Paths of Glory (17 page)

“There it is . . .” he said.

 

“There it is,” said Captain Charpentier as the sky behind him filled with the piercing whine of countless shells. The roar of the discharge, like that of a huge, long-pent force which has burst its bonds, blotted all thought from his mind. Silence behind him, for a moment, while the guns were being reloaded, in front of him the crash of the barrage as it struck the ground and burst two hundred metres from the trench. The earth trembled with the shock of the impact. Clouds of dark smoke leapt upwards, then bowed before the wind. The pungent smell of explosives was everywhere, all at once. Shovelfuls of mud were hurled into the air, then fell back again, scattered. The place buzzed and sang with flying metal. Men crouched a little and moved closer to one another.

Charpentier looked at his watch. It was already zero plus forty seconds.

The earthquake continued. The barrage seemed like an elemental upheaval, terrifying alike to those it was meant to protect and to those it was meant to destroy. S O S rockets were bursting all along the enemy line, rising, bursting, and falling with their absurd deliberateness, aloof from the turmoil below.

Machine-gun bullets began to clip the French parapet and to splash mud around.

At zero plus three minutes the German counter-barrage was adding to the chaos, tearing up the French wire, moving back and forth across the front line. Already there were cries for stretcher-bearers in the trenches, but nobody could hear them. At the same time the enemy's heavy machine guns were coming into action along the whole sector and the parapets were under a steady spray of bullets.

At zero plus five there was a momentary lull while the French guns were being re-aimed for the rolling barrage.

Whistles sounded along the jumping-off line.

Charpentier climbed onto the smoking parapet, shouting and waving to his men to follow. He stood there, waving and shouting, an heroic-looking figure, fit for any recruiting poster. He did not feel heroic, though. All he felt was the blister on his heel and the intoxication of the vibration all about him.

Men started to scramble over the parapet, slipping, clawing, panting. Charpentier turned to lead the way. The next instant his decapitated body fell into his own trench.

Four other bodies followed right after his, knocking over some of the men who were trying to get out. Three times the men of Number 2 Company attempted to advance, and each time the parapet was swept clean by the deadly machine-gun fire. It couldn't be done, that was all. The men, with one accord, decided to wait.

Number 1 Company got as far as its own wire, but it was driven to earth there by the German barrage. Unable to advance, the men crept back, one by one, to the less meagre protection of their trench. Captain Renouart was the last to go. He had given up ordering his men forward. It was useless.

The two companies on the left made a bit better showing to begin with. About fifty men of Number 4 Company managed to get beyond their wire, but only a half dozen survived, among them Meyer and Férol.

Number 3 Company, Lieutenant Bonnier leading them, got away from their jumping-off position with less trouble than the other had had. But they missed some of the lanes and got tangled up in their own wire, and it was there that the sweeping German machine-gun fire caught them. Everybody was shouting, unheard by anyone else. They seemed to be dancing a crazy dance in their efforts to disentangle themselves . . .

“Get down! Get down!” Bonnier shouted, himself standing waist deep in the wire. “Get down! Get down! . . .”

His shouts turned to gurgles. Blood sputtered in his mouth. His legs gave way under him. The din faded out of his ears with astonishing speed. Silence. Darkness. Lieutenant Bonnier sat down in the wire. He sat there as if he were attentively reading a book. He had taken a burst of machine-gun bullets full in the chest.

By zero plus thirty-five minutes the third attack on the Pimple was all over, stopped in its tracks, smothered.

Adjutant Herbillon's paper work on the ration requisition had been estimated with some accuracy.

Telephonist-Corporal Nolot had a good story to tell. That was obvious to his mess-mates back at Division and they accordingly gave him the seat of honour at the table and set a bottle and a mug within his reach.

“The best day of my life,” he began, almost squirming with delight. “Old Sharkface told where to get off. And by a mere captain! I heard the whole business. I couldn't close the wire because he was talking through the open extension. You can't run a switchboard in an observation post, you know. And anyway, I'd have heard his side of—”

“Never mind all that . . .”

“Yes, begin at the beginning . . .”

“And don't leave out anything . . .”

“But don't put in anything, either.”

“Make it short, I've got to go.”

“Never mind him, tell us everything.”

“Well, I was squatting on the floor. I had the receiver to the seventy-fives in one hand, the other in the other. Ernest, here, was on the other end of that one. The general had asked for the weather report three hundred and seventy-nine times . . .”

“Sixty-nine,” said Ernest.

“Oh, get your mind off it for a while . . .”

“Yes, don't interrupt. I've got to go in a minute and I want to hear it.”

“Well, I kept on giving him the weather reports. They were all the same one. The last time he asked for it was about zero minus fifteen. We fiddled around there, Ernest telling me the time every minute and me repeating it. Wasted breath though, because all Sharkface looked at was his watch and the Pimple. One eye on each, so to speak.”

“So then, after a while, Ernest says ‘Zero.' I know it was zero all right. Hell had just broken loose. Zero for the Boche and for plenty of the boys, too . . .”

“Never mind the accompaniment . . .”

“Sharkface and Nicolas, that's the artillery officer, were glued to their glasses. And they stayed glued too. Then Ernest says, ‘Zero plus five,' and you could hear the fire slacken for a moment while they fixed the guns. Ernest starts to tell me a dirty story. By the way, where did you say the flea woke up . . . ?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Well, suddenly I hear Sharkface yelling, ‘Name of God! Where are they?'

“‘There, on the left, sir,' Nicolas yells back at him.

