The Crew

by Joseph Kessel

  “How?” Jean exclaimed, looking around for his watch.

  “It’s ten in the morning,” the soldier said. “Given the state of the weather, I didn’t wake you up. The ground’s like molasses out there, Lieutenant.”

  “But it was so nice yesterday,” Jean muttered.

  “The weather turns quickly over here, sir, we might still get a little sunshine later on. In fact, Lieutenant, soon enough you might welcome a bit of fog in the morning, just like everyone else here.”

  On that note, the orderly left, leaving Herbillon to his despair. He’d so dearly hoped to fly that morning and thus be initiated into the squadron! At which point he could have stood shoulder to shoulder with the “veterans” around him, or at least felt he was their younger comrade. Whereas he would be forced to remain a novice for the time being, nothing but a rookie.

  His eyes examined the room, which he hadn’t had the time to do the previous day. He shuddered at the sight: a black open coffin framed by a window curtained with a pale misty cloth.

  “I can’t live like this,” he thought to himself. “I’ve got to brighten up the walls somehow.”

  This sudden desire allowed him to shake off his idleness and he got out of bed, feeling a little less crestfallen.

  As he entered again with a cup of coffee, Mathieu asked: “Would the lieutenant like a pair of clogs?”

  “Oh, no!” Jean exclaimed disdainfully, remembering Marbot’s dishevelled appearance.

  Yet at the same time Jean couldn’t see the point of lacing up his boots, given that the state of his room and the filthy-looking morning outside, didn’t exactly make him aspire to any elegance.

  “Does everyone wear them?” he asked, somewhat hesitantly.

  “Nearly, Lieutenant.”

  “Bring me a pair,” Jean ordered him.

  He was rummaging around in his trunk to find some photographs and engravings so he could brighten up those unbearable tarred walls when someone gently knocked on his door. As he thought it was the orderly, he didn’t turn around. Yet a voice, which he instantly recognized due to its charming timbre, asked him: “Am I bothering you, Monsieur?”

  By way of reply, Jean gave Berthier a hearty handshake. The lieutenant was wrapped in a goatskin which he’d thrown on top of his grey cloth pyjamas.

  “You must be bored. The first few days here are always difficult.”

  “That’s right, I am.”

  The answer had risen to his lips without Jean being able to restrain it, and yet he saw it as an admission of weakness he wouldn’t have confessed to anyone else. Nevertheless, even though he didn’t know Berthier, Jean realized he couldn’t keep his real emotions from him, provided, of course, they were genuine. He’d felt this as soon as he’d seen him climb down from his cockpit.

  “I see you’ve dressed already,” Berthier continued. “You’ll get the hang of it soon enough. You’ll pick up our lazy habits eventually. They help us live more comfortably.”

  Jean followed him down the corridor, which was swarming with busy orderlies, and entered a room that was for all accounts and purposes identical to his own except for an oil stove that puffed out a warm, acrid breath. Various items of clothing hung dishevelled on the walls, while there were astonishing piles of little bits of wood and metal—barbed wire, scraps of cloth, screws, nuts and bolts, punctured tyres—scattered everywhere: on top of the large rough-topped table, on top of the poorly nailed shelves, on top of the stools and even on top of the bed.

  Having displayed the chaos of his room, Berthier smiled like a man apologizing for what he knew was an obsession, yet one he was nonetheless very fond of.

  “This is my warehouse,” he explained. “I bring everything I find on the field here that I can use to build, to invent.”

  Then, despite himself, he grew livelier: “Needless to say, people make fun of me. But look at this, it’s a special cartridge extractor for machine guns that the entire squadron now uses. And people say this set of expandable and collapsible boards that can be used for cards is impractical, but once I perfect it everyone is going to want one. Obviously, this means my room’s become a little cramped thanks to everything I store here, but I can assure you that it’s most practical.”

  He started to laugh and then added: “Thélis mocks me the most.”

  “But you like him, don’t you?” Jean asked, noticing the warmth with which he’d pronounced the captain’s name.

