4 IN THE AISNE

‘The unexamined life is not worth living’

Socrates

At battalion HQ we enjoy the privilege of being able to leave our packs with the support unit transport. And some, myself included, have replaced their rifles with pistols, and thus also freed themselves of bayonets and bandoliers. This contravenes regulations but is tolerated, and we would in any case be hard pressed to find our own rifles again, now that they have mysteriously disappeared. It is quite possible that we bear some responsibility for these disappearances, but no one is ever going to get to the bottom of it. After years of war, we are firmly convinced – a rifle is of no use at all to soldiers like us, whose role is to rush around in the trenches and whose constant concern is to avoid any unexpected encounters with the enemy. On the contrary, it has major drawbacks: the care that has to be taken of the breech and barrel, its heavy weight, the way it slides about on the shoulder. Some prefer to get themselves short-barrelled carbines, easier weapons to handle, which you can attach with a strap. The ways we have managed to acquire arms to suit our taste remains obscure. But in short we have adapted our weaponry ‘to the demands of modern warfare’, which consist of avoiding anything that is fired at us, and our choices come with experience. It is in decisions like these that we can recognise the much celebrated initiative of the French soldier, with which he makes up for the deficiencies of the rule book concerning armies in the field.

Thus equipped according to our tastes, haversacks at our side, blankets across our chests instead of bandoliers, and canes in hand, our marches are turning into tourism. Those who are interested in the countryside can enjoy discovering panoramic views, picturesque bends in the road, a deep, crystal-clear lake at the foot of a valley, pastures as green as freshly painted railings, bright borders of birches round a park, an old house with rusty wrought iron and broken shutters which retains nobility in its decrepitude like a grand old lady fallen on hard times. Mornings are sweet delight, pale blue mist clearing to unveil wide vistas blushed with luminous pink. All of a sudden, the chime of church bells breaks the silence, while the farmyard cock warms himself in the sun, lord of all he surveys. We share the adventure of new billets in the evening, a village to explore with all it has to offer in the way of grocery shops, bars, wood and straw – and women, if we stay awhile. But women are rare and the countless men who lust after them get in each other’s way. The excess of desires protects their virtue, and the beneficiaries of this are usually men stationed at the rear who have permanent quarters in the village.

We make up a little detachment at the head of the battalion, behind the commandant on horseback who is himself preceded by all the cyclists. The road opens before us, clear and empty. As we pass through towns and villages, we are the first to spot a pretty girl standing on her doorstep. My comrades, almost all from the south, greet her with an exclamation which needs to be heard with the right accent: Vé, dé viannde! Which makes it clear that their aspirations are not focused on the soul of this child.[34]

Behind us, men from the companies struggle with their loads of packs, light machine guns, and full bandoliers. They need marching songs to forget their fatigue. Drawing its recruits from Nice, Toulon, Marseille, etc., the regiment has kept its local traditions in spite of the incorporation of new elements from all over the country. One song is particularly popular. It celebrates the charms of a certain Thérèsina, a young woman who always extends a warm welcome to working men. Every couplet praises a different part of her superb body. The best bit, kept till last, is more or less the same as that which gourmets appreciate in chickens. More men join in, voices swell, and the song ends on this apotheosis:

Bella c . . . nassa,

Quà Thérèsina,

Bella c . . . nassa,

Per fare l’amoré.

Thérèsina, mia bella,

Per fare l’amoré.

Thérèsina, mia bella,

Per fa-ré l’a-mo-ré![35]

This evocation of the charming Thérèsina, half-Niçoise, half-Italian, has helped us up many a steep hill and over many a difficult stretch, as if possession of this military Venus must be the reward for our efforts.

Soldiers from the south are very demonstrative. During breaks, while we are all sitting around outside our billets, they shout out from group to group, and amiably insult each other in their colourful patois.

‘Oh! Barrachini, commen ti va, lou miô amiqué?’

‘Ta mare la pétan! Qué fas aqui?’

‘Lou capitani ma couyonna fan dé pute!’

‘Vaï, vaï, brave, bayou-mi ouna cigaréta!’

‘Qué bâo pitchine qué fas!’[36]

At the front, where there is the risk of the Germans listening in to our telephone communications, this patois is used as a code. I remember once hearing our adjutant announce a bombardment of our sector thus:

I do not understand everything. But I love this sonorous tongue, which evokes sunny lands with all their optimism and nonchalance, and lends a particular pungency to their tales. Sometimes when we’re sharing a hut I have the impression of finding myself mixed in with an exotic tribe. These people experience the north as an exile. They say: ‘We’ve come to fight for others. It isn’t our country that’s being attacked.’ To them, their country is the shores of the Mediterranean, and they have no worries about their frontiers. They are astonished that people can fight tooth and nail over cold regions, blanketed in snow and fog for six months of the year.

Yet they perform their enforced role as soldiers just like everyone else – only with a bit more noise and cursing. They are easy people to get on with.

