Waltenberg

by Hedi Kaddour

  One hundred and twenty kilos per horse with rider, a hundred mounted ex-farmhands led by officers with aristocratic names, not all of them, but they set the tone, no need for them to keep their distance with the men to be obeyed, and no need for the ex-farmboys to touch their forelocks to keep their place, it’s a genuine society in itself, with values, there’s a positive side to everything, the officers don’t give too much thought for the men, they know their horses better, though not all of them, the hardest ones are the NCOs.

  They’re every man jack of them heartily sick of these last two months of marches, counter-marches, retreats, nights when horses are not unsaddled and men sleep with their helmets on, bridle in hand. The fear comes little by little, not at the start, because at the start they’re still living the legend, a new Reichshoffen charge and a victory, ‘victory’, they said, ‘or death’ because they hadn’t seen death close up, brave words, no one would buckle, they didn’t care a damn about the mounted gendarmes forming a screen behind the front lines ready to round up any soldiers who ran away, they repeated what the colonel of the gendarmerie had said in 1870:

  ‘Gendarmes, remember that you have families and that your horses are your own property!’

  All your gendarmes are good for is to make life complicated for the poor bastard who has got himself separated from his unit after a failed attack!

  The fear came little by little, from sitting on a horse and doing nothing while being shelled, from being made to take a back seat by men on bicycles and foot soldiers, even by kitemen, from thinking about the kids, from an order to cross a road as last week, the order was issued well before the Germans brought their 77s to bear, but the road still had to be crossed, it was only after they’d crossed it that they received the order to retreat, which meant crossing it again while being shelled by the same 77s, you’ve got to carry out orders, a total shambles.

  And so at Monfaubert the dragoons charge to demonstrate that they are good for more than rounding up prisoners or serving as target practice for German 77s, they are charging because more and more people keep telling them: ‘You’re in the wrong war.’

  They intend to fight and win a battle such as was never fought and won, you’ll see what we make of your modern warfare, they are charging for the legend, such is the view of the Captain, the subalterns and a few of the men.

  The rest do it because they’re there, might as well charge because this is a dream, trade fear for illusion for a moment, just as the young men of the Tsar’s guard charged at Austerlitz so that Napoleon would say: ‘Tonight many pretty ladies will weep.’

  Bound and gagged, Hans lies curled up on the moss and dead leaves, they’re going to kill him, like Johann, no, he’s a prisoner, prisoners can’t be killed, Hans is virtually certain of that, nor do they cut off prisoners’ ears before killing them, they obey the laws of war, they’ve got to respect prisoners and the Red Cross, no officer would still dare shout at his men: ‘No prisoners!’

  Hans is not going to die, das Wandern, he walks towards a mill, towards a woman who sings a song about a mill, an immortal song, even the heavy millstones enter the refrain, ‘Let me go in peace and walk’, river where are we going? Later here is Madame Nietnagel, her voice that of a teacher accustomed to being instantly obeyed, she was speaking of jealousy and anger directed at the hunter, you are angry, you must be angry, Mademoiselle Hotspur, there is the sound of the hunting horn in your voice, the melody is overpowering the song, listen, listen, listen carefully to the piano, it plays what is written, staccato, the piano plays staccato, the voice stays with the piano’s right hand, you must not stray from it, that’s good, it’s fast but you’re not running away with it, you’re going sharp, Madame Nietnagel’s very fat fingers on the keys, small hands, very quick movements, she said that this Lied of the hunter is pretty much an exercise, the whole of the first section keeps the mood sombre, but it mustn’t become too intense, and do not make it darker, and keep the second section in the middle range.

  Madame Nietnagel’s face lit up, she carried on in the same vein: ‘This is the hardest passage, you think you’re going to be able to rest the voice but this is the hardest part, and when you are well launched, you tend to go sharp, scheut, the highest – and loudest – note takes fright.’

  Madame Nietnagel turned to Hans with an air of complicity which to her was the height of suggestive banter:

  ‘A young she-goat frightened by the hunter’s beard, do not contract!’

