A MARCH LASTING SEVERAL HOURS in torrential rain has brought us to the heart of ‘dry’ Champagne.[38] The downpours pen us like cattle in a slough of despond, where all we can see is running water, dampening and depressing our spirits. Miserable huts, soiled with the mud that cakes our boots, remind us of prison camps. Our clothes are soaked, our food cold, and we have no way of making a fire. Fatigue stretches us out on the damp straw of our pallets but steam rises from our bodies and we cannot get warm. We had not seen a single tree or house in our surroundings. This is an inhospitable, hostile land, where nature itself denies us the smallest bit of joy.
We stay for a week in the tarpaulin shacks, surrounded by deep puddles, lacking anything which could make our lives more agreeable.
One morning the captain who is temporarily in command takes us off to reconnoitre the support positions that we must soon occupy. Our sector is located between Tahure and the Main des Massiges, names made famous by our offensive in 1915. It is well equipped and the trench system is very deep, as it was in Artois. Everywhere we find old battery emplacements and empty shelters, in the walls of the trenches. The reserve battalion occupies the reverse slope of a ridge, behind another ridge that hides the summits where the trenches are. On our right you can see in the distance a great expanse of green, which contrasts with the bare, grey landscape, like a desert, that we have under our noses. They say it is the Argonne.
The battalion command post is a dugout in a trench, roofed with a good thickness of logs, and with openings at ground level to let in the light. It is relatively comfortable. We are not going any further forward today.
On our way back we make a halt in a ruined village some four kilometres from the front lines, where the colonel has set up his headquarters in some very fine shelters built against the wall of a quarry. They look as stylish as mountain chalets and are fronted by an arcade protected by sandbags in zigzag rows. The neat and tidy surroundings are impressive.
Through the windows we can see secretaries in their indoor clothes, writing and drawing at large tables, cigarettes in hand. Typewriters imitate the sound of machine guns in a way that is silly and unseemly. Batmen hurry about, bringing bowls and bottles of eau de cologne, and cooks carry folded napkins over their arms, like maîtres d’hôtel. We hardly go near these privileged ones, these courtiers, who keep us at a distance as if we were of no account. They are afraid lest among our number are Gascon cadets[39] who might rise too swiftly in their careers under the benevolent eyes of the great and powerful. Everyone here is defending his position and scents a rival a mile off. A fall from favour may mean a return to the front line, the threat of death. This world of employees knows all the servants’ gossip and office secrets. The desire to flatter, to make oneself indispensable, leads to an excess of zeal. There are corporals here who would strike fear in the heart of a battalion leader.
The officers of the colonel’s entourage (his deputy officer, an information officer, an officer for the 37mm cannon, flag bearer, etc.) are carefully shaved, powdered and scented; these are men who have time to devote to their toilet. In particular they must be good company, clubbable, able to tell a funny story over dinner. They do not concern themselves with the actual war except in extremis, and, if at all possible, at a good distance.
Finally the colonel shows up. He’s tall and slim, with a long Gallic moustache, dressed in khaki, cap pulled down over one ear, chest pushed out – very much the musketeer. (In civilian life, with light trousers and white gaiters, he would make a classic ageing philanderer.) He pulls himself to his full height when he sees a soldier, fixes his magnetic gaze upon him, and salutes him with a fulsome gesture which might signify ‘All honour to you, bravest of the brave!’ or ‘Always follow my plume!’[40] Unfortunately, at the moment of a skirmish, that plume will stay put rather far in the rear . . . I am only going by appearances, and I do not know the true worth of the colonel, apart from his theatrical salute. But I never trust people who give themselves airs.
His audience over, the captain rejoins us. We leave Versailles . . .
Just before we set off for the front, a new battalion leader has come to take command of our unit. This is our third commandant since I became a runner, not counting the temporary captains. Changes like this always worry us. Our fate can depend on the cool- headedness of our leader, and our well-being depends on his moods.
The newcomer has a distrustful manner. He handed me all the operations maps he found in the shelter and told me: ‘Check all these and bring them up to date.’
So twice a day I take my gas mask, my helmet, my revolver, my cane, my pencil and papers and set off alone on topographic reconnaissance. It is a hard job to identify the terrain because bombardments have levelled it all, destroyed all the landmarks. I have to establish a point using some detail from the trenches and determine other points on the basis of this one. The sector is absolutely vast, the front line for three companies stretching over about twelve hundred metres, on the flank of the first summits of the Champagne mountains, whose peaks are held by the Germans. Their dominant position compelled us to fill in parts of the trenches dating from their occupation and to dig new communication trenches which they could not see or hit with direct fire from machine guns. The result was a tangle of trenches that I have to explore to get my bearings, indications on the map being somewhat fanciful. I often climb over barriers of sandbags, making myself visible at ground level for a few seconds, and I wander through abandoned trenches which are crumbling away and getting covered by grass. The slope facing the Germans is deserted. I find myself in total solitude for hundreds of metres, and, if I were to get seriously wounded, no one would have the idea of looking for me in places where I am the only one to venture. In the beginning I had a few bullets fired at me, luckily from five hundred metres; they served to warn me of the danger presented by these old ditches. I go back there, though, taking all due precautions, as much for pleasure as necessity. I love the isolation, the silence, I love discovering old dugouts with mushrooms growing on their damp walls, which have all the poignant mystery of ruins. These particular ruins have their own pathos, and I imagine the destinies of the men who spent time here, many of them now dead. Along with pleasure comes pride in knowing secret places, which become my own domain, on this land that one army observes and another defends.
My first concern is to mark those shelters and dugouts that are in good condition. It inevitably happens that the zone I am exploring as I make my rounds gets hit by some shells. I then run for the nearest shelter. I am more afraid of shells than bullets. Because of their stupid noise and the way they rip apart the body. Bullets are more discreet and operate more cleanly.
I spend a lot of time at the front lines, to the point where look outs start to wonder what form of madness compels me to roam around places that they would dearly like to leave. The colonel wants the fullest details and demands that the thickness of each barbed-wire entanglement be indicated on the map. Since it is out of the question to go and take measurements in front of our lines, I estimate as best I can by looking over the parapet. It is a tricky task which could, with a moment’s distraction, earn me a bullet in the head.
