“To begin with, how many have we?”
“How many pockets? Eighteen,” says some one—Cocon, of course, the man of figures.
“Eighteen pockets! You’re codding, rat-nose,” says big Lamuse.
“Exactly eighteen,” replies Cocon. “Count them, if you’re as clever as all that.”
Lamuse is willing to be guided by reason in the matter, and putting his two hands near the light so as to count accurately, he tells off his great brick-red fingers: Two pockets in the back of the greatcoat; one for the first-aid packet, which is used for tobacco; two inside the greatcoat in front; two outside it on each side, with flaps; three in the trousers, and even three and a half, counting the little one in front.
“I’ll bet a compass on it,” says Farfadet.
“And I, my bits of tinder.”
“I,” says Tirloir, “I’ll bet a teeny whistle that my wife sent me when she said, ‘If you’re wounded in the battle you must whistle, so that your comrades will come and save your life.’”
We laugh at the artless words. Tulacque intervenes, and says indulgently to Tirloir, “They don’t know what war is back there; and if you started talking about the rear, it’d be you that’d talk rot.”
“We won’t count that pocket,” says Salavert, “it’s too small. That makes ten.”
“In the jacket, four. That only makes fourteen after all.”
“There are the two cartridge pockets, the two new ones that fasten with straps.”
“Sixteen,” says Salavert.
“Now, blockhead and son of misery, turn my jacket back. You haven’t counted those two pockets. Now then, what more do you want? And yet they’re just in the usual place. They’re your civilian pockets, where you shoved your nose-rag, your tobacco, and the address where you’d got to deliver your parcel when you were a messenger.”
“Eighteen!” says Salavert, as grave as a judge. “There are eighteen, and no mistake; that’s done it.”
At this point in the conversation, some one makes a series of noisy stumbles on the stones of the threshold with the sound of a horse pawing the ground—and blaspheming. Then, after a silence, the barking of a sonorous and authoritative voice—“Hey, inside there! Getting ready? Everything must be fixed up this evening and packed tight and solid, you know. Going into the first line this time, and we may have a hot time of it.”
“Right you are, right you are, ’jutant,” heedless voices answer.
“How do you write ‘Arnesse’?” asks Benech, who is on all fours, at work with a pencil and an envelope. While Cocon spells “Ernest” for him and the voice of the vanished adjutant is heard afar repeating his harangue, Blaire picks up the thread, and says—
“You should always, my children—listen to what I’m telling you—put your drinking-cup in your pocket. I’ve tried to stick it everywhere else, but only the pocket’s really practical, you take my word. If you’re in marching order, or if you’ve doffed your kit to navigate the trenches either, you’ve always got it under your fist when chances come, like when a pal who’s got some gargle, and feels good towards you says, ‘Lend us your cup,’ or a peddling wine-seller, either. My young bucks, listen to what I tell you; you’ll always find it good—put your cup in your pocket.”
“No fear,” says Lamuse, “you won’t see me put my cup in my pocket; damned silly idea, no more or less. I’d a sight sooner sling it on a strap with a hook.”
“Fasten it on a greatcoat button, like the gas-helmet bag, that’s a lot better; for suppose you take off your accoutrements and there’s any wine passing, you look soft.”
“I’ve got a Boche drinking-cup,” says Barque; “it’s flat, so it goes into a side pocket if you like, or it goes very well into a cartridge-pouch, once you’ve fired the damn things off or pitched them into a bag.”
“A Boche cup’s nothing special,” says Pépin; “it won’t stand up, it’s just lumber.”
“You wait and see, maggot-snout,” says Tirette, who is something of a psychologist. “If we attack this time, same as the adjutant seemed to hint, perhaps you’ll find a Boche cup, and then it’ll be something special!”
“The adjutant may have said that,” Eudore observes, “but he doesn’t know.”
“It holds more than a half-pint, the Boche cup,” remarks Cocon, “seeing that the exact capacity of the half-pint is marked in the cup three-quarters way up; and it’s always good for you to have a big one, for if you’ve got a cup that only just holds a half-pint, then so that you can get your half-pint of coffee or wine or holy water or what not, it’s got to be filled right up, and they don’t ever do it at serving-out, and if they do, you spill it.”
