Fear (27 page)

In this bandits’ lair we await our turn to move up to the front. Shells whistle down outside the cave entrances, all day and all night.

Two a.m.

Leaning on my elbows on a little table with a candle, I’m keeping watch in the depths of the shelter. We relieved our comrades a few minutes ago. Battalion command has been set up in a very long sap, a kind of narrow gallery with a couple of sharp corners, ten metres underground. The reserve sections are also sheltering in the same sap. Everyone is asleep, except the lookouts at the cave mouths, and me, separated from them by the steps down and the turnings in the tunnel, and by groups of soldiers lying on the ground, curled up in jumbled heaps in the shadows, dead to the world. There must be a hundred men in the sap and you have to walk over them to get through. I feel their heavy presence, and their trust in me; it’s a lonely feeling. Some of them toss and turn violently in their sleep, start and shudder, or suddenly cry out in anguish, which makes me jump.

While watching over these sleeping minds, my own mind, working feebly, considers our situation. We are at the Chemin des Dames. I read the names we all know: Cerny, Ailles, Craonne, terrible names . . . I study our position. Our front lines are at most a hundred metres in front of us, and behind us there is less than fifty metres before the ravine into which the Germans are trying to push us. At the foot of the ravine, the plain stretches off into the distance, a plain so pulverized and desolate that it looks like a sea of sand (I looked at it when we were coming to find the battalion command). Recently the enemy has been attacking strongly in an attempt to take possession of the whole line of plateaus, and these attacks have advanced. At the point we are defending we’ve just a hundred and thirty metres left in which to hang on to the heights. We’re at the mercy of a well-organised major attack. And here, deep in the shelter, if the front line breaks we are powerless – with fifty steps to climb to reach the surface – and would be captured or suffocated by grenades. Not a happy situation . . .

Three a.m. Absolute silence . . .

A lead-tipped cane whacks me on the head, makes my ears ring, sets off the visceral panic that I know only too well. A violent gust of air slaps me in the face, blows out the candle and plunges me into the darkness of the grave. A furious bombardment is crashing down on us, ploughing into us, making the timbers of the sap creak. I hunt for matches, relight the candle, shaking like an alcoholic. Up above me it must be total destruction. The bombardment reaches an extraordinary intensity, then takes on the rhythm of machine-gun fire, like a kind of backbeat broken by the deep explosions of big time-shells, seeking us out in our caves.

My comrades, shielded by the thick walls of the sap that muffle the sound, are still sleeping, exhausted, like sleeping soldiers everywhere. I leave them in their unconsciousness for a while, face the fear alone. The violent bombardment surely means an attack is coming. Will the sections at the front hold out? . . . We’ll have to fight. Fight? I click off the safety catch on my automatic pistol.

A powerful explosion makes the flame tremble once more. I hear cries of panic from the depths of the darkness: ‘Gas! Gas!’ Then I shake those around me: gas! We put our masks on, pigs’ muzzles that make us monstrous and grotesque. We look especially pathetic with our heads bowed down on our chests. Now a hundred of us in this pit are listening to the destruction above us, and inside us, listening to the prompts of fear eating away our nerves. Will it be this time, any moment now, that we will die, like you die at the front, torn to pieces?

We hear other voices:

‘One entrance has collapsed – pass it on!’

The mortar shell has buried the two lookouts. The horror commences . . .

‘Who was on lookout?’

We wait to hear their names, like the numbers in a funeral lottery. Their bodies must be disinterred, right away.

The battalion commander occupies a niche at the side of the trench, a little underground cabin that he shares with his adjutant. We hear him asking:

‘What’s happening?’

‘We don’t know, sir.’

‘Send out runners.’

Men draw back rapidly, try to hide themselves, trembling with fear.

The adjutant gets angry:

‘Runners, now, jump to it!’

The men reappear, with ghastly faces.

‘Find out what’s going on with the other companies, go in twos.’

‘We’ll be blown to pieces for sure!’

‘Wait by the entrance till things calm down a bit,’ he adds.

They go off to their position.