My conscientiousness does not spare me from reproaches. Recently, and with his customary asperity, the commandant held out a map to me and said:
‘You don’t really know what you’re doing. That squad isn’t there.’
After a fortnight we have been able to judge that our commandant is not an ill-natured man. But he does have bad manners and the burden of responsibilities weighs heavily on his mind. I replied with good humour:
‘It is you who are making a mistake, sir. The squad is indeed there and I will show you on the ground whenever you like.’
‘You are sure of this?’
‘Quite sure, sir.’
‘OK.’
He must have checked for himself later. He did not mention it again and ever since then he exercises his authority more politely.
We have just heard the news about the offensive at the Chemin des Dames: a new breach has been opened in our front lines and is getting wider by the minute. They say that the Germans turned up in Fismes a few hours after they launched the attack, catching by surprise a paymaster general, some airmen, etc. To those who know the region, the speed of their advance is overwhelming. It is also overwhelming to know that the enemy is marching on Fère-en-Tardenois, where we have seen fields full of munitions stretching off into the distance, vast depots of matériel that they are going to capture.
Two strong surprise attacks on neighbouring sectors to our right and left caused us some losses. The Germans are harassing us with shells without any warning. I have been caught several times by unexpected shelling, and the other day nearly got killed on some low ground. Everything is going badly. The end seems further away than ever . . . I am at the end of my tether. I think to myself:
‘I’ve had enough of this! I’m twenty-three years old, I’m already twenty-three! Back in 1914 I embarked on a future that I wanted to be full and rich and in fact I’ve got nothing at all. I am spending my best years here, wasting my youth on mindless tasks, in stupid subservience; the life I’m living goes against everything that is dear to me, it doesn’t offer me any goal but burdens me with privations and constraints, and may well finish with my death . . . I’ve had enough! I am the centre of the world, as each of us is for himself the centre of the world. I am not responsible for others’ mistakes, I have nothing to do with their ambitions and their appetites, and I have better things to do than pay for their glory and their profits with my blood. Let those who love war make it, I want nothing more to do with it. It’s the business of professionals, let them sort it out between themselves, let them do their job. It isn’t mine! By what right can these strategists do with me as they please, when I can see through all their ruinous, murderous elucubrations? I reject their hierarchy which is no measure of true worth, I reject the policies that have led to this. I have no faith in those who organise massacres, I despise even their victories for I have seen what they are made of. I have no hatred, I only detest mediocrities and fools, and often enough they get promoted, they become all-powerful. My patrimony is my life. I have nothing more precious to defend. My homeland is whatever I manage to earn or to create. Once I am dead, I don’t give a damn how the living divide up the world, about the frontiers they draw on their maps, about their alliances and their enmities. I demand to live in peace, far away from barracks, battlefields and military minds and machinery in any shape or form. I do not care where I live, but I demand to live in peace and to slowly become what I must become . . . Killing has no place in my ideals. And if I must die, I intend to die freely, for an idea that I cherish, in a conflict where I will have my share of responsibility . . .’
‘Dartemont!’
‘Sir?’
‘Go and check where the 11th have positioned their machine guns. On the double.’
‘Very good, sir!’
We are back at camp, having a rest without any pleasures or distractions. Inside the barracks the sun bakes us alive, but we cannot stay outside either, on this dry, chalk plateau, flayed by the heat, that could have come straight out of the kiln.
Our armies are still in retreat. In the newspapers that reach us irregularly, we are following the German advance. Its successes worry us, not because they foretell defeat, for we do not believe final defeat is possible now that the Americans have joined in, but because they are postponing the end for months or years. The words victory and rout have no meaning for us any more. A corpse is just a corpse, whether it is at Charleroi or in the Marne. We have all had years of this war, been wounded, and our wish to stay alive is stronger than ever.
We were struck by a flu epidemic and a lot of men were evacuated. I had an attack myself. On the evening when we were being relieved, fever took hold of me, and as I was leaving the trench, my legs gave way. Luckily I found a cart that brought me here. I’ve just spent four days flat on a straw mattress, not eating.
Today, at the beginning of the afternoon, I’m in the office with the adjutant. He is sitting on a bench and smoking, and I am rolled up in a blanket. We are both thinking about the latest events. He claps his hands to his temples, raises his eyes to heaven, and, in his southern accent, cries:
‘What a bloody mess!’
‘This would all have been finished long ago if we hadn’t made so many mistakes . . .’
‘When you think that they actually rejected peace! . . . Imagine, rejecting peace! . . . Sweet God! . . . It could hardly be any worse!’
The latch on the door snaps open and a head peers in. We see it is Frondet, dirty, unshaven, with his tortured face and feverish eyes. Seeing we are alone he comes in. He looks strange and is smiling oddly. He looks at us searchingly. And then this well-bred, high-principled believer opens his mouth in a sneer and very quietly utters these terrible words:
‘They are at Château-Thierry[41] . . . Maybe it’s going to end!’
His words embarrass us . . . There is a long silence in which we both ask ourselves, on the brink of treason, whether to accept or reject his implied outcome to the war.
Then the adjutant pulls up his sleeves, and rubs his hands together. The gesture of Pontius Pilate . . .
‘What we all want is to get back home!’
On the night of 6 July we make a halt in the village where the colonel is based. Our commandant goes to collect his orders, and tells us on his return:
‘In three days’ time the Boche will attack right across the Champagne front. We have this from unimpeachable sources.’
We camp among the ruins which are becoming the base for reserves. I work through until morning with the adjutant, preparing various urgent communications.
