6 THE HOSPITAL

‘He [Jesus Christ] has revealed to the world this truth, that one’s country is not everything, and that the man is before, and higher than, the citizen.’

Ernest Renan, La Vie de Jésus

I AM LYING IN A HOSPITAL BED and covered in dressings. A sheet is attached to the head of the bed on which is sketched a human body, front and back. A dozen marks in red ink indicate the wounds on this body: my body. On the left wrist, the throat, the legs, the right foot. ‘Nothing in the chest or guts, jolly good!’ the little doctor had told me down in the cellar at La Targette where I’d had to wait after the assault from the parapet. Next to the sketch is a temperature chart, at the foot of which can be read: ‘Admitted: 7 October 1915. Operated: 20 October. Discharged . . .’ I am hoping that this bit stays blank for as long as possible.

On my bedside table there are books, cigarettes, lozenges, writing materials; in the drawer, my wallet, some letters, my knife, my pen, my identity tag which is now useless, and my little aluminium mug which I found in a haversack that had stayed with me. Jolly good, indeed! I’m all right. I’ve escaped the winter offensive, and the war will surely finish. I’m happy. I’ve saved my skin . . .

The grenade had peppered me with shrapnel. Fortunately it was a tin grenade, blasted into such tiny pieces by the explosion that the shrapnel didn’t hit me with much force. Almost all the wounds were skin deep and even now, after a few weeks, if I press hard on the spots that appear in the middle of my body, I squeeze out very sharp bits of metal. There must be quite a few left since when I change position I can feel sudden pricks like you get if you sit on a drawing-pin. For some time I was afraid that these little bits of shrapnel might cause abscesses. But the embarrassment of showing my buttocks to the nurses always stopped me mentioning it. (For me, buttocks are linked to the image of women and seem contrary to virility. And also, perhaps, there is some remnant of military prejudice, absurd today: a soldier should not be wounded in the back.) I carry out my own examination, groping under the bedclothes. When I’ve found a little hard spot, I twist myself around to investigate it with my mirror. Then I try to clean it out with the aid of my nail or a pin. This keeps me busy during moments when I’m tired of reading or smoking, and my neighbours find it entirely natural, as they busy themselves with similar activities. In any case, we have nothing to hide about our bodies, or their functions, and we look away from those who have to uncover themselves so as not to embarrass them. The only way we discomfort each other is with smell, however hard we try to be discreet.

I have pulled a lot of shrapnel out of my legs, along the tibias, using the point of my knife. I reckon I’ve found about forty pieces. However my body only has eleven serious wounds, none of them grave. The annoying thing is that the injuries are spread all over the place so that I have had to be almost entirely swathed in bandages. As the pus sticks to the gauze the bandages adhere to the wounds so that with the least movement I feel them tearing away. And because there is a little delay in transmission from one to the other my wincing is multiplied by a series of painful twinges. So I keep as still as I can. But because of lying permanently on my back, I get bed sores and so every day I have to spend a few hours on my side. Occasionally I manage to sit up. This is a movement that I prepare carefully so as to avoid any pain sharp enough to make me fall back down rapidly. Anyway, I have plenty of time. I even manage to get up briefly, while they are making my bed.

I ‘went under the knife’ and it wasn’t so bad. The doctor in an ambulance at the front had probed my wounds and without any anaesthetic – or my consent – had pulled out the biggest pieces of shrapnel. One remained in my right foot and one in my left wrist which had lodged – without penetrating them – between the tendons which controlled the two middle fingers of my hand. To extract them they decided to put me to sleep. I was only afraid of being awake, of getting the same treatment as I had received at the front. After a day without food I was taken to the operating theatre around six o’clock, a stark, white room harshly lit by an arc lamp which gave a sharp blue shine to all the steel. I was laid out, naked, in the centre of this white space, offering myself up soft and shivering to all the instruments, as if in a torture chamber, and the nurses in their smocks seemed like the executioners of some grim inquisition. As they bent over me with the wad of cotton wool, the doctor said: ‘Don’t be afraid. Open your mouth wide and breathe deeply.’ Which I did willingly, having no wish to witness the tortures they were going to inflict on my body.

The anaesthetic gave me the distinct impression of dying and since then I’ve thought that death, the crossing over, cannot be such a difficult moment as people believe, so long as it is not accompanied by the agonies that come with illness. One must overcome anxiety, resolve to vanish into nothingness. Under chloroform you quickly lose all sensation of your body; it stops existing. All life flows back into the humming brain. Mine, up to the moment when it vanished in its turn, did not lose its lucidity. Freed of the burden of the flesh, I was nothing more than a mind, and I had the fleeting idea of being pure spirit, an angel, a little dancing flame of joy. I told myself: ‘You are dying!’ and ‘You are not really dying’, and yet: ‘All the same . . .’ I offered no resistance to this advancing extinction. And then my thoughts, like a distant beacon, threw nothing but a dim light within me flickering over the chiaroscuro of my being and I slipped down into the darkness, into death, without being aware of it.

My mind came back first. Accompanied by a burning pain in my arm. And I could hear voices, make out what they were saying but as if they were in an antechamber of my self, for I was still wrapped in a thick web of sleep. The voices were saying: ‘He’s still out. Couldn’t wake him down there.’ I only had to open my eyelids, like shutters in the morning, to show them that my living soul was still inside. It was such a huge effort that I took some time deciding. At last I was gazing at faces leaning over me, I saw them light up, and closed my eyes again. All that remained of the chloroform was a nauseating taste that I exhaled through my lips in sickly bubbles. And fever wrapped me in its burning arms, shook me with its icy shivers and struck my temples with its hammer-blows.

After a fortnight, my temperature is back to normal, and there are no more reasons for concern about the consequences of my wounds. Only a few scars will remain, proof that I have indeed been through the great adventure of war, so that later, sated with pleasure, grateful and half-dreaming, women will feel pity and say ‘Oh, how you must have suffered, my darling!’ and their soft hands will gently caress those places once pierced by metal. Or so I imagine . . .

Sergeant Nègre from Limoges lies on my right. He must be about thirty-five. Small head, almost bald, a mischievous glint in his eyes and a little goatee beard. A typical French reserve NCO: quick to blame but slow to punish, taking charge of his little world but taking care of it too, even against orders if necessary, an obliging man with a wicked tongue. Like me he appreciates his good fortune and indeed has been even luckier than me. He has a hole in his calf; the wound isn’t at all serious but a tendon has been damaged. He will need treatment so he can walk normally again. When he gets out of bed, he hops along on his good leg, down our row of beds by the windows, holding on to the frames. He stops at each one to inquire: ‘So, my old pal, how’s it going? We’ve made it to the hospital. And that’s a bloody sight better than getting a medal, believe you me!’ To those in pain, he points his finger to the north, cocks his ear as if listening to the gunfire: ‘But they didn’t get us! Think of all those fine bloated corpses, my lad, and give thanks to the god of armies!’ To distract them from their pain he shouts: ‘On your feet, the lot of you! Volunteers for patrol, get in line! Who can’t wait to go and make a nice hole in the wire with a good pair of cutters? . . . One at a time, now, don’t all rush!’

One day when we were all laughing at his antics as he hopped about, he explained: ‘This war’s given me bloody cramp. It comes from chasing after Glory. I’ve been chasing her ever since this war began, and then the bitch went to find General Baron de Poculotte who was at that precise moment planning his seventy-third Final Offensive with coloured pencils and tracing paper and rapid-writing rifles in his forward command post forty kilometres behind the lines. And you know what he replied when they told him that Glory had come at last? “God damn it, I don’t like to be kept waiting, you old bat!” Oh yes, my lad, that’s exactly what he said. You don’t know the de Poculottes? A great family, from the old military aristocracy, so they say. A whole family of generals. These are the people who really know how to make decisions and counter-orders and manage the cavalry and the transport and supplies and the artillery and the engineers and sappers and mortars and the aeroplanes and the whole lot and how to really slaughter the infantry at zero hour, in industrial quantities. I mean, of course, the German infantry! Because your French infantryman is indestructible, as is well known in Perpignan . . . First military principle: one French soldier is worth two German soldiers. Second military principle: obstacles don’t bloody exist! Third military principle: one dead French soldier equals ten dead German soldiers, at least. Because the Germans attack in tight formations so as not to get lost in places they’ve never been before and to stop themselves being afraid. You only have to fire at them and you can knock down as many as you want. Any journalist will tell you. Don’t you know yet that those chaps can see a lot further than you, you little earthworms, you cannon fodder, you stupid war cripples, and you better believe them.

