4

ON 23 August, a Tuesday, at six in the morning, camp was struck and a hundred thousand men of the army of Châlons were on the move and soon flowing in an immense stream, a river of men momentarily spreading out into a lake and then resuming its course. In spite of yesterday’s rumours it came as a great surprise to many of them that instead of continuing the retreat they were turning their backs on Paris and going somewhere eastwards into the unknown.

By five in the morning the 7th corps still had no ammunition. For the past two days the artillerymen had half killed themselves unloading the horses and supplies in the goods yard cluttered with material coming in from Metz. And it was only at the last minute that some trucks loaded with cartridges were discovered in the inextricable confusion of trains, and a fatigue party, including Jean, managed to shift two hundred and forty thousand of them in hastily requisitioned carts. Jean issued the regulation hundred rounds to each man in his squad at the very moment when the bugler Gaude sounded the order to march.

The 106th was not to go through Rheims itself, the order being to go round the city and rejoin the main Châlons road. But once again they had not thought of staggering the times, so that the four army corps set out at the same time and a terrible muddle ensued where they had to get on to the same sections of road. At every moment artillery and cavalry cut across lines of infantry and brought them to a halt. Whole brigades had to stand by for an hour. Worst of all, a terrible storm broke scarcely ten minutes after departure, with deluges of rain that soaked the men to the skin and added to the weight of their packs and capes. However, the 106th had been able to set off again as the rain eased off, while in a field nearby some Zouaves, obliged to wait longer still, had thought out a game to keep themselves in a good humour; they bombarded each other with clods of earth, great lumps of mud which spattered all over their uniforms, giving rise to gales of mirth.

The sun came out again almost at once, a glorious sun on this hot August morning. And cheerfulness returned; the men were like a line of washing hanging out in the open air, and very soon they were dry, like muddy dogs fished out of a pond, joking about the festoons of caked mud they were carrying on their red trousers. There was a fresh halt at every road junction. At the last outlying houses of Rheims there was a final halt in front of a pub which was doing a roaring trade.

Maurice thought he would treat the squad, by way of wishing them all good luck.

‘Do you mind, corporal?’

Jean hesitated a moment and then accepted a glass. Loubet and Chouteau were there too, the latter now all obsequious since the corporal had made himself felt, and also Pache and Lapoulle, both good types so long as you didn’t get across them.

‘Here’s to your very good health, corporal,’ said Chouteau in smarmy tones.

‘And to you, and we must all try to bring back our heads and our feet,’ answered Jean politely, and everyone laughed in agreement.

But they were off again and Captain Beaudoin came by with a shocked air, while Rochas looked the other way, for he was indulgent towards his men’s thirsts. Already they were out on the Châlons road, an endless, tree-lined ribbon running straight ahead across the vast plain – interminable cornfields, broken here and there by big hayricks and wooden windmills turning their sails. Further northwards lines of telegraph poles marked other roads where they could make out the dark columns of other regiments on the march. There were even quite a few cutting straight across the fields in dense masses. Ahead to the left a brigade of cavalry was trotting along in the dazzling sun. The whole great featureless horizon, empty, depressing and limitless, was coming to life and peopling itself with streams of men pouring from all sides, like continuous runs from some gigantic anthill.

By about nine the 106th left the Châlons road and took the one to Suippes, on the left, another straight ribbon going on for ever. They marched in two files with a space between, leaving the middle of the road clear. Only officers used that, as they wished, and Maurice noticed their worried look, which contrasted with the good humour and contented jollity of the soldiers, who were as happy as children to be on the move at last. As the squad was almost at the head he even had a distant glimpse of the colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil, and was struck by his despondent look as his tall and stiff figure swayed gently with his horse’s step. The band had been left in the rear, together with the regimental kitchens. Then with the division came the ambulances and equipment, followed by the supply column of the whole corps – an immense convoy, forage waggons, covered vans for provisions, carts for baggage – a procession of vehicles of all kinds more than five kilometres long, the endless tail of which could be seen at the rare bends of the road. And finally at the very end of the column the livestock brought up the rear, a ragged herd of huge oxen tramping along the road in a cloud of dust, the meat, still alive and whipped along, for a migrating tribe of warriors.

Meanwhile Lapoulle every now and then was humping up his pack with a jerk of the shoulders. On the pretext that he was the strongest he had been loaded with the implements common to the whole squad, the big stewpan and the can with the water. This time they had even entrusted him with the company shovel, making out it was an honour. Not that he minded, but laughed away at a song with which Loubet, the tenor of the squad, was enlivening the tedious march. As for Loubet, his pack was celebrated, and you could find a bit of everything in it: underclothes, spare shoes, needle and thread, brushes, chocolate, a knife, fork and spoon, a mug, to say nothing of the regulation rations of biscuits and coffee; and although the rounds of ammunition were there too, and on top of the lot the rolled blanket, tent and pegs, it all looked as though it weighed nothing, so skilled was he at packing his trunk, as he called it.

