Gabriel Chevallier - Fear

Then I think of the words of Baboin: ‘Don’t try to be too clever…’ Today I tried to be clever, and, if I want ‘to come back’ it would be a good idea not to give in to such impulses too often…

There is a growing rumour that a major German offensive is soon coming, but no one knows where. The offensive is a direct consequence of the Russians’ withdrawal which has freed up a lot of enemy troops. It is said that our command is ready for it and has taken the necessary steps.

The army has placed its confidence in General Pétain, who has shown some concern for the troops’ welfare. He has a reputation for not wanting to squander the lives of his men. After the carnage organised by Nivelle and Mangin, generally considered here as bloodthirsty monsters, the army needed reassurance. We know that the two victorious operations led by the new commander-in-chief, at the Chemin des Dames and Verdun, were wisely conducted, with adequate matériel. Pétain has understood that this is a war of weaponry and that reserves are not inexhaustible. Unfortunately, he came too late.

The prospect of great battles ahead is enough to trouble us. But being attacked does not frighten us any more than an offensive led by us. On the contrary we estimate that it is prudent to wait. Selfishly enough, we hope that this business will not start where we are.

The days are bright. Now every night we hear droning in the sky. German aeroplanes are flying over the lines above us, on their way to bomb Paris. We lack the means to block their passage. But we wave to the invisible aviators:

‘The patriots are going to catch it!’

‘It might do them some good. What civilians need is a few hours of bombs falling smack on their bloody heads!’

‘Yeah, then see if they still shout “never surrender”!’

‘What’s really stupid is destroying ancient monuments.’

‘Oh, right, that’s a good one! Isn’t your hide worth a monument? You think anyone gives a damn if you’re blown to buggery?’

‘Let the old Parisians have a taste of it for once!’

‘It’d be a good laugh if they dropped a big one right on the Ministry of War!’

‘Shut your mouth, you defeatist!’

‘Listen to this bloody turncoat! You little twerp, you yellow-belly tin soldier!’

‘The first thing to do in war,’ says Patard, the artillery telephonist, ‘is destroy. That way it’s over quicker.’

That is his guiding principle and he acts on it. Whatever is intact, he smashes up; whatever is smashed up he finishes off; and whatever isn’t guarded, he steals. His pockets are full of strange objects. He is the biggest filch anyone has ever seen, the terror of kitchens, canteens, and shops. His most famous exploit is to have ‘pinched’ the breeches and boots of his divisional general. It happened at the Chemin des Dames. At the back of a dugout, Patard was busy making imitation police headgear that he had the notion of selling to the men of his regiment. But he needed some braid to decorate the caps. In order to obtain it, he offered to go to the division during a bombardment to exchange a piece of broken equipment. It was while he was poking about down there that he came across the fine linen breeches hanging from a nail, red ones, exactly the colour he needed. Since a pair of boots was standing alongside, he took them as well, and made his way back to the trenches. The general made an almighty fuss, but never suspected that his breeches, cut into fine strips, had ended up on the heads of the gunners and that he was saluting them every time he encountered his men. Having cut off the shoes and changed the colour of the ‘aviator’ boots, Patard fashioned himself a pair of gaiters, with which he shamelessly declared himself quite enchanted: ‘The general certainly didn’t rob me with these, old chap!’

His time at Verdun, accompanied by his pal Oripot, was the occasion for another remarkable achievement. This is how he tells it:

‘So, we turn up at the front with the sarge and all our clobber, somewhere near Vaux. The sarge was a decent bloke but the sector was a dump: craters all over the place, shells raining down, and all the brass hiding underground. “OK,” I says to the sarge, “it ain’t worth the trouble of unwinding the phone line just so it’ll get cut, is it?” “Do what you like,” he says. “All right then,” I says, “I’ll go for a wander with Oripot and find us a bit of nourishment.” “What you going to find?” he says. “There’s always something to find,” I tells him. After sniffing around this desert for a bit we come across a sort of vault at the back of the Vaux fortress, which was a food store, absolutely stuffed with nosh of every kind, all you could wish for. But there was no way of sneaking in. The door was guarded by a pair of territorials, real sticklers. “What do you want?” they asks me. “A bit of grub, eh!” “You got a docket?” “No,” I says. “You gotta have a docket!” “What docket?” They explains to me how it works. “Right,” says I, “I’ll go and get one of these dockets!” Back we go to the sarge and tell him the set-up. “But I can’t sign one of those!” he says. (You always get a few dopes even among the educated.) “You just have to sign it as Chuzac!” That was the name of a former group officer who had got on the wrong end of a mortar shell. We go back to the territorials with a docket for food for twenty-five lads. Oh, fellers, you wouldn’t believe it! Five big cans full of gniole and kilos of chocolate, and jams, and meths for the camp stove, and you name it! We found ourselves a nice deep shell-hole where we melted the chocolate in the brandy. In twenty-four hours we’d drained all five cans. Then back we go to the two codgers with another docket, and another, and another, till it was all over. “You haven’t suffered any losses, then?” asks the territorials. “We’re in a safe spot!” I tells them. Stupid old buggers!’

‘But wasn’t there fighting going on around you?’

‘That I couldn’t tell you. I suppose so, but I didn’t see anything. We weren’t sober for the whole three weeks in our crater. We ate and drank our way through eight hundred francs.’

‘How’s that?’

‘The regiment got the bill a month later. The territorials had sent the dockets on up to the commissariat. It seems the nosh had to be paid for.’

‘Was there any trouble?’

‘You bet there was. They had themselves an inquiry. But what you gonna do with an inquiry at Verdun! They couldn’t suppose that two blokes had treated themselves to eight hundred francs’ worth of brandy and chocolate in three weeks. You can say only two, because the sarge didn’t have much.’

‘Life was cushy at Verdun, believe you me!’ declares Oripot.

‘The funniest thing,’ Pacard goes on, ‘is Oripot’s brother, who’s a priest…’

‘He’s a decent lad!’ exclaims Oripot.

‘Decent he may be, but he’s still a twat! He was writing to this sod here, telling him you mustn’t drink too much, think of your family. I was reading his letters cos it’s easier to see when he’s asleep… Mustn’t drink, says his brother. Damn it! If you don’t get pissed, what’s the point of having a war?’

One morning at reveille, the front starts to growl fiercely on our left, beside Chauny. We recognise the thunder, the hammering that the earth transmits like a conductor and which passes through the air in mournful waves. Something very bad is going on and it isn’t far away.

We are not getting any information. The rumbling goes on all day and starts again the next morning. We don’t get any letters or newspapers, always a bad sign.

On the third day we learn that the German offensive has broken through the British front. We learn that artillery is firing on Paris. The battle is turning to a disaster. But optimistic informants claim that the retreat is a trap laid for the Germans in order to ‘thrash’ them in open country. For what it is worth, we make do with this rumour and wait to hear more.