‘And now, you poor little moron, I’m going to teach you a whole load of good things. I got them from de Poculotte himself who was standing right next to me and explaining matters to a gentleman from parliament so that he in turn could explain them to the whole nation, which needs to see things clearly.

‘So, first of all, we’ve got the bayonet. You stick it on the end of a Lebel and you get yourself an infantryman driven by French furia. Opposite, you’ve got your Boche. Now, what cannot fail to happen? They either run for it or throw in the towel. Why do you think they stuck barbed wire in the front of their lines? Because of the bayonet, says de Poculotte.

‘Second, we’ve got our good French bread. The French hero stands up above the trench and shouts out in a scornful tone: “Hey, Fritz, want some nosh?” What cannot fail to happen? Fritz puts down his gun, says goodbye to his pals, and heads for the bread as fast as legs can carry him. Why do you think they stuck barbed wire in front of their lines? Because of our bread, with the sole purpose of stopping the whole lot of them running across at our dinner time leaving their crown-prince all on his own like an arsehole. We’d be in a right mess if this army of gluttons came over to stuff their faces with us! “They are pigs,” says Poculotte, sipping his Burgundy. “They lack moral fibre. We can take them whenever we want!”

‘And last but not least we’ve got the 75,[18] which flattens everything in a couple of shakes. Nothing’s more accurate and nothing’s faster. Why do you think they made Big Berthas? To hit back at our 75s, of course. Except that with our 75s, we always smash them. I can still hear Poculotte: “Races can be distinguished by their weapons. They have heavy artillery because they have heavy spirits, and we have light artillery because our spirits are light. Spirit over matter, my dear Minister. And war is the triumph of the spirit!” Don’t ever forget it, old chum, war is the triumph of the spirit!’

When he’s narrating the heroic deeds of General Baron de Poculotte, Nègre is unstoppable. That dashing superior officer has become a celebrity, a symbol, and we can all feel his presence among us. His resolute character rules over the ward; whenever we are surprised and confused by some new measure, we can turn to him for the correct military response. So, for example, someone who had just been reading the latest communiqué asks him:

‘Mon général, how should we interpret “All quiet on the entire front”?’

‘The true military mind does not permit interpretation,’ replies the general through the mouth of Nègre. ‘Good patriots should understand that “All quiet” means exactly what it says, and this plain description is easy enough to understand.’

‘No dead or wounded!’ shouts the indignant general. ‘Who is this miserable wretch who dares to question the abilities of our leaders? What would a war be like without dead and wounded?’

‘Be quiet, you horrible underling, war is not about saving human lives but destroying them and don’t you ever forget it. It is a noble mission and its goal is to deliver us from barbarism. Dismiss!’

It should be noted that the general normally makes his appearance after the departure of the nurses. Then we are all soldiers together and Baron de Poculotte can express himself without inhibition, knowing that his words of wisdom will not be heard by stupid civilians, people for whom he feels the deepest contempt.

On my left is Diuré, a freckled redhead with milky skin who bears his suffering without complaint apart from rare and muffled groans. Suppurating phlegmon in the thigh from an infected wound. They’ve made a long gash, opening up the wound down to the bone and criss-crossing it with drainage tubes. He has so many pipes coming out that he looks like a piece of machinery. When his sheets are pulled back, the smell is very unpleasant, like a meat market in summer. Still he has the courage to bend down over this fissure in his decomposed flesh, soiled with green pus. He watches closely when his wound is being dressed, and seems very interested in the disgusting scraps of flesh that are pulled off him. He says little; we know nothing about him.

Next to him lies Peignard, the loudest screamer in the ward. They have removed the bones from part of his foot and this floppy foot, lacking its armature, pulls at his leg and his hips, causing his groin to swell and spreading its painful consequences across his stomach all the way to his heart. Sometimes he goes very pale and gasps for breath. The mere weight of a sheet on his foot can make him scream horribly. Fever takes him every evening at about six o’clock. Mouth open, lips trembling, he groans feebly and dribbles a stream of saliva on to his blanket. An hour later the real screaming starts: oh, ooh, ooh, ah, ah . . . aah, aah, the screams you’d hear at night in battle, the screams of abandoned men. At first we would shudder and pity him. Then, one night, when the lights were dimmed, someone turned over noisily with a sigh: ‘Sure, but it’s still a fucking pain in the arse for the rest of us!’ Our silence indicated our approval. We are all suffering to one degree or another and it makes us selfish. When Peignard is hit by these attacks of pain he doesn’t think to spare our nerves, he forces us to share in his suffering and makes us unhappy. Eventually they give him morphine which knocks him out, and we insist that this should be done promptly, as soon as he starts screaming.

Then comes Mouchetier, with what remains of his right forearm wrapped in a linen bandage. He can still feel his missing hand, thrown out with the rubbish a month ago. The networks of his nervous system stretch out into empty space and carry back pain that is constant and distracting. Often Mouchetier looks like he is rubbing his absent hand; his other hand seems to hold and squeeze it to stop the shooting pain. And yet he is slowly getting accustomed to his new condition. He’s a wounded man like all the rest of us, and his infirmity won’t make itself felt until he’s a civilian again. Still, he must think about it. He sometimes stares at other people’s right hands as if he’s hypnotised – rough hands but so agile, so convenient, so useful in life. He was an accounts clerk before the war. This profession – which he might now have to give up – makes him obsessed with writing. He collects any envelopes or bits of paper with writing on that are scattered around in the ward, spreads them out on the corner of a table, and gazes dreamily at the neat copperplate, the elegant flourishes. Furtively, he tries to copy them in pencil with his untrained left hand. His pockets are full of sheets covered in clumsy letters, like a schoolboy’s exercise book.

We often discuss the war. Those who were not seriously wounded claim that it will not last much longer. We are hoping less for a triumphal conclusion than for an end, which will remove us from further danger. Going back is a prospect that makes us freeze in horror and we refuse to contemplate it. The future offers us a break, varying in length according to our condition, which includes: recovery in hospital, convalescence, leave, and a spell at base. Four to six months in most cases. In our opinion, the war cannot last longer than that and the formidable alliance of France-Great Britain-Russia-Italy-Belgium-Japan will inevitably prevail over the Central Powers, despite whatever merits we, as soldiers, may have seen in the Germans. Our spring offensive will carry all before it. Failing a great victory, then the exhaustion of one tribe or another should finish it off, that or general weariness.

Some, and Mouchetier first and foremost, argue that, on the contrary, ‘it will go on for years the way things are going and there are still lots of surprises to come’, with remarkable persistence. Listening to the debate the other day I suddenly understood: all the pessimists are cripples. It is too cruel for them to believe that they have lost a limb at the last moment, that with a little bit more luck they would have survived intact. Better for them to think that mutilation had not only saved their lives but spared them years of suffering. I shared my observation with Nègre and those with less serious injuries. From then on, we were less positive when the question came up.

To settle the dispute, we sought the advice of General de Poculotte, and he gave his answer:

‘The great struggle exalts the lifeblood of the nation, it carries our country to the highest rank of humanity, and we must not wish for it to end too quickly. The France of the twentieth century is on the road to glory. Let us rejoice and place that glory higher than petty considerations about the life or death of a few hundred thousand soldiers. It is with their blood that we are writing these unforgettable pages, and their fate can never be a sad one!’

Turning to the cripples, who always grouped together, we declared, with an air of jealousy: ‘You’re the lucky ones!’ They smiled, and forgot some of their regrets. And Bardot, holding himself up on his crutches, spoke kindly to us:

‘Absolutely,’ chipped in another, ‘better to come back damaged than not come back at all!’

Only a few days ago, there were three in our ward whose condition gave cause for concern, out of thirty in all. Now there are only two, and that will not last long.

