Gabriel Chevallier - Fear

The man behind hands me his. I pass them on. Others follow, passed along from hand to hand.

The four of them keep going like a machine: shout, ignite, throw… Can this go on forever?

I am lifted up, deaf, blinded by a cloud of smoke, pierced by a sharp smell. Something is clawing at me, tearing me. I must be shouting without hearing myself.

A sudden shaft of clarity. ‘Your legs are blown off!’ For a start…

My body leaps and runs. The explosion has set it off like some machine. Behind me, someone is shouting, ‘faster!’ in a voice of pain and madness. Only then do I actually realise I am running.

Some part of my reason returns, amazed, and starts to check: ‘What are you running on?’ I think I must be running on the stumps of my legs… My reason tells me to look. I come to a halt in the trench while invisible men run past. Fearful of finding something horrible, my hand goes slowly down the length of my limbs: thighs, calves, shoes. I still have my two shoes!… So my legs must be intact! Joy, but such incomprehensible joy. Yet something has happened to me, I’ve been hit…

My reason continues. ‘You’re running away… Have you the right to run away?’ A new anxiety. I no longer know if I am hurt, or where. I examine my body, feeling it in the darkness. I discover that my right hand no longer works, the fingers don’t close. A warm liquid is running out of my wrist. ‘OK, good, I’m wounded, I can go now!’

This discovery calms me down and also makes me aware of pain. I groan quietly. I am dazed and dumbfounded.

I make it back to the first parapet where a gap has been opened to speed the advance. The captain is still there. No one stops me. Soldiers from my battalion, with their gleaming bayonets, turn their pale, frightened faces to see this, the first of the wounded. I recognise men from class 15. ‘Lucky bastard!’ they call out.

One comes forward. It’s Bernard. He relieves me of my kit.

‘Is it serious?’ he asks.

‘I have no idea.’

‘Is it going OK out there?’

‘I didn’t have the time to find out.’

‘Good luck!’

‘You too, mate!’

‘I only wish I was in your place.’

Their anxiety, their words, make me aware of my luck.

Now all I have to do is get to the rear, not get lost in the trenches, or hit by a shell… ‘Lucky bastard!’ I keep telling myself.

I’m starting to feel cold. My legs are stiffening and I’m limping on my right foot, which hurts. I move forward with difficulty through the network of dark, deserted trenches. We only passed through this sector at night and I don’t know it. And now night covers it once more, and stretches to infinity. All I can do is to follow the most heavily trodden paths, the ones where more troops have passed. So I concentrate on the state of the ground and make sure I keep my back to the flares which must mark the front. I am alone and running out of strength.

My watch tells me it’s three in the morning. I find a broken rifle to use as a stick to keep myself up. I feel more and more tired but if I stop to rest I don’t think I’ll get up again. I had the good fortune to be the first to get out of the attack, without the aid of stretcher-bearers. I must profit from this and avoid being caught in artillery fire. In fact the bombardments seem quite a way off, on the front lines.

Four o’clock. I still don’t know where I am or where I am heading and I still haven’t met anyone. Some shells fall nearby. I find myself on a sunken path. I hear footsteps, voices, and then bump into a supply party. The men give me something to drink, some coffee and brandy, point me in the direction of the village and the first-aid post beside it. They tell me it’ll take an hour to get there.

An hour for them but a lot longer for me. In the village I leave the trenches and take the road, to save time. It’s one of those typical Pas-de-Calais villages, stretching out in a long line, a mournful spot. And now there are shells coming down on my right, high explosives that go off above ground level, and shrapnel shells that throw rocks everywhere. If they get to me I cannot run or shelter; I am hobbling like a cripple. Now I am truly afraid, afraid I’ll be finished off…

A red cross. I go down into a cellar. A medical officer gives me some first aid, is amazed at the number of shrapnel wounds I have, but is reassuring. The bottom of my coat is shredded and my leggings ripped apart. I haven’t the strength left to move again. An orderly takes me on his back to the nearby clearing station. Daylight comes. It’s now after six o’clock.

Outside the clearing station there are two stretchers, one of them occupied. I lie down on the other. I immediately feel a sense of well-being and safety; the worst is over, now I only have to let myself go, people will look after me.

A young priest with a pleasant face comes over and asks us kindly if we want anything. I ask for a cigarette. Once it’s lit I give him a smile of gratitude. He spreads his arms in a somewhat liturgical gesture, and says:

‘Such a spirit of self-sacrifice in our soldiers. Even in pain they have the courage to laugh!’

While he’s off looking for something for us to drink, my wounded neighbour says:

‘The old padre hasn’t got a clue! Only reason we’re laughing is that we’re getting the hell out!’

We’re taken down into a cellar that is still empty, with supports in place to take three rows of stretchers, one on top of the other. I am amazed that I have got here, at my incredible adventure… But I’m tired out and soon fall into a heavy sleep.

When I wake up some hours later the cellar is full of wounded men, screaming. All the places are full. Their occupants cover the whole range of expression of pain and despair. Some feel death approaching and struggle with it fiercely with imprecations and wild gestures. Others on the contrary let their lives slip away in a thin stream of liquid, with muffled sighs. Others try to soothe their suffering with measured, hoarse groans. Others plead for someone to stop their pain; others still beg to be finished off. Some call for help from beings we do not know. Some in their delirium are still fighting, uttering inhuman battle cries. Others confront us with their suffering and blame us for doing nothing for them. Some call upon God; some curse him, insult him, tell him to intervene if he is all-powerful.

To my left I recognise the young sub-lieutenant who led our section. From his flaccid mouth comes the monotonous, feeble cry of a little child. He is dying. He was a decent lad, and everyone liked him.

There isn’t enough room. The most unfortunate are laid out on the ground, muddy lumps crowned with haggard faces, bearing that terrible expression of resignation that pain brings with it. They look like beaten dogs. Holding their shattered limbs, they intone a mournful chant that rises up from the depths of their flesh. One has a broken jaw hanging down that he dares not touch. The hideous hole of his mouth, blocked by an enormous tongue, is a well of thick blood. A man who has been blinded, walled up behind the bandage around his face, raises his head to heaven in the hope of catching some faint glimmer of light through the loophole of his eye sockets then slumps back down sadly into the darkness of his cell. He gropes around in the emptiness like someone scrabbling at the damp, slippery walls of a dungeon. A third has lost both his hands, the hands of a farmer or a worker, his tools, his means of earning a living; once he would have said, proclaiming his independence: ‘When a man has two good, strong hands he’ll always find work.’ And now they are not even there to help him in his pain, to meet that most basic, habitual need of bringing them to the place that hurts, which they should hold, which they should calm. No hands to wring, no hands to clench, no hands to pray. Never again will he be able to touch . It occurs to me then that this is perhaps the most precious of all the senses.