It is most likely that the Germans will unleash their preparatory artillery barrages during the night and their troops will advance at dawn. This is the standard tactic in a big push. It has the advantage of surprise and leaves a whole day for troops to advance through unknown country. To counter it, every day at nightfall we withdraw our troops from the front line trenches over a depth of two or three kilometres, leaving behind a few sacrificial victims charged with signalling the enemy approach by launching flares. The troops take up defensive positions on the ridge, protecting a line that the enemy must not be allowed to cross. Just before daybreak our battalions go back to their usual front line positions and make it clear by their activity that they are still there. It is vital that the enemy does not know about this manoeuvre. Basically, we are doing to him what he successfully did to us in April ’17 at different points on the Chemin des Dames. He will squander his bombardment on empty trenches and then throw himself against well-manned positions equipped with machine guns. The battle will take place on ground of our choosing.
While we were resting, the sector had been arming itself at a prodigious rate. We wake the next morning to find guns all over the place. The biggest, the 120s and long-barrelled 155 GPFs, and the 270s which fire enormous shells, are hidden behind walls and banks. On the right, shells have simply been piled up in cornfields which provide them with natural camouflage. The countryside is suddenly packed with all kinds of artillery, its dark, gaping mouths menacing the other army. They say there are tanks at the rear and General Gouraud is ready for anything. All these preparations give us some confidence.
The sector’s gun batteries are doing their own preparatory work, their aim being to make life difficult for enemy troop concentrations. Between sunset and three in the morning each battery fires several hundred shells filled with mustard gas. The new batteries remain silent, for the Germans must not suspect their presence until the fighting starts.
All the activity is on our side and at night. In the daytime we’ve never known the sector so quiet. Not a single explosion or rifle shot, not a German aeroplane to be seen; the enemy isn’t even sending up observation balloons any more. Deep silence reigns, off into infinity, beneath the clear, blue sky. You can make out all the little sounds of a summer’s day in the country, made by unseen creatures; the buzz and hum of insects, the beating of countless wings, and the faint rustle and crackle of the corn in the heat. Yet this peace is one more portent of what is to come. We read in the reports that a similar torpor preceded the offensives at Amiens and Château-Thierry.
My name is on the list of those due for leave at the next departure. I am waiting for the attack, or my leave. Which will come first?
A few days go by. It’s leave . . . I hurriedly bid farewell to my envious comrades.
It’s 15 July and I am off to visit friends in the suburbs. On the tram I open the newspaper. Banner headlines announce the defeat of the German offensive in Champagne. My first instinctive thought is: ‘I got out of it!’ My second is about the men in my regiment, who are fighting at this very moment, being shelled and counter-attacking. I am too closely bound to them to forget. What state will they be in when I return?
My friends, who are industrialists, have a son who is about to be called up, and his mother is worried. So she has decided to help her son’s career by finding him the connections that could get him into a sector where he would not be in too much danger; their choice was motor transport. This provident mother had used her wiles to establish good relations with a general attached to the regional command and to persuade him to accept an invitation to visit their home. She had been warned that this general had a mania for writing little plays in verse, somewhere between tragedies and revues. To cement their relationship she came up with the idea of putting on one his dramas at a charity fête in aid of a small hospital that she manages. It is to this fête that we have been invited.
I am presented to the general. The embarrassment is mutual. Neither of us knows how to properly reconcile hierarchy with normal social relations. Cap in hand, I salute, but without standing to attention, and make a slight bow. But I prevent myself from saying ‘Delighted to meet you!’ (a soldier in uniform cannot be delighted to meet a general, even at a social occasion). He looks at me.
‘Aha! Excellent! Good day, young man!’
He does not ask about the war. It’s not his department.
This is the first time I’ve met a general in private life; I observe this one closely. He’s a stout little man with a red face, who walks with his legs apart like a cavalier. He is wearing the old-fashioned uniform of black tunic and red trousers over elasticated boots. He has a poet’s long, flowing locks, a nasty glint in his eye, the air of a cunning satyr. The table is set for twenty and he has been placed on the immediate right of the lady of the house. He speaks in a clipped military manner, picks and chooses among the different dishes, and puts his nose to women’s arms as if to check how fresh they smell. His sense of humour bears an unpleasant trace of the barracks; he tells funny stories that are somewhat coarser than one is used to accept in polite society. Moreover he eats heartily and gulps down the burgundy with impressive intrepidity. He does not look up from his plate except to sniff his female neighbours and leer at their décolletage. Since he is the man who must protect young Frédéric, the son of the house, one finds these manners absolutely charming. One responds favourably to his jokes.
After coffee, the cars take us to the nearby aerodrome. A Bessonneau hangar has been transformed into a theatre. A stage has been built, benches set out, and acting roles given to young aviators, of whom the bourgeoisie of this place have provided rather a lot. Soldiers from the camp, wounded from the hospital, and local people are all there. The general, surrounded by various dignitaries, sits in the front row in an armchair. The curtain rises. As was to be expected, the revue celebrates the virtues of the race and the valour of our fighters. One after another, an infantryman, artilleryman, horseman, machine-gunner, grenadier, etc., come on to the stage and recite Cornelian couplets with very warlike vehemence. At the end of each tableau, a luminous France, draped in tricolour sheets, clasps them all to her bosom. The general’s sublime alexandrines, in which ‘trench’ rhymes with ‘French’ and ‘savagery’ with ‘Germany’ are greatly relished by the civilians, who stamp their feet with restrained enthusiasm. It is a real shame to let such energy go to waste; they should be given weapons immediately and taken to Champagne . . .
The general receives many congratulations, which he accepts with the modesty of genius. My obscurity luckily prohibits me from offering my own: a common soldier cannot have an opinion on something that emanates from a great leader. At last he is accompanied to his staff car. He carefully settles himself down on his cushions and makes his departure, distributing little limp waves as he goes, like a bishop giving blessings.
The lady of the house then discovers that the envelope he has given her for her hospital contains a derisory sum, the kind of tip one might give a maid. Some observe that his behaviour at dinner was not of the best, and I foresee the moment when he will be denounced as a miserable skinflint . . . But the appearance of Frédéric tempers any criticism: the child has not yet been placed! Until further notice it is advisable to find the general charming, refined, spiritual . . .
I realise how useful it is for a young man in troubled times to have a rich father and energetic mother . . . I tell myself, too, that generals are less fearsome when they put their names to verse rather than battle orders. At least the one who has just left only murders language.
