‘There, now you’ve been cleaned up you’ve got a human face again. Just a second and I’ll fix you up with a hat.’
So he picked up the képi of a dead soldier and carefully put it on Jean’s head.
‘Just the right size… Now if you can walk we’re both smart boys.’
Jean stood up and shook his head to see if it felt all right. All he felt now was a bit of a headache. He’d be fine. He was overcome with a simple man’s emotion and threw his arms round Maurice and clasped him tight to his heart. The only words he could find were:
‘Oh my dear boy, my dear boy!’
But the Prussians were coming, and the vital thing was not to dally behind that wall. Lieutenant Rochas was already retreating with his small band of men protecting the flag, still being carried under the second lieutenant’s arm, rolled round its staff. Lapoulle, being very tall, could raise himself and still fire a few more rounds over the coping, but Pache had slung his rifle over his shoulder, presumably deeming that enough was enough and that now some food and sleep would be desirable. Jean and Maurice, bent double, hurried after them. There was no lack of ammunition or rifles, you only had to stoop down. They rearmed themselves, having left everything over there, kit and all, when one had had to carry the other on his shoulders. The wall ran right along to the Garenne wood, and the little band, thinking it was in safety, darted behind a farm building and from there reached the trees.
‘Ah,’ said Rochas, still keeping his fine, unshakable confidence, ‘we’ll get our breath back here for a minute before going back to the offensive.’
But with the very first steps they all felt they were entering an inferno; they could not go back again, but had to go on through the wood, their only line of retreat. It was now a terrifying wood, a wood of despair and death. Realizing that troops were falling back through it, the Prussians were riddling it with bullets and raking it with gunfire. It was being lashed by a hurricane, all movement and howling and shattering of branches. Shells cut trees in two, bullets brought leaves down like rain, groans seemed to come out of the split trunks and sobs come down with branches wet with sap. It was like the distress of a fettered mob of men, the terror and cries of thousands of people nailed to the ground and unable to flee from the hail of bullets. No anguish ever moaned so loud as in a bombarded forest.
At once Maurice and Jean, who had rejoined their mates, lost their nerve. At that moment they were going through a glade of tall trees and could run. But the bullets were whistling in a cross-fire, from which directions it was impossible to tell and so dart safely from tree to tree. Two men were killed, hit in the back, hit in the front. Right in front of Maurice an age-old oak had its trunk pulverized by a shell and crashed down with the majesty of a tragic hero, smashing everything around it. And as he jumped back a colossal beech on his left had its head knocked off by another shell, broke and collapsed like a pillar in a cathedral. Where could they run? Which was the best direction to go? On all sides nothing but falling branches, it was like being in a huge building threatened with collapse as in room after room the ceilings were falling in. Then, when they had leaped into a thicket to escape from this crashing of big trees, it was Jean’s turn to be almost cut in two by a projectile which mercifully did not explode. This time they could not make any headway through the inextricable tangle of bushes. Twigs caught their shoulders and tall grasses clung round their feet, sudden walls of brushwood brought them to a standstill, while foliage flew round them as the giant scythe swept through the wood. By their side another man was killed instantly by a bullet through the forehead, but he remained standing, jammed between two birches. A score of times as they were held prisoners by this thicket they felt death pass by.
‘Christ!’ said Maurice. ‘We’ll never get out of here!’
He was ashen and his trembling had come back, and Jean, so brave as a rule, who had comforted him that morning, was going pale, too, and feeling as cold as ice. It was fear, horrible fear, catching and irresistible. Once again they were parched with thirst, an intolerable dryness in the mouth, a contracting of the throat with an acute, strangling pain. And with it other discomforts, a feeling of sickness in the pit of the stomach, pins and needles pricking their legs. In this wholly physical sensation of fear that crushed their heads as in a vice, they could see thousands of black dots rushing past as if they could pick out the bullets in the flying cloud.
‘Oh what bloody awful luck!’ muttered Jean. ‘I mean, it makes you wild being here and getting killed for other people when those other people are somewhere quietly smoking their pipes.’