The battered division has gone to recuperate on quiet roads and in peaceful villages. Survivors of the Chemin des Dames have brought back a series of anecdotes which they embellish and gradually transform into feats of arms. Now that they are no longer in immediate danger, the simplest men forget how they shook with fear, forget their despair, and display a naïve pride. Poor men who paled in terror under the shells, and will do so again at the next engagement, make themselves into a legend worthy of Homer, without seeing that their vanity, which has nothing to feed on apart from the war, will become part of the same traditions of heroism and chivalrous combat that they usually scorn. If you were to ask them ‘Were you afraid?’ many would deny it. At the rear they start talking again of courage, dupes of this tawdry illusion. They like to impress civilians with tales of the horrors they have witnessed, exaggerating their own sangfroid. They bask in the joy of having survived the massacres, blot out the others that are being prepared, and the fact that their lives that they managed to save last time round will soon be threatened again. They live in the present, they eat and they drink. ‘No need to worry!’ they say, and in that they are mistaken.

Rewards and medals have been distributed, with the usual injustice. Men like lieutenants Larcher and Marennes, for example, who held the battalion together, have received hardly any recognition. When a battalion performs well, its leader is the first to get medals, and if he does not indicate those among his subordinates who showed merit, the higher ranks ignore them. In fact Commandant Tranquard abandoned us at our first break, without so much as a by your leave, and without bothering to put the affairs of his unit in order – ‘like a yellow-belly’ as people said. The men at the front fight amidst chaos; there are no witnesses, no umpires to record their successes. They alone can judge where honour is due. This makes most proud proclamations ridiculous and most honours a disgrace. We know of all the usurped reputations which nevertheless carry weight at the rear. Medals are a mockery when some share out the honours and everyone else shares the risks. And as for stripes, they quickly became absurd distinctions; we tore them off long ago. Their only value is for those passing their time in the military zone at the rear who want to impress people when they’re on leave. For us, the front means the trenches.

We have been walking in the Vosges, revisiting the solemn, majestic forests and the silent mountain passes. We have got as far the Col de la Schlucht, opposite Munster. At the foot of the high peak of the Hohneck, its summit still covered with snow that had survived the summer, we were billeted in isolated encampments. In this valley of boredom we were only troubled by our own anti-aircraft batteries, whose shells fell back on us. Some victors of the last battles were thus stupidly wounded.

After Pétain’s offensive, we returned to the Chemin des Dames, captured at last, to the area around Vauxaillon, to the left of the Moulin de Laffaux. Because of our advance, this sector was still disorganised. Paths led to the battalion command post, set up in a little house on a hillside and the runners had their shelter in some ruins.

Along with Frondet, I slept in a narrow passage which we shared with an unexploded shell from a 150 which had come through the wall. A main road led on to the front lines. Down on the plain we found a village hidden by trees, and German positions were scattered around the rich, unspoilt countryside.

We only got shelled at mealtimes in the field kitchens, and spent our leisure exploring the old enemy positions, which had been knocked to pieces by a bombardment lasting several days. On the Mont des Singes we found a number of German corpses, purple and swollen, in an advanced state of decomposition. Grimacing and terrifying, these hideous cadavers had been left to the worms which were coming out of their noses and mouths like some gruel that they vomited as they were dying. They awaited burial, eye sockets already picked clean, hands blackened and shrunken, clenched on the ground. In spite of the smell, the most hardened and greedy soldiers searched them again, but in vain. These unfortunates had already been robbed once by their conquerors, as revealed by their open jackets and turned-out pockets; all the trophies were long gone. Hatred played no part in this pillaging of their remains, merely the desire for booty, traditional in war, to the point of being its true motive, which could only find satisfaction on dead bodies, on quite rare occasions.

At least the corpses proved that the enemy was also taking serious losses, something we did not often have the means to verify. Then we alerted the sanitary brigade to their presence, and stopped going to see these rotting conquerors with empty pockets.

Now we are in another sector, and it looks like this time we will be here for a while.

On our right is the little village of Coucy, crowned by a medieval castle with round towers. On our right is the English army which is holding the Barisis sector. The reserve battalion occupies a huge limestone cave network, a ‘creute’ – with entrances on the opposite slope beneath a plateau. Below us lie a valley, fields, a forest, and in the background, a canal. We take it in turns at the front line, between two sectors that have not been devastated and are covered with wild flowers.

The soldiers have returned to their monotonous duties: keeping watch and digging trenches. Men are increasingly dispersed, are expected to work to their limits. The hours of guard duty are extended. While some regiments only go up to the trenches to attack and do not stay there, ours hardly ever leaves them, except when it is moved. Our losses are generally less, but the work is exhausting. After two weeks at the front line, the battalions are moved back to the reserve positions, as close as they get to rest. At night, detachments are sent off in fatigue parties but in the daytime men remain in the cave with little to do and pass their time playing cards, engraving shell cases, sleeping, sewing or writing.

The days pass, indistinguishable in their tedium. Shells always find a few victims. There is nothing interesting in the communiqués and it is clear the war has no reason to stop.

In the morning the ground is hard, a thin film of ice covers the puddles and long-fallen leaves crackle underfoot. Winter has come and we have to prepare to spend it as well as possible. ‘One more winter!’ cry the men in despair. They draw up a balance sheet of four years of war. They have seen many of their comrades perish and have narrowly escaped death themselves several times, and yet the Allies have still not managed to carry out a major offensive which has shaken the enemy line or liberated a significant portion of territory. The battles of 1915 have won nothing but local advantages, paid for too dearly and without strategic importance. At Verdun we were on the defensive, the Somme was inconclusive, and last April’s offensive was a crime that the whole army has condemned. We followed our brothers’ rebellion at a distance and our hearts were with them: the mutinies were a human protest. Too much has been asked of us, our sacrifices have been wasted and abused. We know very well that it is the docility of the masses that permits so many horrors, our own docility . . . We are kept ignorant of battle plans, but we see the battles themselves, and we can judge.