When I return to my sector, all is in order again. People tell me what had happened.
On the evening of 13 July, a surprise attack near the village of Tahure gained us some German prisoners in assault kit. From them we learned that the German attack, postponed by our poison-gas shells, was fixed for the following morning. Orders were immediately given, runners set off in all directions. At eleven in the evening, Gouraud’s forces were put on full alert, the infantry took up combat positions and the artillerymen stood by their guns. On all sides hundreds of thousands of men were anxiously awaiting the moment when the silence would be shattered.
At midnight, a great blaze of light filled the horizon. The German artillery was starting its bombardment. But even before its first salvo had hit the ground, the sky turned crimson on the French side. Our own artillery was beginning its job, with greater fire-power. And we were striking our blows on massed troops, while the enemy’s shells were hammering down on empty positions. We were the ones causing destruction, not only of troop units and dugouts, but of the morale of men who would very soon have to go through this storm.
They attacked at dawn, as predicted. Our artillery reduced its range from our abandoned trenches to a point ahead of our line of defence. Batteries of 75s specially adapted for barrage fire went into action. Successive waves of German forces, sticking to their timetables, piled up at the same place and were flattened without being able to cross the fire zone. From its new positions, our infantry machine-gunned them at good range. The attackers’ situation became untenable, they had to fall back and more were killed by the mustard gas we had put in the trenches when we left them. During the day of 14 July the great German push (the push ‘for peace’) was broken, having failed to make any serious breaches in our positions. Over the next days our troops reoccupied their former emplacements without encountering much resistance. As the men sum it up:
‘The Boche came a cropper!’
Few traces can be seen of the hard battle that has just taken place. The trenches have already been repaired and the fresh shell-holes merge with old ones on this lifeless ground which has been pulverised so many times. Once again, the defenders have won.
In our own group there was only one victim: Frondet, who died of shock. During the bombardment, a 210 shell had pierced through the logs covering the shelter where the battalion runners were based and rolled on to the middle of the floor, without hitting anyone or exploding. But there were three terrifying seconds, in the sudden presence of this monstrosity that might go off and pulverize the petrified men. Frondet’s heart gave up.
‘He just stayed there like that . . .’
‘His mouth gaping, his eyes wide open, like the face of some bloke in a film calling for help.’
‘We thought he was kidding at first . . .’
Poor Frondet! Yes, I can well imagine the expression on his face – the expression they have all had, without ever knowing it . . .
‘You know, when you have a great shock . . .’
‘After that blow, we just stood there for a good quarter of an hour unable to say a word.’
‘We had the feeling that if we spoke we’d set the thing off.’
‘Did the battalion catch it badly?’
‘The 11th got it worst. Three platoon leaders and forty men cut down.’
‘And the 9th?’
‘Not much. They were lucky.’
We are not being relieved. Reserves must be getting rarer. We go back to our usual tasks.
One morning I am making my rounds of the sector. Down in the ravine I bump into my company commandant, Lieutenant Larcher. Proud of his own courage, of his influence over the men whose dangers he shares, he is rather scornful of the battalion’s ‘dug-ins’ – like me – and he shows it. Although I am often there and he knows it, he pretends to be surprised:
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Checking the maps, and inspecting a bit of the sector.’
‘I’ll show you round.’
He takes me with him. Fifty metres on, we find a machine-gun emplacement. The lieutenant climbs up on the fire-step and I climb up beside him. Our chests are fully exposed above the trench. We are surrounded and overlooked by enemy lines. I know this spot and I have climbed up here on my own already, but very briefly. Today it is up to the lieutenant to decide how long we will stand here. He points out a bank of yellow clay some three of four hundred metres away.
‘The Boche are there, and there, and there . . .’
He smugly goes through all the enemy positions, in detail . . . I see: this is a game of pride! Here we both are, with no witnesses, very calm, risking our lives. I ask a few questions coldly and he gives me the answers. Neither the questions nor the answers are of any interest. He is thinking: ‘So, you dabble in inspecting the lines, like an amateur. I’ll soon put you off that!’ And I am thinking: ‘I am just as capable of taking risks as some little lieutenant, however brave he’s supposed to be . . .’ But the Boche have a lot of patience this morning!
Rat-tat-tat-tat, ss-ss-ss-ss. Bullets whistle around us. The lieutenant has jumped down into the trench and he pulls at my sleeve.
‘You’ll get yourself killed!’
I calmly descend. I am surprised, not by the bullets – which were to be expected – but because he gave way so fast. He stares at me. We are both thinking the same thing: ‘Well, well . . .’ I am sure I have not gone pale. Abruptly, he shakes my hand.
‘So, there we are! Enjoy your stroll, old chap!’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I say in the normal tone of a subordinate.
These are the childish amusements we still get up to in August 1918! Good lord, I am sure that if I had commanded a company my men too would have said: ‘That Lieutenant Dartemont, he’s got guts!’ It is true that perhaps I would then have been killed a long time ago . . .
Two surprise attacks have shaken the sector.
One evening at sunset, outside the battalion’s deep shelter, we were happily assembling our bags ready to be relieved later that night. Some men had already put their gear on the road below where the trucks would arrive.
Machine-gun fire overhead makes us look up. Above the German lines two aeroplanes are ducking and diving round each other and exchanging fire. Everyone’s attention is fixed on the sky. Before choosing our preferred victor, we are all peering to see which one has our colours . . .
Rrrran, rrrran, rrrran, rrrran, vraouf, vraouf, vraouf-vraouf . . . Bombardment, earth shaking . . . Vououou . . . 150s coming straight at us. We throw ourselves down the steps of the sap, tumble down into the depths of the shelter . . . We are overcome with the stunned stupor that always accompanies the start of an attack, gripped by terror. The dark question rises up from the depths where it slumbered: ‘Is this the hour?’ We look at each other, mutely: ‘Who’s it going to be? Who’ll be hit in the next second?’ And then the silent prayers, the refusal: ‘no, no, not me!’ We are extremely shaken. Heavy shells are exploding right outside the entrances to the shelter, the trench has been targeted exactly, the acrid smoke comes down in waves and makes us cough. Now, we are eight hundred metres behind the front lines. Such deep shelling makes us fear some major attack.