“‘But that's only a handful. Where's the rest? Zero plus six and they're not out of the trench yet. . . .'

“Then a couple of minutes later from Sharkface, ‘Any reports yet?'

“Ernest says there aren't any reports yet. As if there could be! I start to yell this to Nicolas but Sharkface is already doing some yelling of his own:

“‘The dirty cowards! They aren't advancing. The barrage is getting away from them. . . .' Then he thinks it over I suppose and what d'you think he says next? He's in a terrible rage. He says, ‘By God, if they won't advance behind a barrage, they will in front of one! Captain, order the seventy-fives to fire on the jumping-off positions. That'll blast them out.'”

“Jesus! You don't mean it?”

“Just as sure as I'm sitting here.”

“What does the captain do?”

“He looks as if somebody had shot him. He says, ‘Sir?' Question-like, see?”

“And what does Sharkface say?”

Nolot was letting them drag it out of him, and enjoying doing so.

“He says, ‘You heard me,' and he gives the captain a look that would spike a gun. So Nicolas picks up the map and the extension receiver to the seventy-fives and says:

“‘Hello, Polygon. General orders both batteries to fire on 32, 58, and 73. End. Repeat.' Those were the squares marked off on the map. The fellow down there repeats it right and then I hear him passing it on. A couple of minutes go by and the voice comes back:

“‘Polygon speaking. Battery Commander says there must be some mistake. Those indications are our own front line. Please verify. End.'

“So Nicolas tells that to Sharkface and he says, ‘Tell them there's no mistake and to obey at once. The troops are mutinying, refusing to advance. Fire as ordered until further notice.' And he can swear worse than any trooper I've ever heard.

“There's another wait, a bit longer. Then the voice says—now listen to this—it says, ‘Battery Commander respectfully reports that he cannot execute such an order unless it is in writing and signed by the general.'

“‘Give it to me,' says Sharkface and grabs the receiver out of Nicolas's hand. He roars like a bull, ‘Get the Battery Commander on the wire at once. General Assolant speaking.'

“I can hear the fellow at the other end falling all over himself. Pretty soon another voice begins:

“‘Battery Commander speaking, sir.'

“‘Are you going to obey my orders?' Sharkface bellows at him.

“‘Not that one, sir, with all respect, unless it is in writing.' Calm, just like that.

“‘For the last time I say, will you obey my order, Name of God!'

“‘With all respect, sir, no. Unless it is in writing and signed by you.'

“There's a pause for a moment. Sharkface is fuming and looks as if he's going to burst. Then the voice begins again:

“‘With all respect, sir, you have no right to order me to shoot down my own men unless you are willing to take full and undivided responsibility for it. I must have a written order before I can execute such a command. Supposing you are killed, sir, then where will I be . . . ?'

“‘You'll be in front of a firing-squad tomorrow morning, that's where you'll be. I'm running a battle up here, not a bank. D'you think I carry an office around with me? What's your name?'

“‘Pelletier, sir.'

“‘Hand over your command and report yourself under arrest to my headquarters.'

“‘Yes, sir.' He says it just like that. Sounded a bit tired.

“It was about zero plus thirty then and Ernest starts buzzing in my other ear, ‘According to first reports attack has apparently failed all along the line.' But Sharkface interrupts, ‘Tell my chief of staff to arrange for the immediate relief of the 181st Regiment. Send them to Château de l'Aigle. Tell him to assemble a field court martial and have it ready to sit at noon.' Then he goes on, talking to Nicolas, ‘If those bastards won't face German bullets, they will French ones.'

“‘What are you going to do, sir?' says Nicolas. He's so flabbergasted he starts questioning the general. But Sharkface seemed glad of the chance to talk.

“‘I'm going to have a section from each company shot for mutiny and cowardice in the face of the enemy, that's what I'm going to do.'

“‘Jesus!' says Nicolas. ‘A section from each company! Jesus! Why, you'll have to use a machine gun.'

“‘That's a first-rate idea, my boy,' says Sharkface. He was so pleased with it that he was feeling better already. And he didn't seem to notice that Nicolas didn't say ‘sir,' talked to him just as if he was his pal.

“‘Come on,' says the general. ‘There's no use staying here. But I'll teach them a lesson they won't forget. Playing a trick on me like that. But I can play tricks too.'

“So they pick up their stuff and go out. Nicolas keeps saying, ‘Jesus! Jesus! Holy Mother!' But Sharkface only smiles, if you can call that look a smile. That's a good name for him, too, Sharkface. I've never seen it fit him better than when he walked out of that observation post. What a day!”

Telephonist-Corporal Nolot squirmed with delight.

 

There were three reasons why Assolant had directed the 181st Regiment to the Château de l'Aigle. Later he was glad to discover that there had been a fourth. Retrospective reasons were normal by-products of the general's decisions, and he always accepted them as additional tributes to his sagacity without ever recognizing their spuriousness as such. On the contrary, he welcomed them all the more for having come to make a sound piece of judgment, as he thought, sounder.

Chief of the three genuine reasons, however, which had flashed through his mind in the observation post and which had made him fix instantly on the Château de l'Aigle, was the fact that the château happened to possess the best parade ground in that part of the country. There was, as the general knew, on the northern limits of the estate, a spacious and level tract of land, bounded on two adjacent sides by woods, on the other two by the avenue of poplars which went out from the buildings and the highway to which it gave access.

How was it, though, that in the tenseness and bitterness of the situation in the observation post, the general's mind had remained so well-ordered that the minute he had decided to relieve the regiment, he knew exactly where he wanted to send it?