THE ENCHANTED CIRCLE, when at last we reached it, was a disappointment. When the train set us down in the middle of the countryside, we had to begin a long march in the rain, during which our beautiful new kit, our full packs, our bandoliers and our tools all weighed heavily. At nightfall we reached a rather grand country house, its terrace crowded with strutting officers. But we had to erect our tents on the spongy lawns under trees dripping with rainwater. This exercise, which we carried out clumsily, took a great deal of time and it was dark by the time we finished. Then, already soaked, we had to sleep in this swamp.
The next day we were ordered to join a march battalion. Battalions like this provided reserves of men which were moved up parallel to the front line so that they could be brought in to places that were under attack and provide immediate reinforcements. These battalions also acted as front-line depots into which were poured those who passed through the first-aid posts: the sick, the walking wounded. These wounded men, veterans, could be recognised by their washed-out uniforms, their faked submissiveness and their anxious demeanour. The NCOs treated them better.
I managed to get myself into the same squad as my friend Bertrand, with whom I had been through initial training and who was, like me, a private first class. But we very soon realised that this single stripe had no value here, that it only attracted ridicule, and we decided to get rid of it, with a quick slash of the knife. Not quickly enough, though, to stop our corporal noticing and taking umbrage. No doubt he saw in this stripe the start of an ambition that threatened his power. We had been marked out, and these two unfortunate privates first class, even self-demoted, became the unhappy objects of his ill-temper and abuse. I should say that I was his main target. Betrand had a rather gentle character and a mild face to match his mild emotions. My own face, on the contrary, by the disgust which it clearly revealed, was a constant challenge to our superior. One can only describe this NCO, whose name I have forgotten, as a thug. His repulsive appearance made it all too clear: a big red face, square head, thick neck, powerful but ugly chest, thin legs with knock knees, club feet, huge fists, something base in his expression, and the voice of a drunken navvy. He ordered us around with revolting coarseness and constantly boasted of his courage. Later we had proof that this was an empty boast.
In the army it is always easy to find fault with people and persecute them. Especially easy in my case, since, out of training as I was, fatigue overwhelmed me to the point where I failed to look after my weapons or the fine details of my uniform. I was, in particular, very bad at marching. Our torturer was aware of this, and never failed to force me to carry an extra load whenever we were on the move. He made me add to my pack a dixie containing food for the whole squad. These few, awkwardly balanced, kilos were pure torture for me. I soon decided to head for the latrines after the second break in the march. Lying flat on my back I let the column set off without me and then waited for one of the convoys that rumbled along the roads. Hopping from one vehicle to another I made it to my destination quite comfortably. But at one point my pack, falling from an artillery truck on which I was hanging, slipped beneath the wheels. The dixie was flattened and that evening the squad had nothing to eat. That was the last time I was ordered to carry food.
Digging latrines, sweeping out the camp, stuffing straw mattresses – these tasks left us no time to rest. To them we brought a cheerful nonchalance and unfailing incompetence. Our good humour was sustained by the thought that there was nothing else to do here in the countryside and so we might as well pass the time together, straining to botch a job or make it last forever, and pretend we enjoyed it. In the end it stopped us being bored. When we were ordered out on fatigues, we got in the habit of declaiming a line from Cicero: ‘Quid abutere, Catilina, patienta nostra?’[11] ‘What was that you said?’ shouted our little boss, the first time he heard these words, suspecting rebellion. ‘It is not my duty to teach you Latin, corporal,’ I replied very sweetly.
In the end, my patience ran out. I can still picture the exact spot. On a bare plateau beneath a fierce June sun, our squad was exercising under the orders of Catiline (the name had stuck). With no other motive than hatred, he let my comrades take a break, leaving me alone to repeat the exhausting movements of bayonet drill; point! thrust! . . . A man’s strength has its limits, of which he took no account, and this test was a kind of duel which I would necessarily lose. I knew that when I could no longer move my arms he was quite capable of provoking me into disobeying an order. More than anything, the sight of his hideous face was driving me mad. I suddenly strode up to him, with my fixed bayonet, only stopping when the point was touching his chest. ‘I’m going to k . . . !’ I snarled. I don’t know if I would have killed him. But, seeing the look on my face, he didn’t doubt it. He went very pale and didn’t say another word. The whole, trembling squad knew he was beaten.