Maurice, his face drawn and wild-looking, went on:
‘Yes, why me and not somebody else?’
It was the revolt of the self, the self-centred rage of the individual unwilling to sacrifice himself for mankind and cease to be.
‘And besides,’ added Jean, ‘if only we knew the reason, if there was any point in it!’
Then, looking up at the sky:
‘And then this bleeding sun won’t make up its mind to fuck off! When it’s set and it’s dark they’ll stop fighting, maybe.’
For ages now, with no means of knowing the time and not even being conscious of the flight of time, he had been looking out for the slow decline of the sun, which seemed to have stopped altogether above those woods on the further side of the river. It was not even cowardice now, but an imperious and growing need not to hear shells and bullets any more, but to go away, anywhere, and bury oneself in the depths of the earth and find oblivion. If it were not for what other people thought, or the glory of doing one’s duty in front of one’s fellows, he would go beserk and run away instinctively, at full speed.
And yet once again Maurice and Jean got used to it, and out of the very excess of their panic there grew a sort of don’t-care intoxication which had something brave about it, and they ended by not even hurrying any more through that accursed wood. The horror had intensified still more among this population of bombarded trees killed at their posts and falling on all sides like steadfast, gigantic soldiers. Under the greenwood tree, in the lovely half-light, down in mysterious bowers carpeted with moss, brutal death passed by. The solitary waterbrooks were violated, dying men gasped their lives away in the most secret nooks where hitherto none but lovers had ventured. One man with a bullet through his chest had time to shout ‘Got me!’ as he fell on his face, dead. Another, both of whose legs had been smashed by a shell, went on laughing, not realizing he was wounded, but thinking he had merely stumbled over a tree-root. Others, with limbs shot through and mortally wounded, went on talking and running for a few steps before collapsing in a sudden spasm. At the first moment even the deepest wounds could hardly be felt, and it was only later that the appalling sufferings began and poured themselves forth in screams and tears.
Oh, that treacherous, massacred forest, that amid the sobs of dying trees was gradually filling with the agonized shrieks of the wounded! At the foot of an oak Maurice and Jean saw a Zouave with his entrails exposed, who was howling endlessly like an animal being slaughtered. And further on a man was on fire, his blue belt was burning and the flame reached up to his beard and singed it; but his back must have been broken for he was unable to move and was crying bitterly. And then a captain, with his left forearm gone and his right side slit down to the thigh, was flat on his belly and dragging himself along on his elbows, imploring somebody, in a dreadful high-pitched voice, to finish him off. More and still more were in abominable suffering, scattered along the grassy walks in such numbers that you had to watch out so as not to tread on them as you moved. But wounded and dead had ceased to count. Any comrade who fell was left there and forgotten, with never a glance behind. It was just fate. Now the next – me perhaps!
Suddenly, as they were coming to the edge of the wood, a cry was heard.
‘Help!’
It was the second-lieutenant who was carrying the flag, and he had just had a bullet in the left lung. He had fallen and blood was gushing from his
mouth. Seeing somebody coming, he found enough strength to pull himself together and shout:
‘The flag!’
Rochas leaped back in one bound, took the flag, the staff of which had been broken, while the second lieutenant murmured in a voice choking with bloody foam:
‘I’ve got my ticket, I don’t care a damn. Save the flag.’
There he stayed alone, writhing on the moss in this lovely woodland dell, clawing at grass with his clenched hands, his chest heaving in a death-struggle that went on for hours.
At last they were out of this fearful wood. Apart from Maurice and Jean there only remained out of the little group Lieutenant Rochas, Pache and Lapoulle. Gaude, whom they had lost, emerged in his turn from a thicket and ran to rejoin his mates, with his bugle slung over his shoulder. It was a real relief to find themselves in open country and breathing freely. The whistling of bullets had stopped, and shells were not coming down on this side of the valley.