The telephone rings. The commandant answers:
‘Yes, sir, we’re getting it . . . don’t know yet . . . on the right especially . . . Yes, sir . . . I’ll keep you informed.’
Will men be sent out? . . . The dull rumbling tears at our chests, the accurate shelling makes it hard to stop shuddering.
‘Runners!’
The adjutant peers through the darkness. In a corner there is a short argument: the runners are defending their lives. ‘It’s not my turn to go . . . Not mine either.’ And then the judgement is passed: ‘You and you.’ Four men set off for the companies, breathless even before they have started running. We look away as they pass to hide our shameful joy: any of us might have been chosen . . . They wait on the top steps. After a burst of firing, they take a deep breath, throw themselves outside, heads down, like divers.
We wait for them to come back. It will take a good half-hour.
Two runners arrive from the 9th and one of them, white-faced, is wounded. Lieutenant Larcher sends the news that everyone is at his post and that there is no sign of the enemy.
The telephone rings again. In the rear, the colonel is getting impatient, under pressure himself from divisional command. The runners shake with fear and try to hide. But the commandant has the good sense just to grumble, ‘Let them come and look for themselves if they’re in such a hurry!’ and not to risk the lives of more men.
We spend another twenty minutes wondering whether the Germans are not about to arrive . . .
Then we notice that the bombardment is slowing down.
‘All over!’ says the adjutant.
Chests heave deep sighs of relief, the tension falls. A little later, other runners bring the first reports. The enemy penetrated the front-line trenches of the 10th and took some prisoners, we don’t yet know how many. The lieutenant will send details as soon as he’s clarified the situation.
In the meantime we go to look at the damage. It is night outside. The trench has caved in and we get stuck in the churned-up soil. The front is silent, the evening chilly. We worry again about when we will be relieved.
Finally the company report arrives. We can reconstruct the progress of the attack. The aerial combat had been a fake so as to distract the attention of our look outs. Assault troops had been massed in abandoned trenches between the lines. At the first explosions, they surged out, rushed to our lines, surrounded a detachment of machine-gunners and threw grenades into a dugout. Our casualties were eight missing, three dead and seven wounded. One of the dead had just been given leave and was to have set off the next day to get married.
No problem as far as the dead and wounded are concerned: their names are added to the profit and loss sheet. But command cannot accept that men disappear, cannot accept the surprises or hazards of war. Someone must be responsible. The machine-gun officer and the company commandant are both incriminated and they turn against each other. The former claims that ‘the infantry gave no support to my machine-gunners.’ The latter replies that ‘the machine-gunners should have given covering fire to my men.’ The actual truth was simple: the Germans had come up with a plan that they executed with precision, leaving our squads no time to organise any defence. At the start of any engagement there is always a degree of wavering and they profited from it. Their success was regrettable but deserved, and the combatants, who are impartial, agree on this. One would not be able to give such an explanation to the men at the rear. Blamed by divisional command, the colonel lets the battalion leader know of his displeasure and he then takes his revenge on the company commandants. Blame cascades down through the ranks and ends up, as always, on the back of the soldier. But the soldiers take this philosophically. ‘One thing’s for sure, and that is that those lads who went off with the Boches have had their lives saved!’ Whereas the three dead are indeed dead. In a hut at camp I heard Chassignol discussing the events in measured terms, a water bottle of wine in his hand:
‘If the old colonel reckons he’s smarter than me at the look out, he can have my gun any time he likes. Then he can thrash it out with Fritz!’
‘If they ain’t pleased with our work then all they got to do is pension us off!’ said another.
‘Ha, they’ll pension you off with a dozen bullets in your guts, you stunted foetus! Rest homes and pensions are nice little fiddles for invalids!’
‘And why wouldn’t I be an invalid?’
‘Because you ain’t anything. You’re nothing. Nothing! You’re part of the quota, just a tool, about as much as a shovel handle. If you’re still alive, it’s because the shells couldn’t be bothered with you!’
We had a score to settle with the enemy. It had to be done. The battalion prepared a surprise attack which took place a fortnight later. The affair cost us several wounded and thousands of projectiles. But the Germans had known only too well that a riposte was coming and had evacuated their trenches as soon as we fired the first shells.
Latterly the division has been made up of two French regiments and one regiment of American blacks. We encounter them in rest periods because their camp is next to ours. The poilus fraternise with their new brothers in arms. Blacks and whites sit together drinking the heavy wine they serve out in the canteens, and swop bits of equipment. The Americans are more generous, being better off. They are holding a sector on our left but I have stopped going there because it is so dangerous. They keep all their weapons ready to shoot, safety catches off, whether it is revolvers in their pockets or rifles propped up against the wall of a shelter. If one gets dropped, it goes off. If someone gets killed, it is an inevitable accident of war, something of which they only have a vague notion. They came to France like they would set off to the lands of Alaska or Canada, to become gold prospectors or fur trappers. They go out on crazy, boisterous patrols in front of their lines, making a lot of racket, something which does not always turn to their advantage. They throw grenades like fireworks at a festival. They have hung up tin cans on their barbed wire and fences at which they shoot from every direction. Behind the line there are bullet holes everywhere, from American bullets.
Our men tell of an event which happened in their camp. One of their sergeants is distributing the coffee ration in the kitchens. Each soldier goes up and holds out his mug (theirs are double the size of ours, half a litre). One man drains his mug. He goes back to the sergeant and demands a second helping. ‘No!’ says the sergeant. ‘No?’ ‘No!’ The man then pulls out his revolver and shoots the sergeant dead on the spot. NCOs run over, grab the murderer, tie a rope to a tree and hang him without further ado. The onlookers all roar with laughter, enjoying the comedy . . . The poilus love this story. They reckon that people who hold the lives of others so cheaply will be excellent soldiers. We are counting on them to finish the war.
The days go by and our victories continue, one after another. There is no doubt that the end is in sight. Clemenceau and Foch are popular, but we cannot admire them: they threaten our lives and their status goes up as our numbers go down.
