LEON BARBESSE, SLACKER, SOLDIER, HERO
Told by Fred B. Pitney, War Correspondent
I—"I MET HIM IN THE TRENCHES ON THE SOMME"
This is the story of Léon Barbèsse, a volunteer of France. I met him first in the trenches on the Somme. He stood in a first line post, where we were halted because the Germans had begun a fierce rain of shells on the French lines. They were nervous that day, the Germans. All the day and night before there had been a succession of sallies from the French trenches. They were really only reconnoitering expeditions, but the Germans had come to think each the precursor of an attack in force, and every time there was the least sign of activity in the French lines the German artillery burst into furious action, shelling the French trenches to prevent a sortie. We arrive as one of these rafales began, and we were halted to seek shelter.
The best trench is not proof against a real bombardment of heavy shells. Parapets crumble in like walls of sand. There is nothing reassuring about coming suddenly upon a great gaping hole in what has been considered a moment before a solid rampart, a hole still steaming from the impact of a white hot shell weighing half a ton. It does not add to one's confidence to find that instead of walking quietly along a well ordered corridor with a decent, dry plank floor one is crossing a miniature mountain chain, sinking suddenly into narrow valleys, waist deep in water, rising as suddenly to heights that leave half one's body exposed to the full view of the enemy. And to know that those valleys and those heights have been caused by the explosion in the trench of the shells that are constantly screaming overhead—that is the most disconcerting of all.
Such was the position we were in when I first saw Léon Barbèsse. We had come to a comparatively quiet spot. The shells whined above us or exploded in the barbed wire in front, but they had not found the trench. We stopped to take stock, to look about us, to get our breath, to straighten our backs and get a new thought in our minds, something except where the next shell would land. And standing in front of us in the trench, some ten feet away, I saw a bearded soldier with the stripes of a sergeant and the ribbon of the Medaille Militaire—the highest honor any French soldier, from ranking general down, can win—and the Croix de Guerre with two palms, meaning that he had been mentioned twice for conspicuous bravery in the general orders of the army. Despite his beard he was a young man, well under thirty, and he stood with a quiet air of confidence and looked at us with a certain amusement.
Five minutes later we were all distributed at the bottoms of various deep shelters. The shells had begun to fall on the section of trench where we were, and we had been ordered underground. I had descended eighteen steep steps, a matter of twenty feet, and found myself in a little, low celled, earth walled, square chamber, with six bunks in double tiers taking up three sides and the narrow door in the fourth side. The bearded soldier was in our party. He had preceded me and lent me a helping hand down the ladder-like stairs. When we were safe in the cave he lighted a candle and pulled up an empty shell box for me to sit on.
"You are safe here," he said.
"That is all right," I replied. "I want to know why you smiled at us when we came up. We had come across pretty dangerous ground."
"I know you had," he said. "That was why I smiled. You know now something more of what it means to be a soldier. You don't know very much. You can go back and tell of the narrow escape you had, and you need never come again. But for a few minutes, when you were under that rain of shells, you knew the glory of war. You prayed. That was why I smiled."
II—THE CONFESSION OF A SLACKER
It was not exactly what one expects from a man wearing the Medaille Militaire and the Croix de Guerre with two palms. There was a certain implication in it. It sounded as though he meant that any man not in military uniform was a curiosity seeker or a sensation monger. I said something to that effect.
"No," he said hastily. "Not at all. Not at all. I only meant you could understand now, perhaps what it is that moves men in this, what makes them take part in it."
"Most of the men are conscripts," I said. "You are, I suppose."
"No," he answered. "I am a volunteer. I might be at the rear; I might even be writing for some paper."
It was a fine answer to my brutality.
"I beg your pardon," I said. "You are a volunteer. Tell me why you are here."
"I will tell you my name first," he said. "It is Léon Barbèsse. I was a schoolteacher in the centre of France, married, and with a boy four years old. The war came and I was called to the colors, as every one was called. But I was sent home. My lungs, you know. They are all right now, though. A few months of this life and your lungs kill you or they get all right. Mine are all right."
He struck himself a heavy blow on the chest and grinned.
"I could not have done that in 1914," he said. "I would have coughed for half an hour."
"So I was sent back," he continued, "and I was glad of it. I can't tell you how glad. I did not want to go to war. I was afraid. That is the truth. I was afraid. And when the doctor said I would not do, I could have cheered. The doctor was sorry for me, and I pretended to be sorry, also, but not too sorry, for he might have passed me.
"I went home. I was safe. I did not have to fight. I did not have to be killed. I did not have to be ashamed, for the doctors had turned me back. Well, I was ashamed. My country was in danger. The Germans were in France. And I was at home. But I was afraid. There you have it, I was ashamed because I would not fight for my country, my country that needed me, and I was afraid to fight. I was afraid to be hurt. I was afraid to die.
"Do you remember when they called the 1917 class a year ahead of time? I went then. I volunteered. God, what a struggle that was! I walked the road to the caserne with the sweat running off me. For a year I had dreamed nightly of the shells. I had heard them. They had fallen around me. I had been wounded. I had felt the impact of the steel on my yielding flesh. For a year I had spent my days trying to hide my terror from my wife, my friends and my neighbors. And all the time my country had called. Fear and shame! Fear and shame! My country called and I was afraid to go!