‘Fucking awful country, though!’ Chouteau repeated at intervals, casting a contemptuous eye on the dreary plains of this barren Champagne.

The vast stretches of chalky earth went on and on without end. Never a farm, never a soul, nothing but flights of rooks like specks of black on the grey immensity. Far away to the left some pine woods, almost black, crowned the gentle undulations where the sky began, while to the right the course of the Vesle could be made out by an unbroken line of trees. And in that direction, behind the hills, they had seen for the last league a huge amount of smoke going up in billows that finally united to blot out the horizon with a terrifying cloud of fire.

‘What’s burning over there?’ everybody was asking.

The explanation ran from end to end of the column. It was the Châlons camp which had been blazing for two days, set on fire by the Emperor’s order to prevent hoards of supplies falling into Prussian hands. The rearguard cavalry, it was said, had been ordered to set fire to a great warehouse called the yellow store, full of tents, tent-pegs, matting beds, and to the new store, a huge enclosed shed in which were piles of messtins, boots, blankets, enough to equip another hundred thousand men. Stacks of forage, also fired, were burning like giant torches. At this sight, witnessing these livid, swirling clouds rolling over the distant hills and filling the sky with mourning for the irreplaceable, the army marching across the dreary plain fell into a sullen silence. Under the sun no sound could be heard except the beat of their steps, but heads were turned willy-nilly towards the ever spreading smoke which, like a doom-laden cloud, seemed to be following the column for yet another league.

Cheerfulness came back at the main halt in a field of stubble where the soldiers could sit on their packs and have a bite to eat. The big square biscuits were meant for dunking in soup, but the little round ones, crisp and light, were a real treat that had only the one drawback that they made you terribly thirsty. When his turn came, Pache, by request, sang a hymn that the whole squad took up as a chorus. Jean smiled good-naturedly and let them get on with it, and Maurice’s confidence began to return as he saw everybody’s enthusiasm and the orderliness and good humour of this first day’s march. The rest of the stage was covered in the same perky way, but the last eight kilometres seemed tough. They had left the village of Prosnes to their right and had abandoned the main road and cut across fallow land and some sandy heathland dotted with little plantations of pine, and the whole division, followed by its endless supply column, wound its way in and out of these woods, ankle-deep in the sand. The waste land stretched ever further, and there was nothing to be seen in it but a straggling flock of sheep guarded by a big black dog.

At last, at about four, the 106th halted at Dontrien, a village on the banks of the Suippe. The little stream runs between clumps of trees and the ancient church in its churchyard is completely shaded by a huge horse-chestnut. The regiment pitched its tents on the left bank in a sloping field. The officers said that the four army corps were camping for that night along the Suippe from Aubérive to Heutrégiville, passing through Dontrien, Bétheniville and Pont-faverger in a front nearly five leagues long.

Gaude sounded rations straight away and Jean had to run, for the corporal was the chief supplier and had to be always ready. He took Lapoulle with him and they returned after half an hour loaded with a rib of fresh-killed beef and a bundle of wood. Three animals out of the herd in the rear had already been slaughtered and cut up. Lapoulle had to go back for the bread which had been baking since noon at Dontrien itself, in the village ovens. On this first day everything was really in abundance except wine and tobacco, and as a matter of fact there never would be any issue of these.

When he got back Jean found Chouteau putting up the tent, assisted by Pache. He watched them for a minute like an experienced old soldier who wouldn’t give tuppence for the job they were doing.

‘All right if it keeps fine tonight.’ he said. ‘Otherwise, if there were any wind we should all go down into the river… Here, let me show you.’

He wanted to send Maurice for water in the big can, but he was sitting on the grass with his boot off, examining his right foot.

‘Hallo, what’s up with you?’

‘It’s the stiffening that’s taken the skin off my heel… My other boots were done in and I was silly enough to buy these at Rheims because they were a good fit. I ought to have chosen a pair of boats.’

Jean knelt down, took up the foot and turned it over very gently, like a child’s foot, shaking his head.

‘You know, this isn’t funny at all… Mind what you do. A soldier who’s lost his feet is no use for anything but the scrap-heap. My captain in Italy always used to say that you win battles with your legs.’

So he ordered Pache to go and fetch the water. Anyhow the river was only fifty metres away. And while he was doing so Loubet kindled the wood in the hole he had dug in the ground so that he could at once put the stew over it – the big dixie of water into which he placed the meat, neatly tied up with string. Then it was sheer bliss just to watch the stew bubbling. The whole squad, now free of fatigues, lay stretched out on the grass round the fire like a family, full of tender care for the cooking meat, while Loubet solemnly skimmed the pot with his spoon. Like children and savages, their only instinct was to eat and sleep in this rush towards the unknown with no tomorrow.

