Paths of Glory (30 page)

When Langlois lifted his gaze from where the pieces of metal had fallen he found that a wall of horizon blue had formed in front of him, so close that it shut off the whole world except for a narrow strip of ground.

He drew a deep breath again, trying to ease the solidified anguish of his spirit. At that moment he felt his wrists gripped, pulled behind him, and tied. Men were all around him, puffing in his face, smelly, clumsy, yet tender. He liked the feeling of them when they brushed against him, he liked the smell of them.

He was forced back a couple of steps, felt the hard support of the post behind him, felt ropes pass round his chest and waist, then a constriction as he and the post were lashed tightly together, so tightly it hurt his bound and clenching fists.

A voice from behind asked if he wanted to be blindfolded.

“No,” he said. His sight was the last remnant of freedom which was left to him and he would cling to that until the end.

The little crowd around the post moved away. Langlois stood there, soaked in sweat, panting, alone. The rigidity of his attitude gave him an aspect of defiance which he did not feel. He looked at the line of blue in front of him, but the faces of the men did not seem to have any features.

A man came up and examined him, felt the tension of the ropes, took Langlois's cap off and threw it aside.

“Courage!” said Sergeant-Major Boulanger, then vanished as quickly as he had come.

The unearthly silence in which Langlois seemed to be floating was suddenly broken by the beat of drums. It was a throbbing sound, savage and full of doom, yet it comforted Langlois a little because it absorbed some of the piercing ache of his own throbbing heart.

The drums ceased, and a voice began to drone. He caught some of the words and they sounded familiar to him. He had heard them used in those combinations and cadences somewhere else, somewhere where there was also the sound of running water, or was it pigeons? The faces of the firing-squad were becoming more distinct now. That fellow on the end, where had he seen him before? Ah, yes, the recruit who wanted to win medals. Well, he could have those two, down there near his feet. What was his name? Du-something. Duclos? No. Morval? No, not Morval. Of course, Duval! Same name as the restaurant where Louise and he used to eat before they were married....

Férol stood roped to his post, muttering—muttering, had anybody been there to hear it, an incoherent hotch-potch of autobiography, opinion, prejudice, and blasphemy. The last drink of cognac was now in full possession of his brain and he therefore saw twelve men in front of him who were partially effacing twelve others, duplicate of themselves. Time meant nothing to Férol. Nothing meant anything to him. He had managed unwittingly, through a mixture of hatred, contempt, and cognac, to achieve a state of detachment which made him almost as oblivious of what was going on around him as was the man on his left.

Of the three, Didier more nearly maintained the illusion that a crucifixion was in progress. He hung on his stretcher which had been propped up against the post. He hung there, the shape of his shoulders distorted by the ropes in the same way that the shoulders of cripples are distorted by crutches. The top of the post, pushing through the canvas of the stretcher, thrust Didier's head forward and a little downward. His two arms spread outwards, then drooped at the elbows in a drunken farewell. His mouth was open and his tongue was hanging out. He was breathing with some laboriousness, slobbering a little, now and then choking. When he choked, his head jerked upwards to free the obstruction, but this was merely a reflex action, for Didier was in a morphine stupor of some depth. And he would have died there anyway in the end, because his position made it so that he was slowly strangling. Didier did not know this. Didier did not know anything.

The drone of the voice reading came to an end abruptly.

The drums were ruffled again.

“Let justice take its course!” said a loud, clear voice.

There was some shifting around, the colonel and the adjutant doing an about-face. The regimental sergeant-major walked over to where the warrant-officer in command of the firing-squads was posted off their flank and at right angles to them. Picard, the priest, standing behind this man, saw that Boulanger was unfastening his pistol holster. The warrant-officer drew his sword and held it above his head. A tassel dangled from the hilt. He gave an order. Thirty-six rifles were leveled.

“Take aim!”

The rifles steadied.

“Fire!”

Down flashed the sword. The volley crashed out, smoke spurted, thirty-six shoulders recoiled slightly in unison. The smoke drifted sideways, then quickly vanished.

Already the rigid bodies at the posts were beginning to relax imperceptibly.