With that moment of madness I was risking prison. But honour where honour’s due! This senseless act, which could have been the end for me, put a stop to our persecution. Afterwards the corporal tried to make friends with us. We made it clear that this would be even more repugnant than his hatred, and that in any case we were not afraid of him any more. But this thug had spoilt our first month at the front and poisoned in advance the new life we were hoping for.
For several weeks, we had to march all over the place. We did our cooking in the open air and slept under canvas. I remember two marches in particular. One was on a scorching hot day when we all succumbed to the heat. Our battalion fell apart completely leaving groups of men staggering about like sunstroke victims by the roadside. Some tried to drag themselves along, others flopped down in the fields, or attempted to force their way on to passing convoys. True to my principles, I had dropped out of the ranks at the start. I knew I couldn’t make it to the end and told myself it was better not to wait till I was exhausted. By the end of the day, the march looked like a rout.
The second march took twelve hours and lasted right through the night. We were ordered to set off without any warning. The whole battalion was half-asleep and we marched with our eyes shut, bumping into each other. At every halt we nodded off by the roadside. Night marches are dreadful, because there is nothing to look at, nothing to catch your attention and to take your mind off your worn-out body. We were constantly forced into the ditches by ammunition wagons galloping past, by columns of lorries and heavy supply buses which paid no heed to the staggering columns of infantry. The traffic raised up thick clouds of white dust, which stuck to our sweating faces like a brittle glaze. We were a troop of ghosts and old men, and all we could do was keep crying out for a breather. But always the whistles would summon us back up on our feet, set in motion our onerous role as beasts of burden, until it no longer felt like a march with a destination but a journey to the end of a night that spread across the earth into infinity.
We were shaken out of this torpor by a world in flames. We had just marched over the crest of a hill, and suddenly there before us lay the front line, roaring with all its mouths of fire, blazing like some infernal factory where monstrous crucibles melted human flesh into a bloody lava. We shuddered at the thought that we were nothing but more coal to be shovelled into this furnace, that there were soldiers down there fighting against the storm of steel, the red hurricane that burned the sky and shook the earth to its foundations. There were so many explosions that they merged into a constant roar and glare. It was as if someone had set a match to the petrol-soaked horizon, or an evil spirit was stoking up the flames in some devil’s punch-bowl, dancing naked and sneering at our destruction. And so that nothing was missing from this macabre carnival, so that there was something to highlight the tragedy by its contrast, we saw rockets rising gracefully, like flowers of light, fading at the summit of this inferno and dropping down, dying, trailing stars. We were mesmerised by this spectacle, whose poignant meaning only the old hands knew. This was my first sight of the front line, my first sight of hell unleashed.
It was on the following day that I felt an itch and slipped my hand into my trousers to find something soft which stuck under my fingernail. I pulled out my first louse, pallid and fat, the sight of which made me shudder with disgust. As I was concealed by a hedge, I checked through all my clothes. The creature already had a few companions, and in the seams and hems I found the little white dots of their eggs. I was contaminated, but I still had to keep these repulsive clothes, endure the tickling and the biting of the vermin, to which my imagination lent an incessant activity. The foul family must now prosper upon my body, month after month, and contaminate my intimate life with its multiplication. This discovery demoralised me and made me hate my solitude, now haunted by a swarm of parasites. Lice marked the fall into ignominy and a man could only escape this squalor of war by spilling his blood. Heroes now lived as sordidly as the denizens of night shelters, and their quarters, filthier than those shelters, were also deadlier.
The whole area behind the front line was swarming with troops of all kinds. Since the few villages could not provide shelter for so many soldiers, primitive encampments had sprung up everywhere, with tents, huts and barracks, spreading their smoke across the countryside. Every clump of trees, every gulley hid a tribe of combatants, busy preparing food or doing their washing. The landscape had been devastated: the ground churned up by tramping feet, military transport and general depredations, covered in debris and rubbish. It bore the mark of that desolation which armies always bring to the regions they traverse. Only wine was in plentiful supply. The lukewarm barrels in the canteens dispensed oblivion to those who had the money to fill their flasks.