Our lives now become ever more precious as we see the chance of saving them. We are less and less prepared to risk them. Thus we stop complaining about having to hold our positions for so long, since everywhere else our troops are attacking.
The night is disturbed by a dull sound, the murmur of an ocean, masses on the march. It starts far off in the rear, comes out of the distance, spreads across the plain, rises up towards us like a flood. Something is happening out there in the darkness, something vast and spectacular . . .
In the morning we see heavy artillery down in the ravine where the reserves are encamped. Tribes of artillerymen drive us out of our shelters. We are informed that henceforth we are not allowed to use the roads, which are reserved for convoys; the infantry must stick to the paths.
This deployment of forces and the new regulations confirm the news that is starting to spread: Gouraud’s forces are attacking. Preparations continue through the following nights. We lie awake listening to the great hum of human activity. Once daylight comes, everything stops, everything slumbers. The number of big guns keeps rising. In the battalion’s dugouts and shelters, the men exchange views:
‘We’re going to be relieved.’
‘Yeah, probably. They can’t expect us to do the attacking after leaving us here in the shit for five bloody months!’
‘It’s the colonials who are coming. They’ve been seen at the rear.’
For two days we wait optimistically for the assault troops to arrive. On the third day we learn that the assault troops are us . . . This news is not greeted with enthusiasm.
We receive quantities of paperwork, including maps on which I have to work flat out marking objectives and routes. We have to move several times to make way for the rising tide of artillerymen. On the fourth night we crowd into damp saps, packed in too tightly to stretch out. We don’t sleep any more, we are too tired and worried. The power suggested by all the rumbling in the nights reassures us slightly. Men coming up from the rear say that there is artillery everywhere. Those who come from the front report that our 75s, covered with a simple camouflage of painted canvas, are lined up on the plain between our first and second lines.
We feel sure that ‘it will work’. But we also know that it cannot work without losses and that we have to go over the top, that chilling phrase.
Our battalion will form the regiment’s second wave.
The evening of 24 September. We are entering the fifth and final night. Three years ago, to the day, I was waiting on the eve of the attack in Artois.
We go up to take our assault positions where we have to be before the bombardment which will begin very soon. We are marching with an infantry company. The men are fully equipped, without heavy packs, but with food rations for several days. A captain adjutant-major has been working alongside the commandant for the past few days.
We crowd into a big sap on the left sector, on the side of the ravine which separates the front lines. We are too many to fit in the shelter and I predict another sleepless night. But I have made up my mind to get some sleep. Partly as a precaution, to build up a store of sleep on which I can live for the next day or two. Partly because it is bad to spend the eve of a battle lying awake and thinking about all that might happen when nothing can be done to change it. I manage to get to the front of the line and find some bunks in a small dugout. I share one with a comrade. I wrap myself up and sleep.
I wake later. The darkness is full of people’s backs, of bodies jumbled together. I see one man leaning on his elbows staring pensively into the flame of a candle.
‘What time is it?’ I ask.
‘Two o’clock.’
‘Has it started?’
‘Yes, it’s been going on since eleven.’
And indeed I can hear rumbling in the distance. No shells are coming down above us at the moment.
‘What time do we go?’
‘Five twenty-five.’
Three hours of safety and oblivion left . . . I go back to sleep.
Someone is shaking me violently.
‘Up, now, come on, we’re attacking . . .’ I hear.
We are attacking? . . . Oh, yes, right, now is the time . . . There is agitation all round me. Candlelight reveals tense, hardened faces, reflecting the anger that is a reaction to weakness. Everyone is asking questions:
‘Is it going OK up there?’
‘Are the Boche hitting back much?’
I have got to rush! I leap off my bunk, roll up my blanket and tent canvas, still thick-headed. I must concentrate on my gear: my two haversacks, water bottle, gas mask, maps, pistol . . . Have I forgotten anything? . . . Oh, yes, my cane, my chinstrap . . . I have scarcely got everything when the order is shouted:
‘Forward!’
We are near an exit. I take my place in the line, follow the others. We are already at the foot of the steps, we are going up, we are going to go out . . . the terrible moment when you surrender yourself . . .
Outside . . . Whistles and screams of the bombardment we have unleashed . . . Into the colourless chill of dawn, like splashing your face in a tub of icy water. We are all shivering, our faces green, mouths thick with that foul smell that bad awakenings belch up. We wait in the communication trench to give the column time to get organised.
Whipcracks lash the air, so low it seems they might take our heads off; it is the mad onslaught of our 75s whose barrage precedes our assault. Above that the heavy artillery forms a vault of gasps and growls across the sky. A vast net of trajectories is spread over the earth and we are caught in its mesh. Waves of sound collide, break, swirl and eddy overhead. Impossible still to make out what contribution the enemy is making to this overwhelming storm of steel.
Still, some distinct explosions indicate incoming shells, though none of them land near us. We stand motionless on the threshold of the battle, all retreat cut off. Our voices are as pale as our faces. To get a grip on myself, I turn to my neighbour and, speaking slowly and precisely with feigned indifference, as if I am using a foreign language, tell him:
‘The strap on your water bottle is unfastened, mind you don’t lose it.’
‘Forward!’
We set off down the communication trenches. Here we go. Soon we are descending the slopes of the ravine, covered with a sinister mist that smells like gas. We put on our masks then remove them again because we can’t breathe. We go up the reverse slope and come out on to the plateau.
We are now at the enemy positions. There is such chaos that we have to leave the trenches and move forward on the plain. We are entering a repulsive landscape, where nature has been stripped bare, closed off by a horizon of swirling, booming, thick yellow smoke. Five hundred metres ahead, thin columns of men are taking possession of this erupting expanse, conquering the flanks of a deserted, ravaged and sulphurous planet. From time to time, black balls with red hearts burst among the columns: enemy shells.
