But when we leave the wood the world has become grey and depressing. We splash across a marshy field in which guns and ammunition wagons are drawn up, plastered with mud to the axles, and tarnished with splashes. There are the entrails and soft skins of sheep lying in little round piles in the puddles. Bones are scattered about, to which fragments of rain-washed meat are still attached, and they serve to give the bare field the semblance of a charnel-house. A road crosses it, shining with stagnant water and bordered until lost to sight by dejected-looking trees. And over this unelevating prospect, leaden rain-laden clouds hang low and drift one into the other, until the little lake of blueness is completely veiled from view.
We are at Rosnes. It is a village alongside the road. It serves to make me think rather pathetically of all those houses which have not yet suffered bombardment, of those barns even, which contain hay, hay soft and fragrant, in which one can find warmth and comfort.
We leave Rosnes behind us and, marching easy, slowly ascend a steep rising, finally to arrive on a plateau covered far and near with thick growth. The breeze passing over it gives it the appearance of a mysterious and noisome pond whose icy surface is ruffled by autumn winds.
At Captain C——'s invitation, a meeting of officers takes place. It is he who, at Gercourt, distributed the men of our detachment into companies. And now here he commands the regiment, since the colonel and the chief of the first battalion are wounded, and those of the second and third are killed. It is only then I learn that for several days past the 3rd Battalion has been commanded by the officer of gendarmerie whom I saw on the morning of the 9th, when he ran up shouting at us and at our major because he hesitated to throw us out over a bare plain swept by machine-gun fire. He had died magnificently.
Captain C—— addressed us in his unimpassioned voice. He congratulated us and told us he relied on each one of us. We were worn out, but it was necessary to keep going and preserve appearances before the men, in order to maintain their courage so long as the present hard times continued; to prevent them, by the exhibition of our own energy and enthusiasm, from succumbing to the temptation of grumbling and complaining.
From the expression of the faces about me, from the serenity legible in each man's eyes, I gathered we were all ready to face the future, whatsoever it might contain. It almost seemed we leaned on each other for support, true brothers by the common faith within us. A grace exalted and fortified us.
Thus my captain became my battalion chief and Porchon my company commander. I was well content, because the passage of each day had brought Porchon and myself nearer each other. I know him to-day to be a man open and frank to the last word, ambitious to show himself just, but indulgent in all things, and brave with that simplicity which exalts courage. Moreover, I love his good humour, his never failing laugh, the ardent life in him. To be gay and light-hearted, to remain so under the sharpest physical sufferings, even when devastation and cruel death break or snatch away the men or human things about you; to remain constant before these assaults which strike more at the heart than at the intellect, is for a leader a hard but sacred duty. Porchon had perhaps taught me this. No longer did I wish to deaden my senses in order to render my task the easier. I was eager to confront all the demands of this prodigious and unnatural world into which I had been suddenly cast; I no longer even sought to escape those duties which seem to lead one to certain death. And these things would be easy to achieve if only I could attain something of that good humour which I sedulously sought to possess as one sets out to conquer a virtue. Porchon would assist me.
We set off together to settle the location of the trenches which our company must construct. Our men set to work with tools obtained from a park. The picks quickly break up the brown, heavy soil. It is raining, but the task is not difficult. The men sing and jokes fly about—probably because the first section has already been called up for the distribution of rations!
They have descended towards Seigneulles, a village close at hand at the bottom of the valley. From our position we can see the regimental carts pointing their shafts towards us, tilted and supported on garden fences. Further away, emerging from a lake of greenness, is a small group of houses, and the cock on a church steeple.
Soon now along the roadside the fires begin to smoke. This evening we are going to eat cooked meat and hot potatoes. We shall have straw for our beds and a roof to shelter us from the wind and rain. Who cares for to-morrow since life to-day is so good!