  “Of course, I love him dearly,” his comrade replied. “You see, my friend, everyone here would gladly die for him. I don’t know how to explain it. That twenty-four-year-old boy is the life and soul of this squadron. His joy, his courage, his youth! He was awarded a flying cross as an observer, and six medals as a pilot, but he never even mentions it! He would fly ten-hour missions every day if we let him. And what a good comrade he is, you’ll see!”

  Berthier’s paean swelled, surrounding the officer’s face, which had moved the young man at first sight, with a glorious aura.

  “What about the others?” Jean asked.

  “All very charming, but Thélis is on a different level. And we all know it.”

  They talked for a long time. Jean gradually began to be acquainted with his comrades: there was Deschamps the country bumpkin, an infantry soldier who received an honourable discharge after being wounded, then joined the air force, then was discharged a second time after his biplane rolled over in the evening mist, shattering his ribs, ripping off a thumb, and disfiguring his face, at which point he re-enlisted for a third time and shot down three enemy planes. Then there was Captain Reuillard, an observer who’d joined up after seeing service in the army wagon-trains and was an old choleric soldier. André de Neuville, who was very cold, very unforgiving, arrogant and valiant, was the least loved of the bunch. Fat Marbot was a career officer, an old infantry sergeant major who’d joined the air force simply because the enlistment premium would allow him to marry a Normandy farm girl. Marbot was a peaceful man who didn’t like exposing himself to unnecessary risks and who, when the occasion called for it, was the most reliable and courageous of all the observers.

  Berthier talked about them all with unforced benevolence, and with each passing moment, Jean became fonder and fonder of him.

  The lunch bell interrupted their conversation.

  “I have to get dressed right away,” Berthier exclaimed. “The captain doesn’t like it when we’re late.”

  Entering the mess hall where several officers had already assembled, Jean Herbillon was greeted by a unanimous cry. “Officer Cadet—to the bar!”

  Having no idea as to what was going on, he was informed that the youngest among them was tasked with the duty of filling their glasses and keeping tracks of all the bar tabs.

  Shaken up, stunned, yet cheered by that growing familiarity, he took his place behind the bar shelves that were stacked with bottles.

  The officers’ mouths drank their booze neat and talked loudly. The newspapers had just arrived and the news from Paris fuelled the discussions, but everything was bathed in that cheerful, carefree hubbub that is the prerogative of students and soldiers. The clamour was still growing unabated when the captain appeared.

  “About time!” he said when he noticed Jean standing at the bar. “We respect our traditions here. One vermouth rookie, and don’t skimp on the booze when it comes to the senior officers.”

  At that moment, Marbot’s frame darkened the threshold of the corridor’s entrance. He was wearing a sweater. Thélis rushed towards him and yelled: “No grease monkeys in here.”

  With his ink-coloured pipe between his teeth, Marbot sighed: “But I’m so comfortable without my jacket.”

  “Pay the fine then!” Deschamps exclaimed.

  “No!” the bulky lieutenant said, looking truly distressed. “You can’t do that to me!”

  “Then get dressed, you filthy beast!” Thélis pitilessly ordered him.

  Once Marbot returned, Deschamps proposed: “By the way, Captain, we should sho
w the rookie our squadron’s quadrille.”

  Herbillon was suddenly grabbed by some strong arms, hoisted up over the bar and then swept along by the bawdy rhythms of a wild round dance, which didn’t come to a halt until the first dishes arrived.

  Once sitting at the table, Jean continued to learn about his duties as an officer cadet. One of them was to read out the menu, but Thélis warned him, in all seriousness, that he would have to make it rhyme the next time he did so. Jean was the butt of all jokes and was constantly threatened with endless chores. That barrage of ridicule made him feel proud and happy, because it constituted his first real link to that tightly knit group of men, which he badly wanted to belong to.

  By the end of the meal, Jean had become so accustomed to his new role that when the phone rang he immediately rushed to it. The army corps wanted to speak to the squadron commander.

