Paths of Glory (15 page)

Assolant looked into the binoculars and failed to control the start which Dax had hoped to surprise from him by the sight he had prepared. The telescopic lenses seemed to spring the mass of bodies right into his face. The bodies were so tangled that most of them could not be distinguished one from the other. Hideous, distorted, and putrescent, they lay tumbled upon each other or hung in the wire in obscene attitudes, a shocking mound of human flesh, swollen and discoloured. Here and there the numerals of the Tirailleurs were plainly visible.

Assolant wheeled on Dax, incensed by the impertinence of a lesson which had at last got home to him, angry words crowding to the tip of his tongue . . .

There was a crash, a tinkle of glass, and the periscope toppled over, shattered.

“I shall not detain you any longer, colonel. Good day.”

Assolant walked off round the corner of the traverse alone.

 

Sergeant Picard, who had been in charge of Number 8 Post the night before, came into Captain Renouart's dugout and saluted.

“Excuse me, sir. Is it true that we're attacking in the morning? The rumour is all over the place.”

“Yes, it's true, sergeant. And I want to see all the N.C.O.'s here after supper this evening. Pass the word around, will you?”

“Yes, sir. May I have permission then to visit the men? I'm off duty.”

“Certainly.”

The sergeant fumbled around in his pocket for a moment and brought out a long, narrow strip of purple cloth which was piped with grey. He kissed it and passed it over his head and it hung down in front to his knees.

“My son,” he said, and his voice seemed to have taken a gentler tone now that he was wearing the stole, “do you wish to make your peace with God?”

“Yes, father,” said the captain. “Where can we go?”

“Why not outside,” the sergeant said. He turned to the others in the dugout, half a dozen officers, runners, and orderlies, and added, “When the captain comes down, any of you who want to can come up. I shall wait.”

The sergeant sat on the firing-step and Captain Renouart knelt on the floor of the trench and began his confession. A soldier came into the traverse and hurried by without appearing to notice what was going on.

When he had received absolution, the captain got up, brushed his knees off and went back into the dugout.

The sergeant waited, sitting on the firing-step. He waited for ten minutes, then he too got up and turned to face the dugout entrance. He made the sign of the cross in its direction, silently gave the occupants a general absolution, then picked up his rifle and went off along the trench.

 

During the afternoon, Langlois was sent back to the regimental train with a message for the quartermaster. He delivered the message and went off to look for a friend of his, the corporal who acted as regimental carpenter. The corporal was not there, but the arrangement of his tools indicated that his absence was a temporary one. Langlois sat down on a box outside the corporal's tent to wait for him and to smoke a cigarette. He still had in his pocket the letter which he had written his wife at the Café du Carrefour the day before, telling her he would be out of danger for a week or so. He now had the opportunity to post the letter, but he was unable to decide whether to do so or not. If he posted it and was afterwards killed, the war ministry's notification would be a doubly cruel blow for his wife. On the other hand, suppose he posted it and came through all right. Then he would have done her a distinct kindness by anticipating his fate. Had he the right, though, to gamble with another person's feelings? The reply to that was, yes, if he won the bet, no if he didn't. He was right back where he started from.

His gaze wandered over the corporal's interrupted work: a saw, a hammer, and nails and, piled neatly beside the improvised bench, strips of wood. The laths in one pile were longer than those in the other, and they were shaped to a point at one end only. “What's he making?” Langlois asked himself. The answer eluded him until he had finished his cigarette. He tossed the butt away and followed it with his eyes to the place where it landed, just short of a box of stencils. Instantly the various parts of the corporal's work fell together and stood completed in his mind—markers for graves.

Langlois got up and lighted another cigarette. He nursed the match while he pulled the letter out of his pocket with his free hand, then set fire to it, dropped it to the ground where he watched it flame, curl, and lie still.

 

The day passed quickly for most of the men of the 181st. There was a good deal of unostentatious activity going on in the sector, subterranean and semi-subterranean activity which could not be seen by enemy observers. It was the aim of everybody to preserve, so far as the Germans were concerned, an appearance of normality throughout a day which could not be quite normal. The eve of an attack always seemed to have a quality of newness, of exciting newness, no matter how often it might repeat itself.

One or two flights of aeroplanes crossed the German lines some distance to the north, wheeled to their right and returned to their own lines after having travelled an almost equal number of miles to the south. The Pimple sector had not, however, escaped attention from the observers or their cameras.

In the headquarters dugout, in the Tranchée des Zouaves, Adjutant Herbillon had spent most of the afternoon doing his paper work. The last thing he did before going up for a breath of the evening air was to make out the requisition for the next day's rations for the regiment. This he did, easily enough and as a matter of routine, by taking the preceding day's requisition and cutting it by fifty per cent.

An artillery officer, followed by a man who was stringing a wire, came to the observation post. For some reason he did not care for its location and so moved off to find a place better to his liking. There he registered a number of shots in the German wire, using a mysterious jargon of his own, then packed up and left, taking his wire with him. Everything he did was done with precision and self-assurance and, if he had to address himself to an infantry-man, even of higher rank than himself, there was a faint condescension in his manner.

Perhaps the reason the artillery officer had disliked the observation post was that it had, since the general's visit, become an unusually active rendezvous. First, the regimental telephonists had arrived to install the telephone wire to the seventy-fives. They were not yet through with their work when other telephonists showed up, bringing the private line from divisional headquarters with them. The co-operation between these two groups was not an enthusiastic one. The owners of the divisional wire considered themselves entitled to priority, while those who actually possessed the priority were disinclined to yield it. Their squabbles showed every evidence of transforming themselves from oral to physical ones when regimental officers began arriving at the post in pairs to familiarize themselves with their objectives and boundaries, easy to identify now that the declining sun shed its light full on the slope of the hill opposite. The telephonists were, therefore, forced to compose their differences and to complete their work with a proper regard for correct behavior when in the presence of authority.