“I believe you that they don’t fill it,” says Paradis, exasperated by the recollection of that ceremony. “The quartermaster-sergeant, he pours it with his blasted finger in your cup and gives it two raps on its bottom. Result, you get a third, and your cup’s in mourning with three black bands on top of each other.”
“Yes,” says Barque, “that’s true; but you shouldn’t have a cup too big either, because the chap that’s pouring it out for you, he suspects you, and let’s it go in damned drops, and so as not to give you more than your measure he gives you less, and you can whistle for it, with your tureen in your fists.”
Volpatte puts back in his pockets, one by one, the items of his display. When he came to the purse, he looked at it with an air of deep compassion.
“He’s damnably flat, poor chap!” He counted the contents. “Three francs! My boy, I must set about feathering this nest again or I shall be stony when we get back.”
“You’re not the only one that’s broken-backed in the treasury.”
“The soldier spends more than he earns, and don’t you forget it. I wonder what’d become of a man that only had his pay?”
Paradis replies with concise simplicity, “He’d kick the bucket.”
“And see here, look what I’ve got in my pocket and never let go of”—Pépin, with merry eyes, shows us some silver table-things. “They belonged,” he says, “to the ugly whore where we were quartered at Grand-Rozoy.”
“Perhaps they still belong to her?”
Pépin made an uncertain gesture, in which pride mingled with modesty; then, growing bolder, he smiled and said, “I knew her, the old sneak. Certainly, she’ll spend the rest of her life looking in every corner for her silver things.”
“For my part,” says Volpatte, “I’ve never been able to rake in more than a pair of scissors. Some people have the luck. I haven’t. So naturally I watch ’em close, though I admit I’ve no use for ’em.”
“I’ve pinched a few bits of things here and there, but what of it? The sappers have always left me behind in the matter of pinching; so what about it?”
“You can do what you like, you’re always got at by some one in your turn, eh, my boy? Don’t fret about it.”
“I keep my wife’s letters,” says Blaire.
“And I send mine back to her.”
“And I keep them, too. Here they are.” Eudore exposes a packet of worn and shiny paper, whose grimy condition the twilight modestly veils. “I keep them. Sometimes I read them again. When I’m cold and humpy, I read ’em again. It doesn’t actually warm you up, but it seems to.”
There must be a deep significance in the curious expression, for several men raise their heads and say, “Yes, that’s so.”
By fits and starts the conversation goes on in the bosom of this fantastic barn and the great moving shadows that cross it; night is heaped up in its corners, and pointed by a few scattered and sickly candles.
I watch these busy and burdened flitters come and go, outline themselves strangely, then stoop and slide down to the ground; they talk to themselves and to each other, their feet are encumbered by the litter. They are showing their riches to each other. “Here, look!”—“Great!” they reply enviously.
What they have not got they want. There are treasures among the squad long coveted by all; the two-
litre water-bottle, for instance, preserved by Barque, that a skilful rifle-shot with a blank cartridge has stretched to the capacity of two and a half litres; and Bertrand’s famous great knife with the horn handle.
Among the heaving swarm there are sidelong glances that skim these curiosities before they return to their own; each man devotes himself to his belongings, and concentrates upon getting them in order.
They are mournful belongings, indeed. Everything made for the soldier is commonplace, ugly, and of bad quality; from his cardboard boots, attached to the uppers by a criss-cross of worthless thread, to his badly cut, badly shaped, and badly sewn clothes, made of shoddy and transparent cloth—blotting-paper—that one day of sunshine fades and an hour of rain wets through, to his emaciated leathers, brittle as shavings and torn by the buckle spikes, to his flannel underwear that is thinner than cotton, to his straw-like tobacco.