No end seems in sight. Every day men fall. Every day we have less trust in our own luck. There are still some old hands in the platoons who have been there from the start, hardly leaving the front. Some of them believe themselves immune, invulnerable, but they are rare. The majority, on the contrary, estimate that the luck which has saved them will eventually turn. The more times a man has a lucky escape, the more he has the feeling his turn is coming. When he thinks back at the dangers he has undergone, he is caught by a retrospective terror, like someone who pales after having narrowly avoided a serious accident. We all have a fund of luck (we like to believe), and if you draw on it for too long there will be nothing left. Of course there is no law to this and everything comes down to probabilities. But faced with the injustice of fatality, we hang on to our lucky star, take refuge in absurd optimism, and we must forget that it is absurd or we will suffer. We have seen plenty of evidence of the fact that there is no predestination, but it’s the only notion we have to keep us going.

Here everything is planned for killing. The ground is ready to receive us, the bullets are ready to hit us, the spots where the shells will explode are fixed in time and space, just like the paths of our destiny which will inevitably lead us to them. And yet we want to stay alive and we use all our mental strength to silence the voice of reason. We are well aware that death does not immortalise a human being in the memories of the living, it simply cancels him out.

The rose-pink morning light, the silence of dusk, the warmth of midday, all these are traps. Happiness is a ruse, preparing us for an ambush. A man feels a sudden sense of physical well-being and raises his head above the parapet: a bullet kills him. A bombardment goes on for hours but there are only a few victims, while a single shell fired for want of anything better to do lands in the middle of a platoon and wipes it out. A soldier comes back from the long nightmare of Verdun and on an exercise a grenade detonates in his hand, tearing off his arm, ripping open his chest.

The horror of war resides in this gnawing anxiety. It resides in the continuation, the incessant repetition of danger. War is permanent threat. ‘We know not the place or the hour.’ But we know the place exists and the hour will come. It is insane to hope that we will always escape.

That is why thinking is so terrible. That is why the most simple-minded, illogical men are the strongest. I do not mean our leaders: they are playing out a role, doing what they are employed to do. They have the satisfactions of vanity and they have more comfort (and some of them weaken nonetheless). But the soldiers!

I have noticed that the bravest are the ones most lacking in imagination and sensitivity. This is understandable. If life had not already accustomed the men in the front lines to resignation and the passive obedience of the humble, they would run away. And if those defending the front were highly strung intellectuals, the war would soon become impossible.

The men at the front are dupes. They suspect this may be the case. But their inability to think very far, their habit of following the crowd, keeps them here. The soldier on the parapet is caught between two powerful forces. Ahead of him, the enemy army. Behind him the barrier of gendarmes, the chains of hierarchies and ambitions, held together by the moral pressure of the country, which lives with a concept of war that goes back a hundred years, and cries: ‘Fight to the finish!’ On the other side the people at the rear respond: ‘Nach Paris!’ Stuck between these two forces, the soldier, be he French or German, cannot go forward and cannot go back. So it is that the shout sometimes heard from the German trenches, ‘Kamerad Franzose!’, is quite probably sincere. Fritz is closer to the poilu than to his own field marshal. And the poilu is closer to Fritz, because of the suffering they share, than to the men in Compiègne.[37] Our uniforms are different but we are all proletarians of duty and honour, miners who labour in competitive pits, but above all miners, with the same pay and risking the same explosions of firedamp.

One quiet and sunny day, two enemy combatants, at the same time and place, put their heads above the parapet and see each other, thirty metres apart. The blue soldier and the grey one, having prudently reassured themselves they can trust each other, venture a smile and gaze across in mutual astonishment, as if to ask: ‘What the fuck are we doing here?’ That is the question both armies are asking themselves.

In a corner of the Vosges sector there was a platoon that was on good terms with the enemy. Each clan got on with its tasks openly and cordially greeted the opposing clan. Everyone freely enjoyed the fresh air and incoming projectiles consisted of loaves of bread and packets of tobacco. Once or twice a day a German would shout ‘Offizier!’ to signal that their bosses were making their rounds. This meant ‘Look out! We may be forced to lob a few grenades over.’ They even warned of an attack and the information was accurate. Then the story got out. An inquiry was ordered. There was talk of treason and court martials and some NCOs lost their stripes. The fear seemed to be that the troops would come together to end the war, overruling the generals. Apparently this outcome would have been something terrible.

Hatred must never diminish. That is the order. But in spite of everything we are losing our appetite for hatred . . .

. . . The Boche have been very aggressive in the past twenty-four hours. They had had the foolhardy notion of carrying off some of our men, and to prepare for this unpleasant attack had subjected us to an intense bombardment. This began last night, which was clumsy of them since it put us in a bad mood by compelling us to get up. They carried on this morning and just now attempted an assault which failed. We didn’t even see the tips of their noses. In front of our lines we have grown a thick crop of barbed wire, and it seems most probable this artificial vegetation stopped the marauders. That, and the fact that our own artillery returned their politeness with typically French good grace and generosity.

