensive with coloured pencils and tracing paper and rapid-writing rifles in his forward command post forty kilometres behind the lines. And you know what he replied when they told him that Glory had come at last? “God damn it, I don’t like to be kept waiting, you old bat!” Oh yes, my lad, that’s exactly what he said. You don’t know the de Poculottes? A great family, from the old military aristocracy, so they say. A whole family of generals. These are the people who really know how to make decisions and counter-orders and manage the cavalry and the transport and supplies and the artillery and the engineers and sappers and mortars and the aeroplanes and the whole lot and how to really slaughter the infantry at zero hour, in industrial quantities. I mean, of course, the German infantry! Because your French infantryman is indestructible, as is well known in Perpignan . . . First military principle: one French soldier is worth two German soldiers. Second military principle: obstacles don’t bloody exist! Third military principle: one dead French soldier equals ten dead German soldiers, at least. Because the Germans attack in tight formations so as not to get lost in places they’ve never been before and to stop themselves being afraid. You only have to fire at them and you can knock down as many as you want. Any journalist will tell you. Don’t you know yet that those chaps can see a lot further than you, you little earthworms, you cannon fodder, you stupid war cripples, and you better believe them.

‘And now, you poor little moron, I’m going to teach you a whole load of good things. I got them from de Poculotte himself who was standing right next to me and explaining matters to a gentleman from parliament so that he in turn could explain them to the whole nation, which needs to see things clearly.

‘So, first of all, we’ve got the bayonet. You stick it on the end of a Lebel and you get yourself an infantryman driven by French
furia
. Opposite, you’ve got your Boche. Now, what cannot fail to happen? They either run for it or throw in the towel. Why do you think they stuck barbed wire in the front of their lines? Because of the bayonet, says de Poculotte.

‘Second, we’ve got our good French bread. The French hero stands up above the trench and shouts out in a scornful tone: “Hey, Fritz, want some nosh?” What cannot fail to happen? Fritz puts down his gun, says goodbye to his pals, and heads for the bread as fast as legs can carry him. Why do you think they stuck barbed wire in front of their lines? Because of our bread, with the sole purpose of stopping the whole lot of them running across at our dinner time leaving their crown-prince all on his own like an arsehole. We’d be in a right mess if this army of gluttons came over to stuff their faces with us! “They are pigs,” says Poculotte, sipping his Burgundy. “They lack moral fibre. We can take them whenever we want!”

‘And last but not least we’ve got the 75,[
18
] which flattens everything in a couple of shakes. Nothing’s more accurate and nothing’s faster. Why do you think they made Big Berthas? To hit back at our 75s, of course. Except that with our 75s, we always smash them. I can still hear Poculotte: “Races can be distinguished by their weapons. They have heavy artillery because they have heavy spirits, and we have light artillery because our spirits are light. Spirit over matter, my dear Minister. And war is the triumph of the spirit!” Don’t ever forget it, old chum, war is the triumph of the spirit!’

When he’s narrating the heroic deeds of General Baron de Poculotte, Nègre is unstoppable. That dashing superior officer has become a celebrity, a symbol, and we can all feel his presence among us. His resolute character rules over the ward; whenever we are surprised and confused by some new measure, we can turn to him for the correct military response. So, for example, someone who had just been reading the latest communiqué asks him:

‘
Mon général
, how should we interpret “All quiet on the entire front”?’

‘The true military mind does not permit interpretation,’ replies the general through the mouth of Nègre. ‘Good patriots should understand that “All quiet” means exactly what it says, and this plain description is easy enough to understand.’

‘So should we understand that there were no dead or wounded?’

‘No dead or wounded!’ shouts the indignant general. ‘Who is this miserable wretch who dares to question the abilities of our leaders? What would a war be like without dead and wounded?’

‘Yes,
mon général
, but what about saving human lives?’

‘Be quiet, you horrible underling, war is not about saving human lives but destroying them and don’t you ever forget it. It is a noble mission and its goal is to deliver us from barbarism. Dismiss!’

It should be noted that the general normally makes his appearance after the departure of the nurses. Then we are all soldiers together and Baron de Poculotte can express himself without inhibition, knowing that his words of wisdom will not be heard by stupid civilians, people for whom he feels the deepest contempt.

On my left is Diuré, a freckled redhead with milky skin who bears his suffering without complaint apart from rare and muffled groans. Suppurating phlegmon in the thigh from an infected wound. They’ve made a long gash, opening up the wound down to the bone and criss-crossing it with drainage tubes. He has so many pipes coming out that he looks like a piece of machinery. When his sheets are pulled back, the smell is very unpleasant, like a meat market in summer. Still he has the courage to bend down over this fissure in his decomposed flesh, soiled with green pus. He watches closely when his wound is being dressed, and seems very interested in the disgusting scraps of flesh that are pulled off him. He says little; we know nothing about him.

Next to him lies Peignard, the loudest screamer in the ward. They have removed the bones from part of his foot and this floppy foot, lacking its armature, pulls at his leg and his hips, causing his groin to swell and spreading its painful consequences across his stomach all the way to his heart. Sometimes he goes very pale and gasps for breath. The mere weight of a sheet on his foot can make him scream horribly. Fever takes him every evening at about six o’clock. Mouth open, lips trembling, he groans feebly and dribbles a stream of saliva on to his blanket. An hour later the real screaming starts: oh, ooh, ooh, ah, ah . . . aah, aah, the screams you’d hear at night in battle, the screams of abandoned men. At first we would shudder and pity him. Then, one night, when the lights were dimmed, someone turned over noisily with a sigh: ‘Sure, but it’s still a fucking pain in the arse for the rest of us!’ Our silence indicated our approval. We are all suffering to one degree or another and it makes us selfish. When Peignard is hit by these attacks of pain he doesn’t think to spare our nerves, he forces us to share in his suffering and makes us unhappy. Eventually they give him morphine which knocks him out, and we insist that this should be done promptly, as soon as he starts screaming.

