The Debacle: (1870-71) Read online

  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 banque
t: 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.