But Maurice had found in his pack a paper he had bought in Rheims, and Chouteau asked:

‘Any news about the Prussians? Read it to us.’

Under the growing authority of Jean they were sharing the jobs well. Maurice obligingly read out the interesting bits of news while Pache, the housewife of the outfit, mended his cape for him and Lapoulle cleaned his rifle. First it was a great victory for Bazaine, who had knocked out a whole Prussian army corps in the Jaumont quarries, and this work of imagination was served up with dramatic details – men and horses crushed to death among the rocks, total annihilation, not even any corpses left intact to bury. Then there were plentiful details on the pitiful state of the German troops since they had been in France: soldiers ill fed, badly equipped, reduced to absolute destitution, dying in hordes along the roads, struck down by fell diseases. Another article reported that the King of Prussia had diarrhoea and that Bismarck had broken his leg as he leaped out of the window of an inn in which the Zouaves had nearly caught him. That’s grand! Lapoulle grinned from ear to ear, and Chouteau and the others, without showing the slightest sign of doubt, were cock-a-hoop at the idea of soon picking up Prussians like sparrows in a field after a hailstorm. They were especially tickled about Bismarck’s going arse over tip. Oh those Zouaves and Turcos weren’t half a lot, they were! All sorts of fairy tales went round – Germany was terrified and angry, saying it was unworthy of a civilized nation to get savages like that to defend her. Although they had already been decimated at Froeschwiller they were apparently still intact and invincible.

The little clock-tower at Dontrien struck six and Loubet shouted:

‘Supper-time!’

The squad solemnly sat round in a ring. At the last moment Loubet had discovered some vegetables at a near-by peasant’s. Complete banquet: a stew smelling of carrots and leeks, as soft on the stomach as velvet! Spoons banged hard in the little messtins. Then Jean, who was serving, had to share out the beef that day with the strictest impartiality, for eyes were sharp and there would have been grumblings if one portion had looked bigger than another. They mopped up everything and were up to their eyes in it.

‘Oh Christ,’ declared Chouteau, lying back when he had finished, ‘well, anyhow that’s better than a kick up the backside!’

Maurice, too, was very full and very happy, having stopped thinking about his foot where the pain had gone off a bit. He was now quite reconciled to this brutish comradeship that brought him down to the common level of mateyness which comes from sharing the physical needs of life. And that night, too, he slept the same deep sleep as his five tentmates, all in a heap together and glad to be warm in these heavy dews. It should be added that Lapoulle, egged on by Loubet, had gone and pinched great armfuls of straw from a near-by rick, and in this the six chaps snored away as in a feather bed. Under the clear night sky, from Aubérive to Heutrégiville, all along the pleasant banks of the Suippe which meanders between the willows, the camp fires of the hundred thousand men lit up the five leagues of plain like a trail of stars.

At sunrise coffee was made by crushing the beans in a messtin with a rifle-butt and throwing them into boiling water, then the grouts were precipitated to the bottom by adding a drop of cold water. That morning the sun rose with regal magnificence amid great clouds of purple and gold, but even Maurice no longer paid any attention to these spectacles of horizon and sky, and only Jean, the discerning countryman, looked anxiously at the red dawn which warned of rain. And, as just before leaving there had been an issue of the bread baked the day before and the squad had received three long loaves, he went for Loubet and Pache who had tied them outside their packs. But tents were folded and bags tied up and they took no notice. It was striking six by all the village churches when the whole army moved off, gaily resuming its advance in the early morning confidence of a new day.

In order to rejoin the Rheims–Vouziers road the 106th cut through almost at once on cross-country roads and climbed through fields for over an hour. Below them and to the north they could see Bétheniville, where it was said the Emperor had spent the night. When they were on the Vouziers road the plains of the previous day began again, the poor fields of barren Champagne rolled on and on with heartbreaking monotony. Now the Arne, a miserable little stream, ran along to their left, while to the right the bare fields stretched on for ever, prolonging the horizon with their flat lines. They went through villages, Saint-Clément with a single line of houses winding on each side of the roadway, Saint-Pierre, a bigger place with prosperous folk who had barricaded their doors and windows. At about ten came the main halt near another village, Saint-Etienne, where the soldiers were over-joyed to find some tobacco still left. The 7th corps had been divided into several columns and the 106th was marching alone with nothing behind it but a battalion of Chasseurs and the reserve artillery, and Maurice looked back in vain at each bend of the road for the immense column which had interested him the day before: the herds had gone and there was nothing but guns rolling along, magnified by these bare plains and looking like black, long-legged grasshoppers.