"For a man who loves his country, there is nothing harder than to be a coward and know it. I went at last because I could not stand the torture of failing to do my duty. No one else knew. I had been sent back by the doctors. I was blameless before the community. But I knew it was because I was afraid to be hurt, afraid to die. So when they called the class 1917 I went.
"They sent me to Verdun. Can you imagine what that meant to me? It was in the very midst of the German attack on the left bank of the Meuse. I had been drafted into a veteran regiment with a lot of others to help fill up the gaps, and I joined just in time to go into the front line.
"You know how the papers were filled at that time with the terrors of the Verdun fighting. It was not of the bravery of our troops that I read, but of the terrors. I don't know how I ever got into line on the day we marched from the rear to go to the front. Everything I did was mechanical. We were called before daylight; we had a cup of coffee; we were marching along the road.
"I had managed it up to then without giving myself away. True, I talked little to my comrades, and probably that saved me. But the morning we marched to the front, what saved me then I don't know, except possibly because I said nothing. I was unable to speak. I was numb with fear. I was sick. My stomach turned. I walked with my head down and my feet dragged like great weights.
"You know, at that time you could always hear at Verdun the pounding of the big guns. I had heard it for days, while my regiment was in repose. I used to go out in the woods by myself and listen to it and terrify myself by thinking what it would be like to be under that rain of shells. A foolish thing to do, but for more than a year, nearly two years, I had been under the obsession of my fear. I could no longer control it."
III—"WE WERE MARCHING TO INFERNO"
"And then we were on the road, marching toward that inferno. By imperceptible degrees the pounding grew louder. I moved mechanically because I was in the ranks, with a man on each side of me and one in front and one behind. I had to go on. My will could not control my movements. I was part of a machine. The machine went toward the pounding and I went with it. That was all, except that once I vomited.
"Mind you, I had never really heard a shell, only the distant sound of the explosions. We had been marching nearly two hours, when I heard my first shell. There was a long, thin whine some place in the air. It was a new sound, and it was so strange to me that I raised my head for the first time since we started on the march. The man next to me laughed.
"'A shell,' he said.
"I looked all around me. I tried to stop to see the path of that queer whine, but the man behind me prodded me on. Several of them laughed.
"'You will hear plenty more,' they said.
"They thought I was eager for them.
"The shells began to come at regular intervals, all following the same path with the same peculiar whine. I tried every time to see them.
"'The Boches are hunting for a battery over on our left,' the veterans said. There was no change in the pace. I was saying to myself, 'I have really heard a shell, and I did not run.'
"It was very queer to me; I tried to think it out. I was afraid. I knew I was afraid. But I had not run. I began to wonder just how afraid I was, and I wanted to know. I had heard the shell and my curiosity was aroused. I wanted to go on and see how far I would go before my fear overcame me. With every one of their long whines I studied myself to see if I would run, then when I continued marching with the regiment I would say:
"'Not yet; perhaps the next time. Certainly, there is a limit beyond which I will not go.'
"It was as though I were studying some other man. There was the me who was afraid and knew it, and the me who watched to see how afraid I was.
"Eleven o'clock came and we stopped for luncheon. We stacked our arms beside the road and eased off our equipment. I felt wonderfully relieved that I had got that far. I was not really hungry, because I was afraid, but I was enough master of myself to know that I must eat, and to force myself to do so.
"While we waited there shells began to fall close to us—close enough so that we could hear the explosion after the whine. Before we had only heard the whine. The first one made me jump. The whine was loud and strong and the explosion came quick and sharp. With the second I was strong enough to turn and look at the cloud of earth, smoke and rocks. I was doing pretty well. A shell fell short of us. Some of the men looked up and saw an aeroplane sailing around over our heads.
"'Better get out of here,' they said. 'That is a Boche. He is giving our range to his battery.' A shell dropped up near the head of the line, almost in the road. I heard no orders, but we all gathered up our rifles and equipment and marched off at quick step.
"I had looked straight in the face of the shell that fell in the field beside us. It was another triumph for me. I had looked at it, shivering, to be sure, wondering if I would run. But I had not run. There was still a little further to go to pursue my investigation and find out how much I could stand before I ran."
My curiosity got the better of me.
"Have you found out yet?" I asked.
"I am coming to that," he replied. "We went on up that road at the quick step until we came to the entrance of a boyau leading to the supporting trenches. Shells fell around us all the time. The Boche aeroplane was still trying to regulate the fire of its battery, and there was a maddening wait at the mouth of the boyau until it came time for us to go in. We had been marching in the road four abreast, but we had to go into the boyau single file. My platoon was well toward the rear, and that made us wait. We had nothing to do but stand in the road and watch the shells and wait our turn."