In the morning, we heard a buzzing in the air, and up in the blinding blue sky where the sun breaking through the last patches of mist promised a scorching day, we could see an aeroplane climbing up, dipping and turning like a lark. We watched it for a long time until it dissolved into the atmosphere way off in the distance so that there was nothing left but a glittering shard of mica fluttering in the wind. How we envied that man up there who made war in the purity of the heavens, an angel with a machine gun.
Before us, the line of observation balloons, known as ‘sausages’, marked the front line, the thundering front of the attack sector, whose rage reached us in waves of dull thuds. Sometimes we would pass frantic columns of lorries on the road, full of haggard infantrymen, some of them venting their joy at having survived in frenzied cries that sounded like curses, others just stretched out, still as corpses, and all of them stained with blood and dirt. These were the troops who had just distinguished themselves at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Le Labyrinthe, Souchez, and La Targette, and we knew from the number of empty lorries the price these regiments had paid for clawing from the enemy a few ruined houses or a few bits of trench.
The battalion finally moved to quarters a few kilometres behind the front, in a village where we could reorganise ourselves. The road passing through this village was the main thoroughfare for the whole Neuville-Saint-Vaast sector. So we were posted at a crossroads and could get a picture of life at the front through the movement of relief troops, supply columns and ambulances. The permanent traffic jams on the access roads forced units to wait under our gaze for a long time. We were thus able to observe at close quarters men who had already fought, terrifying, hardened men who were returning to attack again. They uttered nothing but curses, as if to spit in the face of death, but we could see the anxiety beneath the bravado, at the edge of despair. They were shepherded by officers with tense faces, in plain uniforms, officers who would mix in with them, rarely seemed to stand on ceremony and kept orders to a minimum. The soldiers hung around in preoccupied groups by the rifle stacks, argued bitterly with the NCOs whom they threatened with terrible retributions, and whenever no one was looking would rush off to the few places in the village where they could get a drink. Many were drunk, and not only the ordinary soldiers. In the evening they would slowly take the road that led back up there. The uproar they made would slowly fade, soon lost in the noise of the bombardment into which they were marching.
We slept on straw in huts of wood and tarpaulin that were swelteringly hot in the daytime. We were used as navvies, repairing old trenches in readiness for a new offensive. We set off at dusk, marched for a long time through former positions. Once we got to the right spot we were assigned our tasks in groups of two: one pick, one shovel. After a certain hour, the nights were calm. We could only hear the crackle of grenades far away, and brief fusillades, and see rockets going up: stray bullets buzzed like mosquitoes. A few artillery shells exploded ahead of us, also far off, and an invisible battery, somewhere down in the shadows, barked its response. We returned to camp at daybreak and had the morning to rest.
Our huts were so infested with lice that I would often go and sleep in a field, rolled up in my blanket and tent canvas. The trouble with that was the damp morning dew. That was surely the cause of the stomach upsets that wore me out and for a long time gave me no peace at all. In a situation where everything depends on your body, a discomfort like this became something very serious.
Along with Bertrand and some other soldiers, I was attached to the company office as a runner or, if they needed one, a secretary. This did not spare us from work, but it brought a few advantages. We got out of afternoon drill and other petty annoyances, and we were given food separately which we could cook in kitchens in the village, paying the people who lived there a bit of extra money to improve on our rations. This cooking was also an occasion for frequent quarrels, because of the work it entailed, to which we brought very little good will. I often noticed at the front how men’s boredom and misery changed to anger at the slightest pretext; they did not know who to blame and so turned violently against each other. Too much suffering made them lose control. And since material concerns were all they thought about (all intellectual life being suspended, having nothing there to nourish it), the pettiest issues were the cause of their arguments. In war all instincts are given free rein, with nothing to impede or stop them, except for death’s arbitrary intervention. And even that limit did not exist for those whose jobs usually kept them out of danger. Among the many senior officers staying in the village I saw two examples.
