Paths of Glory (12 page)

The star shells were becoming fewer, but a light remained none the less. The bombardment was now drumfire, and the air was heavy with the smell of explosives. It was getting harder to see the flashes of the detonations because the darkness of the night was thinning. But the earth continued to jump and rock, and whole sections of trench caved in, crumbled and lay still, smoking a little. The wire zinged to the flying metal and chunks of it, thrown aloft by the shells, came down and fell into the trench.

The horizon began to widen slowly, swept back by the dawn which was now advancing with gathering speed. Men looked at the debris around them, and at each other, searching for the faces of friends, then turned again to wait and to stare....

A fire began to burn, over in the German lines. The fire grew brighter and revealed its shape: the sun. Slowly it raised itself out of the earth, red and hostile-looking, but welcome to the men who watched it. It swelled to enormous size, then paused in delicate contact with the rim of the world like a dancer waiting for the first notes of the ballet. For a moment the two edges were tangent and seemed to cling. Then the sun stepped off the edge of the earth and was instantly floating in its own space.

The bombardment began to die down slowly and the holocaust was gradually extinguishing itself. The earth seemed to relax from its fearful punishment of steel. Men, too, relaxed a little and began to talk in monosyllables, elliptically. Later, it seemed very quiet after the fury of the paroxysmal gunfire. Later still, when all danger of a dawn attack was over, the order came along the line, from mouth to mouth:

“Stand down! Stand down! Stand down. . . .”

Duval stood down, on the right; so did Langlois on the left. Didier stood down too, near the centre, where he had been overtaken by the bombardment. Everyone stood down, except some scattered sentries. Everyone silently nursed the inner bruising he had received from the drumfire.

The sun, to whose coming all this inferno had been but a prelude, moved higher in the cloudless sky, unmindful, so it seemed, of the havoc caused in honour of the event. Day was full now, and Langlois saw that it was really spring. He saw the delicate blades of grass which the bodies of his comrades had fertilized; he saw the little shoots on the shell-shocked trees. He saw the smoke-puffs of shrapnel being blown about by light breezes. He saw birds making love in the wire that a short while before had been ringing with flying metal. He heard the pleasant sound of larks up there, near the zenith of the trajectories. He smiled a little. There was something profoundly saddening about it. It all seemed so fragile and so absurd.

 

It was about an hour after sunrise when General Assolant's car arrived at Number 5. Number 5 was the place where the Tirailleurs guides had met Colonel Dax the night before, and the spot where Colonel Dax had been standing was now marked by a very large and quite fresh shell-hole. It was this shell-hole, in fact, that brought the general's car to a stop. Had it not been there, the general would have driven right on without seeming to see the officer who was saluting him from its farther lip. He would, to the dismay of his chauffeur and of the aide-de-camp who was with him, have driven right up to the entrance to the communication trench, a few hundred metres beyond the chalk pit, and he might easily have driven right into his own front line. It was the sort of thing the general liked to do. He felt that he owed dashing exploits of this kind to his reputation for dash, a reputation which he spent a good deal of time trying to live up to.

The chauffeur brought the car, skidding, to a halt on the edge of the shell-hole. There was an expression of relief on his face when he turned and said:

“We can't go any further, sir.”

“All right. Wait for us here, then. Come on, Saint-Auban, we'll have to walk it.”

The aide-de-camp got out and held the door for the general, then both moved off round the edge of the shell-hole. The officer on the other side of the hole remained at the salute and, as the general approached him, he pivoted on his heels so that he could keep the salute full in the face of the man for whom it was intended.

“All right, captain. I consider that I have been sufficiently saluted. You may carry on.”

“Colonel Dax sent me to meet you, sir, and to escort you to his headquarters. I am the adjutant of the 181st, Herbillon, sir.”

“Doesn't Dax think I can find my way about my own trenches?”

“Oh, no, sir, yes, sir. Everybody knows that the general is always to be found in the trenches.” It was not an answer to the question, but it was just the right thing to say.

“You'll be an aide-de-camp some day, if you can keep that up,” Saint-Auban said to himself.

“Tell me, Herbillon, why is this utterly undistinguished spot on the road called ‘Number 5'?” Place names, especially military ones, were a hobby of the general's. In fact he was keeping some private notes with the intention of publishing a book on the subject after the war. “Just ‘Number 5.' That's queer. Number 5 what? Battery? Regiment? What?”

“I—er—I don't know, sir. A map co-ordinate, perhaps. . . .”

“Nonsense. Who ever heard of a map co-ordinate in one figure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I say no, sir.”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.” Herbillon floundered, trying to get back into verbal step. The aide-de-camp, having waited to make sure that he would not be contradicted by the adjutant, intervened with a brilliant answer, an answer no less brilliant for being a spontaneous invention:

“Number 5 kilometre, sir,” he said softly, with a smile which he strove to make as brilliant as his answer.

“Of course,” said Assolant. He made a mental note of the fact and was so pleased with the information that he failed to notice it was incomplete—Number 5 kilometre from where? Saint-Auban could not have answered that, for the place was actually not five kilometres from any other particular place. It always had been, and it continued to be—except in the general's private notes—Number 5, nothing more, nothing less.

The morning was cloudless and fresh with spring. The dawn bombardment had died down and there was nothing to show for it but some new shell-holes, in some places linking, in others superimposed upon the old ones. The general walked along the road enjoying the cool and fragrant morning. Now and then a whiff of a less fragrant smell would filter through the bristles of his nostrils, and he enjoyed that too, in a way. Casualties were a part of war. Where there were no casualties, there was no fighting. It would be unthinkable not to have fighting under a fighting commander. The smell of the dead reassured him on this point.