The first had a perforated intestine. He could only be fed through tubes, and his open stomach, into which these pipes fitted very loosely, gave off an odour of latrines. He struggled on, and went under the knife several times. From a distance all I could see was a bloodless face the colour of old ivory, and little by little this face seemed to acquire a dull, grey coating, as if someone had forgotten to dust it, and the beard, drawing strength from the compost of unhealthy flesh, spread rapidly, seeming to drive out life like ivy takes light from the front of a house. At last they took him down to a room on the first floor reserved for those needing constant care. Two days later, we learned that he had died.

The second is an adjutant – so we were told – who is suffering from acute toxaemia. Tests have shown fatally high levels of albumin. For the past two days the man has been completely blind, struggling feebly in the dark. Some spark of life still flickers, like a gas flame turned right down, but his mind has gone. No one stops by his bed any more; medicine has done all it can and must leave it to the organism to perform a miracle. He, too, will be taken downstairs. It seems most likely that nothing will interrupt his passage from the darkness of this death struggle to the darkness of the coffin. As he has never spoken we have not been able to form a bond with him, and his death will affect us less than that of a comrade whose voice is familiar. This is an unknown man whose name must be recorded somewhere on a list, and he is as much a stranger to us as a corpse would be that we encountered at a bend in the trench. And finally, he is dying of an illness, and illness doesn’t inspire much pity in us.

The last is a small Breton lad, very young, with gangrenous wounds all along one side of his body. The doctors keep chipping away at two of his limbs: one arm and one leg, battling with the gangrene over his flesh, bit by bit, fifteen to twenty centimetres at a time. He has had five operations in eighteen days. Half the time he is knocked out by chloroform. They use this state of torpor to bind up his wounds, hiding from him the progressive shortening of his limbs. When he is lucid he won’t let anyone come near, knowing that people only touch him to cause him pain. He is completely illiterate and speaks an incomprehensible patois, in which we can only understand the swear words he uses on the nurses. He is another one who emits the most horrible screams at certain times. But no one mutters complaints at these screams, for we know his situation is terrifying and will remain so even if he survives. On the contrary we are amazed at how rarely he screams and at how much resistance he has.

One evening four days ago, they brought a new patient into the ward and put him in a bed in a secluded corner. He seemed to be in very low spirits and kept his face turned resolutely to the wall. On his first day in the ward I thought I noticed the nurses displaying a certain degree of surprise when they questioned him. And over the next days they spoke to him in an odd tone in which, knowing them as well as I did, I could discern some cautious pity, along with an indefinable nuance of superiority. He became an object of curiosity and furtive glances for all of us. However, he didn’t complain and ate normally.

A little while ago (I was beginning to take my first steps out of bed) I approached him rather stealthily. He didn’t see me coming and our eyes met when I was right beside him.

He gave me a photo he took from under his pillow: a pretty brunette with bright eyes and firm bust.

I told him what I knew about eunuchs, about the pleasure they could give to women in the harems, explained that there were plenty of cases of having such surgery voluntarily. He seized my sleeve and, as if he wanted me to swear to the truth of what I was saying, demanded:

‘As for myself, well, perhaps, if I must . . . But you understand, it’s because of her . . .’

I have told no one what I learned, not wanting to make it worse for him. There’s no doubt everyone would feel pity for him, but it was precisely pity that would be so dreadful and he will have plenty of time to endure it. For now, the little edge in the nurses’ voices (now I understood what it was) was quite enough. The tone they use with him astonishes me. Among their numbers are several very proper young women, from good families, some of them pious and probably virgins. Yet they are still sensitive to this. Faced with a man who is incomplete, they lose that very discreet air of submission and fear that women have with men. Their lack of respect means ‘there’s no danger in this one’, the worst insult a woman can direct at us. He was right, the poor devil: that is essential with them, with all of them. The prudish ones, who are afraid of it, think about it just as much as the sensual ones, who need it.

As soon as she arrives at eight in the morning, the matron comes straight to my bed:

‘Good morning, Dartemont. Sleep well?’ she asks with a warm, sociable smile.

‘Good morning, Nègre!’ with a weaker smile, just what is left of the one she’s given me.

To Diuré, on my left, now in a much more matronly tone: ‘All right, Diuré?’

Then she hurriedly makes her rounds, addressing people as groups now, not as individuals – ‘Everyone OK over here?’—while distributing haughty little nods of greeting.

The nuances are significant. They show that I have been granted the favour of the matron, who, to us wounded, was the equivalent of the colonel to the soldier. I have done nothing to merit this favour except to be myself, without concessions, accepting all the dangers of such frankness which must sometimes shock these women. It worked; they liked me. It must be said that the nurses find me more charming than many of my comrades. I come from the world of ideas and as I’m not in much pain, and stay lucid, and am not interested in drinking and card games, I can have long conversations with them which allow me to make sense of things – in my own fashion. I proceed to revise their values, which are not the same as mine. Their heads are stuffed with good intentions, which have been garnished with the bric-à-brac of noble sentiments tied up in a pretty bow, of honeyed breasts and make-believe men, as if their mothers had raised them to spend their whole lives sailing on some limpid blue lake with their heads on the shoulder of a faithful companion . . . I make a mess of some of the drawers where they keep their ideas and break a few tasteless vases. But I get the feeling that they don’t really detest what they would call cynicism, paradox or blasphemy. Being women, they like their ideas and opinions to be treated roughly, as, in some cases, their bodies. They experience a certain chaste thrill in listening to me, not so very different from the other kind of thrill, though they do not suspect it. They tell me a little anxiously of the things they admire. When they are at home they prepare questions for me at their leisure, which they note and then spring on me the next day. From my point of view, as long as they look after me, keep in their place and attend to my dressings every morning after washing me and applying iodine, then in the evenings, free from the tyranny of my wounded flesh, I can enjoy regaining my advantage over them, as a man, and one with a powerful intellect. It’s funny to see how a little infantryman – little more than a servant, no doubt, in the eyes of some of their fathers – can give lessons to the daughters of superior officers, as indeed they admit I do, and pleasantly too. What adds piquancy to this little victory is the memory of the utter misery in which I found myself a few weeks ago, of my insignificance at the front, in a squad, behind a parapet, among the endless foothills of the Artois where a man with his personality and his ideas, with his past achievements if he’s old and his future potential if he’s young, is merely an anonymous unit in the vast hordes of serving soldiers, who will be decimated every day then replaced by other men who mean just as little to the leaders . . . A soldier, just another grain of the inexhaustible raw materials of the battlefield, little more than a corpse since he is destined to become one by chance in the great, anonymous massacre . . . And here, in mixed hospital no. 97, is the blessed Dartemont, to whom the matron remarked the other day, in the presence of some of these young ladies: ‘Here we have the intellectual centre of the ward.’

Yesterday the lowliest herdsman, the lowliest navvy, with his thick skin and superior physical endurance, was better at war than me. His hard muscles and broad chest gave the country a safer frontier, in the ten metres of territory under his care. Yesterday, the meanest hoodlum with his stiletto and his hyena’s taste for corpses, was a better assailant, a more dangerous enemy for the blond giant facing him than the unknown soldier Dartemont, taking his turn at drudgery (‘just like one of the lads’, and it was only fair), no good at marching, no good down in the trenches, untrained, scorned by the tough guys for all his useless student intellectual baggage, impressing them only when he gave away his brandy ration and didn’t haggle over food. And here he is today chatting to ten young women who are smiling at him and listening to him, and who, when they discuss their wounded charges among themselves, must – I imagine – be saying: ‘He’s got an interesting mind, that boy!’

The hospital train that took us away from the front came into the station around nine in the morning, after an arduous, bumpy, and feverish three-day journey.

While we were being carried across the tracks and platforms, civilians looked at us with pity, and murmured: ‘Poor children!’ Their pity made me suddenly feel that my wound had a meaning, one revived from antiquity: ‘Your blood has flowed for the country, and you are a hero!’ But I knew just how hesitant and unwilling a hero I was, and that in fact I was a mere victim, or beneficiary, of a blow that had struck home, that I had not raised my arm to avenge it, that no enemy was dead because of anything I had done. I had no exploits to recount to all the zealous mothers and old men gathered on the ramparts to greet the returning warriors after their victorious battles. I was a hero without enemy scalps, taking advantage of the heroism of homicidal heroes. It could be that I felt just a little ashamed . . .