I tell myself that there is a certain grandeur to this spectacle. It is quite moving to watch these pathetically small, fragile groups of men, little blue caterpillars, so far apart, marching to meet the thunder, disappearing into the gullies and ditches and re-emerging on the slopes of this valley of hell. It is moving to watch these pygmies controlling the advance of the cataclysm, commanding the elements, wrapping themselves in a sky of fire that clears and ploughs all that is ahead of them.
All grandeur and beauty suddenly vanishes. We are passing scattered, broken corpses, men in blue lying flat in the nothingness on a litter of blood and entrails. One of the wounded is writhing, grimacing and screaming, his arm torn off, torso ripped open. We all know him. He was the batman for the intelligence officer, a giant of a man who was even more ‘dug-in’ than us . . . We turn our eyes away so as not to see the reproach in his, we hurry on so as not to hear his imploring cries.
This is where we really enter the battle – our flesh on full alert . . .
It’s nine o’clock. The sun is shining.
After many pauses, we have reached the rim of a valley whose floor is still hidden by a light mist. Above this mist on the other side emerge the slopes held by the enemy, with their menacing trenches. We have advanced for two or three kilometres over abandoned positions. The enemy had pulled back, covering its retreat with just a few sacrificed troops who surrendered without putting up any fight. We passed a detachment of prisoners dazed by the night’s hammering.
Soon the black American regiment appeared; they were following us. They formed a line along the ridge, their mass silhouetted against the sky. Thousands of bayonets glistened at the ends of their rifles. They were laughing. Many of them had already swopped their weapons and gas masks for German equipment.
‘It’s stupid to stay up there in full view!’ some observe wisely.
But no one is listening to them. We are a bit intoxicated by our victory. Our losses were very low. We fraternise with the Americans.
We waste a good hour like this. Flights of enemy aeroplanes appear overhead. Fighters circle gracefully, gathering information on our positions, which does not bother us.
At last the Americans march off along a communication trench which leads down into the valley. We wave to them cheerfully as they disappear, full of confidence.
We have another long wait. The mist has cleared, our bombardment ceased. For the first time today we hear machine guns . . .
Now it is our turn. The battalion goes off along the wide communication trench, which is open to enfilade fire from the ridges opposite along its entire length. One man in front of me separates me from the commandant, himself preceded by the captain adjutant-major.
The enemy can see us. 77s and 88s start to strike the parapets with terrible precision and regularity. Machine guns support them. A swarm of bullets is buzzing round our ears, tormenting us . . . Then there is some kind of bottleneck ahead. The front of the column stops moving. We stay there, crouched down and panting, offering ourselves as targets all the way down this slope. The shells are getting ever closer. Our situation is hopeless if we continue to go down the trench. We will leave hundreds of dead men behind us.
There is a terrible explosion right next to us. People are shouting:
‘Get in the shelter, quick!’
Our commandant, his face ashen, turns back, pushes past us and throws himself down the steps of a German deep shelter a few metres way. I can understand his panic. The shell went straight into the captain adjutant-major, blew up in his chest and scattered him in pieces, but, miraculously, did not claim any other victims. By terrifying the commandant, this death saved all of us.
We crowd through the shelter’s two entrances. Just as I am going in I recognise Sergeant Brelan, a teacher, with whom I have had some friendly chats in the past. I draw back:
‘After you, sergeant!’
This gesture takes two seconds, time enough for a few shells or ten bullets to find me . . . Refinement, a wish to impress? I do not think so. It was more a matter of concern for my morale, a way of warding off panic. More than anything I am afraid of fear itself overwhelming me. One must use any bit of folly to control it.
For the next two hours, heavy shells hunt us in our underground shelter, where we spend the rest of the day.
We take advantage of the clear night to continue our journey down the valley, whose floor is covered with a bog about two hundred metres long. We cross this by a narrow footbridge which the Germans had left intact to give themselves a way of escape. A few big time-shells go off just above us.
Our successive waves of troops from this morning now form a single line at the foot of a four-metre bank, the limit of our advance. Above the bank there is another stretch of flat ground, swept by German machine-gun fire since nightfall. The Americans were stopped here with heavy losses. Corpses rolled down the slope where in the darkness they got mixed in with the sleeping bodies of the living. We attack at first light.
Our preparation starts a little before dawn. Our shells are coming down just in front of us. But they fail to demolish the bunkers from which the machine guns are firing with fury.
Then a battery of 75s fires short. We can clearly hear the four bangs when the shells depart and they are above us with terrifying speed, exploding only a few metres ahead. The bog prevents any retreat. It feels as if death will strike us from behind, and we have a quarter-hour of total panic under these fratricidal blows. We fire off all our red warning rockets to tell them to increase the range. The fire then stops but by then we are too demoralised to attack. And in any case the machine guns are still sweeping the open ground.
Day has dawned. Heavy shells are seeking out the footbridge to cut off our communications. They throw up showers of mud.
In the afternoon the machine guns go silent. We move forward without any opposition. At the entrance to a sap lies a German corpse, a hole in his temple: one of those who held us up.
We advance very slowly for some days, with lengthy delays caused by invisible machine guns. The land we conquer is covered with our corpses. The Americans, who do not understand how to use cover or shelters, have been badly hit. We have seen them changing positions following the whistle, as artillery fire is striking the middle of their sections, throwing men into the air. They launched a bayonet attack on the village of Sochaux across open ground. And left behind hundreds of dead.
Overall, the artillery fire is not doing us a lot of damage and the Germans only have a few guns to use against us. But it is true that they use them well, holding their fire till they have spotted troops massing. Mostly, though, they are covering their retreat with machine-gunners who must have orders to hold us down for a certain time. Over broken, bare ground, well concealed machine guns have an extraordinary effectiveness that tests us cruelly. Some resolute platoons stop whole battalions. We do not see any of the enemy. Some surrender at the last minute, others escape into the night, their mission accomplished. All this confirms once again that the attacker, obliged to use dense troop formations, has the more dangerous role. If we had chosen a defensive strategy in 1914, we would have avoided Charleroi and done considerable damage to the German forces.
After several trying days in the rain and cold, we have now assembled on the highest summit of the Champagne mountains, looking down over the vast plain where the Ardennes begin.
