My .75: Reminiscences of a Gunner of a .75m/m Battery in 1914 — Context and Discussion

silence when the Captain gave the order, in clear resonant tones:

Like an echo there rose from the crowd a loud hurrah, through which I nevertheless distinctly heard two heartrending sobs.

Never was there a brighter August day. The limber-boxes and gun-wheels, the straps and hooks of the harness--even the muzzles of the guns themselves--were festooned with flowers and ribbons, the bright hues of which were blended together in a harmony of colour against the iron-grey background of the guns.

This morning the Captain, Bernard de Brisoult, said to us:

"Take the flowers they offer you, and decorate your guns with them. They are the only send-off the women can give you. And, whatever you do, keep calm! Then they'll be much braver when you go off."

The streets, through which we proceeded at a walking pace, were gay with flags and bunting. The departure of the soldiers, many of whom would never return, was attended with a degree of composure and good order which was really admirable. The gunners, sitting motionless on the limber-boxes or walking beside the horses, smiled and laughed merrily as the women by the wayside waved them farewell. We felt moved, of course, but it was rather the emotion of the crowd in the street which affected us than any feeling born in our inner selves.

Entraining was effected easily and expeditiously. As it was very hot, the gunners hoisting the material on to the trucks had discarded their vests, and, with red faces, their shoulders to the gun-wheels, they united their efforts whenever the gun-commanders gave the word "Together!" which was echoed down the whole length of the train. The drivers had great difficulty in getting their teams into the boxes. The old battery horses were used to the manoeuvre, but the commandeered animals resisted obstinately. Girths were slung round them, two by two, and they were hauled by force on to the foot-bridges. Once in the vans they had to be turned round and backed into position so that four could stand on each side. This operation was accompanied by a deafening din of iron-shod hoofs on the wooden floors and partitions. The horses once safely installed and secured face to face in their places by picket-lines, the stable-pickets began to arrange the harness and forage in the space between the two lines.

Just as the train was starting I was attacked by a sort of dizziness. Something in my chest seemed to snap, and I felt almost choked by a sudden feeling of weakness and fear. Should I ever come back? Yes! I felt sure of it! And yet, I wonder why I felt so sure!

CONNERRÉ-BEILLÉ. I am sitting on a truss of hay between my eight horses. At every moment, in spite of my whip, they bite at the forage and nearly pull away my seat. The door of the van is opened wide on the sunny country.

The train rumbled on for fifteen to eighteen hours. A long journey like this is best passed as a stable-guard. I made myself comfortable on some shaken-up hay, and, cushioning my head in a well-padded saddle, eventually fell asleep.

The horses, almost all of which were suffering from strangles, slobbered and sneezed over me, and eventually woke me up. It was already day. A thick summer mist was floating over the fields at a man's height from the ground. The sun, breaking through it in places, lit up myriads of shimmering grass-blades, dripping with dew.

Sitting at the open doors of the vans, their legs dangling over the side, the gunners watched the country flit past. The empty trains passing us in the opposite direction frightened the horses, which neighed and whinnied. No one--not even our officers--knew whither we were bound, and the engine-driver himself said that he didn't know, but that he was to receive orders on the way.

The Territorials guarding the line greeted us as we passed by holding out their rifles at arm's length. We waved our whips in answer.

"Good luck to you, boys!"

RHEIMS. First the canal, then a glimpse of the town, and then open country again, with fields of ripe corn yellow in the morning sun. There were only a few sheaves to be seen. The crops were standing almost everywhere, motionless in the heat, casting golden lights on the gently rolling hills and quiet beauty of the countryside. I felt as though I could not see enough of it. In a few days, perhaps, I should no longer be able to see the splendour of the sun-kissed corn and the gorgeous mantle it throws over the symmetrical slopes of the harvest-land like a drapery of old lace lightly shrouding a graceful Greek form.

The train rolled slowly on towards Verdun. In each village, from the gardens adjoining the railway-line, girls and children threw kisses to us. They threw flowers, too, and, whenever the train stopped, brought us drinks.

It was already dusk when, after passing the interminable sidings and platforms of Verdun, with its huge bakeries installed under green awnings, the train finally came to a standstill at Charny. We had been travelling for more than thirty hours. Before we had finished detraining it was quite dark.

We were crossing the Meuse. The sun had gone down and the river, winding its way between its reedy banks and marshy islands in the afterglow of the crimson western sky, looked as though it was running with blood. To-morrow, or perhaps the day after, the appearance may have become reality. I do not know why these blood-red reflections in the water affected me so much as this last moment of the evening, but so it was.

Night fell--a clear night, in which I uneasily sought for searchlights among the stars. By the wayside, in one of the army cattle parks, countless herds lay sleeping. The country would have been absolutely still and silent had it not been for the muffled rumble of our column as we marched along. The last reflections of the daylight and the first beams of the moon, just rising in the east, were welded together in a weird, diffused light.