‘This evening it seems that the people opposite have abandoned their dark designs on us. They must be starting to realise that the road to Paris is a bumpy one and that in order to get there it might be better to borrow a Cook’s Guide than to adopt the manners of Roman conquerors.

‘There was a spot of damage. The destroyers of cathedrals smashed one of our shelters which, fortunately enough, was empty at the time. We will add this to our bill.

‘Yesterday we knocked down one of their aeroplanes. We followed the progress of the combat from its beginning way up high to the last shots exchanged one hundred and fifty metres above our heads. Our fighter, circling round the German two-seater, forced it to land behind our lines: the observer was killed and the pilot wounded. Our men ran over and brought us the wicked archangel on a stretcher. The commander interrogated him but couldn’t find out much. His boots were removed to allow his wounds to be dressed and one of his feet was bare. We were very struck by how clean this foot was, toenails perfectly manicured. It made us respect this defeated enemy with broken wings: we thought of our own, black, infantry feet . . . Imagine a dishwasher comparing her chapped hands to the delicate hands of a duchess!

‘It has to be said that the Germans also knocked down one of ours last week. But the cowards were five against one. The pilot of our single-seater, blinded by the sun, was caught high up by a whole squadron. At first he fought to break through the ring of enemy planes surrounding him. And then he dived below the clouds to escape. The squadron dived down after him, all six aeroplanes levelling out just above the ground at 200 kph. Behind our Spad, which was losing speed, five two-seaters were taking turns to use their machine guns. They flew over us at three hundred metres. The birds of prey killed the dragonfly. The light-coloured aeroplane dropped vertically, like some crazy diver leaping off a springboard with outstretched arms. It crashed behind a little wood, a kilometre away. Our hearts stopped for a few seconds and we felt we were falling into the void with him. There is something supernatural about these aerial battles for us, earthlings with heavy legs, caked in mud.

‘What else can I tell you? I did a bit of carpentry recently. I wanted to make myself a little bunk bed. A difficult task, since we don’t have any tools. I had to run halfway round the whole sector to find one bad hammer, a broken saw, a few pieces of plank and some nails. Still, I am quite pleased with my construction even if it is a little fragile. My labours brought me rest. Bear in mind that I can sleep perfectly well on the ground or a table. But I had not found any surface that was right for my size, and the little pallet is definitely more comfortable for a long break.

‘It’s been cold but sunny, perfect walking weather. When you climb up on the ridge that protects us, you can see hills, woods, roads down in the valley – off in the distance a lake glistens, and there are crenelated ruins, so many things. It is lovely. It would be so nice to go down there along the grassy path. But the path is out of bounds and the valley is deadly. The Boches would be quite capable of killing a peaceful stroller. No doubt about it. We are crafty old warriors and they won’t get us so easily.

‘We have no idea what actions are being planned. We eat jam and smoke English tobacco that our cyclists buy from our neighbours. Ensuring we get plenty of provisions is our chief preoccupation. Currently, my immediate goal is a new pair of trousers – and maybe a couple of shirts and some socks. I am preparing my attack. I will probably avoid the quartermaster and attempt an enveloping movement on the storekeeper. I hope to open the engagement with some serious preparation, such as the contents of a two-litre “water” bottle . . .’

I am writing to my sister. There is no truth in what I write, no deep truth. I am describing the outer surface, the picturesque side of war, a war fought by enthusiasts that does not involve me. Why do I put on this dilettante tone, this false assurance which is the opposite of what we are really thinking? Because they cannot understand. For those at the rear we write letters filled with suitable lies, lies ‘to keep them happy’. We tell them about their war, the one that they will enjoy hearing about, and we keep ours secret. We know our letters are destined for fathers to read aloud to each other in cafés, so they can say: ‘Those young devils don’t have a care in the world! Huh! I tell you, they’ve got the best of it. If only we were still their age . . .’ To all the concessions we have made to the war, we add our sincerity. Since they cannot estimate the true cost of our sacrifice, we tell more tall stories, with a sneer. Me just like everyone else, everyone else just like me . . .

We are holding the regiment’s right sector. The battalion command post is on the side of a rugged ravine, and smoke is rising from our camp kitchens at the bottom. A little higher up is the start of the plateau where we have established our front lines, about a thousand metres ahead. In this bleak, bare place, our view is limited by three arid slopes. But on the left we have a vista of a smaller, gentler valley. In the mornings the trees tremble in a fresh breeze blowing across the plain and the sun piercing the mist drapes it with rosy pink, like tulle on a woman’s skin. Rolling hills form the background, harmoniously arranged with that unaffected charm you find in landscape paintings of the French countryside.

All is quiet, as usual. We are waiting for the end of a day like the rest, in the great idleness of war that is only broken by various little tasks. We have a good shelter, quite spacious and bright, solidly constructed, partly underground. We enjoy the calm, safely outside our cave.