It was when we were brought into a great hall full of nurses in white, some of them young, smiling and fresh-faced, others grey and maternal, that we learned how special we were. Women! To be surrounded by the faces and voices and smiles of women! So we were not going to end up in some sinister military hospital . . .

We were assigned our beds. I was in ward 11, on the third floor, under the supervision of the matron, Miss Nancey. Each ward had its staff and head nurse; the hospital had twelve wards and must have held two or three hundred patients.

It was six days since I was wounded and this was the first time I had left the hard stretcher on which I couldn’t turn round. My new bed felt infinitely soft, and to find myself in a bright, clean place, in white sheets, made me strangely astonished. Now I was certain of my salvation, I could at last let go, relinquish all the strength I’d summoned up to keep myself safe and sound while I was being transported by indifferent stretcher-bearers who had grown deaf to our screams having heard too many screams already, and who could only get the rest and calm which they also needed by abandoning us to our pain, forgetting us, sometimes letting us die. I gave in to the weakness that came so easily and closed my eyes, as a young nurse took charge of me.

I had not washed since we were in the trenches before the attacks of 25 September. Underneath its coating of bandages, my body was covered in filth and dried blood from top to toe, and there were still pallid lice crawling around beneath the gauze, lice which you could burst like fat pimples in one vile squelch with your fingernail. The young woman propped me up on my pillows, put a basin on my bed and wiped my face. I was transformed. From the haggard mask scarred by horror and exhaustion that I had acquired through three weeks of combat emerged my real face, my old one, the face of man destined to live. She considered this new face that she had just cleaned, now pink but still dazed, and asked me:

She washed my right hand (the left was still swathed in dressings), holding it in hers like you do with little children. The water in the basin was black and mucky. It was thick with the mud of Artois, the clay into which we were driven by the whistle of shells and which had plastered us with hard scales.

I thought she had finished with me but she came back, accompanied by a small, brusque woman who told me:

And without further ado she summoned the porters. I glared at her, I found her unpleasant. However, this turned out to be the first of Mademoiselle Nancey’s kind deeds. From then on this was to be my bed, second in the row by the windows looking on to the hospital’s main quadrangle, near the door, which I was soon convinced was a very good position. And I owed it to my social status, of which the young woman had immediately informed the head nurse.

Now that we were rested we could begin to take stock of our surroundings and companions. Before the war, mixed hospital no. 97 had been a religious boarding school called Saint-Gilbert, and ward 11 was in a former dormitory. It was very long room, lit by ten windows on either side, the darkest corner sectioned off, with beds lined up at two-metre intervals. In the middle of the room were dining tables; in the corner, the store cupboards, dispensary, and wash-hand basins. The ward was painted pale yellow, and was spotlessly clean; there were even vases of flowers.

We watch the nurses scurrying around busily. (‘The brunette’s not bad.’ ‘The tall one’s OK, too.’). They are getting the measure of this new batch of patients, choosing their favourites. They stop at the foot of each bed and call out to each other, a little too casually:

‘Mademoiselle Jeanne, come and take a look at this one. Doesn’t he look young?’

Unshaven and feverish, the wounded man who has lost the habit of talking to women, if he had ever acquired it, shrinks down under the blankets, blushes, and gives stupid answers to young ladies whose confidence intimidates him.

They are very polite and display considerable willingness to help. But you can still feel a certain distance in their tone, which shows that we are not from their milieu. Caring for us is a patriotic task, a humane gesture which they deign to make but which does not overcome the distance born of different upbringing. They keep the prejudices of their caste and address officers in a different tone. Nègre grumbles:

‘We’re going to look bloody stupid if this carries on! We didn’t put up with shells and bullets in order to get pushed around by a bunch of hoity-toity brats!’

‘Mademoiselle, I need some notepaper, some cigarettes, and a newspaper. Can you sort that out?’

‘No doubt you do. But I want L’Œuvre, mademoiselle. Shall I give you the money?’

She notes all this down and assures us that we’ll have it all in a couple of hours, then returns to her friends, looking a little astonished.

‘Excellent, excellent! As the general always said: “Attack, attack, attack! Always go on the offensive! Get the upper hand over your adversary and demoralise him! Attack and attack again!” Any staff officer from military college who knows what he’s about would say the same.’

This is how I first hear of the famous General Baron de Poculotte, such an intimate friend of sergeant Nègre that he chose to make him his confidant. This leads me to question my neighbour on his past. I don’t get anything very precise out of him. ‘Ah well, you know, I’ve done this and that!’ Later, in the course of various conversations, I learned that he had travelled abroad, had been a man of business, sold different products, some kind of trader. I think I also understood that he’d collected bets in cafés, and he seemed impressively well informed on drug-trafficking and the ways of the demi-monde . . . In short, he was a charming companion, his head full of stories and unexpected knowledge.

Our little initiative had been pointed out to the other nurses, who observed us at a distance, and, for the first few days, didn’t come near us except to perform their medical duties.

We first made real contact when I asked for some books. When people like to read, they can readily find common ground. Preferences lead to debate, and give a rapid measure of each other’s opinions. On my bedside table I soon had Rabelais, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Jules Vallès, Stendhal naturally; some Maeterlinck, Octave Mirbeau, and Anatole France, etc., all suspect authors for the young daughters of the bourgeoisie. And I rejected, as conventional and insipid, the writers whom they’d been fed.

Once I’d won over one nurse she’d bring along another one, and so it went. The conversations began and I was surrounded and bombarded with questions. They asked me about the war:

‘Yes, at the front line I never saw a living, armed German before me. I only saw dead Germans: the job had been done. I think I preferred it that way . . . Anyway, I can’t tell you what I’d have done faced with some big, fierce Prussian, and how it would have turned out as regards national honour . . . There are actions you don’t plan in advance, or only plan pointlessly.’

‘What I was ordered to do, no more no less. I am afraid there’s nothing very glorious in it, and none of the efforts I was compelled to make were in the least prejudicial to the enemy. I am rather afraid that I may have usurped the place I have here and the care you are bestowing on me.’

‘Oh, you do get on my nerves! That’s not an answer. I asked you what you did!’

‘Yes? . . . Well, all right, what did I do? I marched day and night without knowing where I was going. I did exercises, I had inspections, I dug trenches, I carried barbed wire, I carried sandbags, I did look-out duty. I was hungry and had nothing to eat, thirsty and had nothing to drink, was tired without being able to sleep, was cold without being able to get warm, and had lice without always being able to scratch . . . Will that do?’

‘Yes, that’s all . . . Or rather, no, that’s nothing. Would you like to know the chief occupation in war, the only one that matters: I WAS AFRAID.’

I must have said something really disgusting, something obscene. They gave a little indignant shriek and ran off. I saw the revulsion on their faces. From the looks they exchanged I could guess their thoughts: ‘What? A coward! How can this man be French!’ Mademoiselle Bergniol (twenty-one, a colonel’s daughter, with all the fervour of a Child of Mary,[19] but with wide hips that would predispose her to maternity) asked me insolently.

A very unpleasant word to have thrown at you, in public, by a young woman, and quite an attractive one at that. Ever since the world began, thousands and thousands of men have got themselves killed because of that word on women’s lips . . . But it isn’t a matter of making these girls happy by trumpeting out a few appealing lies like a war correspondent narrating daring deeds. It’s a matter of telling the truth, not just mine but ours, theirs, those who are still there, the poor bastards. I took a moment to let the word, with all its obsolete shame, sink in, and accepted it. I answered her slowly, looking her in the face:

‘It is the first time I have ever heard such a thing and I must say I find it hard to accept. When you’re afraid, you run away.’

Nègre, who wasn’t asked, comes to my rescue spontaneously, with this sententious statement:

‘The man who flees has one inestimable advantage over the most heroic corpse: he can still run!’

His support is disastrous. I can feel that our situation is getting seriously out of hand and sense a collective rage rising up in these women, like the one that possessed the mobs in 1914. I quickly intervene:

‘Yes, everyone, no exceptions. French, German, Austrian, Belgian, Japanese, Turkish, African . . . the lot . . . If you could? I tell you it’d be like a great offensive in reverse, a bloody great Charleroi,[20] every direction, every country, every language . . . Faster, forward! The lot, I’m telling you, the whole lot!’