  Madame Nietnagel laid her fingers on Lena’s diaphragm:

  ‘Keep your sides supple, and when you sing low you must save enough breath otherwise the stomach sags forward, which is not at all attractive, don’t you agree?’

  She was looking at Hans when she said this.

  A war in which prisoners are not killed, the officers are far too busy dying gloriously, leading their men, a bullet in the head, a small clean hole, very little blood, just the red blotch which in the paintings of gifted artists serves to draw the eye of the beholder. The officers die for the legend, they will not sully their glory with an obscene order to have prisoners and wounded men shot, on the day war broke out President Poincaré spoke of ‘the eternal moral power of right which neither peoples nor individuals can disregard with impunity’, these lieutenants and captains die as Péguy died at Villeroi on 6 September, defending right, and from a shot in the middle of his forehead.

  Péguy had demanded that Jaurès and his pacifism should be silenced ‘by the drums of the guillotine’.

  The officers pass living into legend even when no trace of their mortal remains is ever found, like Alain-Fournier, killed in action, like so many others, his death is summed up by the words of one soldier who survived:

  ‘The lieutenant’s bought it!’

  Then come the phrase-makers, Alain-Fournier is dead, a mortal blow to literature, end of our childhood, the very trees of Sologne are in mourning, the village school is dead, the classroom that smells of hay and stables, everything, the red house, the Virginia creeper, the lamp-lit evenings, Christmas, the great sacks of chestnuts, everything, good things to eat wrapped in cloths, and the pungency of singed wool when some boy stood too close to the stove to get warm, a body was never identified. Fournier’s corpse was absent when they held roll-call.

  ‘Henri Alban Fournier (the real name of Alain-Fournier) died from a shot in the head,’ reports his brother-in-law, Jacques Rivière, who got it from a private soldier.

  ‘He was killed by a bullet to the head,’ says Paul Genuist.

  ‘A bullet in the head, in a heroic action,’ Patrick Antoniol states specifically.

  It happened at Saint-Rémy, three weeks after Monfaubert, a bullet in the head, Fournier’s batman said so, name of Jacquot, he saw it all: ‘In the forehead, killed outright.’

  Fournier had written:

  ‘I’ve picked out as my batman a Zouave, a crapulous type who’s good at fending for himself, seen service in Morocco, had two teeth knocked out by bullets, I’m afraid he’s prone to exaggeration Jacquot added:

  ‘When I got back to him, the lieutenant was stone cold.’

  Fournier’s sister does not believe the story about the bullet in the head, Henri didn’t die at all:

  ‘The bullet in the centre of his forehead was something Jacquot made up, he’d told my parents: “I’ll watch out for the lieutenant”, but he wasn’t at his side, he was in the rear.’

  Yet Fournier’s mistress, Pauline Benda – in January she was on stage playing Régine in La Danse devant le miroir displaying a surprising talent for the subtle nuance – Pauline Benda adds:

  ‘At the exact moment Henri was shot, I felt a sudden pain in the middle of my forehead, as if I had been struck by something.’

  In this war which never ends, a year, no, much longer than that, on another occasion altogether, Hans is very hungry, very thirsty, one day he is dying of thirst in a hole he cannot get out of, he tears out the last remaining handfuls of grass, he chews the grass, his t
eeth crunch on soil, he goes on chewing.

  He vows that never again will he lose his temper when normal life returns, after the war, the trees, the paths, the woman he’ll be reunited with, their walks together, he will not get cross when their horses pull on the reins and reach out with their lips to the grass which the dying day is now sprinkling with dew, Hans will turn to look at Lena, they will not waste the moment.

  Henri Alban Fournier, killed in action while leading the 23rd Company of the 288th Infantry Regiment. A bullet in the head, his face otherwise unmarked. Rémi Debats, another soldier, saw Fournier hit by a bullet:

  ‘But not in the head. In the chest. Killed outright.’