All this and other activity was merely a projection of the intense activity at the source—divisional headquarters. The energy spread from the source, fanwise, down the various communicating and dependent centres, losing some of its intenseness in direct ratio to the distance it travelled. Zero hour would reverse the flow of energy and the centre of activity would be shifted in one bound from the rear to the front, giving point to one of Assolant's chief complaints against modern war: that a general was condemned to days of intensely busy preparation before an attack, but that once zero hour was at hand, he might just as well turn in and go to sleep.

Just at present, however, all was relatively relaxed and quiet in the ranks except for those detailed to fatigues, mainly the lugging up of small-arms ammunition, grenades, and explosive charges for dugouts. Men slept in funk-holes or dugouts, or sat in the entrances or in the traverses, tinkering with their equipment, delousing themselves, smoking, thinking, or talking.

Sergeant Picard had just left Captain Sancy's Number 4 Company lines. The sight of the sergeant, but more particularly that of his stole, had had the effect of transforming the prevalent rumour of an attack into a certainty. A group of Number 4 Company men were talking.

“When the priests come around you always know there's death in the wind.”

“Yes, and you're the first one to run to them.”

“Naturally, I always take every precaution.”

“Including the permanganate of potash?”

“Don't blaspheme.” It was said sarcastically.

“Listen to who's talking about blasphemy! The Jew!”

“Well, there's nobody knows any more about it than those two.”

“What d'you mean by that?”

“Well, you've done time in Cayenne, haven't you, Meyer? And Férol has served in the Legion. They're not seminaries, those places.”

“You've said it. You've got to be a man to go through the dry guillotine,” said Meyer.

“And you've got to be two men to be in the Legion,” Férol retorted. Meyer and Férol were started again on their everlasting wrangle, a wrangle which always removed them from the general conversation and which quite often ended in blows.

“They're off again. Who gives a curse which is tougher, Algeria or Guiana?”

“You're right. This war's tough enough for me. I'd swap places right now with any convict or legionary, anywhere. . . .”

“That's because you're afraid of going over the top tomorrow, afraid of being killed.”

“I'm not going to be killed.”

“Don't say that, it's bad luck.”

“Bad luck nothing. This war is bad luck.”

“I know I won't be killed because I'm not afraid of it. It's always the ones who are afraid of it who get it. You've seen that.”

“That may be true. I don't know. But I'm afraid of it and they haven't got me yet. What's more, they're not going to. They haven't got my number.”

“Don't say that, I tell you. That's a sure way to get it.”

“If you stay here long enough, you'll get it. That's sure anyway.”

“What time's zero hour?”

“Usual time. Dawn, I suppose.”

“They say the general was down here today.”

“Which one? There's millions of generals. This army is all generals and privates.”

“Joffre, of course.”

“Say, he couldn't get that carcass of his into a trench.”

“And he wouldn't if he could.”

“They must feed well down at G.H.Q.”

“Generals and priests are always fat.”

“I've never seen a picture of a fat English general. And Assolant isn't fat.”

“Who's Assolant?”

“You tell him.”

“He's the divisional mascot. A pet tiger. He can kill you with a look.”

“Well, anyway, generals and priests always mean death. That's sure.”

“If those colonials would ever shut up, I'd take a nap.”

“Colonials is good. . . .”

 

Langlois got back to his section in time for the evening meal, breakfast for some of the men who had managed to get some sleep during the day.

“Hey there, Langlois, what's new at the regimental train? Any papers?”

“No papers, but it's going to be an attack all right.”

“You're telling us! It's been official around here for hours.”

“Yes, the general was through here . . .”

“And the priest . . .”

“And look at those extra packages of ammunition . . .”

“Yes, I know. The carpenter was making wooden crosses.”

“Did they look pretty?”

“He didn't make one for me.”

“Don't say that. That's a sure way to get it.”

“Stay here long enough, that's the sure way to get it.”

“Was he making one for you, Langlois? Did you print your own name while you had the chance?”

“I don't know and I don't care much. I'm not afraid of dying, only of getting killed.”

“That's as clear as trench mud.”

“Well, which would you rather be done in by, a bayonet or a machine gun?”

“A machine gun, naturally.”

“Naturally—that's just my point. They're both pieces of steel going into your guts. Only the machine gun is cleaner, quicker, less painful, isn't it?”

“What does that prove?”

“That proves that most of us are more afraid of getting hurt than of getting killed. Look at Bernard. He's in a panic when it comes to gas, but gas doesn't mean anything to me. He's seen photos of gas cases and it looks bad to him. Now that doesn't bother me a bit. But I hate like the devil to be without my tin hat. But I don't mind not having a tin hat for my tail. Why's that?”

“Well, you ought to, since that's where your brains seem to be. Why is it you don't want a tin hat for your tail? You tell us.”

“Because I know a wound in the head will hurt much more than one in the tail. Your tail is just flesh, but your head is all bone . . .”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I am. Now you tell me, apart from bayonets, what are you most afraid of?”

“High explosive.”

“Me too.”

“And me.”

“Exactly. It's the same with me,” said Langlois. “Because it can chew you up worse than anything else. Just what I'm trying to tell you. If you're really afraid of dying, you'd be living in a funk all your life because you know you've got to some day, any day. And besides, if it's death you're afraid of, why should you care about what it is that kills you? Why are you more afraid of shells than machine guns, or bayonets than shells?”