Past Saint-Etienne the road became atrocious, climbing by gentle humps amid the vast barren fields in which the only growth was the eternal pinewoods with their black foliage, so depressing against the chalky earth. They hadn’t crossed such a desolate area before. Badly surfaced, soaked by the recent rains, the road was a real sea of mud, diluted grey clay in which your feet stuck as if it were pitch. Everybody was extremely tired, and the exhausted men seemed to make no headway. And then to cap it all, it suddenly began to pour with terrible violence. The artillery almost stuck there in the quagmire.

Chouteau was carrying the squad’s rice ration, and out of breath and furious with the load weighing him down he threw it away, thinking nobody was looking. But Loubet had seen.

‘You’re making a mistake, mate, shouldn’t do things like that because later on your pals ’ll have to tighten their belts.’

‘Don’t you believe it,’ answered Chouteau. ‘As they’ve got everything, they’ll give us some more at the next stop.’

So Loubet, who was carrying the bacon, convinced by this argument, got rid of that too.

Maurice was having more and more trouble with his foot, and obviously the heel was inflamed again. He was limping so painfully that Jean became more and more concerned.

‘Not so good? Starting up again?’

Then, as they called a short halt to let the men get their breath back, he gave him a bit of good advice.

‘Take your boots off and walk barefoot, the cold mud will take away the smarting.’

And Maurice was indeed able in this way to keep up without too much difficulty and he felt a deep sense of gratitude coming over him. It was a real stroke of luck to have a corporal like this, an old soldier knowing all the tricks of the trade, a yokel and not very polished, obviously, but a good type all the same.

It was late when they reached Contreuve where they were to bivouac after crossing the Châlons–Vouziers road and going down a steep hill into the Semide gorge. The country was changing, and it was already the Ardennes. From the big bare hills above the village where the 7th corps was to camp, the valley of the Aisne could be made out in the distance veiled in the pale mist of the rainstorms.

By six Gaude had still not sounded rations, so Jean, for the sake of something to do, and also because he was worried about the rising wind, wanted to put up the tent himself. He showed his men how you should choose a site on a gentle slope, drive in the pegs at an angle and dig a gulley round the canvas for drainage. Maurice was exempt from all fatigues because of his foot, so he looked on and was surprised at the shrewd skill of this big, raw-boned fellow. He himself was dead beat but was kept going by the hope which was being reborn in every heart. They really had marched hard from Rheims, sixty kilometres in two stages. If they went on at this rate and straight ahead they would without doubt knock out the IInd German army and join up with Bazaine before the IIIrd, that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, said to be at Vitry-le-François, had had time to move up to Verdun.

‘Look here, are they going to let us peg out with hunger?’ asked Chouteau, realizing that it was seven o’clock and no issue had been made.

Jean had prudently ordered Loubet to light a fire all the same and put on a pan of water, and as there was no wood he had to shut his eyes when Loubet got some by simply ripping off the palings from a near-by garden. But when Jean mentioned doing some rice and bacon they had to own up that the rice and the bacon had been dumped in the mud along the Saint-Etienne road. Chouteau told a barefaced lie and swore that the package must have come untied and dropped from his pack without his noticing.

‘You’re a lot of swine!’ Jean shouted furiously. ‘Throwing food away when there are so many poor buggers with empty stomachs!’

And it was just the same over the three loaves that had been tied outside the packs: nobody had listened to him and the rains had soaked them and turned them into a soggy mess you couldn’t bite on at all.

‘We’re in a nice old mess!’ he said. ‘We had plenty of everything, and now look at us without a crust to eat… You’re a lot of fucking swine!’

Then the sergeants’ call was sounded for orders to be given, and Sergeant Sapin, with his doleful air, came to warn the men in his section that as any issue of supplies was impossible they would have to manage with their marching rations. Apparently the supply convoy was stuck on the road because of the bad weather. As for the herd of cattle, they must have got lost owing to contradictory orders. It came out later that as the 5th and 12th corps had gone up to Rethel that day, where the general headquarters was to be billeted, all the provisions had drained towards that town, together with the population, all agog to see the Emperor, with the result that the country had emptied itself before the eyes of the 7th: no meat left, no bread, no people even. And as the last straw, by some misunderstanding, supplies for the commissariat had been sent to Le Chêne-Populeux. Throughout the campaign this was the continual despair of the poor quartermasters, about whom all the soldiers complained, and for the most part their only offence was that they reached agreed places dead on time, but the troops never went there.

‘You bloody swine!’ repeated Jean, beside himself with rage. ‘It’s just what you deserve and you aren’t worth all the trouble I’m going to have to root something out for you, for after all it’s my job not to let you starve to death on the road.’

He went off to explore as any good corporal should, taking with him Pache, whom he liked for his gentleness, although he did find him a bit too given to priests.