“And how did the relief go off, Herbillon?”

“Quite well, sir. We lost only about thirty men. A direct hit on one section. An officer apparently missing.”

“And the bombardment?”

“The reports hadn't come in when I left, sir.”

“Did the patrol find out anything?”

“Nothing we didn't know. The Boche wire is heavy and his line seems well-manned. They found a machine-gun post in some ruins on our right centre. The lieutenant is at headquarters to report to you personally, if you wish to see him, sir.”

“Well, we'll have the artillery blot it out during the hurricane barrage.... Ah, this must be the famous chalk pit. A bad place all right. I suppose they think we've got some guns or a headquarters in it. They might know the position is too obvious.”

“Yes, sir, this is the place the section got it. See, there are the bodies.”

Assolant glanced at the bundles of motionless clothing without pausing in his stride. He noted that one group wore the uniform of a line regiment and that another, a smaller one, wore that of the Tirailleurs. Large blue flies were buzzing indiscriminately over both groups, and clusters of them were busily feeding at eyes, nostrils, mouths, and open wounds.

“The fatally gregarious instinct of troops in the presence of the enemy.” There was no pity in the general's apostrophe, only a slight contempt. Herbillon thought the remark was very good. More than anything else, perhaps, it reconciled him to the mystery of why Assolants were generals and Herbillons were not.

“That's it exactly, sir,” he said, making no effort to conceal his genuine admiration for such remarkable powers of definition. Saint-Auban said nothing. He had heard the phrase before, and he knew the source to which the general had overlooked crediting it—a military text-book.

The road, beyond the chalk pit, became a sunken road. They met a detail from the 181st going down to fill their clattering petrol tins at the water tanks. The corporal in charge carefully saluted Herbillon who, to him, was the ranking officer of the three. He had failed to notice the stars on Assolant's sleeves, the only indication that a general was present. Assolant was pleased with the corporal's error and accepted it as a tribute to his own soldierlike appearance.

The officers came to a place where the horse dung and the shell-holes lay a bit thicker on the road, indications that they were at a rendezvous of some sort.

“Here's the entrance to the communication trench, sir. Boyau des Perdus.”

“Confound these sniveling names!” said Assolant, petulantly. “Why can't we have names with some inspiration to them, names that express the offensive spirit of the troops? But it's always something about death, almost a defeatist propaganda. Boyau des Perdus; Tranchée des Supplices; Carrefour de la Mort. I'm getting tired of it. Boyau des Perdus! Bah! And look at that, will you! They don't even know how to spell it. What was there, a whore-house around here?”

The general was pointing to the wooden signboard on the side of the road, and he was referring to the feminine spelling of the word “perdu.” The sign was written thus: BOYAU DES PERDUES, and below it was an arrow pointing in the only direction the trench went, namely, straight off into the embankment, on the right-hand side of the road.

“Yes, sir,” said Herbillon, “that is wrong. I'll see that it's changed at once. What name would you suggest, sir? Would the general permit—I mean—er—would the general allow us the honour of naming the trench after him? . . .”

“Certainly not,” said Assolant, flatly, so flatly indeed that Herbillon sensed, Saint-Auban knew, that nothing would have pleased him more. “You can't go around changing names here and there. It would cause too much confusion, to say nothing of the work on the maps. But when I get a chance I'm going to take the matter of these defeatist names up with Army. However, if you want to wallow in perdition in the meantime, you might at least spell it right.”

“As a matter of fact, sir,” said Saint-Auban with a suppressed excitement which indicated that a great moment had come in his career of aide-de-camp, “the error in that sign is actually one of omission, not of spelling.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you will permit me to explain, sir?”

“That's what I'm waiting for you to do.”

“Well, sir, originally there was another word there, a word that is at the same time feminine and masculine. That is to say feminine in grammar, masculine in anatomy.” Saint-Auban was again turning on that brilliant smile of his, the smile which was to supply the brilliance in case his wit did not.

“Stop grinning and making riddles and get on with the point.”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir. What I mean is that this trench was named after a legendary wound that is supposed to have taken place up here. The sign read originally: Boyau des Couilles Perdues—in memory of the emasculation of a sergeant. Somebody or other took exception to the sign and the objectionable word was deleted. The spelling of the adjective remained, however. So the story goes, at least.”

“Ah, that's interesting, very interesting indeed, Saint-Auban. No, on no account must the name of the trench be changed. Ha, ha, ha! D'you suppose that sergeant feels compensated for his sacrifice by having a trench named in commemoration of it? When all is said, it is an honour, a eunuch honour!”

They all laughed uproariously and went into the trench, Herbillon leading the way.

As soon as the order to stand down had been given, Didier went on along the trench to his company. He went down into the dugout, struck a match and found his equipment. The match went out and he felt around in his things until his hand came in contact with a clasp knife, a hunk of bread, and a box of sardines. He took his canteen with him and groped his way up the stairs. He sat down on the top step and worked over the sardine tin with the can-opener in the knife. When he had got the lid curled half-way back he closed the can-opener and opened a blade. He uncorked the canteen and took a drink of the sour, red wine. The wine puckered his mouth and he made a face, then began to eat. He ate quickly and deftly, using the blade alternately as a fork for the sardines and a knife for the bread. Each mouthful was washed down by a swig of wine. He was hungry and the food tasted good to him. Other men were squatting up and down the dugout steps and in the traverse outside. They too were eating their breakfasts, talking between mouthfuls.