All of a sudden, the peace is shattered by a massive artillery barrage. Despite the distance, we can feel the shock waves of exploding mortar shells. From the first shots, we recognise the frenzied rhythm of a major attack. Shells soon start whistling low overhead. They have missed the ridge and explode on the other side of the ravine, which fills with black clouds of smoke. Powerful time-shells burst in the air, blotting out the sky. There can be no doubt about it: this is preparation for an assault or an all-out attack, made all the more dangerous by the fact that at the end of the long access trenches we only have a single front line, and the troops manning it are spread out widely.

This looks very bad. We were not thinking about the war and now must face it with all its dangers. Men are going to die, perhaps some are dead already, and we are all threatened. We get our kit together nervously, so as to be ready for whatever comes. Our hearts are less submissive than our bodies and you can read our anxiety on our faces.

Our little group is not at full strength. In peaceful sectors like this one, people wander off on whatever pretexts they can find. We have no idea where the others are.

The battalion leader sends off two runners to alert the reserves in the rear. They set off through the upper end of the ravine. Two more go to find the colonel. Must we go forward? That is the only question that matters.

Our own artillery goes into action. Now we can hear the howls of our 75s. The air is full of the roar and rush of shell after shell. The din gets louder.

Two men take the trench that leads to the company on the right. But it is on the left that the bombardment seems to be doing most damage . . . There is only one runner left and a runner is never sent out alone under shellfire. The adjutant hesitates . . . At that moment we see a man running across the ravine and clambering up the slope, and soon he appears, breathless and soaked in sweat. It’s Aillod from the 11th. He lets out the sigh that means: ‘Saved!’ But the adjutant calls out his name:

‘Yeah, sure, the same ones get sent every bloody time!’ he responds feebly, standing in front of me.

I see how terror has replaced joy on his face, and I meet his gaze, the gaze of a dog who is used to being beaten, a man picked out to die. That gaze makes me ashamed. Without thinking, and just because it is unfair, I shout:

I see his gaze come back to life, its gratitude. And I see the astonishment of the adjutant:

I know this sector because I have been through it to check our maps. I set off and Julien follows me . . . It is a twenty-minute walk, with detours, to reach the command post of the company on the left, at the end of our front line.

We soon emerge on to the plateau where the ground is shaken by shock waves from explosions that are now even more intense, violent and resonant. Waves of steel are crashing down in front of us, in a great wall of smoke as if an oil well had caught fire. We dive on into it, driven by the force of the order we have been given, prisoners of discipline just as surely as if we’d been handcuffed.

I become aware of what I am doing. I am a volunteer, I asked to go through this avalanche . . . This is madness! No one has volunteered for ages, no one wants to take upon themselves the responsibility for what will happen, to usurp the role of chance, to expose themselves to regretting having been struck down.

Something strange is happening to me. My character is such that I always take logic to its limits, accept my acts in all their consequences, envisage the worst. Now I’ve embarked on this mad adventure by a simple reflex, without taking the time to consider it. But it is too late to go back. I will go where I have promised to go.

Now we are entering the zone of heat and chaos. Shells are exploding nearby, throwing up showers of metal; fierce gusts of air make us stagger. Behind me I catch the sound of Julien panting like a dog trotting after his master’s carriage. It’s not our pace that’s making him breathless, it’s suffocating terror. I know that these surprise bombardments are short but extremely violent. For an hour, this is Verdun, this is the Chemin des Dames, this is as relentless as it gets. And we are under it. Either I must take some sort of moral decision or collapse in shame. I can feel fear rising up, hear its moans, and I know its livid mask will cover my face, making me gasp like a fox fleeing the pack . . .

Logic dictates to me: to be a volunteer is to accept all the risks of war, to accept to die . . . I need this consent to continue, need this agreement between my will and my action . . .

This slim, blond boy, with his pale skin and well-proportioned body (the legs a little too heavy, for my taste), this boy of twenty-two who looks sixteen, this soldier with a schoolboy’s face, his forehead still smooth, and his mocking smile, they say (how could it not be mocking?), and his eyes that stare into the depths of beings (I know how my mechanism works, I have taken it apart often enough), this Jean Dartemont, is going to die, on this March evening in 1918, because a man said: ‘It’s always the same ones who have to take the risks’, because in the gaze of this man with whom he could not have an hour’s enjoyable conversation he found some unbearable glimmer of reproachful light, which was immediately extinguished by the habit of submission . . .

Striding forward vigorously like a true infantryman, Jean Dartemont is going to get himself killed on this plateau of the Aisne and he is not calling for help from either the notion of duty or God. As for God, he cannot love him without loving the shells that he sends, which seems absurd to him. If he calls upon him, it is only confusedly: ‘I am giving the most that I can give and you know what it is costing me. If you are just, then judge. If you are not, then I have nothing to expect from you!’

He is going to get himself killed, this boy, because he thinks it is inevitable. Just for self-esteem. Ever since he began to think, he only envisaged life in terms of a success. Precisely what success he did not know, except that this success would be inseparable from an inner success, sanctioned by himself. Such a conception does not allow him to face death resolutely without having the intention of dying.

At that moment, he has it. The mind has mastered the body, and the body will no longer shirk at marching on to the final agony.

I can read myself clearly because I have been turning over these questions for years. The answers had been prepared for the day when I was in the final extremity. That is the moment when I must hold to the principles that I have made for myself.

