Gabriel Chevallier - Fear

A little before the event is due to start the lieutenant leaves his shelter accompanied by his runner, his batman, some quartermasters and observers. A dozen flares are arranged in a semicircle next to the parapet. At exactly ten o’clock we light the touch-papers. The flares whistle up into the night, and turn into twelve flickering light bulbs, spreading a pale, luminous dome beneath them. A few flares answer us from the opposite lines. We stare in wonder at this new lunar landscape, and, after counting three, we all shout ‘Vive la France!’ But our shouts are lost in the ring of mountains looming in the darkness and have no echo. The flares die, and our artificial joy goes out with them. No sound come from the German trenches, silence and darkness reclaim the land. We’re disappointed. The party’s over…

The only onslaught in this sector is of paperwork. The men at the rear bombard us with notes, and not a day goes by without the company having to provide the battalion, always as a matter of urgency, with reports and inventories, on stocks of food and munitions, on supplies of clothing, on specialists suitable for one task or another, on fathers of a certain number of children, etc. So much, indeed, that the runners are always dashing about to keep up with all the nonsense.

Thus I have got to know everyone, and everyone knows me, asking me questions about what’s happening at the rear: a runner is also a vital source of information. Even the platoon leaders, who cannot leave the front line, hold me in respect and I sometimes help them prepare their reports. But the main benefit for me from this toing and froing, where the time we take isn’t rigidly controlled, is that it allows me to stop at different shelters and talk to the men. Their numbers swollen by successive reinforcements, the units are made up of men from every part of the country and every part of the front, most of them having been wounded and having belonged to other regiments. They all have their own memories. Through their stories, I get to know every aspect of the war, for it is their favourite topic of conversation, being the thing that has brought them together and filled their lives for the last two years.

Naturally Verdun comes up a lot. There the use of artillery, the accumulation of means of destruction, reached a level of intensity hitherto unknown, and everyone agrees it was a hell in which you lost your mind. With the help of their accounts, confused as they often are, I reconstitute the epic story of the regiment in this terrible sector. It’s a shameful epic, if, as historians will, you judge by the results. But a soldier judges from his experience under fire and knows that the conduct of a unit usually results from the situation in which it has been placed, and has little do with the courage of the combatants. This is what I learned.

Last April, the regiment was engaged in front of Malancourt, in a salient, a position ‘out in the open’, with no communication or support on the flanks, and it was kept in this position despite all the warnings from battalion leaders who had pointed out its vulnerability under concentrated fire. When the action started, two battalions stood to face the attack, but they were outflanked, overwhelmed by the masses of troops that swarmed out of the shell smoke, and taken prisoner, almost to a man. Only some support elements were able to fall back and these included one ambitious captain. This cunning officer, displaying considerable nerve in his presentation of the facts, estimated that no official enquiry would come and investigate what had happened on the ground. His report transformed our accidental defeat into a tale of defence to the last man, of the sacrifice made by a thousand soldiers, refusing to yield an inch of ground, and now buried in the ruins. This version, in perfect concordance with military doctrine, was immediately adopted by the colonel, who transmitted it to the division, adding a few amplifications of his own. For it is accepted, by some strange aberration, that a great loss of men proves the courage of those who command them — by virtue of that axiom of the military hierarchy which states that the valour of soldiers is created by the valour of their leaders, an axiom which does not have a converse form. So the colonel published a dispatch in which he exalted the nobility of the sacrifice and proclaimed his pride at commanding such valiant troops. The regiment would have therefore left Verdun crowned in glory, had a German aeroplane not had the poor taste to scatter leaflets on our lines in which the enemy command boasted of its success at Malancourt and added a list of the prisoners taken that day — several hundred men, officers as well as soldiers, all from that same regiment. There was no room for doubt: the sacrifice had not been consummated. Learning that these men, over whose loss tears were still being shed, were in fact alive enraged the colonel, who published a furious, scathing counter-dispatch.

The surrender of two battalions taken by surprise cast suspicion on a regiment that had been sent out into untenable positions. As someone had to be held responsible, the high command incriminated those who had disappeared, as they weren’t there to defend themselves. It was recalled that the regiment came from the Midi and absurd old grievances that dated back to the beginning of the war were used against it. This military vilification put it into the category of unreliable units which had displayed weakness under fire. And that has earned us a long stay in the Vosges, exiled from honour. The colonel, who sees his chances of promotion jeopardised, complains bitterly. But the men don’t hide their delight, and are in no hurry to regain ‘esteem’ which is so often deadly.

The survivors, men who have already endured dangers and torment beyond normal human comprehension, speak of Verdun with special horror. They say that when they got out they couldn’t eat properly for several days because their stomachs had been so knotted with fear, because everything filled them with disgust. They have remembered nothing from Verdun except terror and madness. Except one thing, which always brings a smile to their lips. They tell of a crossroads behind the lines where they saw three gendarmes who had been strung up from a tree by colonial troops as they passed through. This is the only happy memory they have retained from Verdun! It never crosses their minds that gendarmes are men like them. The hatred of the gendarme, so traditional in France, has been intensified in the war by the scorn — or envy — that soldiers feel towards the non-combatant. And gendarmes not only do not fight, but they force others to do so. Behind the lines they form a network of jailers who force us back into the prison of the war. It is also said that during the retreat of 1914 they killed stragglers who no longer had the strength to march. So the execution of a few gendarmes lifts the spirits and avenges the forced labour they have inflicted on the men. Everyone feels like that and I have not seen a single soldier show the slightest pity for the three hanged men. There’s no doubt that this ‘special operation’ has done more to boost the reputation of colonial troops that any brilliant military action would have done. Who can say whether it hasn’t indeed done a service to the High Command by getting the army of Verdun to laugh? Of course it’s immoral. So this is the occasion to use the famous phrase which has already excused so many other immoralities: It’s war!

A sergeant who has just arrived offers me another picture of Verdun. He describes a feat of arms:

‘I was a grenadier sergeant. One evening we take up position on the flank of a devastated slope. No trace of barbed wire, or shell holes, position of Boche unknown. Once we’d sorted ourselves out, the commander, Moricault, an old bloke with a big mouth, summoned me. I found him in his little dugout, smoking his pipe. Handing me a quarter-litre of brandy he says: “Ah, good, th-there you are, Simon. I have need of you. Have y’self a nip of this!”