Fear (35 page)

My conscientiousness does not spare me from reproaches. Recently, and with his customary asperity, the commandant held out a map to me and said:

‘You don’t really know what you’re doing. That squad isn’t there.’

After a fortnight we have been able to judge that our commandant is not an ill-natured man. But he does have bad manners and the burden of responsibilities weighs heavily on his mind. I replied with good humour:

‘It is you who are making a mistake, sir. The squad is indeed there and I will show you on the ground whenever you like.’

‘You are sure of this?’

‘Quite sure, sir.’

‘OK.’

He must have checked for himself later. He did not mention it again and ever since then he exercises his authority more politely.

We have just heard the news about the offensive at the Chemin des Dames: a new breach has been opened in our front lines and is getting wider by the minute. They say that the Germans turned up in Fismes a few hours after they launched the attack, catching by surprise a paymaster general, some airmen, etc. To those who know the region, the speed of their advance is overwhelming. It is also overwhelming to know that the enemy is marching on Fère-en-Tardenois, where we have seen fields full of munitions stretching off into the distance, vast depots of matériel that they are going to capture.

Two strong surprise attacks on neighbouring sectors to our right and left caused us some losses. The Germans are harassing us with shells without any warning. I have been caught several times by unexpected shelling, and the other day nearly got killed on some low ground. Everything is going badly. The end seems further away than ever . . . I am at the end of my tether. I think to myself:

‘I’ve had enough of this! I’m twenty-three years old, I’m already twenty-three! Back in 1914 I embarked on a future that I wanted to be full and rich and in fact I’ve got nothing at all. I am spending my best years here, wasting my youth on mindless tasks, in stupid subservience; the life I’m living goes against everything that is dear to me, it doesn’t offer me any goal but burdens me with privations and constraints, and may well finish with my death . . . I’ve had enough! I am the centre of the world, as each of us is for himself the centre of the world. I am not responsible for others’ mistakes, I have nothing to do with their ambitions and their appetites, and I have better things to do than pay for their glory and their profits with my blood. Let those who love war make it, I want nothing more to do with it. It’s the business of professionals, let them sort it out between themselves, let them do their job. It isn’t mine! By what right can these strategists do with me as they please, when I can see through all their ruinous, murderous elucubrations? I reject their hierarchy which is no measure of true worth, I reject the policies that have led to this. I have no faith in those who organise massacres, I despise even their victories for I have seen what they are made of. I have no hatred, I only detest mediocrities and fools, and often enough they get promoted, they become all-powerful. My patrimony is my life. I have nothing more precious to defend. My homeland is whatever I manage to earn or to create. Once I am dead, I don’t give a damn how the living divide up the world, about the frontiers they draw on their maps, about their alliances and their enmities. I demand to live in peace, far away from barracks, battlefields and military minds and machinery in any shape or form. I do not care where I live, but I demand to live in peace and to slowly become what I must become . . . Killing has no place in my ideals. And if I must die, I intend to die freely, for an idea that I cherish, in a conflict where I will have my share of responsibility . . .’

‘Dartemont!’

‘Sir?’

‘Go and check where the 11th have positioned their machine guns. On the double.’

‘Very good, sir!’

We are back at camp, having a rest without any pleasures or distractions. Inside the barracks the sun bakes us alive, but we cannot stay outside either, on this dry, chalk plateau, flayed by the heat, that could have come straight out of the kiln.

Our armies are still in retreat. In the newspapers that reach us irregularly, we are following the German advance. Its successes worry us, not because they foretell defeat, for we do not believe final defeat is possible now that the Americans have joined in, but because they are postponing the end for months or years. The words victory and rout have no meaning for us any more. A corpse is just a corpse, whether it is at Charleroi or in the Marne. We have all had years of this war, been wounded, and our wish to stay alive is stronger than ever.

We were struck by a flu epidemic and a lot of men were evacuated. I had an attack myself. On the evening when we were being relieved, fever took hold of me, and as I was leaving the trench, my legs gave way. Luckily I found a cart that brought me here. I’ve just spent four days flat on a straw mattress, not eating.

