The Pimple was, to Assolant, just what all other hills were to him, topographical obstacles which might have to be attacked or defended. He saw the jumbled mess of no-man’s-land and the brown line of the German wire on its farther side. The slope of the hill looked easy to him, though he was quite aware that it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Silently, as he reviewed the various features of the terrain, he ticked off percentages of losses in his mind. He was pleased to find that his arithmetic left a substantial margin of numbers to overrun the crest of the hill and to establish themselves on the ground beyond. His optimism increased and, in proportion, the height and the reputation of the hill diminished. Given enough troops and ammunition, he could take anything. It was all a question of percentages. Men had to be killed, of course, sometimes lots of them. They absorbed bullets and shrapnel and by so doing made it possible for others to get through. Say, five per cent killed by their own barrage (a very generous allowance, that). Ten per cent lost in crossing no-man’s-land, and twenty per cent more in getting through the wire. That left sixty-five per cent, and the worst part of the job over, the most exposed part.
His reasoning was faulty and his percentages were pure guesswork, but he failed to notice his fallacies in the exuberance of winning a battle in his head. He even failed to notice them when they themselves provided a hint in the form of an idea, an idea which captivated him so that it displaced all others, blinded him to the very light of which it was itself the source. The idea was simply this: after the attack he would have the burial parties make detailed records on maps of exactly where all the dead had been found. He and his staff would then correlate the information, make a report and a critique of it, and send it on up the hierarchic ladder in the hope that it might eventually reach G.H.Q. and draw attention there to the fact that its author was a man of brains as well as of bayonets. General Assolant instantly became impatient for the attack to begin so that he could the sooner put his idea into practice. He was in no mood to remember that a battle is a thing of flux, and that you cannot measure flux by the debris that it leaves behind. Nor did it occur to him that while an operation might be, strategically, a neatly conceived plan, tactically it tended to become more and more a series of accidents.
“Zero hour will be at seven A.M.,” Assolant said, more as if he were talking to himself. “I picked that time because we can’t attack in the middle of the dawn bombardment and I don’t want to attack before it. This business will have to be done in daylight so that we can see what we’re doing. There’s this extra advantage, too. After the dawn bombardment the Boche will think all danger of an attack is over for the day. We’ll catch him off his guard.”
“I doubt it, sir,” said Dax. “From my own experience and from what I’ve been told, he’s never off his guard there. He knows the Pimple is as important to us as it is to him. His barrages respond to his signals almost instantly. And they’re well-registered.”
“Furthermore,” said Assolant, ignoring Dax’s remarks, “since the dawn bombardment seems a well-established custom around here, we can have the artillery cut the wire then.”
“Won’t the Boche notice that we’re doing it, sir?”
“What of it? He can’t repair it till after nightfall, and by that time it won’t be his any more.”
“Yes, but he can cover the gaps with machine guns. It’ll tell him just the points at which to expect us.”
“Well, the wire has to be cut. Would you rather have it done during the hurricane barrage before the attack? It’s only going to be a five-minute one, before starting to creep. This is a surprise attack, you know. He won’t be expecting it so soon after the other.”
Dax didn’t pretend to know what the Germans might or might not be expecting, but he did know that the problem of cutting the wire was always a perplexing one for him. If you cut the wire in advance, you were bound to warn the enemy at the same time that you were going to attack at those points within the next twenty-four hours. If you waited for the preliminary bombardment to do the job, you ran the risk of its not being done thoroughly, especially if the bombardment was to be, as in this case, a very short one.
“On the whole, sir, I think you’re right. Better to have the wire well cut in advance. Then the guns will all be free to attend to the Boche when we go over.”
“I’ll have the artillery do it quietly. I’ll have them drop occasional shells in the wire, as if they were falling short. They can make a few registering shots this afternoon. An officer can register them from this post. Which makes me think. This would be an excellent place for me to watch the attack from. Saint-Auban!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go down to Colonel Dax’s headquarters and call up Couderc. Tell him to arrange to have telephone wires strung to this post straight from my headquarters.” The view of the sloping side of the Pimple had given Assolant another idea, that of directing the attack in person from the observation post. “Wait a minute. Dax, you can fix me up with a line to the seventy-fives back of the hill here, can’t you?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Good. Tell Couderc, then, that after the hurricane barrage those two batteries back there, find out which they are, are to come under my personal command. They will carry on with the fire schedule as planned, but they must be ready to shell any targets which I may have for them during the advance.”
Assolant was delighted with the way things were shaping up, with the prospect of being able to select targets himself and to stand there and watch them being blown to pieces. This was going to be war as it should be fought. The terrain was just right for such an exploit, an exploit whose novelty, he now felt assured, would go a long way towards making his coveted promotion in the Legion of Honour a certainty. He went back to his telescope and looked at the Pimple again. When he turned to speak, Dax saw on his face an expression of mingled avidity and affection, the expression of a man who has just been contemplating a cherished trophy.