I will witness my death. Only one thing shocks me: the feeling of pity that death evokes in the living. They look on a corpse as the remains of someone defeated. I will get myself killed in a little local action, one that will not even get mentioned in dispatches, stupidly, in some corner of a trench. They will say: ‘Now Dartemont, there was a chap who might have made something of himself but he never got the chance’. The earth will cover my corpse and time my memory. They will not know what happened inside me at the final moment, will not know that I volunteered for death, defeated myself – the only kind of victory that is precious to me. But I am well used to ignoring the opinions of others. Who cares what stories they will tell!

I still need to face pain, which I dread. I consider the worst pains I have endured: neuralgia, a bout of typhoid, a broken arm. But I cannot recall the feelings. Pain has no place in time, its duration is short. It will be numbed by shock at the start. Then the flesh will give out its dramatic cries. An hour, two hours . . . If it is unbearable then I will end it with the loaded pistol I have ready in my hand. But at least the mind will keep this lucidity: ‘I thought as much.’ I will not be left with that appalling terror-stricken gaze that you see on those taken by surprise, who had not already given their consent.

My mind is imagining what will happen to me so intensely that I am already wounded as I am marching; my stomach is open, my chest smashed in, each shot that spares me nonetheless penetrates my flesh, cuts it and tears it and burns it. The sacrifice is consummated. The blow I am awaiting, from one second to the next, cannot be worse. It will only be the last blow, the coup de grâce . . .

I had forgotten him. I turn round and see his haggard face. He points out a sap to me, one running across our trench which is caught in enfilade shellfire.

Since my decision is made I have no reason to take cover. But the briefest pause, the least hesitation would weaken my resolve. Now I cannot throw everything into question again. And besides, what Julien is suggesting is stupid, based on fear of going further. We would hardly be protected in a little deserted sap in which I do not know of a single shelter.

I set off and he follows me again without saying anything. I am truly not afraid. The trench is blocked: I clamber over the pile of earth without any rush, hardly even ducking, and find myself on a level with the plain. Mechanically, I glance across the devastated landscape. A shell explodes on my right, the red gleam in the middle of the black ball of combustion imprints itself on my retina.

We are approaching the company sector. I am still unscathed, but I hang on to my idea: to die. I push away the hope that tries to insinuate itself. With the hope of escaping reappears the wish to flee. My mind continues to offer me up to the shrapnel, still waits for the blow that will finish me off. I repeat to myself: get my face smashed in! This familiar phrase suits me very well, it diminishes the thing’s importance.

We come out into the front line, and turn left. The explosions merge into one, the whistles from the two artilleries, the noise of shrapnel and shells, are all mixed together. Under a heavy bombardment it is almost impossible to distinguish the incoming shells. I am amazed that all this violent rage is spread above us without any consequences. The trench is deserted for a long stretch.

At last we find a small group of men squeezed up against the parapet. A look out peers furtively out over the plain. He shouts to us:

Down there is precisely where we are going. Too bad! Our mission is to reach the lieutenant, to pass on news. Onwards!

We go round a few traverses. Suddenly I find myself facing a revolver: a French one. The lieutenant has come with an escort to find out what’s happened. We tell him that his men are still at their posts. He turns round and takes us with him. For two hundred metres, the position had been badly damaged by box barrage fire, aimed at cutting off the place where the enemy wanted to attack. After this point we were moving away from danger. Soon we reached the command post and went down into the shelter.

But I’ve already got my commendation. I awarded it to myself, and I don’t give a damn for those of the army, which sanction the circumstances and ignore the motives.

In my comrades’ attitude, there is amazement and something like blame, as if they’re saying to themselves: ‘he knows all the dodges, that one!’ They cannot accept that I went off simply because I wanted to. My gesture seems inexplicable to them and they search for an ulterior motive. If I confided to Aillod that I just risked my life because of him, even though my role protected me, it would surely astonish him. In war, one does not do things for sentimental reasons! And, if I told the men about the decision I had taken just now as the shells came down, if I told them what I had been thinking, they would not believe me. How many have anticipated their deaths resolutely? I have gained nothing by following the impulse that drew me along. But I acted for myself. I am happy enough with this spontaneous act and with the way I accepted my responsibilities.

We get the casualty lists. The wounded arrive on stretchers and their cries bring misery to the twilight. A German corpse is also brought in, a soldier who fell just in front of the company and who was found in the grass. So the Germans really did get right up to our lines and this corpse is the proof of our victory. He has no papers on him, no army number. Enemies always conceal the identity of soldiers on patrol so as not to reveal the positions of their divisions.

At an early hour I go and stretch out on my bunk in the dark, and reflect on this evening’s events. So, in order to be courageous, I now have a fairly simple means at my disposal: to accept death. I recall that once before, in Artois, when it was a matter of going out and facing machine guns, I had adopted this idea for some hours. Then the orders had changed.

Those who go forward – and it is most of them – saying to themselves: ‘Nothing will happen to me’ are ridiculous. I cannot sustain myself with a notion like this, for I’m well aware that the cemeteries are full of people who had hoped they would come back, who had convinced themselves that bullets and shells made a choice. All the dead had put themselves under the protection of some personal providence, distracted from all the others to watch over them. Without that, how many would have come to get themselves killed?