  Yet another, Zacharie Baqué, a sergeant, sees Fournier leading the assault through the wood, under low branches, trampling the nettles underfoot, crushing the valerian just as Seurel and co. do in Le Grand Meaulnes, and Seurel himself stands at the forest’s edge ‘like a patrol which the corporal leading it has lost’, along paths of green grass under the leafy branches they run, red breeches and blue frock-coats, to debouch, as if chasing game through the woods of Sologne, with the brambles snatching at your sleeve, ‘suddenly,’ said Seurel, ‘I came out into a sort of clearing which turned out to be a meadow.’

  Captain de Gramont and Lieutenant Fournier ‘fire shots with their revolvers’, Baqué sees Fournier ‘on the ground, not moving’, he hears a voice choking, it’s Second-Lieutenant Imbert fatally wounded, he cries out ‘Mother!’, Baqué doesn’t tell him what Robinson said to another officer who is dying:

  ‘Your mummy doesn’t give a damn!’

  Instead he just goes on shooting at the Germans.

  Now it’s an Englishman, Stephen Gurney, who describes what happens to Fournier:

  ‘Suddenly, stopped by a bullet in the arm, he dropped on one knee and was never seen again.’

  Fournier, in that clearing at Saint-Rémy, like his hero at the end of Le Grand Meaulnes.

  At Monfaubert the dragoons are about to find fame, at a gallop, skimming the ground, by Saint George! ‘Contending for glory’, and seven hundred paces a minute, a regulation cavalry pace being set at eighty centimetres, destiny is already flexing its muscles, at sixty paces from the Prussians Captain Jourde stands up in his stirrups and at the top of his voice cries:

  ‘Chaaarge!’

  The cry is taken up by all the officers. Some riders sit up straight to cut a more intimidating figure for the enemy’s benefit, they drop their hands, dig with their spurs. One horse stumbles, a rabbit hole, it falls, rolls on its rider. Enemy fire starts up, still scattered as yet, ineffective. When dragoons charge in formation six abreast, only the leading line is fully exposed, it partly masks the rest of the column, horses and riders are hit but the devastating strike is rare, a wounded horse will continue to gallop long enough to smash into enemy lines, we have rediscovered our spirit, our drive, our bite, the column at full gallop, the rear presses the front to go faster, riders who fall cannot slow the overwhelming mass, we have stopped being only good for rounding up scum, it takes both arms to hold my mare, lying on her neck I aim with the point of my sabre, I have a pain in my belly, in my chest, I am hot and cold, a dragoon for the first time in all the years that he has been learning how to ride, falls, one foot caught in a stirrup, a lump of fear dragged over the grass by an animal determined to overtake the others.

  Fournier isn’t dead, Captain Juvin saw him, just wounded, he told the parents of Lieutenant Fournier:

  ‘I can assure you that there was a German field dressing-station at the spot where he fell.’

  ‘In that German dressing-station,’ said Isabelle, ‘lay all of our hopes.’

  And everyone agrees: Captain Boubée de Gramont launched a pointless and dangerous attack. He said:

  ‘It is essential that we go after the Hun.’

  Testimony of Private Angla:

  ‘The look-outs had warned us, Huns everywhere. The Captain was off his head, he said “I’ve got the black-rot all through me, say your prayers, lads, in my Company we’re all dead men”.’

  Fournier was falling back with his infantry when the Captain made him turn and go after the enemy.

  Suddenly there are shouts, all hell breaks loose.

  ‘It’s a German dressing-station that’s been overrun,’ said Baqué.

  ‘I’m stuck with a captain who is a swine and so tiresome you could weep,’ said Fournier.

  A field dressing-station.

  They attacked it, a ‘desperate and heroic’ action. Captain de Gramont, Lieutenants Fournier, Imbert and their men versus a field-station, the Red Cross and German stretcher-bearers.