“I want to go down and inspect your front line.”
“Yes, sir. But I must warn you it’s a hot place.”
“I like hot places,” the general said, and it was no more than the truth.
Dax felt tired and gloomy as he conducted Assolant along the trenches leading to the front line. It was quite clear to him, depressingly so, that the hour or more he had spent at his headquarters pointing out the difficulties of the attack and the exhaustion of his troops to the general had been wasted. The discussion, moreover, had ended on a note of unpleasantness, a note which had only served to wound Assolant’s vanity and to solidify his stubborn refusal to consider the attack in any way a questionable one. Warming to the argument that his troops were in no condition for the job assigned to them, Dax had been led into an indiscretion which had given instantaneous offence. He had said:
“Furthermore, sir, this is really a corps operation, not a divisional one.”
The reply had been cold, forbidding:
“Please confine yourself to obeying the orders of your superiors, Colonel Dax, not to criticizing them.”
The sight of the Pimple from the observation post and of the ground between had intensified Dax’s misgivings. The general’s, if he had had any, seemed to have been dissipated by the same sight. “Rarely,” said Dax to himself, “does a soldier see with naked eyes. He is nearly always looking through lenses, lenses which are made of the insignia of his rank.”
The two men reached the front line and turned to their left. Picking their way through the traverses which plainly showed the effects of the dawn bombardment, they often came upon working parties digging out the avalanches of earth which had been tumbled into the trench. This earth was being carefully put into sand-bags and stored in the traverses, as if it were something precious. It was precious, at that, but the reason it was being stored was that soldiers didn’t advertise their position to the enemy by gaily tossing spadefuls of earth over the parapet. Here and there, however, where the parapet gaped too dangerously, sand-bags were thrown or push
ed gingerly into the openings. That the Germans also had observers, and that they were alert, was proved by the frequent bursts of machine-gun fire which these efforts to patch up the parapet drew.
Dax was not displeased by this intermittent fire. He hoped Assolant would notice how responsive, how well-aimed it was, and when he thought the general might not be noticing, he drew his attention to it. More than once they had to crouch with their backs to the damaged parapet and watch the little storm of dust spurt on the parados, a foot or so above their heads. Notwithstanding this, Assolant had been constantly jumping up on the firing-steps to take quick looks into no-man’s-land. To Dax, these quick looks seemed to be getting less and less quick.
“Please, sir,” he said, when he could restrain himself no longer, “that’s suicide. You’re putting me in an awkward position, for I’m more or less responsible for your safety, you know, and I can’t answer for it if you keep that up. You’ve seen how accurately they sweep our line. We have a periscope a little farther on and I’d feel easier if you’d wait to use that.”
In spite of his love of hot places, Assolant found that Dax’s urgings had a welcome sound to his ears, so welcome indeed, that he suddenly realized they might also be considered overdue.
The trench periscope was already set up on its tripod when the two men came around the corner. Dax got to it first, as he had wanted to do, and went to work raising it cautiously over the parapet. He searched with it for a while until he found what he had been expecting to find, then focused it and stepped away, offering it with a gesture to the general.
Assolant looked into the binoculars and failed to control the start which Dax had hoped to surprise from him by the sight he had prepared. The telescopic lenses seemed to spring the mass of bodies right into his face. The bodies were so tangled that most of them could not be distinguished one from the other. Hideous, distorted, and putrescent, they lay tumbled upon each other or hung in the wire in obscene attitudes, a shocking mound of human flesh, swollen and discoloured. Here and there the numerals of the Tirailleurs were plainly visible.
Assolant wheeled on Dax, incensed by the impertinence of a lesson which had at last got home to him, angry words crowding to the tip of his tongue . . .
There was a crash, a tinkle of glass, and the periscope toppled over, shattered.
“I shall not detain you any longer, colonel. Good day.”
Assolant walked off round the corner of the traverse alone.
Sergeant Picard, who had been in charge of Number 8 Post the night before, came into Captain Renouart’s dugout and saluted.
“Excuse me, sir. Is it true that we’re attacking in the morning? The rumour is all over the place.”
“Yes, it’s true, sergeant. And I want to see all the N.C.O.’s here after supper this evening. Pass the word around, will you?”
“Yes, sir. May I have permission then to visit the men? I’m off duty.”
“Certainly.”
The sergeant fumbled around in his pocket for a moment and brought out a long, narrow strip of purple cloth which was piped with grey. He kissed it and passed it over his head and it hung down in front to his knees.
“My son,” he said, and his voice seemed to have taken a gentler tone now that he was wearing the stole, “do you wish to make your peace with God?”
“Yes, father,” said the captain. “Where can we go?”
“Why not outside,” the sergeant said. He turned to the others in the dugout, half a dozen officers, runners, and orderlies, and added, “When the captain comes down, any of you who want to can come up. I shall wait.”