Mademoiselle Bergniol, standing between our beds like a gendarme at a crossroads, tries to put a stop to this rout.

‘And the officers?’ she snaps. ‘Generals were seen charging at the head of their divisions!’

‘Yes, so it’s said . . . They marched with the troops once to show off, to play to the gallery – or simply because they didn’t know what would happen, just as we didn’t the first time. Once but not twice! When you’ve tasted machine-gun fire on open ground once, you’re not going to go there again for the fun of it . . . You can bet that if generals had to go over the top, they wouldn’t launch attacks so lightly. But then they discovered defence in depth, those aggressive old chaps! That was the finest discovery of the General Staff!’

‘Oh, this is quite dreadful talk!’ says Mademoiselle Bergniol, pale with fury.

It is painful to watch her and we get the feeling it might be wise to change the subject. Then Nègre turns the tables:

‘Don’t get all het up, mademoiselle, we’re exaggerating. We have all done our duty courageously. It’s not so bad now that we are starting to get covered trenches with all the modern conveniences. There’s still no gas for cooking but we already have gas for the throat. We have running water every day that it rains, eiderdowns sprinkled with stars at night, and when our rations don’t arrive, we don’t mind at all: we eat the Boche!’

‘The General told me: “I know why I see such sadness in your eyes, little soldier of France . . . Take courage, we will all soon be back to our pig-stickers. Ah, I know how you love your bayonet, little soldier!”’

‘Thank you, my children, thank you. Soldiers, you will always know I am behind you at the hour of battle, and you will always see me in front of you, boots polished and brass shining, on the parade ground. We are together, in life, in death!’[22]

‘Soldiers, I will send you against machine guns, and will you destroy them?’

‘Soldiers, I will send you against artillery and will you silence those guns?’

‘Soldiers, I will throw you against the Imperial Guards and will you crush the Imperial Guards?’

‘Soldiers, soldiers, I can feel your impatience, sense how your generous blood is boiling. Soldiers, soon I won’t be able to hold you back. Soldiers, I can see it, you want an offensive!’

The whole room is now gripped by warlike delirium. People are imitating the rattle of machine guns, the whistle of shells, explosions. Roars and shouts of hatred and triumph evoke the frenzy of an attack. Projectiles are thrown, bedside tables shaken, and everyone joins in the furious fun. The nurses rush to calm it down and stop the noise disturbing patients in other wards.

Nègre has pulled the blankets off his thigh and stuck his leg in the air. He has put a képi on his foot and is waving it around to imitate a capering, conquering general at the head of his army.

‘Dartemont, I have been thinking about what happened yesterday and I fear I may have offended you . . .’

‘Please don’t apologise, mademoiselle. I have been thinking about it, too, and I should not have spoken to you as I did. I’ve come to realise that in this war it is just not possible for people at the front and people at the rear to see eye to eye.’

‘I’ve been taught a great many things – like you – and I’m aware that one has to choose between them. War is nothing but a monstrous absurdity and nothing good or great will come from it.’

‘My country? Another concept to which you attach from a distance a rather vague ideal. You want to know what “my country” really is? Nothing more or less than a gathering of shareholders, a form of property, bourgeois mentality, and vanity. Think about all the people in your country whom you wouldn’t go near, and you’ll see that the ties that are supposed to bind us all together don’t go very deep . . . I can assure you that none of the men I saw fall around me died thinking of his country, with “the satisfaction of having done his duty”. I don’t believe that many people went off to fight in this war with the idea of sacrifice in their heads, as real patriots should have done.’

‘What’s really demoralising is the situation in which we soldiers are put. When I thought of dying, I saw death as a bitter mockery, since I was going to lose my life for a mistake, someone else’s mistake.’

‘Oh, it’s quite possible to die without being a mug. In the end I wasn’t so afraid of dying. A bullet in the heart or the head . . . My worst fear was mutilation and the long drawn out agony that we witnessed.’

‘I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change the badge that I wear, but you can’t change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, intrusions and obligations with which every civilisation, every community would burden me. I make myself my own homeland through my affinities, my choices, my ideas, and no one can take it away from me – I may even be able to enlarge it. I don’t spend my life in the company of crowds but of individuals. If I could pick fifty individuals from each nation, then perhaps I could put together a society I’d be happy with. My first possession is myself; better to send it into exile than to lose it, to change a few habits rather than terminate my role as a human being. We only have one homeland: the world.’

‘But don’t you think, Dartemont, that this feeling of fear you talked about yesterday has helped make you lose all your ideals?’

‘That word fear shocked you, didn’t it? It’s not a word you’ll find in histories of France, and that won’t change. But I’m sure now that it will have its place in our history, as in all others. In my case I reckon convictions will overcome fear, rather than fear overcoming convictions. I think I’d die quite well for something I believed in passionately. But fear isn’t something to be ashamed of: it is a natural revulsion of the body to something for which it wasn’t made. Not many people avoid it. Soldiers know what they’re talking about because they have often overcome this revulsion, because they’ve managed to hide it from those around them who were feeling it too. I knew men who believed I was brave by nature, because I had hidden what I was going through. For even when our bodies are wriggling in the mud like slugs and our mind is screaming in distress, we still sometimes want to put on a show of bravery, by some incomprehensible contradiction. What has made us so exhausted is precisely that struggle between mental discipline and flesh in revolt, the exposed, whimpering flesh that we have to beat into submission so we can get up again . . . Conscious courage, mademoiselle, starts with fear.’

Such are our most frequent topics of conversation. They lead us, inevitably, to define our notion of happiness, our ambitions, the goals of humanity, the summits of thought, even god and religion. We re-examine the old laws of humanity, laws created for interchangeable minds, for the whole flock of bleating minds. We discuss every article of her own morality, the morality which has guided the endless procession of little souls down through the ages, indistinct little souls which twinkled like glow-worms in the darkness of the world, and were extinguished after one night of life. Today we offer our own feeble light, which isn’t even enough for us.

Through my questions, I lead the nurses into traps of logic, and ensnare them in syllogisms that completely undermine their principles. They struggle like flies in a spider’s web, but refuse to surrender to the mathematical rigour of reason. They are led by the sentiments that a long passage of generations, ruled by dogma, has incorporated into the very substance of their being – sentiments that they have got from a line of women, housewives and mothers, who were alive in their early years and then crushed by domestic drudgery, worn out by the daily round, who crossed themselves with holy water to exorcise any thoughts they might have.

They are surprised to learn that duty, as they understand it, can be opposed to other duties, that there are seditious ideas vaster and more elevated than theirs, and which could be more beneficial to humanity.

‘I know that, mademoiselle. You could bear flaming torches as well as babies, but you’ll only give your son the guttering candle that you were given; its wax is dripping and burning your fingers. It is candles like that which have set the world ablaze instead of illuminating it. Blind men’s candles, and you can be sure that tomorrow they’ll relight the braziers that will consume the sons of your loins. And their pain will be nothing but ash, and at the moment their sacrifice is consummated, they will know this and will curse you. With your principles, if the occasion presents itself, then you in turn will be inhuman mothers.’

‘The action of a hero is a paroxysm and we don’t know what causes it. At the height of fear, you can see men becoming brave; it is a terrifying kind of bravery because you know that it’s hopeless. Pure heroes are as rare as geniuses. And if in order to get one hero you have to blow ten thousand men to pieces, then we can do without heroes. You should remember that you would probably be unable to carry out the mission you give us. You can only be sure of how calmly you’ll face death when you’re facing it.’

When Mademoiselle Bergniol has gone, Nègre, who was following our conversation, shared his opinion:

‘The delicate little dears! What they need is a hero in their beds, a real live hero with a bloody face, to make them squeal with pleasure!’

‘They don’t know anything, I agree. When all’s said and done, women – and I’ve known plenty of them – are females, stupid and cruel. Behind all their airs and graces, they are just wombs. What will they have done during the war? They’ll have egged on men to go and get their heads blown off. And the men who will have disembowelled lots of the enemy will receive their reward: the love of a charming, right-thinking young woman. What sweet little bitches!’