  Thélis commanded the room’s silence with a single gesture and picked up the receiver.

  The captain’s increasingly worried features replaced the previously cheerful expressions on everyone’s face with restless concern. Thélis suddenly exclaimed: “But considering the fog that would be impossible at this time, Colonel.”

  A new silence settled over the room. Everyone knew that thanks to the invisible phone line’s witchcraft, decisions that would determine their fate had been made somewhere far away. Thélis continued: “I can assure you it’s sheer madness, Colonel.”

  Then: “We’ll try, Colonel, but I can’t give you any certainties and I’ll only ask my men to volunteer for the mission. Otherwise I’ll need an official order.”

  He loudly slammed the receiver back on the hook and Jean started to hear whispers whose meaning he couldn’t grasp. “Naturally those gentlemen don’t have a doubt in their minds.”

  “It’s always the same with headquarters.”

  “They should try having a steering stick between their legs for just a day!”

  “If at least they weren’t so completely blind!”

  Meanwhile, the captain had approached a window and was looking at the murky sky. He was angrily clenching his teeth, distorting his mouth. He was clearly finding it difficult to speak.

  He finally headed over to the table and curtly said: “They think troops are massing on the other side. The general wants us to go and take a look.”

  “So all he has to do is tell his driver to take him there,” Marbot grumbled.

  “Shut up!” Thélis harshly yelled at him. “You saw how strongly I objected; there was nothing I could do.”

  Then, lowering his voice as though he were ashamed, he added: “And Marbot and I have been forbidden to go on this mission, because… because… that’s just how it is.”

  His last words betrayed a great deal of rage, and everyone knew why. Flying in that kind of fog was highly dangerous, and the general didn’t want to put his senior officers at risk.

  “So I need two of our best men,” Thélis continued. “I can’t dump this mission on the non-commissioned officers.”

  There were three pilots in the mess hall: Doc, who’d just arrived, as well as André de Neuville and Deschamps. Jean was certain the latter would rush to answer the captain’s call. But the disfigured man kept staring at the table and grumbled as though he were being tortured. “I can’t do this, captain,” he said. “I’ll take on twenty Krauts if I have to, but don’t make me go out in that fog.”

  Herbillon remembered that frightening episode Berthier had told him about when Deschamps’s biplane rolled over in the mist.

  So Neuville stood up without a word and headed over to the hangar, whose grey, bulky mass seemed like a shapeless outgrowth of the mist. They still needed an observer. Marbot left the room and shouted: “I don’t want to watch this. The flight visibility can’t be more than thirty metres.”

  Thélis’s eyes saw the humble prayer in Herbillon’s gaze, and he tenderly told him: “No kid, you wouldn’t do us much good up there.”

  Jean suffered his inexperience as though it caused him unbearable shame, but by that time, Berthier had already come forward: “Captain, I’m the most senior officer here after Marbot.”

  “No, not you,” Thélis exclaimed. “I…”

  What he wanted to say was “I love you too dearly”, but his deep commitment to his role as the squadron’s commander forced him to restrain his tenderness.

  “Go ahead old chap,” he told him, firmly.

  An engine started to roar outside.

  The entire squadron saw them off, even all the unenlisted workers had shown up, and their stunned eyes looked incredulously at the horizon, which was hung so close that it blocked all visibility past the edge of the plateau, after which everything was obfuscated by the fog’s denseness.

  The mechanics, who were leaning against the wings, thus restraining its momentum, were just about to let go when Thélis leaped up in one bound until he was face to face with Berthier, who was sat in his cockpit, and said: “If the flight visibility is this poor while you’re over enemy lines I forbid you to go any further. You hear me?”

  Neuville gestured his consent. Freed from all constraints, the biplane lifted off and was almost immediately engulfed by the fog. All the assembled groups scattered, except for Thélis, who was determined to stay on the field until his comrades’ return, and Jean, who didn’t want to leave the captain on his own.

