“Count Roland’s mouth is bleeding. Near his forehead the temples are shattered. In pain and sorrow he blows the horn. Charles and his Frenchmen hear it. And Charles said: ‘That horn is long-winded.’ Duke Naimes answers: ‘It is Roland who is in pain.’”
* * * * *
Are the appeals of the horn that shook the Pyrenees more than ten centuries ago more moving than the silent appeals of Fort Vaux, which, above the enemy’s lines, communicates to the High Command the details of its death-agony and its resolve to hold out?
On the morning of June 3 a swift-flying pigeon reaches the dovecote.
“Messenger, what are your tidings? The fort, since it can send you, still lives. Tell us if it can endure a siege until the hour we had fixed for its deliverance.”
In vain does it look under its wing for the despatch that it should carry. Badly fastened, it has fallen off on the way. The bird has been let loose to no purpose. How many of its mates are there left in the fort?
On the 4th, about midday, the dovecote is visited by a poor wounded pigeon, which drags itself laboriously up to its resting-place. This one has not made a useless journey. Here is the message that it brings:
“We are still holding out, but are subjected to a very dangerous gas and smoke attack. It is urgent that we should be extricated; let us have immediate visual signalling communication by way of Souville, which does not answer our appeals. This is my last pigeon.”
The last pigeon! The telephone wires have long since been cut, and the signals are not working. The last pigeon: it is the final connecting link with the fort. The fort is now cut off from the outer world. No flapping of wings will ever again convey its messages. It will remain dumb if they do not contrive to restore the visual signalling connections. Nothing more will be known of its career. At the military dovecote a soldier has put the bird on his hand—the bird, which, like some scout, was wounded on active service.
The afternoon of June 4 passes, but the communications are not restored. It is impossible to obtain a signal from the fort. Probably there has been no means of registering the position of its sighting gear. On the 5th, however, at three o’clock in the morning, the headquarters of the division see two men arrive. They have issued from the fort—nothing more than that! They belong to the searchlight section. As there were no more pigeons and the signals were not working, they had to come to restore the communications. That is as plain as a pikestaff.