While he’s talking I am watching the women going about their duties. Mademoiselle Bergniol is energetic in a methodical way, busying herself with studied cheerfulness: she seems transformed by the sense of duty that she upholds. Mademoiselle Heuzé is a big girl, homely and rather awkward, but the shape of her large mouth gives her a kindly appearance. Mademoiselle Reignier is full of goodwill, clumsy, a bit daft, and already too fat; in a few years she’ll make ‘a good, plump mother’ without a trace of ill-nature. With Madame Bard, her nonchalance and the way she swings her strong hips, suggests desire; with the rather sultry gaze of a woman lacking a husband, her eyes linger on our bodies, a little covetously, perhaps. I avoid the attentions of grey-haired Madame Sabord, a fussy woman with dry fingers whose touch is unpleasant. Mademoiselles Barthe and Doré, one blonde the other brunette, both with bruised eyes, are almost inseparable, wrapping their arms round each other’s waists, whispering confidences which make them burst into shrill laughter, like giggles, in a way men find irritating. There is something a bit too voluptuous in their sisterly embraces. Mademoiselle Odet offers everyone her sad smile, her veiled words and the ardour of her feverish eyes. She is too pale, too thin; her frail shoulders already bent beneath the weight of life at its start. You can see she will not have the strength to bear this life for long. We are grateful to her for sharing this short future with all of us, for caring for us when she needs someone to care for her, and the least we can do is to give a smile of encouragement in return for her smile, so full of self-denial.

I know nothing of them apart from these impressions and that’s enough for me. I don’t try to understand what brought them here. I am simply thankful that they are here, gliding gracefully around the ward, filling it with flowers and their various charms. I’m thankful, too, that they have lost that little edge of bourgeois arrogance they had at the start, when they spoke to us as if they were addressing their staff. I even allow myself the forbidden pleasure of catching them unawares with the ghost of a blush on their cheeks which they hide by turning away, or of suddenly looking deep into their eyes and finding the trace of some illicit emotional agitation which makes their hearts beat differently. But I stop myself on the threshold of this disquiet, like a gentleman at the door of a boudoir.

And above all I am delighted that we have become such good friends, that these young ladies (it’s the young ones who display the most curiosity) spare me an hour of their time every day. The clamour of war is silenced by the murmur of their voices. Their words may not always be true, may be empty, but they are kind and gentle, and this pulls me back into life outside the battle zone – though it strikes me every now and then that my return here is unlikely to be permanent.

Every now and then the door of the ward silently opens, and a dark shadow appears beside one of the beds, mumbling unctuous words over the occupant. It’s the hospital chaplain, the former head of the Saint-Gilbert school.

Now, I respect all faiths (and occasionally envy them) but I am always surprised at the furtive approach of some of these people, at their unconvincing smiles. If they are truly performing a holy and noble ministry then why do they behave like touts, and give the impression that they are soliciting your soul with a ‘psst!’ from the end of some dark alleyway. This particular chaplain is of the type that seem to impose themselves on you by calculating your faults. Under their embarrassing gaze I suddenly feel like a monster of depravity, and I’m always waiting for them to say: ‘Come, my son, and confide in me all your filthy little sins . . .’

Father Ravel took a particular interest in me in the beginning, and I suppose that the nurses, knowing my religious background, must have told him about me. In the period just after I arrived he would visit me every day and asked me to come and see him as soon as I could walk. I put this off as long as I could.

But he managed to drag a promise out of me, in a way that I find unfair. On the evening after my operation, seeing me weak and no more capable of resistance than a dying man, he persisted at great length and, still lost in the fog of chloroform, I said yes. Afterwards he kept reminding me of this promise and repeating: ‘I am waiting for you’, in a reproving tone that made it seem like I was the one acting in bad faith.

He did this so much that last week I eventually followed him out of the ward. He took me to his room and sat himself down in the chair beside the prie-dieu, where penitents kneel before Christ. But I’ve known that old trick with the furniture for a long time. So instead of kneeling on the prie-dieu, I sat on it. Once he had recovered from his astonishment, he questioned me, rather clumsily.

I realised that I should not expect any sophisticated conversation from him and that the only reason he’d brought me there was to catch me off guard and steal my sins. For him, every soul must be healed by absolution, rather in the way that some doctors use purges for every illness. I let him go on. He reminded me of my Christian childhood, and asked:

‘I don’t have sins any more. The greatest sin, in the eyes of the Church and the eyes of men, is to kill your brother. And today the Church is ordering me to kill my brothers.’

‘They are nonetheless the children of the same God. And God, the father, presides over the fratricidal struggle of his own children, and the victories on both sides. He’s just as happy whichever army sings the Te Deum. And you, one of the just, you pray to him to ruin and annihilate other just men. How do you expect me to make sense of that?’

‘We have that saying in the army, too: “Don’t try to understand.” It’s the logic of a corporal.’

‘I implore you, my child, for it is written: “Pride is the beginning of all sin: He that holdeth it, shall be filled with maledictions, and it shall ruin him in the end.”’

‘Yes, I know: “Beati pauperes spiritu”.[23] It’s a form of blasphemy, since He created us in his image and likeness!’

He got up and showed me the door. We did not exchange another word. Instead of the affliction at the sight of this lost sheep that should have been in his eyes, all I could see was a glint of hatred, the fury of a man who had been defeated and whose pride (yes, he too!) was wounded. I wondered how this fury could relate to the divine . . .

Still, I would have liked it if this priest had given me a few words of hope, indicated a possibility of belief, explained things to me. Alas, God’s poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use your reason, to look for a rainbow, you always run up against the great excuse, mystery. You will be advised to light some candles, put coins in the box, say a few rosaries, and make yourself stupid.

If the Son of God exists, it is at the moment when he bares his heart, while so many hearts are bleeding – that heart so full of love for man. Was it all to no purpose, had his Father sacrificed him pointlessly? The God of infinite mercy cannot be the God of the plains of Artois. The good God, the just God, could not have allowed such bloody carnage to be carried out in His name, could not have wanted such destruction of bodies and minds to further his glory.

God? Come off it, the heavens are empty, as empty as a corpse. There’s nothing in the sky but shells and all the other murderous devices made by men . . .

The nurses leave the ward between noon and two o’clock, after our lunch. To avoid the embarrassment of relieving ourselves in their presence, we have regulated our bodily functions so that – unless it’s unavoidable – they are only exercised in that period. The only job of the male army nurse who covers for them is to remove the bedpans. Those waiting for him to come look at the ceiling and smoke energetically to dispel the odour. Once the big rush is over and we no longer risk catching cold, we open the windows. Winter sunlight pours into the ward and we let it trickle between our hands, pale with idleness, so that they acquire a faint flush of pink.

Someone had given this male nurse the cruel surname of Caca. I know this name upsets him, know it because I knew André Charlet before the war, at university, where he was one of the star students, bursting with curiosity and ideas. In student reviews he published some brilliant sonnets, which represented life as a vast field of conquests, a heavenly forest full of surprises, into which ventured great explorers who brought back amazing fruit with unfamiliar tastes, women of savage beauty, and a thousand barbaric objects of refined savagery. When the mobilisation began he was one of the first to join up and he was severely wounded the following year.

Now I found him here, broken, drained, and dirty. A few months of war had brought about this metamorphosis, given him this agitated manner, emaciated body and yellow skin. It has left him with the mad terror that you can see behind his eyes. So that he could stay in the hospital he accepted this job and the disgusting duties that go with it. By being Caca, he gets to spend an extra three months in hospital, through some military decision or other allowing medical staff to take on temporary assistants. If he hadn’t done this he would most likely have joined the auxiliaries unless he’d been declared unfit for service altogether. But he doesn’t want to go before a panel except as a last resort for he isn’t convinced that his health has been sufficiently ruined to exempt him from returning to front-line duty. He is alone in doubting it; we believe he is likely to die from tuberculosis, more infallible than shells.

I try to win him round, recalling our adolescent years together, our friends, our happiness, our former ambitions. But I cannot interest him. He smiles weakly and says: ‘It’s all over!’

He shrugs his shoulders: ‘Poetry is like glory!’, then leaves because someone is calling him. A moment later he returns with steaming bedpan, turns his head away in utter disgust, and sneers: ‘There you are, poetry!’