The sergeant sat on the firing-step and Captain Renouart knelt on the floor of the trench and began his confession. A soldier came into the traverse and hurried by without appearing to notice what was going on.
When he had received absolution, the captain got up, brushed his knees off and went back into the dugout.
The sergeant waited, sitting on the firing-step. He waited for ten minutes, then he too got up and turned to face the dugout entrance. He made the sign of the cross in its direction, silently gave the occupants a general absolution, then picked up his rifle and went off along the trench.
During the afternoon, Langlois was sent back to the regimental train with a message for the quartermaster. He delivered the message and went off to look for a friend of his, the corporal who acted as regimental carpenter. The corporal was not there, but the arrangement of his tools indicated that his absence was a temporary one. Langlois sat down on a box outside the corporal’s tent to wait for him and to smoke a cigarette. He still had in his pocket the letter which he had written his wife at the Café du Carrefour the day before, telling her he would be out of danger for a week or so. He now had the opportunity to post the letter, but he was unable to decide whether to do so or not. If he posted it and was afterwards killed, the war ministry’s notification would be a doubly cruel blow for his wife. On the other hand, suppose he posted it and came through all right. Then he would have done her a distinct kindness by anticipating his fate. Had he the right, though, to gamble with another person’s feelings? The reply to that was, yes, if he won the bet, no if he didn’t. He was right back where he started from.
His gaze wandered over the corporal’s interrupted work: a saw, a hammer, and nails and, piled neatly beside the improvised bench, strips of wood. The laths in one pile were longer than those in the other, and they were shaped to a point at one end only. “What’s he making?” Langlois asked himself. The answer eluded him until he had finished his cigarette. He tossed the butt away and followed it with his eyes to the place where it landed, just short of a box of stencils. Instantly the various parts of the corporal’s work fell together and stood completed in his mind—markers for graves.
Langlois got up and lighted another cigarette. He nursed the match while he pulled the letter out of his pocket with his free hand, then set fire to it, dropped it to the ground where he watched it flame, curl, and lie still.
The day passed quickly for most of the men of the 181st. There was a good deal of unostentatious activity going on in the sector, subterranean and semi-subterranean activity which could not be seen by enemy observers. It was the aim of everybody to preserve, so far as the Germans were concerned, an appearance of normality throughout a day which could not be quite normal. The eve of an attack always seemed to have a quality of newness, of exciting newness, no matter how often it might repeat itself.
One or two flights of aeroplanes crossed the German lines some distance to the north, wheeled to their right and returned to their own lines after having travelled an almost equal number of miles to the south. The Pimple sector had not, however, escaped attention from the observers or their cameras.
In the headquarters dugout, in the Tranchée des Zouaves, Adjutant Herbillon had spent most of the afternoon doing his paper work. The last thing he did before going up for a breath of the evening air was to make out the requisition for the next day’s rations for the regiment. This he did, easily enough and as a matter of routine, by taking the preceding day’s requisition and cutting it by fifty per cent.
An artillery officer, followed by a man who was stringing a wire, came to the observation post. For some reason he did not care for its location and so moved off to find a place better to his liking. There he registered a number of shots in the German wire, using a mysterious jargon of his own, then packed up and left, taking his wire with him. Everything he did was done with precision and self-assurance and, if he had to address himself to an infantry-man, even of higher rank than himself, there was a faint condescension in his manner.
Perhaps the reason the artillery officer had disliked the observation post was that it had, since the general’s visit, become an unusually active rendezvous. First, the regimental telephonists had arrived to install the telephone wire to the seventy-fives. They were not yet through with their work when other telephonists showed up, bringing the private line from divisional headquarters with them. The c
o-operation between these two groups was not an enthusiastic one. The owners of the divisional wire considered themselves entitled to priority, while those who actually possessed the priority were disinclined to yield it. Their squabbles showed every evidence of transforming themselves from oral to physical ones when regimental officers began arriving at the post in pairs to familiarize themselves with their objectives and boundaries, easy to identify now that the declining sun shed its light full on the slope of the hill opposite. The telephonists were, therefore, forced to compose their differences and to complete their work with a proper regard for correct behavior when in the presence of authority.
All this and other activity was merely a projection of the intense activity at the source—divisional headquarters. The energy spread from the source, fanwise, down the various communicating and dependent centres, losing some of its intenseness in direct ratio to the distance it travelled. Zero hour would reverse the flow of energy and the centre of activity would be shifted in one bound from the rear to the front, giving point to one of Assolant’s chief complaints against modern war: that a general was condemned to days of intensely busy preparation before an attack, but that once zero hour was at hand, he might just as well turn in and go to sleep.
Just at present, however, all was relatively relaxed and quiet in the ranks except for those detailed to fatigues, mainly the lugging up of small-arms ammunition, grenades, and explosive charges for dugouts. Men slept in funk-holes or dugouts, or sat in the entrances or in the traverses, tinkering with their equipment, delousing themselves, smoking, thinking, or talking.
Paths of Glory Page 11