It is afternoon, and the sun is shining. Two or three German batteries are harassing us, but fortunately their shells are landing behind a little trench that shields us from the shrapnel.
We hear a faint humming, which rapidly increases in volume, becoming so loud that it even drowns out the explosions. It comes from the sky . . . Soon afterwards a whole wing of bombers, bearing our colours, flies overhead. We count more than two hundred machines in triangular formation, covered by fighters, at about two thousand metres. Their mass, flanked by hundreds of machine guns on the fighters, gives the impression of an irresistible force, unaffected by enemy gunfire which causes no visible damage. The armada disappears from sight into the clear sky. Later on we hear the echoes of a string of explosions that shake the earth: the aeroplanes are flattening a village, destroying an assembly point.
At twilight, the artillery has gone quiet. We descend the slopes in small groups. Fog comes down, spreading its veil over the distant landscape. All we can still see are a few shining patches: rivers and lakes that reflect the last light of the day. Then they too disappear.
I have taken command of a stray group of a dozen men, including two American runners who have been attached to us since the start of the offensive. One carries a shovel and the other a pick, and both have large packs of blankets. They have chucked away all their weapons, considering them useless, keeping only items of protection and comfort. Such a precise grasp of the needs of the present fills us with admiration.
We spend the night in a crater caused by one of our 270s, big enough to hold a platoon.
The following morning, we see two American officers approaching. One of them asks us questions and I manage to pick out a few words:
‘I am . . . Colonel . . . Have you seen? . . .’
I realise that we are in the presence of an American colonel who, baton in hand, is looking for his regiment. Using sign language I explain that I don’t know any more than he does. Or rather I cannot express to him what I do know. Which is that through complete inexperience his regiment has lost three quarters of its strength in six days. (Did he not notice the bunches of men in khaki strewn across the plateaus, slowly turning from their natural brown to the green of decomposition?) The other quarter, with some disgust at this war whose results they have seen, must have gone and pitched their tent well away from the fighting, somewhere near the canteens and supplies. Deeply upset, the colonel headed off in the direction of rifle shots. The notion of this colonel who had lost his regiment kept us amused for the rest of the day, which we passed very peacefully eating tinned food and smoking. Shells were falling a long way behind us, and there was little danger from bullets.
Unfortunately the battalion was reassembled in the evening, so we can’t go it alone any more. During the night we march forward again, a very hesitant march, broken by interminable pauses. Morning finds us on a fine open road, where our column is all too visible. The battalion digs in on the ditch on the right and we camouflage ourselves as best we can with foliage and tent canvas.
At about one o’clock a German aeroplane circles over us, banking round several times to have a good look at what is happening below. He must find the area much changed . . . Someone is shooting somewhere but the bullets don’t come near us.
The day ends badly. Around five o’clock we are directly targeted by shellfire. A battery of 150s and another of 88s catch us in an enfilade. The firing is precisely aimed at the length and breadth of the battalion. At the very moment when it was furthest from our minds, terror seizes us by the throat, and the guts. We are pinned down under a systematic bombardment. Once again our lives are at stake and we are powerless to protect ourselves. We are lying in the ditch, flat as corpses, squeezed together to make ourselves smaller, welded into a single strange reptile of three hundred shuddering bodies and pounding chests. The experience of shelling is always the same: a crushing, relentless savagery, hunting us down. You feel individually targeted, singled out from those around you. You are alone, eyes shut, struggling in your own darkness in a coma of fear. You feel exposed, feel that the shells are looking for you, and you hide among the jumble of legs and stomachs, try to cover yourself and also to protect yourself from the other bodies that are writhing like tortured animals. All we can see are hallucinations of the horrible images that we have come to know through years of war.
The projectiles bracket our position. Almost all of them are hitting the road and the field to our right, behind a hedge. There are wounded men ten metres ahead of us, and more further off. Our victorious battalion is now begging for mercy, humiliated by some brute beast. I am thinking that today is the second of October 1918, and that this war is near its end . . . and I must not, I must not get killed!
This one has my name on it! . . . Ssss . . . First the crash so loud that it shakes your head almost off your shoulders, leaves you dizzy . . . and then the enveloping smoke that burns your eyes and nose and fills your chest with its unbreathable stench. We’re coughing and spitting, our eyes are streaming. The shell came down on the road two metres away. If you stretch out your arm you can touch the edge of the crater . . .
Behind us an explosion of a 150 is followed by screams. Someone says Lieutenant Larcher has been wounded: Larcher the invulnerable, who had been in the thick of every fight for the last two years. And now he is stupidly wounded in a roadside ditch by a retreating enemy which has at most ten field guns! It is ridiculous and unfair! And if Larcher can be hit then surely none of us can avoid the same stroke of fate!
Every new burst of fire leaves us gasping for breath. And where is our own artillery, for christ’s sake? We lie prostrate for an hour suspended between luck and death until the two German batteries run out of shells.
Night falls. The stretcher-bearers set off into twilight heavy with the smell of gunpowder, leaving in their wake the cries of agony from their charges. More tragically still, the stretchers carried by the last teams to leave are silent ones. On one of them lies Chassignole, the bomber.
Petrus Chassignole, class of 1913, in service at the front since the start of the war, was killed this evening, 2 October 1918, after fifty months of suffering.
We move around this plain for several more days. The runners are based at a crossroads in a battered forest, which is sometimes even hit by our own 75 shells.
A little further forward what remains of our units are attacking the village of Challerange where the enemy has dug in deeply and seems to want to put up a fight. The Germans launch a surprise counter-attack and take some prisoners.
Support from our own artillery is inadequate.
It has been raining and the nights are cold. For ten days now the men have slept on the bare ground and have had to fight with hardly any sleep and nothing hot to eat. They are tired, and sick; quite a number are evacuated. We are all asking to be relieved.
At last we are, after an offensive of eleven days in which we have advanced about fifteen kilometres. This victory has cost us half our troops. A company in the battalion now consists of no more than twenty fighters.
We are taken away on trucks, utterly exhausted. But alive. Maybe we will be among those who come back from the final relief . . .