‘It was in the eastern zone, end of August. Our battalion attacks with bayonets. You have no idea how idiotic those first assaults were, what a massacre. What distinguished that period without a doubt was the incompetence of our leaders – and they were sometimes victims themselves. They had been taught that battles were decided by the infantry, and cold steel. They didn’t have the faintest idea about the effects of modern weaponry, of artillery and machine guns, and their big hobby horse was Napoleonic strategy – nothing new since Marengo! We were under attack and instead of establishing solid positions, we were scattered across the plains, unprotected, wearing uniforms straight out of a circus and then ordered to charge at forests, from 500 metres. The Boche picked us off like rabbits and then, once they’d done all the damage they could, they fled when we got close enough for hand-to-hand fighting. Finally on that particular day, having lost half our men, we managed to drive them out. But the bastards had a diabolical idea. There was a strong wind blowing against us and they set fire to the cornfields from which we were chasing them . . . What I saw there was a vision of hell! Four hundred wounded men, lying still on the ground, suddenly bitten and revived by the flames, four hundred turned into human torches, trying to run on broken limbs, waving their arms and screaming like the damned. Their hair went straight up in flames, like tongues of fire on the head of the Holy Ghost, and the cartridges they had in their belts exploded. We were struck dumb, unable to think of taking cover, as we watched four hundred of our comrades sizzling and twisting and rolling in this inferno, swept by machine-gun fire, unable to reach them. I saw one stand up as the wave of fire approached him and shoot his neighbours to spare them this horrible death. And then several of them, about to be engulfed by the flames, began screaming to us: “Shoot us, pals, shoot us!” and maybe some of us had that terrible courage . . . And Ypres! The night battles at Ypres. You didn’t know who you were killing, who was killing you. Our colonel had told us: “Treat prisoners well, my children, but don’t take any.” The people we were facing had surely been given the same instructions.’

‘But look, the worst is over, old pal. We’ll soon be back in civilian life, and we’ll return to what we were doing before.’

‘No, it won’t be like before. That’s not possible. The war has diminished me. You knew me at university, you know my fellow students had me marked out as someone who would stand out in our generation, our teachers had faith in me, and men of distinction had already honoured me. I dreamed of a glittering career as a leader of men, at least an intellectual leader, but I also believed that my body was capable of serving my ideas. Now I’ve seen that my body is just an old rag, a straw in the wind; it’s a deserter and it’s taken me with it . . . A chap who shakes with fear cannot be a leader.’

‘Not all. You remember Morlaix, that dolt who spent his life in bars with dubious women, who got ill at the very thought of opening a book, and whom we held in utter contempt? He’s already a sub-lieutenant. He was completely in control at the front, incredibly plucky. To give you some idea – at the time when the trenches still weren’t continuous, in a new sector, we were coming back with provisions through a foggy night. You couldn’t see more than three metres ahead. So of course we get lost and we end up floundering around in some kind of swamp, going around in circles like we were blindfolded, hampered by the supplies we were carrying and unarmed. Morlaix decides what to do: “Go straight ahead, we’ll see where we get!” So we march on and on, in silence . . . A shout makes us freeze: “Wer da?” We’ve walked straight into the German sentries. Now, listen to this, Morlaix has a pack full of hard-boiled eggs. Quick as a flash he chucks three of them ahead of him. Hearing them land, in the dark, the Boche thought they were grenades and fled. I could never keep my cool like that . . .’

‘You have other qualities. The fact that a brute may be briefly useful on a battlefield doesn’t prove anything against the life of the mind, quite the contrary. A man who creates is worth more than a man who kills.’

‘I can’t accept that a man can be incomplete, that he can show himself inferior in certain aspects of the game. In the war, I was a disaster. I cannot forget it.’

‘I’m ashamed to think of it! I’ve writhed in humiliation at all the times I’ve sobbed in fear, at the tears I’ve shed, a weakling’s tears. Don’t you see, I’ve betrayed all the beliefs of my youth, Nietzsche, strength . . . ah, sweet god . . . Now I am good for emptying chamber pots and I will never be more than a clerk.’

It was a strange case of depression and I think his physical illness played a large part in it.

I saw him do something shocking. It was at the time when Diuré was suffering so badly with his thigh. One day, on the pretext of relieving his pain, Charlet had insisted he change his dressing. Diuré finally agreed. The procedure completed, I saw Charlet take the bowl behind the wash-hand basins, take out a soiled piece of gauze and carefully put it inside a tin box that he slipped into his pocket. Intrigued, I called him over a moment later and asked:

‘I can tell you and I know you won’t talk about it. You remember Richerand, who was in the School of Chemistry?’

‘The same. I met up with him at the front. We were good friends and promised to help each other whatever happened. The promise helped sustain us a little. He didn’t let me down. He stuck by me when I was wounded. It was he who bound up my wound and transported me to the first-aid post, through an artillery barrage, with the help of another soldier whom he had persuaded to come with him. There they were able to stop the bleeding, and so Richerand probably saved my life. I am all the more grateful to him for his devotion because I know he’s very sensitive: a heap of nerves who has suffered a great deal in this war . . . He has just written to me (he’s at Vieil Armand[24]): “All we do is attack. Save me!” Which I know is his way of saying, I’ve reached my limit, I’ve given up hope.’

‘So . . . How do you think I can help him from here? I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday and it’s urgent . . .’

‘Phlegmonic pus. If he injects himself with it, he has a chance of being evacuated.’

‘One man leaves the front, another takes his place. By saving Richerand you are condemning someone else.’

‘Too bad! Richerand is my friend. Do you want me to sit back and let him die? In a moment of depression he may do something foolish. I have no choice.’

The idea of denouncing him never crossed my mind, any more than it would with our comrades. Between us there is strict solidarity: we all have to do our jobs in the trenches but we consider that everyone is free to try and escape the front, and how this is done is none of our business; we congratulate those who succeed. Could I even judge Charlet? I thought of all those soldiers I had seen with the eyes of condemned men, suddenly overcome by a fatal presentiment. A man in the grip of such an obsession can no longer look after himself, fight to stay alive; he goes to his death like a sleepwalker . . . Could I judge Charlet? Where we had come from, you don’t judge. You submit. To submit is to risk your life; not to submit is also to risk it. Charlet’s gesture? Simply this: here is where our utter misery has taken us, this is what men are forced to resort to when their strength fails. We cannot blame: we know too well that weakness lies in wait for all of us.

It is hard to guess the age of Mademoiselle Nancey. Probably between thirty-five and forty. Sour face, thin lips, cold eyes and sharp voice; she lacks everything a man might seek in a woman, offers no physical feature that might stick in your memory. She is irritable, quick-witted, born to give orders, at no time could such a woman have possessed that hesitant grace, those little hints of consent that in most women can attract and keep a man. You can tell that she has never felt her heart heavy with longing and the sudden, irrational urge to offer it timidly. She is one of those women in whom love’s safety valve doesn’t work and so her energy must turn to other activity for release: cerebral tasks, the tasks of men. The hospital provides an excellent outlet for this energy. The indefatigable Mademoiselle Nancey does great service there, giving strong leadership to her little troop of nurses, never panicking at the sight of wounds, never moved by cries of pain.

In the mornings she leads the doctor on his rounds – a decent old civilian doctor, who signs the necessary papers, checks our condition, and asks his colleagues to assist in the most serious cases. He looks distractedly at the patients and asks:

‘Number 12, doctor, that’s the arm. We’re carrying on with the irrigation. But number 23 is worrying us and is in pain. You should see him.’

She prepares the paperwork, the doctor checks it, and the man has no choice but to go. The bonus period, those precious extra weeks that a patient who has recovered may still enjoy here, in complete safety, depends entirely on her. And bad luck for anyone who has crossed her! For having done just that, Boutroux (a thigh) left overnight, even though the scab on his extensive wound was only recent, still soft and swollen with pus. The idiot had come back drunk after an evening’s outing, and caused a scandal. His vulgarity had been noted: he was a marked man. And so the very next morning, despite his incomplete recovery, out he went. His misbehaviour had cut his period of freedom by at least three weeks: time enough to get killed twenty times over.