Marthereau is beside me, and he points to our comrades: “Look at them, these poor chaps gaping into their bags o’ tricks. You’d say it was a mother’s meeting, ogling their kids. Hark to ’em. They’re calling for their knick-knacks. Look, that one, the times he says ‘My knife!’ same as if he was calling ‘Léon,’ or ‘Charles,’ or ‘’Dolphus.’ And you know it’s impossible for them to make their load any less. Can’t be did. It isn’t that they don’t want—our job isn’t one that makes us any stronger, eh? But they can’t. Too proud of ’em.”
The burdens to be borne are formidable, and one knows well enough, ye gods, that every item makes them more severe, each little addition is one bruise more.
For it is not merely a matter of what one buries in his pockets and pouches. To complete the burden there is what one carries on his back. The knapsack is the trunk and even the cupboard; and the old soldier is familiar with the art of enlarging it almost miraculously by the judicious disposal of his household goods and provisions. Besides the regulation and obligatory contents—two tins of pressed beef, a dozen biscuits, two tablets of coffee and two packets of dried soup, the bag of sugar, fatigue smock, and spare boots—we find a way of getting in some pots of jam, tobacco, chocolate, candles, soft-soled shoes; and even soap, a spirit lamp, some solidified spirit, and some woollen things. With the blanket, waterproof sheet, tent-cloth, trenching-tool, water-bottle, and an item of the field-cooking kit,* the burden gets heavier and taller and wider, monumental and crushing. And my neighbour says truly that every time he reaches his goal after some miles of highway and communication trenches, the poilu swears hard that the next time he’ll leave a heap of things behind and give his shoulders a little relief from the yoke of the knapsack. But every time he is preparing for departure, he assumes again the same overbearing and almost superhuman load; he never lets it go, though he curses it always.
“There are some bad boys,” says Lamuse, “among the shirkers, that find a way of keeping something in the company wagon or the medical van. I know one that’s got two shirts and a pair of drawers in an adjutant’s canteen*—but, you see, there’s two hundred and fifty chaps in the company, and they’re all up to the dodge and not many of ’em can profit by it; it’s chiefly the non-coms.; the more stripes they’ve got, the easier it is to plant their luggage, not forgetting that the commandant visits the wagons sometimes without warning and fires your things into the middle of the road if he finds ’em in a horse-box where they’ve no business—Be off with you!—not to mention the bully-ragging and the clink.”
“In the early days it was all right, my boy. There were some chaps—I’ve seen ’em—who stuck their bags and even their knapsacks in baby-carts and pushed ’em along the road.”
“Ah, not half! Those were the good times of the war. But all that’s changed.”
Volpatte, deaf to all the talk, muffled in his blanket as if in a shawl which makes him look like an old witch, revolves round an object that lies on the ground. “I’m wondering,” he says, addressing no one, “whether to take away this damned tin stove. It’s the only one in the squad and I’ve always carried it. Yes, but it leaks like a cullender.” He cannot decide, and makes a really pathetic picture of separation.
Barque watches him obliquely, and makes fun of him. We hear him say, “Senile dodderer!” But he pauses in his chaffing to say, “After all, if we were in his shoes we should be equally fat-headed.”
Volpatte postpones his decision till later. “I’ll see about it in the morning, when I’m loading the camel’s back.”
After inspection and recharging of pockets, it is the turn of the bags, and then of the cartridge-pouches, and Barque holds forth on the way to make the regulation two hundred cartridges go into three pouches. In the lump it is impossible. They must be unpacked and placed side by side upright, head against foot. Thus can one cram each pouch without leaving any space, and make himself a waistband that weighs over twelve pounds.
Rifles have been cleaned already. One looks to the swathing of the breech and the plugging of the muzzle, precautions which trench-dirt renders indispensable.
How every rifle can easily be recognised is discussed.
“I’ve made some nicks in the sling. See, I’ve cut into the edge.”
“I’ve twisted a bootlace round the top of the sling, and that way, I can tell it by touch as well as seeing.”
