Under the German shells

by Emmanuel Bourcier

Weather has an enormous effect on the morale of troops, as on all human agglomerations. We were all more or less touched by the malign influence of the rain. No jest flashed from the ranks as is usual in a French troop, where bantering springs from the lip involuntarily, where chaffing is as natural as the air one breathes, as necessary as bread. A regiment remains alert and strong so long as this spirit of optimism remains; but at the moment of which I speak, when we were drenched with rain, when we saw our country invaded, when we knew ourselves to be surrounded by the enemy, we were morose and feared the worst. However, it was only necessary that there should be an unexpected peal of laughter to bring light to every face, and that was what happened soon after we were given the order to march.

Indeed, the column was scarcely in motion, when the irrepressible Yo burst forth with a raucous tone in one of the most ancient songs of the march, one of those which are transmitted from generation to generation. Instantly, another voice responded, then another, then a chorus. And then, in the downpour of rain, on a road so water-soaked that one sunk to the ankle at each step, it was no longer a surrounded regiment in flight, but a troop sprightly, gay, and confident and, like their Gallic ancestors, having nothing to fear but this: that the weeping heavens might really fall on their heads.

We had not been on the march an hour when a terrific explosion was heard, reverberating overhead. It was the mined fort which was blowing up. All the work of those last days was flying into the air in a re-echoing crash of bricks, ironwork, shells, and guns. Our labor was wiped out. Nevertheless, it had not been in vain. Thanks to its existence, the German army which had faced us had been retarded twenty-four hours in its advance. Indeed, their advance-guards had encountered that garrisoned fort, and had been obliged to await the arrival of artillery sufficient to reduce and take it. This delay had permitted the last French troops to retreat without trouble. They were safe when the fort, henceforth useless, blew up. It left nothing for the hand of the enemy, and its mission was accomplished. A battle would have added to our work nothing but blood. Our chiefs were wise in sparing that.

It was not until later that we knew all this. At that moment we did not look so far. We pursued our way singing, in a deluge of rain, overtaking distracted fugitives along the route: exhausted old men, women carrying and leading children, who moved aside to make way for us, then stumbled in our wake. We passed through villages already deserted, a forsaken countryside where the rain beat down the fields of barley and ripe wheat. On we went. In passing, we gathered fruit from the trees. At the fountains and springs we drank water made turbid by the rain. We sang. We heard, somewhere, the roar of the cannon. We had no idea where it thundered so. It seemed ahead of us and behind us. As we saw nothing terrifying, as there was no visible evidence of a battle, we advanced constantly, quite light-hearted, without knowing that we were passing through one of the great battles of the beginning of the war, one of the decisive struggles which did much to retard the advance of the enemy; that our column, quite ignorant of events, was thus marching freely across the battle of Guise.

That, at foundation, is not so impossible as might appear. Shortly after, we had occasion to verify such zones of silence in the midst of violent action. Yes, one may be in the midst of battle and not be aware of it. Even at Austerlitz the guard had not yet charged, half the troops had not broken a cartridge, when the battle was won.

This time our battle was to be gained by our legs, and consisted solely of marching. And we marched. And we took no account of fatigue, nor that the men who hastened along the road were all unaccustomed to marching. One month before, all of us were civilians. Some were in offices, bending over books; others sold dry goods, others were at work-benches or in construction-yards. We were required to make an unprecedented effort, to which none of us was trained. We were asked to march for hours, for a day, for a night, none knew how long. We must advance, cost what it might, follow an unfamiliar road, avoid ambuscades, regain the rear of our army, rejoin other formations which, farther on, were grouping under orders identical with our own.

We went on. The officers had their orders, we followed them. And we sang to drive away fatigue, to forget misery, to escape the thought of the heavy knapsack, of the cartridges dragging on our shoulders, of all the military harness, so useful but so heavy, which weighed down each step of the soldier. We crossed fields of freshly ploughed ground. We climbed slopes, descended hills, traversed plains. We went straight toward the south, covering on foot the route by which we had come to the fort in the train; a route which had become interminable, cut only by a pause every fifty minutes, when one could stretch his aching limbs, could pierce the swollen blisters on his heels, could break a crust of bread or drink a swallow of water.

Some civilians followed and attached themselves to us in the hope of protection. There were women who marched close to the ranks, others who confided their infants for a stage to near-by soldiers, still others gave up, exhausted, and fell on the stones, with eyes rolled back, full of terror and a sort of reproach. They felt themselves abandoned, too worn out to follow longer, given over to all the tragic misery of the invasion. And we turned our eyes that we might not see, in an agony of soul that we must leave them, that we could not help them, that we could not take them with us; ourselves crushed by the burdens of the soldier, hard pushed to arrive at a destination still so far away, at the spot selected for the halt, for rest, for sleep.

We went on, and fatigue began to weigh upon us. Some comrades suddenly quit the ranks, threw down their sacks with a wild gesture, and fell to the ground. They were the physically weak, those first overwhelmed by the burden, whom the enemy would gather up in his advance and take away prisoner, an easily won booty. The underofficers tried to make these men rise and continue their way, without much success. They were at the end of their strength, incapable of further effort. They gave up and fell. They accepted whatever fate awaited them. They had struggled to the extreme limit of endurance. One had marched for several hours with the soles of his feet entirely blistered away from the flesh; another had persisted though suffering intolerably from hernia. Some had foam on the chin. Several attempted suicide. Their firearms were taken from them and were given to another man to carry for a time. The latter soon threw them away because of their weight, first breaking them that they might not be of service to the enemy. Every one began to relieve himself of superfluous articles. We threw away linen and change of shoes; then rations. We emptied our pockets; discarded our jackets.

We marched, and marched, and marched: a march without end. There was no pause, no aim, no goal. We marched. We sought the horizon, and must push on still, as one horizon stretched away and gave place to another, which again must be passed as the first. The day lengthened. The road was never-ending. One after the other the hours rolled on, and still we marched. We encountered vehicles stuck in the mire, which no one attempted to help out of the ruts. We encountered horses in the last throes of agony, struggling one last time to move one foot before the other, then stiffening in death. We encountered automobiles in flames, others in smoking ashes. We encountered encampments of poor wretches, waiting at the edge of the road for a better hour. We encountered lost children. Here and there we came upon a house pillaged, devastated, bare, where remained no crust of bread, where even the wells had been emptied of water. With difficulty one could draw from them a little muddy liquid. The men chewed some beet-roots torn up in a field, to allay the burning thirst. Then night approached. We still marched. The twilight spread her veil of mist and blood. We marched. The shadows fell. We marched. Night came. We marched. We stumbled on the stones which seemed to rise from the road; over the wagon-ruts which cut it, on the slopes which bordered it. We marched. There were unexpected stops, when the column, suddenly halted at some point forward, folded back upon itself like a telescope. The men jostled and swore. Wagons were crushed, horses fell, in an indescribable confusion. Some soldiers fell, and did not rise again. Then the movement resumed. We marched again, and marched, and stopped, and went on.