We were marching eastwards, and, as the road skirted the dark mass of a steep hill, the moon rose clear ahead over the gloomy pine-trees, which stood out like silhouettes on the horizon. Soon the battery entered a dark wood, where the drivers had difficulty in finding the way. Nobody spoke. Occasionally the moon peeped through the trees, and showed up a horseman. It almost seemed as if the yellow light threw off a palpable golden powder; the brasswork of the equipment and the tin mugs of the men shone as though they were gilded. One man passed, then another, and the shadows, clear cut on the road, seemed to form part of the silhouettes of the horsemen and magnify them. Of the rest of the column, lost in the night of the forest, nothing could be seen.

We had been told that the enemy was not far off, somewhere in the plain stretching beyond the hills. At every cross-roads we were afraid lest we should take the wrong turning and find ourselves in the German lines. Besides, this first march of the campaign, at night-time, had something uncanny about it which scared us a little in spite of ourselves.

The column came to a halt just outside a village. Troops were camping on both sides of the road, and lower down, in one of the fields a gloomy artillery park had been formed. Despite the hour--nearly midnight--the heat was oppressive, and the stars were lightly veiled by a thin mist. The bivouac fires cast flickering shadows of soldiers in varying stages of undress, some of them naked to the waist.

A little farther on, in a meadow where the 10th Battery was already encamped for the night--men and horses lying in the damp grass--we parked our guns.

We had to lie on the bare ground, and between drivers and gunners a competition in cunning at once arose as to who was to have the horse-cloths. Most of the men stretched themselves out under the ammunition wagons and guns, where the dampness of the night was less penetrating. But I was still on stable duty, and had to keep watch on the horses, which were tied side by side to a picket-line stretched between two stakes. The animals not only kicked and bit each other, but their collars kept getting loose, and one or two, succeeding in throwing them off, ambled off into the fields. I spent the night in wild chases. One little black mare in particular led me a dance for several hours, and I only caught her at last by rustling some oats in the bottom of a nose-bag.

Grasping my whip, and wet up to the knees with dew, I had surely fulfilled my task as stable-picket conscientiously.

At 3 a.m. the grey shadow of a dirigible passed overhead beneath the stars. Friend or enemy?

At daybreak the park began to stir. Men draped in their rugs emerged from between the gun-wheels and from underneath the limbers and stretched themselves, yawning. We set about digging hearths and fetching wood and water, and before long coffee was steaming in the camp kettles.

On the Verdun road infantry regiments--off to the firing-line no doubt--were already defiling, the long red-and-blue column rippling like the back of a huge caterpillar. The battalions were hid, for a moment, by the cottages and trees of the village. But farther ahead, on the corn-clad slopes of the hills, one could just distinguish, in spite of the distance, the movements of troops marching on the thin white ribbon of a road.

We waited for the order to harness.

The meadow in which we had camped for the night sloped down, on the one side, into marshy ground watered by a stream issuing from a mill and running through the rank grass, and was bounded on the other by a rampart of wheat-sheaves. To the east a high hill of symmetrical contour, covered with yellow barley and tawny wheat, gave one the impression of a golden mountain shining in the sun.

Behind the horses tied together in parallel lines the harness made black patches in the grass. Some of us had slept there under our rugs. Saddles, propped up on their pommels, served as pillows to the men, who, half undressed, with bare chests, slept soundly. I would willingly have slept too, for I was tired out with running about all night, but I could not help thinking of my mother, and of the anxiety the news of the hecatombs of Alsace must have caused her. She had no idea of my whereabouts and would be certain to think that I should be in the thick of any fighting in progress.

On the road columns of artillery succeeded the regiments of the line. It was nine o'clock, but so far no sound of battle had yet reached us. A driver, shaking his rug, woke me, and I started up. In my turn I roused Déprez, who was sleeping near me. Was it the guns? No, not yet.

Officials news came that the Alsace army, whose headquarters were at Mulhouse, had been defeated by the French in a great battle at Altkirch. The beginning of the Revenge!... But there was talk of fifty thousand dead....

Held spellbound by a sort of magnetic fascination Déprez and I riveted our gaze on the lofty line of hills to the east which stood between us and Destiny. Yonder were others like ourselves, masses of men in the plains and in the woods, men who would kill us if we did not kill them.

Overcome by the heat, I allowed my thoughts to dwell on these and similar reflections, and in vain endeavoured to banish from my mind the horrible picture of the fifty thousand men lying dead on the fields of Alsace. Eventually I fell asleep.

They have just killed, by means of a revolver-shot behind the ear, a horse which had broken its leg. The carcass is going to be cut up, and the best portions distributed among the battery detachments. There seems no likelihood of going into action to-day.