Machine guns! . . . The rattle of machine guns. The sound of these terrible weapons cuts through all the other noise, stands out from the bombardment . . . We go quiet, our hearts constricted: now it starts . . .

‘Are the runners back?’

‘Not yet, sir.’

‘Send more.’

‘He’s mad!’

Two ashen-faced men move off slowly, hunched over. The adjutant holds up his finger, cocks his ear:

‘It’s getting quieter, isn’t it?’

Yes . . . so it would seem. The bombardment is slowing down. The rumbling is replaced by bursts of firing. But nothing is sure in this unknown sector.

There’s a clatter on the stairs. Two runners have returned, streaming with sweat, eyes vacant. They give their news to the commander:

‘The Boche advanced on the 9th. They were stopped.’

‘Were the companies badly hit?’

‘Badly enough, sir. Several shells in the trench. They’re calling for stretcher-bearers.’

‘Is Larcher OK?’

‘Yes, sir. He says there’s no danger for the time being and if the Boche come back, they’ll be ready for them.’

Saved, this time! We get the list of casualties: eleven men out of action in the 9th and seven in the 10th.

Around nine o’clock, the adjutant takes advantage of a lull to inspect the sector. While he’s away the bombardment starts again. He is brought back wounded, gravely, it seems. The battalion doctor comes to attend to him and he is carried away. The run of misfortune continues . . . We stay with the commandant. Our fate depends on his decisions. In the quiet sectors his attitude was more than cautious, it made us smile. This may be good: he won’t lead us into any reckless actions.

The bombardment rumbles on, but it has slowed down.

On the second night I have to go and fetch provisions from the edge of the Troyon ravine, and I return loaded with loaves of bread wrapped in a tent canvas. A cluster of trench mortars nearly catches us just outside the entrance to the shelter. By the light of a flare we can make out Frondet, on guard duty, who is crossing himself whenever there’s an explosion, like an old woman in a thunderstorm. My comrades laugh as they tumble on to the stairs. And I am thinking: ‘Prayers, intercessions, get whatever consolation you can, you poor old man!’ Frondet is a well-bred chap of thirty-two, who had a good job in industry abroad, and he has kept his good manners here. He endures without complaint the promiscuity that war inflicts and the coarseness of his companions. But his well-known piety does not save him from being afraid. On some days he looks like an old man. He has one of those lined faces with sad eyes and a desperate smile that mark out a man consumed by an obsession. When fear becomes chronic it turns an individual into a kind of monomaniac. Soldiers call this being down in the dumps. But in reality it is a type of neurasthenia that follows excessive nervous strain. Many of the men are sick, without being aware of it, and their febrile state can make them disobey orders or abandon their posts just as much as it can drive them to fatally rash deeds. It is often the only reason for certain acts of bravery.

Frondet himself clutches at his faith and his prayers but I have often realised, through the poignant humility of his gaze, that these things do not give him enough consolation. I secretly pity him.

We have spent two days crushed together in this pit, where the air is tainted by our breath and stale sweat, and the bitter stench of urine.

We’re targeted with furious bombardments several times a day, for no obvious reason. The constant danger denies us any respite. We are always afraid of an attack, of being forced out into a desperate struggle, of hearing shouts in German at the entrances or grenades exploding on the steps. We cannot see anything at all, and depend entirely on the companies who are fighting in front of us.

The Germans haven’t shown themselves again. But on a front like this where soldiers are nervous and on constant alert, artillery will be called in at the slightest sign of danger; the guns splutter into action at the first enemy flare, and then set the whole zone ablaze. The alert spreads like a trail of gunpowder. Within a few minutes, the eruption spreads across the plateaus. There is never total silence, the trench mortars continue their stealthy work, so terrible for our nerves, and their shells land all over the place. The number of victims continues to rise.