The first was the colonel of an infantry regiment, idling away the time in a camp that had been set up on the outskirts of the village. A former colonial, red-faced and robust, he derived great pleasure from beating up soldiers. His way of doing this, as I witnessed, showed clearly that he was deranged. He would hail someone, call him over, and then, with a warm smile, ask him a few friendly questions to put him at ease – but his eyes shone in a strange way, and his veins swelled up. And then suddenly he would strike the subordinate a blow full in the face, accompanied by a torrent of insults, which made him even more excited: ‘Take that, you swine! You son of a bitch!’ He would carry on hitting the man until, having got over his surprise, his victim would flee. Then the colonel would resume his stroll, moving in a jerky, uncoordinated fashion like someone suffering from ataxia, smacking his jaws, with a contented air. It would often happen that a soldier walking along with nothing much to do would be stopped and get a fierce kick in the arse: the colonel had passed. Very soon, people learned to get well out of the way when they saw him coming, and he could no longer approach anyone. Such a cruel deprivation changed him; he became sad and withdrawn. He only brightened up when a man from another unit or regiment fell into his hands, someone who did not know about his mania. But these windfalls were rare. He experienced a few happy days when four hundred reinforcements were sent up from the rear to join his regiment. For one week, he kept himself busy punching and insulting and his good humour was restored. Old hands, hiding in corners, watched this massacre of newcomers astonished to learn that war consisted of having your face knocked in by a superior officer. Soldiers actually said that – this fault excepted – their colonel was not a bad man. On several occasions he had even overruled severe punishments imposed by court martials. It was true that the culprits still left with bloody faces and broken teeth.
‘I’m amazed that no one has hit him back,’ Bertrand said to me.
‘It would be too dangerous. A man who defended himself would no doubt carry the day. But there would be nothing to stop his colonel then ordering him on a mission where he’d get himself killed.’
Once a week we were sent to the showers. The sanitation service had dreamt up the idea of eradicating parasites by soaking us in cresol. Medical orderlies washed us down with a sponge. This treatment made our skin burn for an hour but had no effect at all on the lice we rediscovered afterwards in our clothes – which had not been disinfected – in fine form and with healthy appetites. But still the weekly showers became an attraction, thanks to ‘Old Father Rosebud’. This was the name we had given to a divisional general, a thin, dirty, hunched man with bloodshot eyes, who was always there. This sadistic officer only liked to see soldiers when they were naked. He would inspect each new batch, lined up under the showers, moving along the line with the little mincing steps of an old man, keeping his eyes fixed somewhere not far below their waist. If one of the objects of his gaze struck him by its dimensions he would congratulate the possessor: ‘You’ve got a fine one there!’ His face would wrinkle up in pleasure, and he dribbled. The only other place one encountered him was the latrines. There, he would lose himself in contemplation of the ditches, plunge his cane in, and welcome the men, who were surprised to see him. ‘Go on, lads, don’t be shy, let it go. Healthy bowels make healthy soldiers. I’m just here to check on your morale.’ This behaviour, which would have been unacceptable anywhere except in a war, entertained the troops, who were not fussy about their distractions.
‘It is terrifying to think that the lives of ten thousand men may depend on a general like this,’ said Bertrand. ‘How are we expected to win the war with people like him at the top?’
‘We don’t see what is going on in the other camp,’ I replied. ‘They’ve got their own mad brutes who make just as many mistakes. The best proof is that they set off to conquer with everything they needed for a swift victory, and they failed.’
‘How do you think this is going to end?’
‘No one knows. The men who are running the war have been overwhelmed by events. The forces on both sides are still so huge that they balance each other out. It’s like when you play draughts: you have to remove a lot of pieces before you can get a true picture of the game. A lot more people must be killed before things will take shape.’
‘We keep nibbling at them, as . . .’[12]
‘The nibbling is mutual. The generals of both sides fight the war with the same military principles and cancel each other out. It takes a great idea to win a war: the wooden horse of Troy, Hannibal’s elephants, Napoleon crossing the Alps through the Saint Bernard Pass . . . those were real ideas.’
‘And the Paris taxis?’[13]
‘An idea too – which didn’t really come from the military. And still . . .’
‘And what about valour?’
‘Valour is a virtue for ordinary soldiers; leaders need the virtue of intelligence. What we lack are leaders with outstanding intelligence. Genius shakes up the old rules and principles, genius invents.’
‘Do you think that Napoleon . . . ?’
‘Napoleon would have done what he always did. He’d make something new from whatever was available to him in 1914 just like he did in 1800. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, they were thinkers. Today all we’ve got are specialists, blinded by dogma, who can’t think beyond the narrow boundaries of their military training.’
‘But they know how to do their job.’