Didier's stretcher began to move, stealthily—so it seemed at first—then toppled over to the left and fell with him under it. Didier looked like a pack animal that had collapsed and perished under the weight of its burden.

Férol sank slowly too as the parted ropes slowly yielded their support. He fell forward, providing and at the same time following the line of his own dripping blood, fell to his knees. His head, unrecognizable now, went down and struck the earth. For a moment he was poised like a Mohammedan at prayer, then his equilibrium left him and he tumbled into a heap.

One bullet had struck Langlois in the leg and he began to sag in that direction. His ropes had not been cleanly cut by the volley which had ripped through his intestines and lungs and he was left dangling there, his arms caught to the post. He wavered a little, grotesque and pitiable, as if pleading to be released, then slipped a little farther down so that he seemed to be abjectly embracing and imploring his post.

Sergeant-Major Boulanger was coming along the hideous line, pistol in hand. He had to roll the stretcher over before he could find Didier's ear, put the muzzle to it and give him the
coup de grâce.
Férol was easier to manage but his ear more difficult to find. Boulanger bent down and sent a shot somewhere into that head. He could not tell exactly where because two rifle bullets had passed through it first.

It must be said of Boulanger that he had some instinct for the decency of things, for, when he came to Langlois, his first thought and act was to free him from the shocking and abject pose he was in before putting an end to any life that might still be clinging to him. His first shot was, therefore, one that deftly cut the rope and let the body fall away from the post to the ground. The next shot went into a brain which was already dead.

All the characters, units, and places mentioned in this book are fictitious.

However, if the reader asks, “Did such things really happen?” the author answers, “Yes,” and refers him to the following sources which suggested the story:
Les crimes des conseils de guerre,
by R.-G. Réau;
Les fusillés pour l'exemple,
by J. Galtier-Boissière and Daniel de Fer-don;
Les dessous de la guerre révélés par les comités secrets
and
Images secretes de la guerre,
by Paul Allard; a special dispatch to
The New York Times
of July 2, 1934, which appeared under this headline: “FRENCH ACQUIT 5 SHOT FOR MUTINY IN 1915; WIDOWS OF TWO WIN AWARDS OF 7 CENTS EACH”; and
Le fusillé,
by Blanche Maupas, one of the widows who obtained exoneration of her husband's memory and who was awarded damages of one franc.

SELECTIONS FROM THE DIARY OF HUMPHREY COBB (OCTOBER 1917 TO NOVEMBER 1918)

Annotated by Humphrey Cobb

Monday, October 1, 1917. Inspected by Brigadier General Landry. Medical inspection and dental parade. Downtown in evening. Beautiful moonlight.

At this time I belonged to the 23rd Canadian Reserve Battalion, stationed at Shoreham Camp. This was a depot battalion from which drafts of recruits and rehabilitated wounded men were sent to France. It was commanded by “Twenty-eight-day” Fisher, who was a first class son of a bitch. Colonel Fisher's nickname was due to his habit of handing out twenty-eight days in the guardhouse whenever he could. It was the maximum punishment which a colonel could inflict.

 

Sunday, October 21. Mass at Guoy-Servins. Women in black. Walked to Mount St. Eloie.

Church parades went on as usual on Sundays, almost up as far as the support lines, and I was a Roman Catholic. I went through with the mumbo-jumbo, although I think my religious feeling had vanished. Anyway, it was under a severe strain at that time. It was difficult to reconcile an Almighty and All Merciful and Good God with what was going on around me. There was something fishy about it, and I felt it. “Women in black.” All the women in France seemed to me to be in black, enough to cause me to make a note of it.

 

Tuesday, January 1, 1918. No. 4 Company refused to go on parade so parades were canceled. Talking to Harrison and Hemming. Made no resolutions as it would be impossible to keep them in the army. I wonder what will happen this year. 1917 was full enough. Wrote letters. Terrific argument about nationalities.