  Neuville hadn’t been able to get enough altitude. After he’d barely lifted off the ground, he’d already tasted the bland fog on his lips. Immediately after take-off, such a thick layer of condensation had settled on his windscreen that he’d been forced to lower it. The wind lashing against his forehead sometimes dispersed the fog into little clouds, which he would then chase, as though they were runaway mares. Neuville could see patches of green and brown below, but the fog’s milky curtain would soon conceal them from sight again. He pulled his hood down to his nose and lowered his helmet down to his eyebrows, and suddenly thought to himself: “I must be the spitting image of a coward right now under this mask.”

  He was afraid. Mortally afraid. All his comrades thought he was fearless, but only he alone knew how easily fear infected every part of his body.

  Fear was his dark, constant companion. He couldn’t even climb into his cockpit without feeling anxious; in fact he couldn’t even think about flying without his heart suddenly feeling heavier and slower.

  Unable to accept that a man of his breeding and elegance should live in a muddy morass of spilled guts, he had asked to be assigned to the air force as a pilot, the most dangerous job of all, where his pride dictated he take even more risks than he was already exposed to.

  His fingers clutching the biplane’s controls, he headed straight for the enemy lines. He nervously listened to the engine, haunted by the idea that a mechanical breakdown would mean a death sentence, because he would have to make a last-minute emergency landing. As he approached the Aisne river, the fog grew thicker and hung lower, as though it were pressing against the very ground, almost on a level with the pale outlines of the trenches.

  Neuville turned to face Berthier, the crew commander, who smiled and pointed ahead.

  Berthier was also agitated, but his was a different fear. He was worried they wouldn’t fulfil their mission. Even though he’d been with the squadron for two years, he still felt as anxious as a rookie each time he flew. Better suited to dreaming and the pursuit of knowledge, he was afraid of being unable to grasp the true reality of things, and each time he climbed down from his cockpit, after having exhausted his pilot, he always had the feeling he’d forgotten some crucial detail. The idea of death and danger didn’t affect him in the slightest, being so naive that he was utterly incapable of imagining his dreams might one day come to an end.

  They were flying right over the front lines. There was a sort of sooty corridor between the layer of fog and the ground, which their biplane sped into at full speed. They were flying so close to the ground they could see the hollow casings and the tops of parapets.


  “Fifteen metres at most,” Neuville thought, clenching his teeth. “We’ve got to pull up.”

  Yet his skilled and experienced pilot’s hand didn’t budge and they headed straight into enemy territory. They reconnoitred the terrain over the entire front between Soissons and Reims in this manner without seeing anything. In the end, Berthier reluctantly gave Neuville the signal to head back to the base.

  Thélis took great strides across the field, followed by Herbillon. The captain kept chewing on repressed expletives when a light suddenly made his face beam. A faint buzz, padded by the fog, could be heard coming from the direction of the Vesle river. The cadet couldn’t distinguish it from the sound of the wind, but looking at Thélis, he realized that the plane was on its way back.

  Marbot, Doc and all the comrades were already running over the field. The biplane burst through the mist.

  “They’re going to have a hard time landing,” Thélis observed, still worried.

  Yet on seeing how nimbly the plane was turning, and in awe of the pilot’s artful manoeuvring, the captain was moved to exclaim: “That Neuville really is an ace pilot, what guts!”

  By then the plane had landed and was rolling towards the hangar. Having reached the group of people waiting for him, Neuville climbed down from his cockpit. Berthier lingered in his, motionless. The captain shook him, laughing.

  “Come on you dreamer!”

  He stopped and raised the observer’s face. His eyes were closed. There was a tear in his flight suit, close to the shoulder.

  “Neuville!” Thélis cried. “Were you shot at from the ground?”

  “I don’t know, Captain, the engine was too loud for me to hear.”

  His voice was impassive, but he’d left his hood on so that his features could return to their usual coldness.

  They carefully pulled Berthier out of his cockpit. His breathing was faint. Judging by the anxious faces surrounding him, Jean could see all the affection that Berthier inspired in the others. Doc unbuttoned his flight suit, then his jacket, examined the wound, and then stood back up.