Fear (37 page)

The days go by and our victories continue, one after another. There is no doubt that the end is in sight. Clemenceau and Foch are popular, but we cannot admire them: they threaten our lives and their status goes up as our numbers go down.

Our lives now become ever more precious as we see the chance of saving them. We are less and less prepared to risk them. Thus we stop complaining about having to hold our positions for so long, since everywhere else our troops are attacking.

The night is disturbed by a dull sound, the murmur of an ocean, masses on the march. It starts far off in the rear, comes out of the distance, spreads across the plain, rises up towards us like a flood. Something is happening out there in the darkness, something vast and spectacular . . .

In the morning we see heavy artillery down in the ravine where the reserves are encamped. Tribes of artillerymen drive us out of our shelters. We are informed that henceforth we are not allowed to use the roads, which are reserved for convoys; the infantry must stick to the paths.

This deployment of forces and the new regulations confirm the news that is starting to spread: Gouraud’s forces are attacking. Preparations continue through the following nights. We lie awake listening to the great hum of human activity. Once daylight comes, everything stops, everything slumbers. The number of big guns keeps rising. In the battalion’s dugouts and shelters, the men exchange views:

‘We’re going to be relieved.’

‘Yeah, probably. They can’t expect us to do the attacking after leaving us here in the shit for five bloody months!’

‘It’s the colonials who are coming. They’ve been seen at the rear.’

For two days we wait optimistically for the assault troops to arrive. On the third day we learn that the assault troops are us . . . This news is not greeted with enthusiasm.

We receive quantities of paperwork, including maps on which I have to work flat out marking objectives and routes. We have to move several times to make way for the rising tide of artillerymen. On the fourth night we crowd into damp saps, packed in too tightly to stretch out. We don’t sleep any more, we are too tired and worried. The power suggested by all the rumbling in the nights reassures us slightly. Men coming up from the rear say that there is artillery everywhere. Those who come from the front report that our 75s, covered with a simple camouflage of painted canvas, are lined up on the plain between our first and second lines.

We feel sure that ‘it will work’. But we also know that it cannot work without losses and that we have to
go over the top
, that chilling phrase.

Our battalion will form the regiment’s second wave.

The evening of 24 September. We are entering the fifth and final night. Three years ago, to the day, I was waiting on the eve of the attack in Artois.

We go up to take our assault positions where we have to be before the bombardment which will begin very soon. We are marching with an infantry company. The men are fully equipped, without heavy packs, but with food rations for several days. A captain adjutant-major has been working alongside the commandant for the past few days.

We crowd into a big sap on the left sector, on the side of the ravine which separates the front lines. We are too many to fit in the shelter and I predict another sleepless night. But I have made up my mind to get some sleep. Partly as a precaution, to build up a store of sleep on which I can live for the next day or two. Partly because it is bad to spend the eve of a battle lying awake and thinking about all that might happen when nothing can be done to change it. I manage to get to the front of the line and find some bunks in a small dugout. I share one with a comrade. I wrap myself up and sleep.

I wake later. The darkness is full of people’s backs, of bodies jumbled together. I see one man leaning on his elbows staring pensively into the flame of a candle.

‘What time is it?’ I ask.

‘Two o’clock.’

‘Has it started?’

‘Yes, it’s been going on since eleven.’

And indeed I can hear rumbling in the distance. No shells are coming down above us at the moment.

‘What time do we go?’

‘Five twenty-five.’

Three hours of safety and oblivion left . . . I go back to sleep.

Someone is shaking me violently.

‘Up, now, come on, we’re attacking . . .’ I hear.

We are attacking? . . . Oh, yes, right, now is the time . . . There is agitation all round me. Candlelight reveals tense, hardened faces, reflecting the anger that is a reaction to weakness. Everyone is asking questions:

‘Is it going OK up there?’

‘Are the Boche hitting back much?’

I have got to rush! I leap off my bunk, roll up my blanket and tent canvas, still thick-headed. I must concentrate on my gear: my two haversacks, water bottle, gas mask, maps, pistol . . . Have I forgotten anything? . . . Oh, yes, my cane, my chinstrap . . . I have scarcely got everything when the order is shouted:

‘Forward!’