Why No. 4 Company refused to go on parade, I do not now remember. All I know is that we were all in complete sympathy with the movement. On this rest period we were billeted in huts which were northeast of Chateau de la Haie, over near the Guoy-Ablain-Saint-Nazaire road. I remember we were short of fuel and that it was damn cold. We burned hard tack biscuits and they made a very fine fire when we could get them. It was about this time that Dixon (more of him later) swiped Von Berg's boots and sold them for Cognac. He came in stinko and, later on in the night, when he had to piss, he missed the door out of the hut and filled up another fellow's boots. These were the only symptoms of foot fetishism that Dixon displayed, however.

Harrison was a Jew from Montreal. I had known him at Shoreham. He was a bright fellow and I had many discussions and a couple of drunks with him. He is the Charles Yale Harrison who wrote
Generals Die in Bed
—a good book of life in the Canadian Corps in the manner that
All Quiet
represented life in the ranks of the German army.

 

January 29. Parade. 12-inch gun firing and plane registering. Letter from B.R.

 

This gun was a couple of hundred feet back of our billet, and I was interested in watching its operations in conjunction with an observation plane. Mysterious business—signals arriving out of the ether, the officer making his calculations, giving orders; the gunners twirling wheels, ramming the shell and the charge home—“Ready, Sir!” Pause. “Fire!” Bang! And away went the shell, whinnying and shuddering up into the sky to its vanishing point. Long pause. Then to the wireless man: “Two hundred yards short, Sir!” or “Direct hit, Sir!” It was a gorgeous day, and while I watched that gun firing I forgot that it would probably draw a load of German cast iron down on our billets sometime.

 

January 31. Colder. Left Bully-Grenay 5:30 (p.m.), arrived dugout 8:30. One hell of an overland walk. Machine guns pretty close. Scouts went out. Young killed by bomb. Good Christ is it just. Dreamed he was alive again.

We were now in the line again, in trenches on Hill 70, in front of Loos. The overland walk meant that we did not use the communication trenches for going up. The frontline was on the forward slope of the hill facing the Germans. We approached it up the rear slope and seldom used the communication trenches until right back of the brow of the hill as we were out of the line of direct fire. But we were not out of the line of indirect fire, and Fritz had the back slope of the hill well registered by fixed machine guns and he swept that area and its trails thoroughly all night long. We lost quite a few men there.

What happened to Young, no one ever knew for sure. Some thought a Fritz potato masher had landed on his respirator and that it had exploded just as he was brushing it off. Evidence: Face blown in and right hand blown off. It was also a question whether it had been a German bomb at all. The patrol had gone out in two sections, one on the right, the other on the left of our front. Both reported a skirmish with a German patrol. It was soft-pedaled, but the notion was pretty strong that the two sections had met and fought each other in the dark. Anyway that was the last time any of our patrols went out in two sections.

The reason, I think, I was so affected by Young's death was that he was the first fellow whom I knew pretty well and rather liked to get it.

 

February 1. Hell of a sensation after Young's unexpected death. Took his boots off. Rather an unpleasant job.

“Unexpected death”—a queer phrase to use under the circumstances. What it means, I suppose, is that the death of someone you know well always provokes a sense of outrage in you. It's all right for the rest of them to get it, but a personal friend—that's quite another matter.

The incident of the boots was sheer bravado on my part. I wanted to show them that although I was the youngest and newest in the section, I was tough for all that. Young had been killed just outside the German wire, and when the firing had died down the rest of the patrol went back and dragged his body in—a grueling job over the chewed-up icy ground and through our own wire. They brought him down to the second line, where our dugout was, and stretched him out in a blanket along the parapet. In the dugout there was a lot of hemming and hawing about the boots he was wearing. These were a fine pair of Canadian trapper's knee boots, and why let the lousy burying party get them? We were his pals, and so on. Still, there was some hesitation about who would go up and peel them off. So I said I would. I swung his body around so it was at right angles to the trench with the feet slanting down toward me. Then I started to work unlacing them. Young had already stiffened, so I had a hell of a job getting them off. Finally it was done and, as he was too heavy for me, I left him as he was, with his feet sticking into the trench so that they would kick you in the face as you went by. But then nobody would take the damned boots, although there were three or four fellows whom they fitted. Something about “dead man's boots.” And I was stuck with them. In the end, I gave them to a civilian Frenchman at Bully-Grenay, and two years later, when I revisited the place after the war, they were the first things I saw when I tramped into the town.