The threat of this terrible punishment, premature departure, keeps the lid on everyone who might be tempted to give in to their instincts. We know from the press that the offensives in Artois and Champagne have failed utterly, that the bloody battles at Hartmannswillerkopf, which fill the news reports, will not be decisive. The war cannot enter a new phase before the spring. So it is important for us to gain time. Mademoiselle Nancey can choose to give or deny us this time, time which could save our lives. It adds to her prestige.

The basic rule is thus ‘keep a low profile’. Among those closest to being fit for service, quite a few try to get in her good books by using whatever simple means they have. They offer themselves as drudges, sparing the nurses the most onerous tasks. Others go to Mass, while bragging that this assiduous churchgoing has nothing to do with their religious sentiments. (Others, it should be said, go to Mass out of conviction and no one mocks them for it.) I have the impression they are making a mistake. I don’t believe for one minute that Mademoiselle Nancey will fall for their false piety and do them any favours.

As I’ve said, Mademoiselle Nancey and I are on very good terms. Better than that, we are flirting, a respectful kind of flirtation. She favours me with special attention, seeks my advice on various plans, asks my opinion on the news.

There is another little thing. Right in front of my bed there is a chest on legs, a sort of storage box. Whenever Mademoiselle Nancey comes by for a chat, she jumps up and sit herself down on this chest, obviously pleased to show how nimble she is. This sudden movement pushes her skirt up high, revealing a little glimpse of thigh above her dark stockings. (Her legs are muscular, but rather pretty: one of her best features, as she surely knows.) On one occasion my gaze alighted on this thigh and she caught my eye. I turned away in embarrassment. But I noticed after that she always sat down with the same revealing movement, and then stared at me without a blush. It seemed to me that she didn’t need to uncover so much of her flesh . . . In short, I had been allowed to share the secret of this sturdy leg and its white skin. Henceforth it would be imprudent not to look at it – discreetly, but with feeling. To show that I was aware of it, that I appreciated it.

I am sure that, with the very best intentions, that is what it was. I recall the words of someone with experience: ‘Women all have the same female pretentions and even the most virtuous among them like to convince themselves that they can tempt a man.’ Yes, Mademoiselle Nancey sought to put a price on her virtue. Why refuse her this little pleasure which didn’t threaten mine?

That leg is my guarantee of extra time in hospital. I can lie back and watch others sweep the floors.

It was bound to happen. I’m surprised that the changes in his behaviour which were definitely abnormal didn’t alert me sooner. A young man, however much he’s exhausted and demoralised, should quickly recover, but Charlet only got more depressed and gloomy.

His clenched fingers, facial tics and jerky movements, all indicated the state of his nerves when he entered the ward earlier on. Nonetheless, he began his duties as usual, though without greeting me.

At about one o’clock he suddenly loomed up in front of me. His face was terrifying, the colour of clay, plastered with brown, his eyes were red. He stuck his arm under my nose:

He was staring at me with wild, burning eyes and I couldn’t look away. Bringing his face right up to mine, he uttered these unbelievable words:

Even more than his fury, it was the spittle dribbling from his mouth that frightened me. Luckily, someone called out for him:

I realised then that he had gone completely off his head, and I feared for the safety of all these vulnerable, wounded men: Peignard with his foot, Diuré with his tubes, the unfortunate Breton. I called out to some of the more able-bodied patients to surround him while we got help. Now completely out of control, he tried to escape, shouting:

‘I am your master, you degenerates! All men depend on me! I am the Truth, the ruler of the world!’

Here is the last vision I have of him in civilian life. One night in the early summer of 1914, under the chestnut trees in the square where we’d all meet every evening. White swans glided silently over the dark, silken surface of the pools by the fountains, the water dappled with light from a brightly illuminated café terrace. A distant orchestra lulled us with its gentle rhythms. And there was Charlet, bare-headed, slim and elegant, sure of himself, even a little spoiled by his precocious success, standing and reciting his own poems. I can still hear his intonation and remember one passage:

Tonight the air is heavy with the scent of the woodland grove

Where she sleeps so calmly, beneath a ray of moonlight,

Her body so white wrapped in the rich brown sash

Of her hair, where I whisper my secrets

The imperious Empress of my heart.

And now, at twenty-two, he is insane. And his madness has taken the lowest form imaginable.

They change our dressings every morning. My turn usually comes around nine o’clock. A nurse approaches with her therapeutic kit and a brave smile (which costs her nothing). She takes hold of me, undoes the safety pins, unwinds the bandages, and takes off the sticky gauze, giving it little tugs that pull at the lips of my wounds. They in turn pass on the message to the rest of my body, which objects to such a sharp and sudden separation and makes me squeal with pain, something I find deeply embarrassing. The wounds are washed with permanganate and then treated with either tincture of iodine or a silver nitrate pencil. There’s nothing to choose between them: both give me the same pleasant sensation of a red-hot iron being thrust into my flesh, and I am always surprised not to smell burning or see smoke rising. The large number of wounds prolongs my agony. While other wounds are still being cleaned, various points on my body, already soaked in iodine, feel like they’ve been placed on a grill, and I writhe about like a heretic struggling not to abjure his faith. My faith, in this case, being my wish to maintain my decorum despite the pain. The worst is kept for last: the wound in my thorax just below my shoulder blade. When I feel the iodine approaching, I tense up, holding my breath, as if a shell was falling. But it is only a pink hand which pauses and then with cruel suddenness pushes the wad of cotton into the gash in my back so that it impregnates me with its brown saliva, right to my lungs, or so it feels. I receive my final thrust to the heart.

Some days when I know I’m about to flinch, I resist. I camouflage my squeals with curses. And I have a very good mind to give this nurse a slap. How can a woman be so calm while making me suffer!

It’s the bad moment of the day; it spoils my rest and blights my morning awakenings, which it follows closely. But once the pain has stopped, it feels like ages till the next treatment. The hours pass until I reach a peak of peace and calm, which then diminishes until the next morning.

Going to hospital, little more than a year ago, was a dreaded phrase. More than suffering, it suggested the ignominious idea of failure. The middle classes did not go to public hospitals; those places were reserved for workers, child-mothers, and those unfortunates who had wasted their inheritance, ‘squandered the lot’, and thus deserved the worst punishments, those, in short, who had gone to rack and ruin. Families would warn their wastrel offspring, their prodigal sons, that ‘You’ll end up in hospital!’, that is, poor, alone and ashamed. Seeing the forbidding exteriors of these institutions, their gloomy corridors, the miserable huddles of mourners that sometimes emerged, used to make me think vaguely of leper colonies.

But now a hospital is the promised land, the greatest hope for millions of men. And for all the pain and suffering and harrowing sights it can contain, it is still the greatest happiness that a soldier can imagine. Once when someone was carried from an ambulance through the doors to this place his heart would sink, he’d feel afraid. Today, the man brought in on a stretcher knows that the admission note he gets from reception is a passport to life.

And if some senior doctor, blessed with divine powers, walked through the ward and told each patient he would heal his shattered limbs, saying ‘Leave thy bed and walk!’, the chances are that Peignard, Mouchetier and all the others who have been torn apart, after weighing up all the risks that a new, healthy body would entail, and remembering the icy sweat of terror that tortures strong, healthy men, would answer: ‘No miracles, please!’

In my case, having been lucky enough to hit the battlefield jackpot with a ‘lucky wound’, my stay in hospital is rather like spending the winter in the Midi. After I’ve paid my debt of pain every morning (the cost of my board and lodging), I really do feel as if I’m on holiday, and the presence of young, graceful nurses, along with the attentions of Mademoiselle Nancey, complete the illusion. What do I need to do, apart from eat, smoke and read? When I tire of reading, I let myself slip into that state of extreme lassitude that comes from excessive rest, I rest from the rest . . . I plump up my weakness like cushions and lie back in comfort. I bask in the pleasure of not having to do anything, of my right – which I owe to a grenade – to be feeble. And I don’t mind the shivers of the mild fever that comes with a long stay in bed.

And so, in my weak state, my eyes closed, I dream. But I don’t dream of the future, which is very uncertain. Safe in the dark behind my lowered eyelids, I can listen to the great rumble of war, echoing in the depths of my ears, like the roar of the waves you can hear in a seashell. Despite myself, I think of the surprising chain of events that has brought me here, and it still amazes me.

6. THE HOSPITAL