The drone of the voice reading came to an end abruptly.
The drums were ruffled again.
“Let justice take its course!” said a loud, clear voice.
There was some shifting around, the colonel and the adjutant doing an about-face. The regimental sergeant-major walked over to where the warrant-officer in command of the firing-squads was posted off their flank and at right angles to them. Picard, the priest, standing behind this man, saw that Boulanger was unfastening his pistol holster. The warrant-officer drew his sword and held it above his head. A tassel dangled from the hilt. He gave an order. Thirty-six rifles were leveled.
“Take aim!”
The rifles steadied.
“Fire!”
Down flashed the sword. The volley crashed out, smoke spurted, thirty-six shoulders recoiled slightly in unison. The smoke drifted sideways, then quickly vanished.
Already the rigid bodies at the posts were beginning to relax imperceptibly.
Didier’s stretcher began to move, stealthily—so it seemed at first—then toppled over to the left and fell with him under it. Didier looked like a pack animal that had collapsed and perished under the weight of its burden.
Férol sank slowly too as the parted ropes slowly yielded their support. He fell forward, providing and at the same time following the line of his own dripping blood, fell to his knees. His head, unrecognizable now, went down and struck the earth. For a moment he was poised like a Mohammedan at prayer, then his equilibrium left him and he tumbled into a heap.
One bullet had struck Langlois in the leg and he began to sag in that direction. His ropes had not been cleanly cut by the volley which had ripped through his intestines and lungs and he was left dangling there, his arms caught to the post. He wavered a little, grotesque and pitiable, as if pleading to be released, then slipped a little farther down so that he seemed to be abjectly embracing and imploring his post.
Sergeant-Major Boulanger was coming along the hideous line, pistol in hand. He had to roll the stretcher over before he could find Didier’s ear, put the muzzle to it and give him the coup de grâce. Férol was easier to manage but his ear more difficult to find. Boulanger bent down and sent a shot somewhere into that head. He could not tell exactly where because two rifle bullets had passed through it first.
It must be said of Boulanger that he had some instinct for the decency of things, for, when he came to Langlois, his first thought and act was to free him from the shocking and abject pose he was in before putting an end to any life that might still be clinging to him. His first shot was, therefore, one that deftly cut the rope and let the body fall away from the post to the ground. The next shot went into a brain which was already dead.
NOTE
All the characters, units, and places mentioned in this book are fictitious.
However, if the reader asks, “Did such things really happen?” the author answers, “Yes,” and refers him to the following sources which suggested the story: Les crimes des conseils de guerre, by R.-G. Réau; Les fusillés pour l’exemple, by J. Galtier-Boissière and Daniel de Fer-don; Les dessous de la guerre révélés par les comités secrets and Images secretes de la guerre, by Paul Allard; a special dispatch to The New York Times of July 2, 1934, which appeared under this headline: “FRENCH ACQUIT 5 SHOT FOR MUTINY IN 1915; WIDOWS OF TWO WIN AWARDS OF 7 CENTS EACH”; and Le fusillé, by Blanche Maupas, one of the widows who obtained exoneration of her husband’s memory and who was awarded damages of one franc.
Appendix
SELECTIONS FROM THE DIARY OF HUMPHREY COBB (OCTOBER 1917 TO NOVEMBER 1918)
Annotated by Humphrey Cobb
Monday, October 1, 1917. Inspected by Brigadier General Landry. Medical inspection and dental parade. Downtown in evening. Beautiful moonlight.
At this time I belonged to the 23rd Canadian Reserve Battalion, stationed at Shoreham Camp. This was a depot battalion from which drafts of recruits and rehabilitated wounded men were sent to France. It was commanded by “Twenty-eight-day” Fisher, who was a first class son of a bitch. Colonel Fisher’s nickname was due to his habit of handing out twenty-eight days in the guardhouse whenever he could. It was the maximum punishment which a colonel could inflict.
Sunday, October 21. Mass at Guoy-Servins. Women in black. Walked to Mount St. Eloie.