“I use a mechanical button. No mistake about that. In the dark I can find it at once and say, ‘That’s my pea-shooter.’ Because, you know, there are some boys that don’t bother themselves; they just roll around while the pals are cleaning theirs, and then they’re devilish quick at putting a quiet fist on a popgun that’s been cleaned; and then after they’ve even the cheek to go and say, ‘Captain, I’ve got a rifle that’s a bit of all right.’ I’m not on in that act. It’s the D system, my old wonder—a damned dirty dodge, and there are times when I’m fed up with it, and more.”
And thus, though their rifles are all alike, they are as different as their handwriting.
“It’s curious and funny,” says Marthereau to me, “we’re going up to the trenches to-morrow, and there’s nobody drunk yet, nor that way inclined. Ah, I don’t say,” he concedes at once, “but what those two there aren’t a bit fresh, nor a little elevated; without being absolutely blind, they’re somewhat boozed, pr’aps——”
“It’s Poitron and Poilpot, of Broyer’s squad.”
They are lying down and talking in a low voice. We can make out the round nose of one, which stands out equally with his mouth, close by a candle, and with his hand, whose lifted finger makes little explanatory signs, faithfully followed by the shadow it casts.
“I know how to light a fire, but I don’t know how to light it again when it’s gone out,” declares Poitron.
“Ass!” says Poilpot, “if you know how to light it you know how to relight it, seeing that if you light it, it’s because it’s gone out, and you might say that you’re relighting it when you’re lighting it.”
“That’s all rot. I’m not mathematical, and to hell with the gibberish you talk. I tell you and I tell you again that when it comes to lighting a fire, I’m there, but to light it again when its gone out, I’m no good. I can’t speak any straighter than that.”
I do not catch the insistent retort of Poilpot, but—
“But, you damned numskull,” gurgles Poitron, “haven’t I told you thirty times that I can’t? You must have a pig’s head, anyway!”
Marthereau confides to me, “I’ve heard about enough of that.” Obviously he spoke too soon just now.
A sort of fever, provoked by farewell libations, prevails in the wretched straw-spread hole where our tribe—some upright and hesitant, others kneeling and hammering like colliers—is mending, stacking, and subduing its provisions, clothes, and tools. There is a wordy growling, a riot of gesture. From the smoky glimmers, rubicund faces start forth in relief, and dark hands move about in the shadows like marionettes.
In the barn next to ours, and separated from it only by a wall of a man’s height, arise tipsy shouts. Two men in there have
fallen upon each other with fierce violence and anger. The air is vibrant with the coarsest expressions the human ear ever hears. But one of the disputants, a stranger from another squad, is ejected by the tenants, and the flow of curses from the other grows feebler and expires.
“Same as us,” says Marthereau with a certain pride, “they hold themselves in!”
It is true. Thanks to Bertrand, who is possessed by a hatred of drunkenness, of the fatal poison that gambles with multitudes, our squad is one of the least befouled by wine and brandy.
They are shouting and singing and talking all around. And they laugh endlessly, for in the human mechanism laughter is the sound of wheels that work, of deeds that are done.
One tries to fathom certain faces that show up in provocative relief among this menagerie of shadows, this aviary of reflections. But one cannot. They are visible, but you can see nothing in the depth of them.
“Ten o’clock already, friends,” says Bertrand. “We’ll finish the camel’s humps off to-morrow. Time for by-by.” Each one then slowly retires to rest, but the jabbering hardly pauses. Man takes all things easily when he is under no obligation to hurry. The men go to and fro, each with some object in his hand, and along the wall I watch Eudore’s huge shadow gliding, as he passes in front of a candle with two little bags of camphor hanging from the ends of his fingers.
Lamuse is throwing himself about in search of a good position; he seems ill at ease. To-day, obviously, and whatever his capacity may be, he has eaten too much.
“Some of us want to sleep! Shut them up, you lot of louts!” cries Mesnil Joseph from his litter.
This entreaty has a subduing effect for a moment, but does not stop the burble of voices nor the passing to and fro.
“We’re going up to-morrow, it’s true,” says Paradis, “and in the evening we shall go into the first line. But nobody’s thinking about it. We know it, and that’s all.”
Under Fire Page 18