We are near an exit. I take my place in the line, follow the others. We are already at the foot of the steps, we are going up, we are going to go out . . . the terrible moment when you surrender yourself . . .

Outside . . . Whistles and screams of the bombardment we have unleashed . . . Into the colourless chill of dawn, like splashing your face in a tub of icy water. We are all shivering, our faces green, mouths thick with that foul smell that bad awakenings belch up. We wait in the communication trench to give the column time to get organised.

Whipcracks lash the air, so low it seems they might take our heads off; it is the mad onslaught of our 75s whose barrage precedes our assault. Above that the heavy artillery forms a vault of gasps and growls across the sky. A vast net of trajectories is spread over the earth and we are caught in its mesh. Waves of sound collide, break, swirl and eddy overhead. Impossible still to make out what contribution the enemy is making to this overwhelming storm of steel.

Still, some distinct explosions indicate incoming shells, though none of them land near us. We stand motionless on the threshold of the battle, all retreat cut off. Our voices are as pale as our faces. To get a grip on myself, I turn to my neighbour and, speaking slowly and precisely with feigned indifference, as if I am using a foreign language, tell him:

‘The strap on your water bottle is unfastened, mind you don’t lose it.’

‘Forward!’

We set off down the communication trenches. Here we go. Soon we are descending the slopes of the ravine, covered with a sinister mist that smells like gas. We put on our masks then remove them again because we can’t breathe. We go up the reverse slope and come out on to the plateau.

We are now at the enemy positions. There is such chaos that we have to leave the trenches and move forward on the plain. We are entering a repulsive landscape, where nature has been stripped bare, closed off by a horizon of swirling, booming, thick yellow smoke. Five hundred metres ahead, thin columns of men are taking possession of this erupting expanse, conquering the flanks of a deserted, ravaged and sulphurous planet. From time to time, black balls with red hearts burst among the columns: enemy shells.

I tell myself that there is a certain grandeur to this spectacle. It is quite moving to watch these pathetically small, fragile groups of men, little blue caterpillars, so far apart, marching to meet the thunder, disappearing into the gullies and ditches and re-emerging on the slopes of this valley of hell. It is moving to watch these pygmies controlling the advance of the cataclysm, commanding the elements, wrapping themselves in a sky of fire that clears and ploughs all that is ahead of them.

All grandeur and beauty suddenly vanishes. We are passing scattered, broken corpses, men in blue lying flat in the nothingness on a litter of blood and entrails. One of the wounded is writhing, grimacing and screaming, his arm torn off, torso ripped open. We all know him. He was the batman for the intelligence officer, a giant of a man who was even more ‘dug-in’ than us . . . We turn our eyes away so as not to see the reproach in his, we hurry on so as not to hear his imploring cries.

This is where we really enter the battle – our flesh on full alert . . .

It’s nine o’clock. The sun is shining.

After many pauses, we have reached the rim of a valley whose floor is still hidden by a light mist. Above this mist on the other side emerge the slopes held by the enemy, with their menacing trenches. We have advanced for two or three kilometres over abandoned positions. The enemy had pulled back, covering its retreat with just a few sacrificed troops who surrendered without putting up any fight. We passed a detachment of prisoners dazed by the night’s hammering.

Soon the black American regiment appeared; they were following us. They formed a line along the ridge, their mass silhouetted against the sky. Thousands of bayonets glistened at the ends of their rifles. They were laughing. Many of them had already swopped their weapons and gas masks for German equipment.

‘It’s stupid to stay up there in full view!’ some observe wisely.

But no one is listening to them. We are a bit intoxicated by our victory. Our losses were very low. We fraternise with the Americans.

We waste a good hour like this. Flights of enemy aeroplanes appear overhead. Fighters circle gracefully, gathering information on our positions, which does not bother us.

At last the Americans march off along a communication trench which leads down into the valley. We wave to them cheerfully as they disappear, full of confidence.