Then they suddenly heard somebody cursing and swearing in front of the gateway to a farmyard, and they saw a furious general on a steaming horse. It was General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, also covered in dust and looking dog-tired. His big red face, the face of a man who does himself well, expressed the state of exasperation he was thrown into by the disaster, which he took as a personal misfortune. The soldiers had not set eyes on him since early that morning. Presumably he had got himself lost on the battlefield, running about after the scattered remains of his brigade, and quite capable of letting himself be killed in his anger with the Prussian batteries for sweeping away the Empire and his prospects as an officer well thought of at the Tuileries.
‘Blast it all!’ he bawled. ‘Isn’t there anybody left here? Can’t you get any information in this buggering country?’
The farm people must have fled into the woods. Finally a very old woman appeared at the door, some old servant left behind and kept there by her bad legs.
‘Here, Ma, come here!… Which way’s Belgium?’
She stared at him stupidly, apparently not understanding. Then he went right off the deep-end, forgetting he was speaking to a woman and bellowing that he didn’t mean to be caught in a trap like a mug by going back to Sedan – he was going to fuck off abroad, he was, and bloody quick too! Some of the soldiers had come up and were listening.
‘But sir,’ said a sergeant, ‘you can’t get through now, there are Prussians everywhere. It was all right this morning, you could have done a bunk then.’
There were stories going the rounds already about companies cut off from their regiments who had unintentionally crossed the frontier, and others who had even managed courageously to get through the enemy lines before they had completed the encirclement.
Beside himself, the general raised his arms.
‘Come on, with some good chaps like you couldn’t we get anywhere we wanted? I can surely find fifty stalwart fellows ready to fight it out.’
Then, turning back to the old woman:
‘Oh damn it all, Ma, why can’t you answer? Where’s Belgium?’
This time she did understand. She waved her skinny hand towards the great woods:
‘That way, that way.’
‘What’s that you’re saying?… Those houses you can see beyond the fields?’
‘Oh, further than that, much further! Right over there!’
The general spluttered with rage.
‘Oh it makes you sick, a bloody hole like this. You don’t know what to make of it. Belgium was over there and you were afraid of stumbling into it without knowing, and now you want to get there it’s gone… No, no, this is the end, let ’em take me and do what they like with me, I’m going to sleep.’
He spurred his horse, bouncing in the saddle like a bladder blown up with the wind of anger, and galloped off towards Sedan.
There was a bend in the road and they went down into Fond-de-Givonne, a district shut in between steep slopes, where the road climbing towards the woods was flanked by little houses and gardens. It was so clogged by a stream of refugees that Lieutenant Rochas found himself pushed back with Pache, Lapoulle and Gaude, against a pub on a corner of the crossroads. Jean and Maurice had a job to get to them. And they were all amazed to hear a thick, drunken voice addressing them:
‘Well, fancy meeting you!… Hallo chums!… Well, it’s a small world, isn’t it?’
Behold, it was Chouteau in the pub, leaning out of one of the ground-floor windows. He was very drunk and went on between hiccups:
‘Look here, don’t worry if you’re thirsty… Plenty left for my pals.’
He waved shakily backwards, summoning somebody still at the back of the room.
‘Come here, you lazy sod… Give these gents something to drink.’
It was Loubet’s turn to appear, holding a full bottle in each hand and waving them about for fun. He wasn’t as drunk as the other one, and he shouted in his Parisian smart-aleck voice, putting on the nasal voice of a soft-drink vendor on a public holiday:
‘Nice and cool! Nice and cool! Who wants a drink?’
They had not been seen since they had gone off ostensibly to carry Sergeant Sapin to the ambulance post. They had no doubt been wandering about ever since and dodging spots where shells were falling. They had landed up here in this pub which was then being looted.
Lieutenant Rochas was outraged.
‘Just you wait, you swine. I’ll give you booze! And while all the rest of us are pegging out in the thick of it all!’
But Chouteau refused to accept the reprimand.
‘Look here, you silly old sod, there’s no more lieutenant about it, there’s only free men… Haven’t the Prussians given you enough, then? Do you want a bit more?’
They had to hold back Rochas, who was threatening to do him in. Loubet, of all people, bottle in hand, was trying to keep the peace.