  Bugles, the gallop at Monfaubert, the earth shakes, Hans can see nothing, but he can hear. A French rider held back in reserve comes up to him, Hans stirs, the man puts one hand on his sabre, a voice says ‘No!’, it’s a bad dream, wake up, dream something else, there’s no sabre, none of it’s real, Hans shakes, I know why I left Hans, because he was never there, physically he was there, he called me Lena, smiled when I looked at him, but he didn’t like being there, or rather he didn’t like the person he was when he was there, he called me Lena but it wasn’t quite him, he always gave me the impression that I was dealing with a replacement, he’d sent me a replacement who was a great deal less interesting than he was, than the person he’d set his mind on becoming, and this replacement took only a blundering sort of interest in me. And in this story I became less desirable, I interested the Hans I had in front of me less than the Hans who would come later, there was this replacement who watched the both of us to see what we might turn into from the point of view of the Hans who would come later. He did not want me as I was, he tried to look at his watch, his innocent fingers crept towards his waistcoat pocket, all this is splitting hairs, I can sum it all up by saying that he was a pain in the neck, he didn’t try to change me but he left me to confront someone who wasn’t really there and with whom I couldn’t really be myself, he was sweet, though still a pain in the neck, irritating and adorable.

  The earth quakes, no one is going to kill Hans, it’s not done, anyway it’s a dream, dream another dream, think of the things you love.

  Eighty thousand dead and two weeks later, on 22 September, came Saint-Rémy.

  ‘Captain Gramont wouldn’t listen, Lieutenant Fournier and Lieutenant Imbert wept because they could see the Captain was leading us to our deaths,’ Private Angla told Jacques Rivière.

  In Rivière’s view, Alain-Fournier did not attack a dressing-station. The wood at Saint-Rémy is also known as Knights’ Wood.

  In his ditch at Monfaubert Hans is afraid and ashamed, he looks at Johann, his partially severed head, the blood has flowed copiously from Johann’s neck.

  The dressing-station attacked at a run, the orders of a captain who says:

  ‘I’ve got the black-rot right through me.’

  ‘A French war crime,’ say the Germans, ‘those responsible were shot.’

  ‘Not a dressing-station but a cart carrying stretchers,’ is the response on the French side.

  ‘A fine, a great, a just war,’ writes Henri Alban Fournier to Isabelle just before he was killed.

  And to Pauline:

  ‘We must not think anything that cuts the ground from under our feet.’

  A dressing-station attacked by French forces: a report by Commandant Uecker, officer commanding the German 2nd Medical Corps:

  ‘At Saint-Rémy, a group of French infantry led by two officers killed eight stretcher-bearers and shot the three wounded men being treated in the dressing-station.’

  On 24 November 1914, to a German military court, Private Meerländer:

  ‘On 22 September, I saw French soldiers killing the wounded men on our stretchers, our men surrounded the Frenchmen and shot them all.’

  ‘Untrue,’ say the officials of the Association of the Friends of Jacques Rivière and Alain-Foumier, ‘it is simply not true that Alain-Fournier was shot for attacking a field dressing-station, and any
way it wasn’t a dressing-station ambulance but a cart carrying a few stretchers.’

  Chapter 2

  1914

  The Lake

  In which the intensity of the French cavalry charge reaches new heights.

  In which the achievement of President Poincaré is compared with that of the Pieds Nickelés.

  In which we learn how Lena Hotspur fell in love with Hans Kappler.

  In which questions are asked about the true death of Alain-Fournier.

  In which Hans and Lena suddenly hear cracking coming from the lake on which they are skating.

  Monfaubert, 4 September 1914

  It engulfs us, we organise: all falls down,

  We reorganise: then we too all fall down,

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, VIII

  Seven hundred paces a minute, Monfaubert, dragoons at full gallop, six hundred rounds in the same minute is the rhythm of the Spandau machine gun, two machine-gun posts at least have begun to open up but not until well after the start of the charge, where have these Frenchmen come from? The dragoons gallop on.

  In close formation, the front line of riders six abreast per troop, three troops, less than thirty paces now from the objective, going at a tremendous lick, lashed by the devil himself. The machine-gun fire intensifies, shaking their tripods, cutting clear swathes through the horsemen who are closing fast. A few Germans, flat helmets with red flash, run hither and thither, rush forward, fall back, work the bolts of their rifles, hardly bother to take aim, fire at will, no time for concerted volleys.