Church parades went on as usual on Sundays, almost up as far as the support lines, and I was a Roman Catholic. I went through with the mumbo-jumbo, although I think my religious feeling had vanished. Anyway, it was under a severe strain at that time. It was difficult to reconcile an Almighty and All Merciful and Good God with what was going on around me. There was something fishy about it, and I felt it. “Women in black.” All the women in France seemed to me to be in black, enough to cause me to make a note of it.
Tuesday, January 1, 1918. No. 4 Company refused to go on parade so parades were canceled. Talking to Harrison and Hemming. Made no resolutions as it would be impossible to keep them in the army. I wonder what will happen this year. 1917 was full enough. Wrote letters. Terrific argument about nationalities.
Why No. 4 Company refused to go on parade, I do not now remember. All I know is that we were all in complete sympathy with the movement. On this rest period we were billeted in huts which were northeast of Chateau de la Haie, over near the Guoy-Ablain-Saint-Nazaire road. I remember we were short of fuel and that it was damn cold. We burned hard tack biscuits and they made a very fine fire when we could get them. It was about this time that Dixon (more of him later) swiped Von Berg’s boots and sold them for Cognac. He came in stinko and, later on in the night, when he had to piss, he missed the door out of the hut and filled up another fellow’s boots. These were the only symptoms of foot fetishism that Dixon displayed, however.
Harrison was a Jew from Montreal. I had known him at Shoreham. He was a bright fellow and I had many discussions and a couple of drunks with him. He is the Charles Yale Harrison who wrote Generals Die in Bed—a good book of life in the Canadian Corps in the manner that All Quiet represented life in the ranks of the German army.
January 29. Parade. 12-inch gun firing and plane registering. Letter from B.R.
This gun was a couple of hundred feet back of our billet, and I was interested in watching its operations in conjunction with an observation plane. Mysterious business—signals arriving out of the ether, the officer making his calculations, giving orders; the gunners twirling wheels, ramming the shell and the charge home—“Ready, Sir!” Pause. “Fire!” Bang! And away went the shell, whinnying and shuddering up into the sky to its vanishing point. Long pause. Then to the wireless man: “Two hundred yards short, Sir!” or “Direct hit, Sir!” It was a gorgeous day, and while I watched that gun firing I forgot that it would probably draw a load of German cast iron down on our billets sometime.
January 31. Colder. Left Bully-Grenay 5:30 (p.m.), arrived dugout 8:30. One hell of an overland walk. Machine guns pretty close. Scouts went out. Young killed by bomb. Good Christ is it just. Dreamed he was alive again.
We were now in the line again, in trenches on Hill 70, in front of Loos. The overland walk meant that we did not use the communication trenches for going up. The frontline was on the forward slope of the hill facing the Germans. We approached it up the rear slope and seldom used the communication trenches until right back of the brow of the hill as we were out of the line of direct fire. But we were not out of the line of indirect fire, and Fritz had the back slope of the hill well registered by fixed machine guns and he swept that area and its trails thoroughly all night long. We lost quite a few men there.
What happened to Young, no one ever knew for sure. Some thought a Fritz potato masher had landed on his respirator and that it had exploded just as he was brushing it off. Evidence: Face blown in and right hand blown off. It was also a question whether it had been a German bomb at all. The patrol had gone out in two sections, one on the right, the other on the left of our front. Both reported a skirmish with a German patrol. It was soft-ped
aled, but the notion was pretty strong that the two sections had met and fought each other in the dark. Anyway that was the last time any of our patrols went out in two sections.
The reason, I think, I was so affected by Young’s death was that he was the first fellow whom I knew pretty well and rather liked to get it.
February 1. Hell of a sensation after Young’s unexpected death. Took his boots off. Rather an unpleasant job.
“Unexpected death”—a queer phrase to use under the circumstances. What it means, I suppose, is that the death of someone you know well always provokes a sense of outrage in you. It’s all right for the rest of them to get it, but a personal friend—that’s quite another matter.