But a minute or so earlier Loubet had spotted a little farm two or three hundred metres away, one of the last habitations of Contreuve, where he thought he could make out quite a bit of trade going on. He got hold of Lapoulle and said:

‘Let’s bugger off on our own. I’ve an idea there’s something to scrounge over there.’

Maurice was left to give an eye to the pan of boiling water, with orders to keep up the fire.

He sat on his blanket with his boot and sock off so that his bad place could dry. He was interested in watching the camp, with all the squads running about now that they were not expecting any issue of food. The truth was dawning on him that some were continually going without everything while others lived in perpetual abundance, according to the foresight and adroitness of the corporal and his men. In the enormous amount of activity going on round him, in and out between stacked arms and tents, he saw some who had not even been able to light themselves a fire, others, already resigned, who had bedded down for the night, but in contrast others busy eating with great relish something or other, but certainly something good. What also struck him was the good order of the reserve artillery camped higher up on the bluff. The setting sun appeared between two clouds and lit up the guns from which the artillerymen had already cleaned off all the mud from the roads.

Meanwhile General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the brigade commander, had installed himself comfortably in the little farmhouse that Loubet and his mates had their eye on. He had found a quite acceptable bed and was at table in front of a large omelette and roast chicken, which put him in a charming good humour, and as Colonel de Vineuil happened to be there about some service detail he had invited him to dinner. So they were both eating, waited on by a big fair-haired yokel who had only been working for the farmer for three days, having said he was an Alsatian, a refugee displaced by the disaster of Froeschwiller. The general talked freely in front of this man, discussed the army’s march and then asked him about the route and distances, forgetting that he was not a native of the Ardennes. The total ignorance displayed by the general’s questions finally upset the colonel, for he had lived in Mézières. He gave a few exact pieces of information which drew the cry from the general:

‘Well, isn’t it silly? How can you expect us to fight in a terrain we don’t know!’

The colonel made a vague gesture of despair. He knew that immediately war was declared they had issued to every officer maps of Germany, but certainly not one possessed a map of France. What he had seen and heard during the past month had finished him, and all he had left was his courage, which made him loved rather than feared by his regiment as a somewhat weak and limited commander.

‘You can’t eat in peace!’ the general shouted. ‘What are they yapping like that for? Go and find out, you.’

But the farmer appeared, exasperated and gesticulating, in tears. He was being robbed – Chasseurs and Zouaves were looting his home. To begin with he had been unwise enough to open his shop, being the only one in the village who had any eggs, potatoes and rabbits. He sold without being too extortionate, pocketed the money, delivered the goods, and that resulted in more and more buyers who swamped the place, muddled him and finally rough-handled him and took the lot without paying. The reason why so many countryfolk during the campaign hid everything, refused even a glass of water, was this terror of the steady, irresistible advance of the tide of men that swept them out of their homes and carried away home and all.

‘Oh, leave us alone, my good man,’ said the general, irritated. ‘I should have to shoot a dozen of these characters everyday. How can I?’

He had the door shut so as not to have to go and deal with it himself, while the colonel explained that there had been no issue of rations and the men were hungry.

Outside, Loubet had spied a field of potatoes, and he and Lapoulle had thrown themselves upon it, digging with both hands, tearing them out and filling their pockets. But then Chouteau, looking over a low wall, gave them a whistle call and they ran over and shouted for joy: it was a flock of geese, ten magnificent geese parading majestically in a narrow yard. At once a council was held and Lapoulle was pushed forward and made to climb over the wall. The combat was fierce, the goose he seized nearly cut his nose off with the snapping scissors of its beak. Then he grasped it by the neck and tried to strangle it, but all the time it beat on his arms and stomach with its powerful legs. He had to smash its head with his fist and yet it was still struggling as he hurried away, pursued by the rest of the gaggle tearing at his legs.

When the three got back, hiding the beast in a sack with the potatoes, they found Jean and Pache just coming back and equally pleased with their expedition, carrying four loaves and a cheese they had bought from some nice old girl.

‘The water’s boiling, we’ll make some coffee,’ said the corporal. ‘We’ve got bread and cheese, it’ll be a real party!’

Suddenly he caught sight of the goose lying outspread at his feet, and couldn’t help laughing. He felt it with an experienced hand and was full of admiration.

‘Good God, what a lovely bird! It must weigh over twenty pounds.’

‘It’s a bird we happened to meet,’ explained Loubet in his professional funny-man’s voice, ‘and she wanted to make our acquaintance.’

Jean made a sign meaning that he didn’t want to know any more. You had to live after all! And besides, why the hell shouldn’t they have this banquet – a lot of poor sods who had forgotten what poultry tasted like?