‘Now, now, give over, no point in scrapping, we’re all brothers together!’
Catching sight of Lapoulle and Pache, two of their mates in the squad:
‘Don’t you be soft, come in here, you two. Let’s give your throats a rinse for you.’
Lapoulle had a moment’s hesitation, feeling vaguely that it was wrong to have a good time while other poor buggers were at their last gasp. But he was so all in and knocked up with hunger and thirst! He suddenly made up his mind, and with one bound and without a word he nipped into the pub, shoving Pache in front of him, who was just as silent and tempted, and gave in. They never reappeared.
‘Lot of swine!’ repeated Rochas. ‘They should all be shot!’
Now he only had Jean, Maurice and Gaude left with him, and all four were more or less swept along in spite of themselves by the torrent of fugitives filling the whole width of the road. The pub was already far behind. It was a rabble pouring down into the ditches of Sedan in a muddy stream, like the earth and stones washed down into the valleys when a storm strikes the hills. From all the neighbouring uplands, down all the slopes and coombs, along the Floing road, through Pierremont, past the cemetery and the parade ground, as well as through Fond-de-Givonne, the same mob rushed on and on in an ever quickening gallop of panic. How could you blame these wretched men who had been waiting motionless for twelve hours, exposed to the shattering artillery of an invisible enemy against whom they could do nothing? Now the batteries were catching them in front, on either side and in the rear, and their fire converged more and more as the army retreated into the town, until whole heaps of men were being flattened out into a human mush in the foul hole into which they had been swept. A few regiments of the 7th corps, especially on the Floing side, did fall back in reasonable order. But in Fond-de-Givonne there were neither ranks nor officers, the troops shoved each other along in a desperate herd made up of all sorts: Zouaves, Turcos, light cavalry and infantry, mostly unarmed, in dirty and ragged uniforms, with black hands and faces, staring bloodshot eyes and thick lips swollen through having bawled so many oaths. Now and again a riderless horse would come
rearing along, knocking soldiers over and leaving behind it a wake of terror where it had cut through the crowd. Cannons would tear through like mad things, batteries in confusion whose drivers behaved as though they were mad drunk and ran over everything without warning. On and on went the herd in a solid procession shoulder to shoulder, a mass flight in which gaps were immediately filled with the instinctive haste to get to shelter, behind a wall.
Jean looked up westwards again. Through the thick cloud of dust kicked up by feet the sun’s rays still shone on sweating faces. The weather was lovely, the sky wonderfully blue.
‘But it doesn’t half get you down,’ he kept saying, ‘this fucking sun that won’t make up its mind to go.’
Then Maurice, seeing a young woman being pushed back against a house and almost crushed to death by the crowd, was suddenly horrified to realize that it was his sister Henriette. For nearly a minute he just saw her and remained gaping. She it was who spoke first, without seeming to be surprised.
‘They shot him at Bazeilles… Yes, I was there… So as I want to get his body back I thought…’
She never named the Prussians or Weiss. Everybody must understand, and Maurice certainly did. He was devoted to his sister and he burst into tears.
‘Oh my poor darling!’
When she had pulled herself together at about two o’clock Henriette had found herself at Balan, in the kitchen of some people she did not know, with her head on the table, crying. But her tears dried up. In this quiet and delicately made woman a heroine was already being born. She was without fear and her soul was steadfast, invincible. In her grief all she thought of was recovering her husband’s body and burying him. Her first idea was to go back to Bazeilles there and then, but everybody dissuaded her and pointed out that it was absolutely out of the question. So she set about looking for somebody, some man to go with her and take the the necessary steps. She thought of a cousin, formerly assistant manager of the General Refinery at Le Chêne when Weiss worked there. He had been very fond of her husband and surely he would not refuse to help. For the last two years, after his wife had received a legacy, he had retired to a nice house and garden, L’Ermitage, the terraces of which were near Sedan, on the other side of the Fond-de-Givonne valley. This was where she was making for in spite of obstacles, held up at every step, and in continual danger of being trampled on and killed.