The incident of the boots was sheer bravado on my part. I wanted to show them that although I was the youngest and newest in the section, I was tough for all that. Young had been killed just outside the German wire, and when the firing had died down the rest of the patrol went back and dragged his body in—a grueling job over the chewed-up icy ground and through our own wire. They brought him down to the second line, where our dugout was, and stretched him out in a blanket along the parapet. In the dugout there was a lot of hemming and hawing about the boots he was wearing. These were a fine pair of Canadian trapper’s knee boots, and why let the lousy burying party get them? We were his pals, and so on. Still, there was some hesitation about who would go up and peel them off. So I said I would. I swung his body around so it was at right angles to the trench with the feet slanting down toward me. Then I started to work unlacing them. Young had already stiffened, so I had a hell of a job getting them off. Finally it was done and, as he was too heavy for me, I left him as he was, with his feet sticking into the trench so that they would kick you in the face as you went by. But then nobody would take the damned boots, although there were three or four fellows whom they fitted. Something about “dead man’s boots.” And I was stuck with them. In the end, I gave them to a civilian Frenchman at Bully-Grenay, and two years later, when I revisited the place after the war, they were the first things I saw when I tramped into the town.
Later that night I went out for a visit to the latrine. Young had slipped down. In the flicker of the star shells I came upon this figure, wrapped in a blanket, headless, standing in the trench.
February 23. Still on trail of German spy and bottle of Scotch. Found neither. Goddamn the luck. Postponed going to the school till tomorrow.
The spy, I remember, was a toothless individual with a strange accent, possibly due to his toothlessness, who hung around the estaminet connected with our billet for a while. He was in a British uniform but wore no insignia whatever. In general he acted queerly. And the idea was not as absurd as it may sound, for we were right in the middle of a mining area of France and the galleries stretched for miles underground, some of them clear over into the German lines. I never did find out what happened to my spy, but I felt pretty pleased with myself for being on the job.
March 29. Up 3:00 a.m. March to Arras 12 kilometers. Into cave. Flopped again and slept. Good feed. Found blankets, bacon, green envelopes. Left in a hurry. On post 7:309:30. Slept.
I shall never forget that march into Arras, nor the days that followed it. It was a nightmare all right. The Germans had made a stab at Arras. The caves, chalk ones, were in the outskirts of the town on the German side and the troops that had been there—Imperials—had beat it, leaving us the above-listed luxuries. The civilians had hurried out of the town, leaving everything wide open. There had evidently been a panic. Our fellows came in there and found complete chaos. Soon other divisions and artillery came pouring in, the artillery merely wheeling their guns into position and starting firing without waiting to dig emplacements. But for two or three days I am sure Fritz could have walked right through the place. For the first day we were too dead beat to put up a fight; for the next couple of days we were too drunk from the civilian wine stores left knocking about. And besides, there was a good-sized gap in the line. And every day at dawn we expected the avalanche of men and steel, and we had no defense works behind which to meet it. Let me go over the top any day rather than stand and let the enemy give it to me in the teeth, when and where he goddamn pleases.
March 31. Easter Sunday. Whizbangs 3 feet over my head. Knocked down and buried. Damn close and good shake-up.
One of these shells was a dud, so it interested me to dope out just how close it had been. What actually happened I shall never know. I was standing in a piece of sawed-off trench, looking away from the line, my rifle leaning against the earth beside me. The next thing I knew I was about 10 feet from my rifle, buried up to the armpits. My rifle looked as if lightning had struck it. Dead silence. Ten minutes later the fellow who was with me came sneaking around a hillock as if he were stalking deer. We hunted out a better hole and we went to it.
April 5. Up for bombs. Shell 15 yards away. Damn good scare and bit the dust hard. Going up the line tonight. Everybody’s wind up. Lost on way in the dark. Shells damn close. Floundering in mud. Wet and plastered with mud and all in. Gas sentry. Letter from Mother.