‘No, they don’t even know that. Who was there to teach them? This war followed forty years of peace. The only training they could have got was through war games, manoeuvres, empty shams whose results couldn’t be measured. Our generals are like students fresh from college: all theory and no practice. They came to war with modern equipment and a military system that’s a century out of date. But now they’re learning, they are experimenting with us. The people of Europe are in the hands of arrogant, all-powerful, ignoramuses.’
‘So what do you think it takes to make a great military leader?’
‘Maybe the first requirement would be that they came from outside the army, so they could bring a fresh approach to understanding war. It isn’t so much a military leader we need as a real leader, which would be something much greater.’
‘Perhaps they’ll still find one . . .’
‘Perhaps . . .’
The heat, the dirt, and the boredom had worn us out.
My most vivid memory from this time was of a dead body, not one I saw but one I smelt. It was a night when we were trying to deepen a communication trench, hardly able to see where we were digging. As one of us struck his pick into the earth there was a squelch, the sound of something bursting. The pick had hit a damp, rotten stomach, which released its miasma right into our faces, in a sudden blast of foul vapour. The stench filled the air, covered our mouths like a foetid flannel so we could not breathe, pricked our eyelids with poisonous needles which brought tears to our eyes. This pestilential geyser caused a panic and the diggers fled the accursed spot. The decomposing body’s disgusting gasses spread out, filled the darkness and our lungs, reigned over the silence. The NCOs had to force us back to this angry corpse, and then we shovelled furiously, desperate to cover it up and calm it down. But our bodies had caught the awful, fecund smell of putrefaction, which is life and death, and for a long time that smell irritated our mucous membranes, stimulated the secretions of our glands, aroused in us some secret organic attraction of matter for matter, even when it is corrupt and almost extinguished. Our own promised, perhaps imminent, putrefaction found communion with this other, powerful extreme of putrefaction, which holds dominion over our pale souls and hunts them down remorselessly.
That night I reflected on the destiny of the unknown soldier whose grave we had disturbed, and upon which many others would trample. I imagined a man like me, someone young, full of plans and ambitions, of loves still uncertain, scarcely out of childhood and about to launch himself into life. To me life is like a game you begin at twenty where victory is called success: money for most people, reputation for some, esteem for a very few. To live, to endure, that is nothing; to achieve is everything. I compare someone who dies young to a player who has just been dealt his cards and then forbidden to play. Maybe this particular player was taking his revenge . . . Twenty years of learning, of subordination, of hopes and desires, the sum of feelings that a human being carries within himself and which gives him his value, had all found their conclusion in a corner of a communication trench. If I must die now, I will not say it is awful or terrible, but it is unjust and absurd, because I have not yet attempted anything, I have done nothing but wait for my chance and my moment, built up my resources and waited. The life of my will and my tastes is only just starting – or will start, because the war has deferred it. If I disappear now, I will have been nothing but subordinate and anonymous. I will have been defeated.
I got my first proper view of a wide section of the front on 15 August 1915. A few kilometres outside our village was a hill called Mont-Saint-Éloi, somewhere near the famous Berthonval farm, I think, from where our spring offensive was launched and which must now therefore be nothing but a pile of rubble. There was a monument on this hill, a church, damaged by shellfire and out of bounds because it was dangerous. But, being curious to see, I managed to slip away with Bertrand and we climbed one of the towers, up a stone stairway that was shaky in places, and partially blocked by debris from the walls, cracked by the bombardment.
From up there you could see right across the plains of Artois, but it was impossible to make out any real signs of a battle. A few white puffs of smoke, followed by explosions, told us that this was indeed where the war was, but we could not see any trace of the armies on the ground observing and destroying each other slowly in this arid, silent landscape. Such a calm expanse, baking in the sunshine, confounded our expectations. We could see the trenches quite clearly but they looked like tiny embankments, or narrow, winding streams, and it seemed incredible that this fragile network could offer serious resistance to attacks, that people did not simply step across it to move forward. I later thought that some generals, who had never done sentry duty at a lookout post nor charged at barbed wire under machine-gun fire, must have seen the trenches as we saw them then, with our novice eyes, and had the same illusions. Such illusions seem to have determined the murderous and pointless offensive in which I took part.
Soon after, we joined a fighting unit.