Today, at the beginning of the afternoon, I’m in the office with the adjutant. He is sitting on a bench and smoking, and I am rolled up in a blanket. We are both thinking about the latest events. He claps his hands to his temples, raises his eyes to heaven, and, in his southern accent, cries:

‘What a bloody mess!’

‘This would all have been finished long ago if we hadn’t made so many mistakes . . .’

‘When you think that they actually rejected peace! . . . Imagine, rejecting peace! . . . Sweet God! . . . It could hardly be any worse!’

The latch on the door snaps open and a head peers in. We see it is Frondet, dirty, unshaven, with his tortured face and feverish eyes. Seeing we are alone he comes in. He looks strange and is smiling oddly. He looks at us searchingly. And then this well-bred, high-principled believer opens his mouth in a sneer and very quietly utters these terrible words:

‘
They
are at Château-Thierry[
41
] . . . Maybe it’s going to end!’

His words embarrass us . . . There is a long silence in which we both ask ourselves, on the brink of treason, whether to accept or reject his implied outcome to the war.

Then the adjutant pulls up his sleeves, and rubs his hands together. The gesture of Pontius Pilate . . .

‘What we all want is to get back home!’

On the night of 6 July we make a halt in the village where the colonel is based. Our commandant goes to collect his orders, and tells us on his return:

‘In three days’ time the Boche will attack right across the Champagne front. We have this from unimpeachable sources.’

We camp among the ruins which are becoming the base for reserves. I work through until morning with the adjutant, preparing various urgent communications.

It is most likely that the Germans will unleash their preparatory artillery barrages during the night and their troops will advance at dawn. This is the standard tactic in a big push. It has the advantage of surprise and leaves a whole day for troops to advance through unknown country. To counter it, every day at nightfall we withdraw our troops from the front line trenches over a depth of two or three kilometres, leaving behind a few sacrificial victims charged with signalling the enemy approach by launching flares. The troops take up defensive positions on the ridge, protecting a line that the enemy must not be allowed to cross. Just before daybreak our battalions go back to their usual front line positions and make it clear by their activity that they are still there. It is vital that the enemy does not know about this manoeuvre. Basically, we are doing to him what he successfully did to us in April ’17 at different points on the Chemin des Dames. He will squander his bombardment on empty trenches and then throw himself against well-manned positions equipped with machine guns. The battle will take place on ground of our choosing.

While we were resting, the sector had been arming itself at a prodigious rate. We wake the next morning to find guns all over the place. The biggest, the 120s and long-barrelled 155 GPFs, and the 270s which fire enormous shells, are hidden behind walls and banks. On the right, shells have simply been piled up in cornfields which provide them with natural camouflage. The countryside is suddenly packed with all kinds of artillery, its dark, gaping mouths menacing the other army. They say there are tanks at the rear and General Gouraud is ready for anything. All these preparations give us some confidence.

The sector’s gun batteries are doing their own preparatory work, their aim being to make life difficult for enemy troop concentrations. Between sunset and three in the morning each battery fires several hundred shells filled with mustard gas. The new batteries remain silent, for the Germans must not suspect their presence until the fighting starts.

All the activity is on our side and at night. In the daytime we’ve never known the sector so quiet. Not a single explosion or rifle shot, not a German aeroplane to be seen; the enemy isn’t even sending up observation balloons any more. Deep silence reigns, off into infinity, beneath the clear, blue sky. You can make out all the little sounds of a summer’s day in the country, made by unseen creatures; the buzz and hum of insects, the beating of countless wings, and the faint rustle and crackle of the corn in the heat. Yet this peace is one more portent of what is to come. We read in the reports that a similar torpor preceded the offensives at Amiens and Château-Thierry.

My name is on the list of those due for leave at the next departure. I am waiting for the attack, or my leave. Which will come first?

A few days go by. It’s leave . . . I hurriedly bid farewell to my envious comrades.