Our commandant hasn’t even reconnoitred the sector and never sets foot outside his little cabin. Apart from the adjutant who takes his orders, no one has set eyes on him. He relieves himself in a dixie which his batman goes and empties over the parapet outside. His meals are prepared for him on a spirit stove and he seems to spend the greater part of his day lying on his bunk. He has lost all dignity and no longer even attempts to keep up appearances. We know too much about what is becoming of all of us to judge him too harshly, but we deeply resent the way he unnecessarily exposes his runners to danger. He despatches them two by two under shellfire and sends out teams one after another without giving the first ones the chance to accomplish their mission. There is no useful information these men can bring back and the squad leaders would be the first to ask for help if they needed it. We feel that our commandant, no longer fit for his duties, will get us all killed stupidly, that fear is driving him mad without removing the rights that come with his officer’s shoulder stripes. We have stopped believing that anyone is leading our battalion, and this makes us very confused. Fortunately, we are well aware of the quality, the courage, of the three company commandants, who know how to judge a situation and always stand firm alongside their men in the trenches. Lieutenants Larcher of the 9th, and Marennes of the 10th, both about twenty-six, are rivals in audacity. The former can always be found at the most exposed spot in his sector. The latter, according to runners, sits on the parapet to observe the German positions. Then there is Captain Antonelli of the 11th, who gets possessed by a raging fury whenever he goes into action, one which would certainly carry him to the front rank in a counter-attack; older than the other two, he wants to show he is their equal. All three would give their lives rather than surrender their trenches, and are an inspiration to their men. They compensate for the inadequacy of the battalion leader, receive his orders with contempt, and decide what needs doing between themselves. We count on them.

In a sap at the front line we discovered the bodies of some men from the battalion that we had relieved. We assume they died of asphyxia after a gas attack.

I have in my hand a little pocket Kodak that I found on one of them. I would like to keep it because the camera belonged to sub-lieutenant F.V— (of whose death I thus learned) whom I had known slightly at university where he was studying for a degree in literature. But I realise that doing so might be misinterpreted. So I put it back on to the little pile of personal effects, though I doubt it will ever reach his family. Others will perhaps have fewer scruples, without the excuse of remembrance.

Later on I slip the camera beneath the other objects. Not because I still want to take it. But it reminds me of its owner. F. V— showed great promise, and this death is heart-wrenching because just a hundred metres from here it struck someone who links me to the days before the war. The death of those whom we only knew in the war, however sad it is, does not have the same significance, the same resonance.

Our heavy artillery has begun methodical shelling at a rate of one round every five minutes. They fall short: 155s and 220s almost invariably come down on our own lines. One sergeant was thrown into the air, several men have been wounded. There is every reason to believe that during most bombardments we are getting hit by shells from our own side. Men keep running back, cursing, demanding they extend the range of fire. We send more and more messages and signals. To no effect. An angry sub-lieutenant comes to us:

‘It’s a disgrace! Where are the heavy artillery officers? We’ve never seen a single one and there’s nothing else we can do.’

‘What a bunch of swine! They’re afraid of getting their boots dirty! They save their skin and don’t give a damn about ours!’

He sets off again, tears of rage on his face. The firing goes on: regular, idiotic, unbearable. This is surely one torment that the men in the trenches could have been spared.

I am woken by a peculiar pain.

I am curled up in a narrow recess underneath a shelf full of papers, cards and bits of equipment. I am sleeping in the dark, forgotten, on a pile of sandbags that I found there.

The first thing I’m aware of is the thunderous roar of the bombardment outside. The second is the pain, which is now localised and makes me panic. But it’s nothing, surely . . . no need to get excited . . . it will pass. Except that I have to face the facts:
I have a bad stomach upset
. I have to go outside. Go outside? All hell is breaking loose up there. The shelter is shaking and shuddering under the crashing waves of heavy shells. The roar of drumfire comes in, blast upon blast . . . I cannot go out!

A ridiculous, obscure little drama, and one in which my life may be at stake . . . My guts are fermenting, distending, pushing at my muscles which cannot hold back for long. My body is letting me down . . . OK, I’ve got to go! . . . Up there? I think of the latrines, near the entrance where the mortar shells are landing. I imagine the shrill, blinding night, the flashes of fire, the screech of the shells that you hear a tenth of a second before the blast. I cannot go, I cannot go out there! No, look, you don’t get yourself killed for an upset stomach, you overcome it. It would be too stupid!