“Get ready to go back,” whispered the sergeants and the order was repeated along the line. We crept, we crawled like slugs, profiting by the smallest tuft of grass, the shallowest recess in the ground that might serve as a shield, but with little hope of escape.
Some furious discharges of seventy-fives cracked with such rapidity and precision that they comforted us. We felt sustained and protected and steadied ourselves. We were annoyingly hampered by our heavy equipment, our inconvenient cartridge-boxes and all our cumbersome accoutrement. Suddenly a man was wounded. He cried out, and, losing all prudence, arose, ran, crossed the embankment and fled to the shelter. Instinctively we followed his example. On the way another man was wounded and fell. Two of his companions seized him and, dragging him between them, struggled to safety, in the shelter of the railroad-bank. It was finished. We reassembled. We were muddy, bruised, and wounded; eyes red from loss of sleep, and mouths drawn, but, just the same, we were content. Thenceforth we were soldiers. We had faced danger. True, we had not fought, but we were ready.
Our rôle had just commenced. We had occupied this sector to fit it up as this novel thing, this underground war, demanded. This task achieved, we were to be its defenders. It was necessary to dig trenches that we might no longer watch from the scanty shelter of trees; to improve on these primitive holes that had been dug, to serve temporarily, at the beginning of the battle. Therefore we dug trenches. It was necessary to connect them with communication-channels. Therefore we dug boyaux. We had to install redans, build firing benches or banquettes[C] and construct dugouts. All these things we did. We dug in the earth day and night. We gathered up cubic metres of soil and threw them out in front to heighten our parapet. We used our shovels and picks; we sweat; we suffered; we froze.
The winter rolled on. December brought intense cold. Ice and snow covered the land, and while we watched the foe, our rifles froze in the loopholes. We ate when we were lucky. The kitchens were far in the rear, and when the soup and coffee arrived they were ice-cold. The service men started early with their mess-pails, but they stumbled in the trenches and often spilled more of the soup and wine than they brought. We ate badly; we slept little: we always dug. We never rested. There were heavy materials to be carried; the stakes for the entanglements, the spools of wire, the sheet iron, the posts, and the timbers. There was nightly patrol duty, the hours on guard, the attack to repulse, endless holes to be bored in the earth. In the daytime one slept where he could, curling up in the mud at the bottom of the trench or seeking to avoid the rain by crawling into some fissure. At night we stole out into No Man’s Land and stalked the foe or dug a listening-post. We watched the illuminating rockets. We plunged to shelter when they threatened to expose us to fire.
We lived there some strenuous hours, some terrible weeks. Some suffered from trench foot, some froze to death, some were killed. These are terrible things: these nights on guard, these nights hugging the ground when on patrol, these nights in the listening-post when the body chills, becomes numb, and loses all sensation. One goes on detail and loses one’s way. One falls, dumb with fatigue, and an alarm sounds. One starts to sleep and an attack rages.
War is a thing of horror. It is more. The very soil is hollowed out like dens of beasts; and into these creep human beings. The rain saturates the trench and rots legs and wood alike. The corpse hangs on the wire and serves as a target. War is cold, war is black, war is night. It is, in truth, such a horror that those who have lived these hours may say: “I was there. But to tell about it is to live it over again. And that is too much.”
Emmanuel Bourcier at the front in the sector of Rheims in 1915.
As for us, we suffered. At first we had no dugouts and slept beneath the open sky. We had no trenches and stalked our foe while waist-deep in mud. In December’s cold we had no fire. This which we saw, which we defended, which the foe destroyed, was France. Our land was invaded, profaned by the German, and we could not retake it. These conquered forests, these occupied cities, these subjugated plains, these mountains polluted, were our native soil and we could not regain them. The sacred homeland was under the boot of the German. Was this the death-rattle in the throat of the republic?