That night I really did give up. We wandered around in circles for several hours, through wire, shell holes, and slimy, slippery mud. Time and again I fell into shell holes full of water. I was caked with mud, exhausted by rage and exasperated to the point of quitting. For about the fifteenth time—literally—I tumbled, sprawling into a shell hole. “Get out of there and come on!” bawled Sergeant MacDonald against the uproar of the night bombardment. I’ve forgotten what I said. This is the substance of it: “To hell with it. Fuck everything. You don’t know where you’re going, and I don’t care. I’m done for. I’m not going another step. Here I am, and here I stay. Let the Heinies come. I don’t give a damn. I’m absolutely all in and I’m not going to move another step. I’ll wait till daylight and find you then, if I’m still alive.”
April 27. Raid pulled off 1:00 a.m. 22 prisoners. Dixon killed and Jones. Great success. Aven of 188th Regiment, I Battalion. Letters from Mother and Arthur.
The Scouts’ job in this and other raids was to reconnoiter No Man’s Land and the German wire. The points of entry were chosen and the artillery registered on the wire as inconspicuously as possible. On the night of the raid, the raiding parties from the companies blackened their faces, removed all identification marks, and assembled at the places fixed in the frontline. The Scouts then led the raiding parties out into No Man’s Land opposite the places in the wire through which they were to go. At Zero Hour a box barrage was put down on the sector to be raided, theoretically cutting it off from its support line, while other guns fired on the wire and blew holes through it. Not much of this could be done beforehand because it would have given the raid away. After a certain number of minutes the wire barrage lifted and changed to harassing fire. The box barrage continued with intensity. It was then that the raiding parties went through the wire and into the German trench. There were, I think, four parties in this raid, each having its own territory to clean up. All this had been practiced back of the line on ground marked out to scale with tapes in exact reproduction of the German positions. The raid was all over in about half an hour. On the right everything went according to plan. On the left, however, Lt. McKean ran into some unexpected trouble and it was there that Dixon was killed. McKean had to subdue two machine gun posts—and he did it practically singlehanded. Later he got the Victoria Cross for this exploit. McKean was the Scout officer and a decent egg. He was a slight, pale-faced, boyish-looking fellow who had been a schoolteacher. A more frail, less warlike person was hard to imagine—but he had guts and proved it many a time. He had risen from the ranks where he had got the Military Medal. After his V.C. he chalked up a Military Cross and Bar and then got what he probably was the most pleased with—a nice “blighty” through the leg. Losing only two of our men in a raid like that showed damned good work all round, and Jones blew himself up by sticking an ammonal tube into a funk hole instead of a dugout, and waiting to make sure that it wen
t off. No decorations were given to the Scouts on whom the whole responsibility for the raid rested—except McKean. 2 Military Crosses, 2 Distinguished Conduct Medals, and 5 Military Medals were dished out to the others.
August 7. The day of “If.” Shelled on assembling. Slept out in open in cornfield. In p.m. operations discussion. Shells again. Up the line at night ready for Zero Hour.
Here we were on what Ludendorff called “the black day of the German army in the history of this war”—or, rather, on the eve of it. “The day of ‘If’” I called it, because the “operations discussions” were punctuated with that word: “If it rains . . . If the artillery . . . If the tanks . . . and, above all, If Fritz does or does not do so and so.”
We, the Intelligence Section of the 14th Canadian Infantry Battalion, spent the day in an orchard of the village of Cachy, east and a little south of Amiens. Around us was the Canadian Corps; on our left the Australian Corps and to our right the First French Army. Yet the lazy summer day droned on and not a soldier was in sight. Nor was there any sign of the 400 tanks and the 2,000 guns and the rest of that unbelievable congestion which had filled the roads and trails the night before. Everything was out of sight, hidden in woods, in the tall wheat or in folds in the ground. Shells dropped casually here and there. A machine gun would rattle lazily and spasmodically in the distance. Planes and bees buzzed around, making a drowsy noise. We loafed around in the high grass of that orchard. All was certainly quiet on the western front around there.
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