Then comes Mouchetier, with what remains of his right forearm wrapped in a linen bandage. He can still feel his missing hand, thrown out with the rubbish a month ago. The networks of his nervous system stretch out into empty space and carry back pain that is constant and distracting. Often Mouchetier looks like he is rubbing his absent hand; his other hand seems to hold and squeeze it to stop the shooting pain. And yet he is slowly getting accustomed to his new condition. He’s a wounded man like all the rest of us, and his infirmity won’t make itself felt until he’s a civilian again. Still, he must think about it. He sometimes stares at other people’s right hands as if he’s hypnotised – rough hands but so agile, so convenient, so useful in life. He was an accounts clerk before the war. This profession – which he might now have to give up – makes him obsessed with writing. He collects any envelopes or bits of paper with writing on that are scattered around in the ward, spreads them out on the corner of a table, and gazes dreamily at the neat copperplate, the elegant flourishes. Furtively, he tries to copy them in pencil with his untrained left hand. His pockets are full of sheets covered in clumsy letters, like a schoolboy’s exercise book.

We often discuss the war. Those who were not seriously wounded claim that it will not last much longer. We are hoping less for a triumphal conclusion than for an end, which will remove us from further danger.
Going back
is a prospect that makes us freeze in horror and we refuse to contemplate it. The future offers us a break, varying in length according to our condition, which includes: recovery in hospital, convalescence, leave, and a spell at base. Four to six months in most cases. In our opinion, the war cannot last longer than that and the formidable alliance of France-Great Britain-Russia-Italy-Belgium-Japan will inevitably prevail over the Central Powers, despite whatever merits we, as soldiers, may have seen in the Germans. Our spring offensive will carry all before it. Failing a great victory, then the exhaustion of one tribe or another should finish it off, that or general weariness.

Some, and Mouchetier first and foremost, argue that, on the contrary, ‘it will go on for years the way things are going and there are still lots of surprises to come’, with remarkable persistence. Listening to the debate the other day I suddenly understood: all the pessimists are cripples. It is too cruel for them to believe that they have lost a limb at the last moment, that with a little bit more luck they would have survived intact. Better for them to think that mutilation had not only saved their lives but spared them years of suffering. I shared my observation with Nègre and those with less serious injuries. From then on, we were less positive when the question came up.

To settle the dispute, we sought the advice of General de Poculotte, and he gave his answer:

‘The great struggle exalts the lifeblood of the nation, it carries our country to the highest rank of humanity, and we must not wish for it to end too quickly. The France of the twentieth century is on the road to glory. Let us rejoice and place that glory higher than petty considerations about the life or death of a few hundred thousand soldiers. It is with their blood that we are writing these unforgettable pages, and their fate can never be a sad one!’

‘He’s a fine speaker, the old bugger!’

‘So Mouchetier got it right, it isn’t nearly over!’

Turning to the cripples, who always grouped together, we declared, with an air of jealousy: ‘You’re the lucky ones!’ They smiled, and forgot some of their regrets. And Bardot, holding himself up on his crutches, spoke kindly to us:

‘We wish you the same when you go back to the line.’

‘Absolutely,’ chipped in another, ‘better to come back damaged than not come back at all!’

Only a few days ago, there were three in our ward whose condition gave cause for concern, out of thirty in all. Now there are only two, and that will not last long.

The first had a perforated intestine. He could only be fed through tubes, and his open stomach, into which these pipes fitted very loosely, gave off an odour of latrines. He struggled on, and went under the knife several times. From a distance all I could see was a bloodless face the colour of old ivory, and little by little this face seemed to acquire a dull, grey coating, as if someone had forgotten to dust it, and the beard, drawing strength from the compost of unhealthy flesh, spread rapidly, seeming to drive out life like ivy takes light from the front of a house. At last they took him down to a room on the first floor reserved for those needing constant care. Two days later, we learned that he had died.

The second is an adjutant – so we were told – who is suffering from acute toxaemia. Tests have shown fatally high levels of albumin. For the past two days the man has been completely blind, struggling feebly in the dark. Some spark of life still flickers, like a gas flame turned right down, but his mind has gone. No one stops by his bed any more; medicine has done all it can and must leave it to the organism to perform a miracle. He, too, will be taken downstairs. It seems most likely that nothing will interrupt his passage from the darkness of this death struggle to the darkness of the coffin. As he has never spoken we have not been able to form a bond with him, and his death will affect us less than that of a comrade whose voice is familiar. This is an unknown man whose name must be recorded somewhere on a list, and he is as much a stranger to us as a corpse would be that we encountered at a bend in the trench. And finally, he is dying of an illness, and illness doesn’t inspire much pity in us.

The last is a small Breton lad, very young, with gangrenous wounds all along one side of his body. The doctors keep chipping away at two of his limbs: one arm and one leg, battling with the gangrene over his flesh, bit by bit, fifteen to twenty centimetres at a time. He has had five operations in eighteen days. Half the time he is knocked out by chloroform. They use this state of torpor to bind up his wounds, hiding from him the progressive shortening of his limbs. When he is lucid he won’t let anyone come near, knowing that people only touch him to cause him pain. He is completely illiterate and speaks an incomprehensible patois, in which we can only understand the swear words he uses on the nurses. He is another one who emits the most horrible screams at certain times. But no one mutters complaints at these screams, for we know his situation is terrifying and will remain so even if he survives. On the contrary we are amazed at how rarely he screams and at how much resistance he has.