I know I am incapable of courage unless I have decided to give my life. Without that choice, there is nothing but flight. But you take such a decision on the spur of the moment and you cannot make it last for weeks and months. The mental effort is too great. Hence the rarity of true courage. We generally accept a kind of lame compromise between the destiny and the man, which reason rejects.

Until now I have shown absolute courage twice. This will be the greatest thing I will have done in the war.

Then I think of the words of Baboin: ‘Don’t try to be too clever . . .’ Today I tried to be clever, and, if I want ‘to come back’ it would be a good idea not to give in to such impulses too often . . .

There is a growing rumour that a major German offensive is soon coming, but no one knows where. The offensive is a direct consequence of the Russians’ withdrawal which has freed up a lot of enemy troops. It is said that our command is ready for it and has taken the necessary steps.

The army has placed its confidence in General Pétain, who has shown some concern for the troops’ welfare. He has a reputation for not wanting to squander the lives of his men. After the carnage organised by Nivelle and Mangin, generally considered here as bloodthirsty monsters, the army needed reassurance. We know that the two victorious operations led by the new commander-in-chief, at the Chemin des Dames and Verdun, were wisely conducted, with adequate matériel. Pétain has understood that this is a war of weaponry and that reserves are not inexhaustible. Unfortunately, he came too late.

The prospect of great battles ahead is enough to trouble us. But being attacked does not frighten us any more than an offensive led by us. On the contrary we estimate that it is prudent to wait. Selfishly enough, we hope that this business will not start where we are.

The days are bright. Now every night we hear droning in the sky. German aeroplanes are flying over the lines above us, on their way to bomb Paris. We lack the means to block their passage. But we wave to the invisible aviators:

‘It might do them some good. What civilians need is a few hours of bombs falling smack on their bloody heads!’

‘Oh, right, that’s a good one! Isn’t your hide worth a monument? You think anyone gives a damn if you’re blown to buggery?’

‘It’d be a good laugh if they dropped a big one right on the Ministry of War!’

‘Listen to this bloody turncoat! You little twerp, you yellow-belly tin soldier!’

‘The first thing to do in war,’ says Patard, the artillery telephonist, ‘is destroy. That way it’s over quicker.’

That is his guiding principle and he acts on it. Whatever is intact, he smashes up; whatever is smashed up he finishes off; and whatever isn’t guarded, he steals. His pockets are full of strange objects. He is the biggest filch anyone has ever seen, the terror of kitchens, canteens, and shops. His most famous exploit is to have ‘pinched’ the breeches and boots of his divisional general. It happened at the Chemin des Dames. At the back of a dugout, Patard was busy making imitation police headgear that he had the notion of selling to the men of his regiment. But he needed some braid to decorate the caps. In order to obtain it, he offered to go to the division during a bombardment to exchange a piece of broken equipment. It was while he was poking about down there that he came across the fine linen breeches hanging from a nail, red ones, exactly the colour he needed. Since a pair of boots was standing alongside, he took them as well, and made his way back to the trenches. The general made an almighty fuss, but never suspected that his breeches, cut into fine strips, had ended up on the heads of the gunners and that he was saluting them every time he encountered his men. Having cut off the shoes and changed the colour of the ‘aviator’ boots, Patard fashioned himself a pair of gaiters, with which he shamelessly declared himself quite enchanted: ‘The general certainly didn’t rob me with these, old chap!’

His time at Verdun, accompanied by his pal Oripot, was the occasion for another remarkable achievement. This is how he tells it:

‘So, we turn up at the front with the sarge and all our clobber, somewhere near Vaux. The sarge was a decent bloke but the sector was a dump: craters all over the place, shells raining down, and all the brass hiding underground. “OK,” I says to the sarge, “it ain’t worth the trouble of unwinding the phone line just so it’ll get cut, is it?” “Do what you like,” he says. “All right then,” I says, “I’ll go for a wander with Oripot and find us a bit of nourishment.” “What you going to find?” he says. “There’s always something to find,” I tells him. After sniffing around this desert for a bit we come across a sort of vault at the back of the Vaux fortress, which was a food store, absolutely stuffed with nosh of every kind, all you could wish for. But there was no way of sneaking in. The door was guarded by a pair of territorials, real sticklers. “What do you want?” they asks me. “A bit of grub, eh!” “You got a docket?” “No,” I says. “You gotta have a docket!” “What docket?” They explains to me how it works. “Right,” says I, “I’ll go and get one of these dockets!” Back we go to the sarge and tell him the set-up. “But I can’t sign one of those!” he says. (You always get a few dopes even among the educated.) “You just have to sign it as Chuzac!” That was the name of a former group officer who had got on the wrong end of a mortar shell. We go back to the territorials with a docket for food for twenty-five lads. Oh, fellers, you wouldn’t believe it! Five big cans full of gniole and kilos of chocolate, and jams, and meths for the camp stove, and you name it! We found ourselves a nice deep shell-hole where we melted the chocolate in the brandy. In twenty-four hours we’d drained all five cans. Then back we go to the two codgers with another docket, and another, and another, till it was all over. “You haven’t suffered any losses, then?” asks the territorials. “We’re in a safe spot!” I tells them. Stupid old buggers!’

