The Downfall (La Débâcle): A Story of the Horrors of War

by Émile Zola

'A table-cloth? Nothing could be better; that's exactly what we want.' And as he turned to go he added: 'We are going to make a white flag of it, and hoist it on the citadel, to ask for peace. Much obliged, mademoiselle.'

Delaherche gave a start of involuntary delight. At last, then, they were going to have quietness. It occurred to him, however, that his joy was unpatriotic, and he restrained it. Nevertheless his lightened heart beat quickly, and he eagerly watched a colonel and a captain, who, followed by the sergeant, were now coming out of the Sub-Prefecture with hasty steps. The colonel was carrying the table-cloth, rolled up, under his arm. It occurred to Delaherche to follow them, and he took leave of Rose, who was quite proud of having provided that cloth. Just then it struck two o'clock.

In front of the town-hall Delaherche was hustled by a stream of haggard soldiers coming from the Faubourg of La Cassine. He lost sight of the colonel, and thereupon renounced his intention of going to see the hoisting of the white flag. He would certainly not be allowed to enter the keep; and besides, on hearing some people say that shells were falling on the college, he was once more filled with anxiety. Perhaps his factory had caught fire during his absence. Thereupon he darted off again, possessed by a feverish desire to be on the move, which he endeavoured to satisfy by running through the streets. Groups of people barred his way, however; at each crossing there were fresh obstacles. It was only on reaching the Rue Maqua that he gave a sigh of relief, on finding that the monumental front of his house was intact, that neither a puff of smoke nor a spark of fire was to be seen. He went in and called out to his mother and his wife: 'Things are going all right; they are hoisting the white flag, so the firing will soon be over.'

Then he stopped short, for the scene which the ambulance presented was really terrible. Not only was every mattress occupied in the spacious drying-room, the door of which was open, but there no longer remained any space even on the litter of straw spread out at one end of the building. More straw was now being laid between the beds: the wounded were being closely packed, one beside the other. There were already more than a couple of hundred of them, and others were still arriving. A white light streamed from the broad windows upon all this accumulation of human suffering. At times there arose some involuntary cry occasioned by too sudden a movement; and now and again the rattle of the death pangs was wafted through the moist atmosphere. From one end of the room there long resounded a continuous, gentle, almost musical wail. Then the silence became deeper, like a kind of resigned stupor, like the oppressive mournfulness of a death room, broken only by the steps and whispers of the attendants. The wounds, most of which had been hastily dressed on the battlefield, though some had remained bare, untended, were displayed in all their distressful horror, amid shreds of torn capotes and trousers. Feet were stretched out, still booted, but crushed and bleeding. Inert limbs dangled from knees and elbows which had been smashed as though by blows of a hammer. There were broken hands and hanging fingers, too, sustained by mere strips of skin. Most numerous, apparently, were the fractured legs and arms, stiffened by pain and as heavy as lead; but the disquieting wounds were especially those that had opened up the stomach, the chest, or the head. Blood was flowing from flanks that had been frightfully lacerated; bowels had become knotted under upraised skin; some men, through their loins being gashed and hacked, were twisted into frightfully distorted postures. Some lungs had been perforated through and through with so small a hole that no blood flowed; others had a gaping aperture whence life was ebbing in a red stream; and there were men, too, who suddenly became delirious and black, killed all at once by internal hæmorrhage. The heads had suffered yet more severely than the bodies; jaws had been smashed, teeth and tongue formed but a bloody mixture; eyes had been driven half out of their torn sockets; skulls had been split open, and cerebral substance was visible. All those whose brains or marrow had been touched by the projectiles lay like corpses, in the prostration of coma; whilst others, the fractured, the feverish ones, moved restlessly and begged for water in low, supplicating voices.

And in the shed close by, where the operations were performed, there were yet more horrors. In this first scramble, only the more urgent operations were proceeded with, those necessitated by the desperate condition of the wounded. Whenever there was any danger of hæmorrhage Bouroche immediately began to amputate. And, in the same way, when the projectiles were lodged in any dangerous part, the base of the neck, the region of the axilla, the origin of the thigh, the bend of the elbow, or the knee joint, he did not spend time in feeling for them and removing them. The wounds which he preferred to leave under observation, were simply dressed by the attendants in accordance with his instructions. For his own part he had already performed four amputations, spacing them out, resting himself, as it were, between these more serious operations by extracting a few bullets. And he was now beginning to feel tired. There were only two tables, his own and another, at which one of his assistants operated. A sheet had just been hung up between them, so that the men operated upon might not see one another. And, despite all the washing with sponges, the tables remained blood-red, whilst the pails, which were emptied a few paces off over a bed of China asters, those pails, whose clear water a glassful of blood sufficed to dye, seemed to be pails of pure blood—blood flung in a splashing, drenching shower over the flowers of the lawn. And, although the air freely circulated in the open shed, a nauseous stench now arose from the tables, linen and instruments there, mingling with a vague smell of chloroform.

Pitiful at heart, Delaherche was shuddering with compassion, when he felt interested at sight of a landau entering the porch. This carriage, the only vehicle, no doubt, that the men of the field ambulance had been able to find, was packed full of wounded. There were eight of them inside it, one atop of another; and when, in the last man who was lifted out, the manufacturer recognised Captain Beaudoin, he raised a cry of mingled terror and surprise: 'Oh! my poor friend! Wait a moment, I will call my mother and my wife.'

They hastened to the spot, leaving a couple of servant-girls to continue making the linen-rollers. The attendants, who had taken the captain out of the carriage, carried him into the drying-room, and were about to lay him on some straw there, when, upon one of the mattresses, Delaherche perceived a soldier with ashy face and open eyes, who no longer stirred.

'I say, that fellow's dead!' the manufacturer exclaimed.

'So he is,' muttered an attendant. 'We'll get rid of him and make room for that officer.' Thereupon he and a comrade took up the corpse and carried it to the charnel-place behind the laburnums. There were already a dozen dead men lying there, stiffened in the last rattle, some with their feet stretched out as though distended by suffering, others all awry, twisted into atrocious postures. There were some showing only the whites of their eyes, and sneering, with their lips turned outwardly and displaying their white teeth; whilst several, upon whose drawn, elongated faces there lingered a fearfully mournful expression, were yet shedding big tears. One skinny, youthful little fellow, whose head had been split open, was convulsively pressing a woman's portrait—a common, faded, blood-smeared photograph—to his heart. And, pell-mell, at the feet of the corpses, were piled the amputated legs and arms, everything that was cut away, hewn off on the operating tables—the parings of flesh and bone of a butcher's shop, swept, as it were, into a corner.

Gilberte had shuddered at sight of Captain Beaudoin. Good God! how pale he was, lying on that mattress there, his face quite white under the filth that soiled it. And she was frozen with appalment, remembering that but a few hours previously he had been full of life. She fell upon her knees: 'What a misfortune, my friend! But it's nothing dangerous, is it?'