Loubet was already blowing up the fire. Pache and Lapoulle were plucking the goose for all they were worth. Chouteau, who had run off to get some string from the artillerymen, came back and hung it between two bayonets in front of the roaring fire, and Maurice was detailed to turn it every now and again with a touch of his finger. The fat dripped down into the communal messtin. It was a triumph of string roasting. The whole regiment, attracted by the lovely smell, came and stood round, and what a feast! Roast goose, boiled potatoes, bread and cheese! When Jean had carved the goose the squad tucked into it up to their eyes. There was no question of portions, each man stuffed as much into him as he could take. They even took a piece over to the artillery who had provided the string.

That evening, as it happened, the officers of the regiment were going hungry. Owing to a mistake in instructions the canteen van had gone astray; probably it had followed the main column. When the men went short because food had not been issued they usually managed to scrounge something to eat, they helped each other and the squads pooled their resources. But the officer, left to himself and isolated, had no alternative but starvation as soon as the canteen went wrong.

So Chouteau, who had heard Captain Beaudoin carrying on about the disappearance of the provision van, had a good sneer when, from the depths of the carcass of the goose, he saw him go by with his stiff, unbending air. He indicated him with a look out of the corner of his eye.

‘Just look at him, his nose is twitching… he’d give five francs for the parson’s nose.’

They all roared at the captain’s hunger, for he had never managed to be popular with his men, being too young and too strict, a real slave-driver they called him. For a moment it looked as though he was going to tell the squad off for the scandal they were creating with their goose. But probably the fear of giving away his own hunger made him move on, head in the air as though he had seen nothing.

But as for Lieutenant Rochas, his guts were just as tormented with terrible hunger, and he was prowling round the blissful squad openly laughing. He was worshipped by the men, first because he loathed the captain for being a puppy from Saint-Cyr, and also because he himself had shouldered the knapsack the same as the rest of them. Not that he was always as easy-going as that, being so rude sometimes that you could punch his head.

Jean first glanced for confirmation from his mates and then stood up and made Rochas follow him to the back of the tent.

‘I say, sir, no offence meant, but if you would like…’

And he slipped him half a loaf of bread and a messtin in which he put a thigh of the goose sitting on six large potatoes.

They didn’t need rocking to sleep that night either. All six were digesting the bird for all they were worth. And they had the corporal to thank for the solid way he had pitched the tent, for they didn’t even notice a violent squall at about two in the morning, with a deluge of rain; tents were blown away, men woke up in a panic, soaked to the skin and forced to run for it in the dark, but theirs stood up to it and they were perfectly sheltered, without a single drop of wet, thanks to the gulleys that took away the storm water.

Maurice woke up at dawn, and as they were not to start off again until eight he thought he would go up to the top of the hill to where the reserve artillery were camped and have a word with his cousin Honoré. After a good night’s rest his foot was not so painful. It was still a matter of wonderment to him how well the parking was done, the six guns of each battery correctly in line, and behind them the ammunition waggons, gun-carriages, forage waggons and smithies. Further off the tethered horses were neighing with their nostrils turned towards the rising sun. He found Honoré’s tent at once, thanks to the perfect order allocating a line of tents to all the men on the same gun, so that the first glance at a camp tells you the number of guns.

When Maurice arrived the artillerymen were up already and having their coffee, and a row was going on between Adolphe, the leading driver and the gun-layer Louis, his mate. They had been together for three years, according to the custom that coupled a driver and a gunner, and all the time theirs had been a perfect marriage except when they were eating. Louis, who was better educated and more intelligent, accepted the dependent position in which any horseman keeps a foot-slogger, and he it was who put up the tent, did fatigues, looked after the cooking, while Adolphe saw to his two horses with an air of absolute superiority. But Louis, a swarthy, thin type cursed with a ravenous appetite, rebelled when the other, a very tall man with a big fair moustache, was by way of helping himself as though he was the master. That particular morning the squabble was because Louis, who had made the coffee, accused Adolphe of drinking the lot. Someone had to see that they made it up.

Every morning as soon as he woke up Honoré went to inspect his gun and saw to it that the night’s dew was wiped off, just as he might have rubbed down a beloved horse for fear it might catch a chill. There he was with a fatherly eye, watching it gleaming in the cool morning air, when he caught sight of Maurice.

‘Oh hallo, I knew the 106th was somewhere about, I had a letter from Remilly yesterday and was coming down… Let’s go and have a white wine.’

So that they could be alone together he took him off to the little farmhouse that the soldiers had plundered the day before, and in which the farmer, incorrigibly out for the main chance, had fitted up a sort of bar by broaching a cask of white wine. He was serving it on a plank outside the door at four sous a glass, helped by the farm-hand he had taken on three days earlier, the fair giant, the Alsatian.