It’s 15 July and I am off to visit friends in the suburbs. On the tram I open the newspaper. Banner headlines announce the defeat of the German offensive in Champagne. My first instinctive thought is: ‘I got out of it!’ My second is about the men in my regiment, who are fighting at this very moment, being shelled and counter-attacking. I am too closely bound to them to forget. What state will they be in when I return?

My friends, who are industrialists, have a son who is about to be called up, and his mother is worried. So she has decided to help her son’s career by finding him the connections that could get him into a sector where he would not be in too much danger; their choice was motor transport. This provident mother had used her wiles to establish good relations with a general attached to the regional command and to persuade him to accept an invitation to visit their home. She had been warned that this general had a mania for writing little plays in verse, somewhere between tragedies and revues. To cement their relationship she came up with the idea of putting on one his dramas at a charity fête in aid of a small hospital that she manages. It is to this fête that we have been invited.

I am presented to the general. The embarrassment is mutual. Neither of us knows how to properly reconcile hierarchy with normal social relations. Cap in hand, I salute, but without standing to attention, and make a slight bow. But I prevent myself from saying ‘Delighted to meet you!’ (a soldier in uniform cannot be delighted to meet a general, even at a social occasion). He looks at me.

‘Aha! Excellent! Good day, young man!’

He does not ask about the war. It’s not his department.

This is the first time I’ve met a general in private life; I observe this one closely. He’s a stout little man with a red face, who walks with his legs apart like a cavalier. He is wearing the old-fashioned uniform of black tunic and red trousers over elasticated boots. He has a poet’s long, flowing locks, a nasty glint in his eye, the air of a cunning satyr. The table is set for twenty and he has been placed on the immediate right of the lady of the house. He speaks in a clipped military manner, picks and chooses among the different dishes, and puts his nose to women’s arms as if to check how fresh they smell. His sense of humour bears an unpleasant trace of the barracks; he tells funny stories that are somewhat coarser than one is used to accept in polite society. Moreover he eats heartily and gulps down the burgundy with impressive intrepidity. He does not look up from his plate except to sniff his female neighbours and leer at their décolletage. Since he is the man who must protect young Frédéric, the son of the house, one finds these manners absolutely charming. One responds favourably to his jokes.

After coffee, the cars take us to the nearby aerodrome. A Bessonneau hangar has been transformed into a theatre. A stage has been built, benches set out, and acting roles given to young aviators, of whom the bourgeoisie of this place have provided rather a lot. Soldiers from the camp, wounded from the hospital, and local people are all there. The general, surrounded by various dignitaries, sits in the front row in an armchair. The curtain rises. As was to be expected, the revue celebrates the virtues of the race and the valour of our fighters. One after another, an infantryman, artilleryman, horseman, machine-gunner, grenadier, etc., come on to the stage and recite Cornelian couplets with very warlike vehemence. At the end of each tableau, a luminous France, draped in tricolour sheets, clasps them all to her bosom. The general’s sublime alexandrines, in which ‘trench’ rhymes with ‘French’ and ‘savagery’ with ‘Germany’ are greatly relished by the civilians, who stamp their feet with restrained enthusiasm. It is a real shame to let such energy go to waste; they should be given weapons immediately and taken to Champagne . . .

The general receives many congratulations, which he accepts with the modesty of genius. My obscurity luckily prohibits me from offering my own: a common soldier cannot have an opinion on something that emanates from a great leader. At last he is accompanied to his staff car. He carefully settles himself down on his cushions and makes his departure, distributing little limp waves as he goes, like a bishop giving blessings.

The lady of the house then discovers that the envelope he has given her for her hospital contains a derisory sum, the kind of tip one might give a maid. Some observe that his behaviour at dinner was not of the best, and I foresee the moment when he will be denounced as a miserable skinflint . . . But the appearance of Frédéric tempers any criticism: the child has not yet been placed! Until further notice it is advisable to find the general charming, refined, spiritual . . .