We have another long wait. The mist has cleared, our bombardment ceased. For the first time today we hear machine guns . . .

Now it is our turn. The battalion goes off along the wide communication trench, which is open to enfilade fire from the ridges opposite along its entire length. One man in front of me separates me from the commandant, himself preceded by the captain adjutant-major.

The enemy can see us. 77s and 88s start to strike the parapets with terrible precision and regularity. Machine guns support them. A swarm of bullets is buzzing round our ears, tormenting us . . . Then there is some kind of bottleneck ahead. The front of the column stops moving. We stay there, crouched down and panting, offering ourselves as targets all the way down this slope. The shells are getting ever closer. Our situation is hopeless if we continue to go down the trench. We will leave hundreds of dead men behind us.

There is a terrible explosion right next to us. People are shouting:

‘Get in the shelter, quick!’

Our commandant, his face ashen, turns back, pushes past us and throws himself down the steps of a German deep shelter a few metres way. I can understand his panic. The shell went straight into the captain adjutant-major, blew up in his chest and scattered him in pieces, but, miraculously, did not claim any other victims. By terrifying the commandant, this death saved all of us.

We crowd through the shelter’s two entrances. Just as I am going in I recognise Sergeant Brelan, a teacher, with whom I have had some friendly chats in the past. I draw back:

‘After you, sergeant!’

This gesture takes two seconds, time enough for a few shells or ten bullets to find me . . . Refinement, a wish to impress? I do not think so. It was more a matter of concern for my morale, a way of warding off panic. More than anything I am afraid of fear itself overwhelming me. One must use any bit of folly to control it.

For the next two hours, heavy shells hunt us in our underground shelter, where we spend the rest of the day.

We take advantage of the clear night to continue our journey down the valley, whose floor is covered with a bog about two hundred metres long. We cross this by a narrow footbridge which the Germans had left intact to give themselves a way of escape. A few big time-shells go off just above us.

Our successive waves of troops from this morning now form a single line at the foot of a four-metre bank, the limit of our advance. Above the bank there is another stretch of flat ground, swept by German machine-gun fire since nightfall. The Americans were stopped here with heavy losses. Corpses rolled down the slope where in the darkness they got mixed in with the sleeping bodies of the living. We attack at first light.

Our preparation starts a little before dawn. Our shells are coming down just in front of us. But they fail to demolish the bunkers from which the machine guns are firing with fury.

Then a battery of 75s fires short. We can clearly hear the four bangs when the shells depart and they are above us with terrifying speed, exploding only a few metres ahead. The bog prevents any retreat. It feels as if death will strike us from behind, and we have a quarter-hour of total panic under these fratricidal blows. We fire off all our red warning rockets to tell them to increase the range. The fire then stops but by then we are too demoralised to attack. And in any case the machine guns are still sweeping the open ground.

Day has dawned. Heavy shells are seeking out the footbridge to cut off our communications. They throw up showers of mud.

In the afternoon the machine guns go silent. We move forward without any opposition. At the entrance to a sap lies a German corpse, a hole in his temple: one of those who held us up.

We advance very slowly for some days, with lengthy delays caused by invisible machine guns. The land we conquer is covered with our corpses. The Americans, who do not understand how to use cover or shelters, have been badly hit. We have seen them changing positions following the whistle, as artillery fire is striking the middle of their sections, throwing men into the air. They launched a bayonet attack on the village of Sochaux across open ground. And left behind hundreds of dead.

Overall, the artillery fire is not doing us a lot of damage and the Germans only have a few guns to use against us. But it is true that they use them well, holding their fire till they have spotted troops massing. Mostly, though, they are covering their retreat with machine-gunners who must have orders to hold us down for a certain time. Over broken, bare ground, well concealed machine guns have an extraordinary effectiveness that tests us cruelly. Some resolute platoons stop whole battalions. We do not see any of the enemy. Some surrender at the last minute, others escape into the night, their mission accomplished. All this confirms once again that the attacker, obliged to use dense troop formations, has the more dangerous role. If we had chosen a defensive strategy in 1914, we would have avoided Charleroi and done considerable damage to the German forces.