Honoré was clinking glasses with Maurice when his eyes fell on this man. For a moment he stared at him, thunderstruck. Then he gave vent to a terrible oath:

‘Fucking hell! It’s Goliath!’

He leaped up and made as if to fly at his throat. But the farmer, thinking his house was going to be sacked once again, jumped back and locked the door. There was a moment of scrimmage and all the soldiers rushed up as the furious sergeant shouted himself hoarse:

‘Open the door, open it, you fucking sod! He’s a spy, I tell you he’s a spy!’

Maurice was quite sure now, too. He had had no trouble in recognizing the man they had let go at the camp at Mulhouse for want of proof, and this man was Goliath, once the farm-hand at his Uncle Fouchard’s at Remilly. When at last the farmer consented to open his door they searched everywhere in vain, the Alsatian had vanished, this blond giant with the honest face whom General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had questioned unavailingly the day before, and in front of whom, over the meal, he had so carelessly revealed his own secrets. The fellow had probably jumped out of a back window they found open, but they hunted all round in vain – this great big man had vanished like a wisp of smoke.

Maurice had to take Honoré away, for in his despair he was going to say too much in front of his mates, who had no need to share in all these miserable family affairs.

‘Christ, I would have loved to throttle him! In any case that letter I had just had had made me furious about him!’ They sat down by a haystack a few yards away from the farmhouse and Honoré gave his cousin the letter.

It was the old, old story, this unhappy love affair of Honoré Fouchard and Silvine Morange. She was a dark girl with meek eyes who had lost her mother when she was quite a child, the mother being a factory worker in Raucourt who had been seduced. Dr Dalichamp, who had obligingly stood godfather (he was a kindly soul always prepared to adopt the babies of the poor girls he delivered), had placed her as a maid at old Fouchard’s. It was true that this old peasant, who had become a butcher for love of gain, hawking his meat round twenty neighbouring parishes, was as miserly as hell and as hard as nails, but he looked after the girl and she would do well if she worked. Anyhow, she would be saved from the lusts of the factory. And of course it happened that in old Fouchard’s establishment the son of the house and the young maid fell in love. Honoré was sixteen then and she was twelve, and when she was sixteen and he twenty he had drawn lots for the call-up and to his delight drawn a lucky number and so resolved to marry her. Nothing had passed between them beyond a good deal of kissing and embracing in the barn – an unusual purity which was part and parcel of the thoughtful and level-headed character of the young man. But when he mentioned marriage to his father, the outraged and obstinate old man declared that it would only be over his dead body, and he calmly kept the girl on, hoping that they would have their fun together and get it over with. For nearly another eighteen months the young pair were madly in love and full of desire but never touched each other. Then after a terrible scene between the two men, the son, who could not stand any more of it, enlisted and was sent to Africa while the old man insisted on keeping the maid, who

pleased him. Then the awful thing happened: one evening two weeks later Silvine, who had sworn to wait for him, found herself in the arms of a farm-hand who had been taken on a few months before, Goliath Steinberg, the Prussian as they called him, a big, good-natured fellow with close cropped fair hair and round pink face always smiling, who had been the friend and boon companion of Honoré. Had old Fouchard slyly encouraged this to happen? Had Silvine given herself in a moment of thoughtlessness, or had she been half raped when she was sick with misery and still worn out with weeping over the separation? She did not know herself and was aghast, pregnant and now accepting the necessity of marriage to Goliath. Not that he refused on his side, ever smiling, but he put off the formality until the baby’s arrival. Then suddenly, on the very eve of the birth, he vanished. It was said later that he went and worked at another farm near Beaumont. Three years had gone by since then, and nobody now doubted that this Goliath, such a nice chap, who so enjoyed giving babies to the girls, was one of those spies with whom Germany filled our eastern provinces. When Honoré had heard this story in Africa he spent three months in hospital, as though the fierce sun of those parts had felled him with a hot iron on the back of the neck, and he had never used a leave to go back home, for fear of seeing Silvine and the child.

While Maurice was reading the letter Honoré’s hands were trembling. The letter was from Silvine and it was the first and only one she had ever sent him. What emotion had stirred this submissive, silent girl, whose beautiful dark eyes would sometimes take on an expression of extraordinarily fixed determination in her life of continual service? She simply wrote that she knew he was at the war and that should she never see him again it hurt her too much to think he might die believing she didn’t love him. She still loved him, she had never loved anybody else, and she repeated this for four pages in the same sentences that came back again and again, with no attempt to find excuses or even to explain what had happened. And not a word about the child, nothing but an infinitely sad good-bye.

The letter touched Maurice deeply, for his cousin had told him the whole story long ago. He looked up and saw that he was in tears, and he put a brotherly arm round him.

‘Poor Honoré!’