‘That I couldn’t tell you. I suppose so, but I didn’t see anything. We weren’t sober for the whole three weeks in our crater. We ate and drank our way through eight hundred francs.’

‘The regiment got the bill a month later. The territorials had sent the dockets on up to the commissariat. It seems the nosh had to be paid for.’

‘You bet there was. They had themselves an inquiry. But what you gonna do with an inquiry at Verdun! They couldn’t suppose that two blokes had treated themselves to eight hundred francs’ worth of brandy and chocolate in three weeks. You can say only two, because the sarge didn’t have much.’

‘The funniest thing,’ Pacard goes on, ‘is Oripot’s brother, who’s a priest . . .’

‘Decent he may be, but he’s still a twat! He was writing to this sod here, telling him you mustn’t drink too much, think of your family. I was reading his letters cos it’s easier to see when he’s asleep . . . Mustn’t drink, says his brother. Damn it! If you don’t get pissed, what’s the point of having a war?’

One morning at reveille, the front starts to growl fiercely on our left, beside Chauny. We recognise the thunder, the hammering that the earth transmits like a conductor and which passes through the air in mournful waves. Something very bad is going on and it isn’t far away.

We are not getting any information. The rumbling goes on all day and starts again the next morning. We don’t get any letters or newspapers, always a bad sign.

On the third day we learn that the German offensive has broken through the British front. We learn that artillery is firing on Paris. The battle is turning to a disaster. But optimistic informants claim that the retreat is a trap laid for the Germans in order to ‘thrash’ them in open country. For what it is worth, we make do with this rumour and wait to hear more.

A new military doctrine is being spread around: ‘territory is not what matters.’ How true! And yet we are rather close to Paris to start innovating. And why if this is true have so many men been massacred to take a salient or occupy a ridge?

On the fourth day, enemy observation balloons are openly flying behind us. We are going to be outflanked . . . It seems unlikely that we will emerge unscathed from this situation.

Leave is suspended. Orders come, instructing us to transport weaponry and munitions to the rear. We are on fatigues for two nights.

Then the orders are countermanded. We restock with cartridges and boxes of grenades. After that no one knows. We have battle orders, some dealing with resistance where we are, others with evacuation. Our command is hesitating between the two. Our own preference is for the latter, and it seems to us impossible to resist a heavy attack with the small numbers we have holding our lines.

More days of uncertainty go by. The sector livens up. We are getting some heavy incoming shells, which are obviously range-finding. Our fate is clear!

‘They’ll have another go to get it right!’ mutter the men in the trenches.

This realisation does not do much for our morale, and we would dearly like to avoid fighting. We are now in the first days of April and the Germans are near Amiens.

Without any warning, our front lines are evacuated at night. The companies have been brought back to our second lines on the ridges, and we have just set up our battalion command post in the rear, in a huge cave, full of men, its approaches crowded with vehicles laden with matériel and with ragged territorials.

The following morning the bombardment resounds opposite us and we get the last ricochets. The Germans are smashing up our abandoned positions. Then we are informed that they have broken through and are making slow progress. Our troops are falling back but doing them some damage on the way. All day long the artillery roars and machine guns crackle. Coucy is heavily bombarded. We do not leave the command post, we cannot see what is happening ahead of us, and we do not know where our units are.

The companies take advantage of the night to take up new positions. The battle starts again at daybreak and there is much confusion. Shells fall at random. We abandon the cave, retreat across the countryside, following the ravines. We spend part of the day on the slopes of a wooded hill. Every quarter of an hour the sky is filled with a tremendous whistling noise. 380s crash down into the soft earth of the valley but none of them explodes. Later on we skirt the ridges and come back down on to the plain following the slopes of a spur.

There we learn that the battalion has mustered ahead of us, on the far side of the canal, and runners get the order to rejoin it. In groups of two or three we set off along a quiet stretch of road. On our way we pass some of our men leading a tall German prisoner, wearing a leather helmet, looking extremely cross and agitated. He is an airman who was flying a spotter plane very low over our platoons and was shot down with rifle fire.

The battalion is drawn up along a bank going up from the road. We are pointed to a sloping field that blocks the horizon and told that ‘the Boches are up there, in the grass behind the ridge’. They must be able to see us and are hesitating: the battle would degenerate into hand-to-hand combat. No one fires and our little detachments continue to move around freely in the open. The proximity of our enemies does not bother us, far less than a bombardment would. We fix bayonets. We hold our fire until they stand up: we will see clearly. They are only men like us. But the Germans do not try anything.

At sunset we get the order to fall back. We cross back over the canal, which must mark the furthest point of the enemy advance. We do all this in silence, without casualties. We return to the high ground. Ammunition wagons gallop by. Around us the 75s open fire. Fresh troops arrive whose duty will be to defend our new positions. The retreat has been carried out in good order, without too much damage, without our leaving the enemy with prisoners. It must be said that the attack was somewhat half-hearted, the Germans counting on their strategic advantage to compel us to withdraw.

We vanish into the night, heading for the rear. We are marching towards fresh dangers but there will be time enough to think of them when we have to face them. For now, our role here is over. This happy retreat feels like a victory. Soon sounds can be heard from our column, the men are singing and swearing. We’ve got out of it alive, one more time.

4. IN THE AISNE