Part 20

"Silence!"

I was obliged to intervene to subdue the joyous effervescence caused in my troop. The men began to discuss their impressions in tones of glee that might have become dangerous. Ladoucette's voice was heard, as usual, above the din, calling upon his absent wife to admire his exploits:

"Madame Ladoucette, if you could have seen that!"

But we had to be on the qui vive. The German attack had been checked, but it might be renewed.

We were fully alive to the courage and tenacity of our enemies.

I could distinguish nothing ahead in the increasingly thick white fog. All I could hear was the sound of pickaxes on the ground and the thud of falling clods. The enemy had, no doubt, decided not to attack again and were digging new trenches. They no longer uttered their contemptuous guttural cries of "Cavalry! Cavalry!" They had learnt to their cost that these French cavalrymen, at the sight of whom their own are so ready to turn back, could hold their own equally well against German infantry. I thought we might count on a little respite. The battlefield was silent, save for the faint cries occasionally uttered by the wounded.

I hastily detached two troopers to man the listening-posts, and they slipped away silently. Then, as our Captain had unfortunately been summoned to Elverdinghe that day on special duty, I went to look for the Major to make my report to him. My men had seated themselves on the rough ledges cut in the slope of the trench, their carbines between their knees, and were talking together in low tones. As I passed a friendly smile lit up their faces. I walked slowly along the narrow trench, careful not to tread on the feet of the talkers.

As I approached a point where the trench, following the direction of the wood, formed an abrupt angle, I heard two familiar voices exchanging the following words:

"Fifty-two!... Tierce major...; three aces!" "Capital!"

This was really the limit! I turned the corner and came upon Major B. and F. seated on the ledge, quietly playing cards by the brilliant moonlight. As their tiny retreat could not accommodate four players, they were solacing themselves with a game of piquet.

Oh, all you who are of necessity far from the scene of conflict, good Frenchmen and valiant Frenchwomen, how I should have liked you to see this picture! No doubt you often wonder whether those who are defending your homes against the accursed invader will be able to bear the sufferings of this war to the bitter end; you fear that they may be losing their good humour and their dashing spirits; you imagine them brooding with careworn faces and anxious souls when, the excitement of the encounter dying down, they think of what the morrow may bring forth. How I wish you could have seen Major B. and the gallant Lieutenant F. playing piquet in the trench where they had just repulsed a furious German attack, which might have been renewed at any moment!

I left them to go on with their game, and went in search of my comrade O. I found him in the middle of his troop, talking amicably with his men. After the enemy had ceased firing he had sent a party of sappers to dig the graves of the two non-commissioned officers who had fallen in the wood. We retired into a corner of the trench, and there he told me of the grief he felt at this loss, a grief he was doing his best to hide, so as not to injure the moral of his troop. Lagaraldi had just got his promotion, and was a soldier of the highest promise; Durand was the model corporal, clean, cheerful, and active. And, even if they had been but mediocre troopers, I knew too well what we officers feel when we lose even a passable Chasseur, to wonder at the melancholy of my charming young comrade.

Time went on, and there were no signs of a fresh attack. The enemy's artillery seemed to be neglecting us, and to be bent upon the destruction of the Boesinghe bridge, by which we had crossed the Yser. His great shells flew over our heads with a sinister roar, and a few seconds later we heard the explosion far behind us. The German trenches in front of us were silent. A single shot fired at intervals alone reminded us that they were not forsaken.

"Mon Lieutenant, it's all ready."

A corporal had come out of the wood to tell O. that the graves were dug. When we had sent word to our chiefs, and placed our non-commissioned officers in temporary command, our strange, sad procession of mourners left the trenches and slipped through the thicket in single file. There were four officers, the Lieutenant-Colonel, Major B., O., and myself and four non-commissioned officers. It would have been dangerous to deplete the firing line further.

With heavy hearts we retraced our steps through the wood we had so lately passed through in all the exaltation of our advance. We knew the moral anguish we were about to feel in rendering this last service to our young brothers-in-arms. It was unhappily by no means the first time we had held such a ceremony, but never had I been present at one in such tragic circumstances, nor in such impressive surroundings. We hurried along, almost running in our anxiety to return quickly to our men. The branches caught at us and slashed our faces, the dead leaves and twigs crackled under our tread. Above us the shells still sang their funeral song.

We had now come in sight of the burial-ground. In the moonlight, at the edge of the wood close to the spot where our gallant fellows had fallen, we could distinguish newly-dug earth, and four silent men standing beside it, their tunics thrown off, leaning on spade and pickaxe. It was there.

In a little ravaged garden-plot, at the foot of great trees which would guard these graves, they had dug two holes, which, by night, looked extraordinarily deep and dark.

Ought we to lament or to envy the touching and simple burial rite of soldiers? To me, nothing could be more beautiful than such a last resting-place. Why should we desire richer tombs, sepulchral stones, and sculptured monuments? We are all equal upon that field of death, the battlefield at the close of day. And there can be no fitter shroud for him who has fallen on that field than his soldier's cloak. A little earth that will be grass-grown and flower-spangled again in the spring, a simple cross of rough wood, a name, a regimental number, a date--all this is better than the most splendid obsequies. And what can be more touching than the poor little bunches of wild flowers which the friends of the dead gather on the banks of ditches, and which are to be seen days afterwards, faded and yet so fair, hanging on the humble crosses? Such was to be the portion of Lagaraldi and Durand. Why should we pity them? We will weep for them, we will not pity them.

They were there, lying side by side in their cloaks, the turned-up capes of which shrouded their heads, and we bared our own in silence. Each of us, consciously or unconsciously, breathed a prayer, each set his teeth and tried to restrain his tears.

But we were not destined to pray in peace to the end. At the moment when the Lieutenant-Colonel was about to express our sorrow and pronounce the last farewell the enemy's mortars, suddenly changing their objective, began to bombard the part of the wood on the edge of which we were standing.

What was their idea? Did they think our reserves were massed in the wood? However this may have been, a formidable avalanche descended above and around us. The first salvo literally cleared the wood close by us. A great tree, cut through the middle, bent over for an instant and then rolled gently to the ground with a great crackling of broken boughs. At the same time the German bullets began to whistle round us by thousands, apparently determined to draw us into their frenzied saraband. Death seemed for a moment inevitable. We could not hesitate; we had to take cover, or to be mown down by shot or shell.

Then--I shall remember the gruesome moment to my dying hour--we all leaped into the only available shelter--crouching together in the newly-dug graves. We were just in time.

Bullets flew past us; the great "coal-boxes" burst without intermission. The uproar was tremendous, beyond anything we had ever heard. It would be impossible to describe the horror of those minutes. Those graves, all too spacious for the poor bodies we were about to commit to them, were too small to shelter us. We pressed one against the other in the strangest positions, hiding our heads between the shoulders of those who were lying in front of us; we thought every moment that the network of projectiles would be drawn more tightly round us, and that one would fall into our holes, transforming them into a ghastly charnel-house.

This idea occurred to me suddenly and obsessed me. Yes, yes, presently the great snorting, whistling, pitiless thing would fall between O. and me. We should feel nothing; there would be no pain. We should be only a little heap of bloody clay, and to-morrow at daybreak our comrades would but have to throw a few spadefuls of earth upon it. They would put a plain wooden cross above, with our names and ranks, the number of our regiment, a date: "November 3, 1914." And it would be better than any sumptuous monument.

"Hush! Listen!"

Between two explosions, in spite of the noise of the German bullets, we distinctly heard the crack of our carbines.

"Our men are fighting!"