But already the sergeant was fighting down his emotion. He carefully put the letter away in his breast pocket and buttoned up his coat.

‘Yes, things like that upset you… Oh, the swine! If only I could have strangled him! Oh well, we shall see.’

The bugles sounded for striking camp, and they had to run to get back to their own tents. As a matter of fact the preparations for departure were held up, and the troops waited about with full kit on until nearly nine. The commanders seemed to be in some uncertainty, and already the fine determination of the first two days had gone, when the 7th corps had covered sixty kilometres in two stages. And a fresh piece of news, rather strange and alarming, had been going the rounds since first thing: the march northwards of the three other army corps, the 1st to Juniville, the 5th and 12th to Rethel, was quite illogical, and it was being explained by lack of supplies. Weren’t they making for Verdun, then? Why a day lost? The worst thing was that the Prussians couldn’t be far away now, for the officers came and warned the men not to lag behind because any laggard was liable to be picked up by reconnoitring enemy cavalry.

It was the 25th of August, and later, remembering Goliath’s disappearance, Maurice was convinced that he was one of those who gave information to the German High Command on the exact route of the march of the army of Châlons and who influenced the change of tactics of the third army. The very next day the Crown Prince of Prussia left Ruvigny and the manoeuvre was under way, the flanking attack, the gigantic encircling movement carried out by forced marches and with admirable efficiency across Champagne and the Ardennes. Whereas the French would hesitate and wander round and round in the same place as though they were suddenly struck with paralysis, the Prussians covered as much as forty kilometres a day like a huge circle of beaters herding the human game they were pursuing towards the forest on the frontier.

Anyhow, they set off at last, and that day as it happened the army pivoted on its left, the 7th corps only covered the two short leagues between Contreuve and Vouziers, whilst the 5th and 12th stood still at Rethel and the 1st stopped at Attigny. From Contreuve to the Aisne valley the plains began again and were even barer; as it neared Vouziers the road wound through the grey earth between desolate hillocks with never a tree or a house, as depressing as a desert, so that the very short march was fatiguing and boring and seemed to be terribly long. By noon a halt was called on the left bank of the Aisne and they bivouacked on the barren ground of the last escarpments overlooking the valley and commanding the Monthois road which ran along the river and by which the enemy was expected to come.

Maurice was completely thunderstruck when he saw coming along the Monthois road the Margueritte division – all the reserve cavalry whose job was to support the 7th corps and scout for the left flank of the army. It was rumoured that it was making for Le Chêne-Populeux. Why leave unprotected the one wing that was threatened? Why take these two thousand horsemen, who should have been deployed as scouts many leagues away, and move them to the centre where they must be absolutely useless? The worst of it was that as they blundered right into the manoeuvres of the 7th they nearly cut up its columns into an inextricable muddle of men, guns and horses. Some of the Chasseurs d’Afrique had to wait nearly two hours outside Vouziers.

By sheer chance Maurice caught sight of Prosper, who had taken his horse to a pond, and they could talk for a moment. He seemed quite lost and dazed, knowing nothing and having seen nothing since Rheims. Oh, but yes, he had seen two Uhlans, chaps who appeared and disappeared and nobody knew where they came from or where they went. Stories were already going round about four Uhlans galloping into a town with revolvers in their hands, dashing through it, conquering it, and twenty kilometres away from their own army corps at that. They were everywhere, they preceded the enemy columns like a swarm of buzzing bees, a moving curtain behind which the infantry could disguise its movements, marching with complete security as in peace time. Maurice felt sick at heart as he saw the road jammed with cavalry and hussars being so badly employed.

‘Oh well, so long,’ he said, shaking Prosper’s hand. ‘Perhaps they’ll still need you up there.’

But the cavalryman seemed to be exasperated at the job they were making him do. He patted Zephir sorrowfully and said:

‘Don’t you believe it! They work the horses to death and do nothing with the men. It’s disgusting.’

That evening when Maurice went to take off his boot to look at his heel which was throbbing and burning hot, he tore away the skin. The blood came and he uttered a cry of pain. Jean was close by and seemed full of anxious sympathy.

‘Look here, this is getting bad, you’ll find yourself laid up… must look after it. Let me have a go.’

He knelt down, washed the place himself and dressed it with some clean material from his knapsack. And his movements were like a mother’s, he had the gentleness of a man of long experience whose big hands can be delicate when need arises.

Maurice could not help being overcome by a great tenderness, his eyes went misty, and the language of friendship rose from his heart to his lips in an immense longing for affection, as though in this clodhopper he had loathed some time ago and despised only yesterday he had found a lost brother.

‘You’re a bloody good chap, you are… thank you, mate.’

Jean, beaming with pleasure, answered with his serene smile:

‘And now look here, boy, I’ve still got some tobacco left. What about a cigarette?’