IV—"HOW I CONQUERED MY FEAR"
"I tried to follow the course of every shell. My head was continually twisting. I jumped at every explosion. I could not control the muscles of my back and shoulders. But I stepped out of the line and walked a little way into the field, toward the shells. I wanted to see if I could do it. I got close enough so that I could hear a piece of shell whiz past my ear. Then I waited for another piece. It was a hard job, but I waited, leaning on my rifle and looking at the ground a little way in front of me, where the last shell had exploded. If I had moved my eyes from that spot I could not have stayed. Not until the third one came did I hear another piece of shell. The others had struck too far to one side.
"'Now I can go back,' I said to myself. But I walked very fast going back.
"In the boyau it was not so bad. A French avion had come up and chased away the Boche.
"I thought of the things I had done and hoped that having done them once I could do them again. But I was not sure. I was afraid. I knew that. I have always been afraid, and there has always been the question in my mind if my fear would conquer or if I would conquer my fear.
"There was the time when it became necessary to take a message from our support trenches to our advanced lines in the Bois des Corbeaux. There was a tir de barrage to be crossed and volunteers were called for. I was chosen.
"By that time I had formed the theory that a man can do anything if his duty demands it of him and he will keep that in his mind. It was a part of the thought that came to me that first day in the boyau and I developed it later in the long nights. The first day I had no really coherent thoughts, only a great fear of my own fear. Afterward I found that I could control it, if there was a reason. And then I found that the reason was France.
"Of course, you may say that it was France that made me volunteer, but I do not think so. I think it was shame—shame that I feared to go when others went. With all the good reasons that I had for not going, with the doctor's word, I knew, nevertheless, it was fear that kept me back. It was because I could not tell the truth to my wife and friends and neighbours that I went.
"Only afterward did I find out that a great duty will take a man any place with a calm mind. I stood against German attacks. I was in counter attacks. I lay out in shell holes, helping to hold a line where there were no trenches. I never forgot my fear, but I thought of France, my country, my duty; and though I shivered and the cold sweat rolled off me, I held steady.
"Have you ever seen a tir de barrage? You can walk up to it and draw a line with a surveyor's chain on the ground, marking exactly the limit where the shells fall, and all beyond that line will be a mass of boiling earth, like waves in a storm dashing on a rocky coast. There is no interval between the explosions. They are constant, unremitting, one following so closely on another that their detonations mingle in a steady roar."
V—"I DASHED FORWARD INTO EXPLODING SHELLS"
"I came within fifty yards of the tir de barrage and stopped to watch it and try to mark out a path. But no path was possible. No sooner was one chosen than it was wiped out, all the little landmarks gone, the whole face of the ground changed by a new rain of shells. My heart sank. My stomach went suddenly empty. I knew that I had reached the limit beyond which I could not go. I had found the point where my fear was greater than my duty. I lay flat down on the earth. I do not know how long I lay. I thought of nothing. There was only a horrible blank fear.
"And then I found that unconsciously, not knowing it, I was digging my fingers into the ground, clutching the roots of grass and dragging myself into the tir de barrage. I might as well have been dragging myself the other way, but I had lain down with my face toward my duty.
"When I made that discovery I got to my feet and stood upright for a second, not more, only time to say, 'I must not give myself time to think,' and dashed forward into the exploding shells. Such a race as that is like the last steps of a dying horse, one that has broken a blood vessel, straining for the wire, and plunges on his face in the midst of his stride. I floundered blindly into the raw earth and fell again on my face. But this time my mind was working. There was only one thing for me to do, and I knew it. That was to go on. I crawled forward on my hands and knees. I could not stand. It would be certain death. Twenty times I was knocked flat, my wind gone, by the explosion of a shell almost beside me. But I crawled on. I did not know if I had been hit. I thought I had. Two hundred yards I crawled through the tir de barrage and then I got to our lines. They gave me the Medaille Militaire for that.
"You asked me why I smiled when you came up to us in the trench. I was wondering what you had to take you through the shells. I thought of my own struggles. I wondered if you had any of the thoughts that have crowded in on me under fire. And I smiled."
The next time I saw him was in a hospital back of the Somme, one of the hospitals where wounded soldiers stay only a few hours, unless they are too badly hurt to be moved on. He was one of those who could not be moved. He lay with closed eyes, asleep or exhausted—more likely exhausted—propped up a little with pillows behind his head and shoulders. His tunic hung beside his cot, and on it there was a new ribbon, the Legion d'Honneur. I stopped before him.
"There is little chance for him," the doctor said.
"What did he do?" I asked.
"Led his company into the Park of Deniécourt, when all the officers were gone," replied the doctor. "They got a footing in the park and stuck there for two days, because he would not give up, until we made a new attack and got the park, the château and the village. He had been wounded the first day, but he would not give up. He has received the Legion d'Honneur and been made a sous-lieutenant, but he will probably never know it."
I saw him once more. This time was on the boulevards of Paris. His left sleeve was pinned across his breast and above it were his three medals, from left to right the Croix de Guerre, now with three palms; the Medaille Militaire and the Legion d'Honneur. He was having a look at Paris, he told me, while he waited for the train to take him home to the centre of France, to his wife and boy.
"I can tell them now that I was afraid," he said. (Told in the New York Tribune.)