The soup-kettles had been put on the fires. On the side of the hill, where the corn stood in sheaves, the men were building straw huts in which to pass the night.

As the sun sank, damp vapours began to rise from the stream and the marshy ground adjoining it. Side by side on our bed of straw Déprez and I, booted and spurred, our revolver holsters bruising our hips, fell asleep with our faces upturned to the stars, which seemed to shine more brightly than usual in the eastern sky.

Shortly after dawn we were ready to start. Some of the 130th Infantry had arrived at the next village, called Ville-devant-Chaumont, to take up their quarters there. Pending the order to advance I entered into conversation with a little red-haired foxy-faced sergeant:

"Ah," said he, "so you're from Mayenne.... Well, I don't know whether many of the 130th will ever get back there.... There was a scrap yesterday.... Slaughter simply awful!... My battalion wasn't touched, but the two others!... There are some companies which don't count more than ten men, and haven't a single officer left.... It's their machine-guns which are so frightful.... But what the devil can you expect? Two battalions against a whole division!"

"But why didn't the third battalion join in?"

"Blessed if I know.... You never know the reason of these things."

"Some of our chaps were splendid.... Lieutenant X, for example.... He jumped up, drew his sword, and opening his tunic he shouted to his men: "Come on, lads!..." And he was killed on the spot.... The flag?... That was taken by the enemy, retaken by one of our captains, and then again captured. Finally, a chap with a good-conduct badge got hold of it, and managed to hide it under a bridge before he died. One of the sections of the 115th found it there.... And then the artillery came up at last.... Three batteries of the 31st. They soon made the blighters clear off.... They abandoned two batteries, what's more!"

Orders came to unharness. What a heat! Transparent vapours rose from the ground and made the horizon quiver. From time to time we heard the muffled sound of the guns but more often we mistook the noise of the carts on the road for firing. Fleecy white clouds forming above the crests of the hills gave one the impression of shells bursting. For a moment their appearance was most deceptive.

I saw one of the men of the 130th coming back from the firing-line in a wretched condition, without cap, pack, or arms. It seemed wonderful that he should have managed to drag himself so far. With staring, frightened eyes he looked nervously from one side to the other. The gunners surrounded him as he stood there, with bent shoulders and hanging head, but he only answered their questions by expressive gestures.

"Done for!" he murmured. "Done for!"

We couldn't hear anything else. His lips kept moving:

"Done for!... Done for!"

Down he flopped in the middle of us, and immediately fell asleep, his mouth wide open and his features contracted as if with pain. Two gunners carried him into a neighbouring barn.

I heard to-day that a priest of Ville-devant-Chaumont had been arrested on a charge of espionage and sent to Verdun.

We availed ourselves of our leisure in order to wash our linen and have a bath in the river. Then, stretched naked on the grass, we waited until the sun had dried our shirts, socks, and underlinen, which lay spread out around us.

_Wednesday, August 12_

The French are fond of heroic legends. I have now found out the truth about the affair in which two battalions were said to have been cut up, and there is not the least resemblance to the highly coloured yarn of the little fox-faced sergeant.

On August 10 the officers of the 130th had not the slightest suspicion that the enemy were so close. A few men were taken by surprise as they were going down to the river, unarmed and half undressed. Immediately afterwards the fight began, and the 130th defended themselves bravely against superior numbers, at first without any support from the artillery, which, having received no orders, remained in its quarters. At last three batteries of the 31st arrived and succeeded in repelling the German attack. We were the victors.

As for Lieutenant X, who, according to the sergeant, had been killed as he stood bare-chested encouraging his men to attack, it appears that, in reality, he fell into the river called the Loison. The chill of the water, together with the excitement of the first brush with the enemy, set up congestion, but he is now reported to be perfectly fit again. That is fortunate, for he is a valuable officer.

Several of his men, charging too soon, also fell into the river, which flows right across the fields between very low banks. There they remained as if entrenched, with the water up to their waists, and fought as best they could. The flag of the 130th was never even taken out of its oil-skin case.

The whole day was spent in sleeping, cooking, and in bathing in the river. Some of the drivers with their teams were told off to transport the wounded of the 130th to Verdun.

When night fell we stretched ourselves out on the grass under the clear sky and sang in chorus until we gradually fell asleep.

If only those we have left behind anxiously waiting for news could have heard us!

_Thursday, August 13_

To-day some of the 130th brought back a grey German military coat, a pair of boots, a Uhlan's helmet, and a sort of round infantryman's cap, looking like a small cheese. These spoils were hung up in a barn, and attracted a crowd of gunners. They belong to a sergeant-major who was proudly exhibiting them to the spectators, calling special attention to a small rent in the back of the coat.

"That's where the bullet went in that did for old Steinberg," said he. "His name's marked inside.... See?"

And he drew himself up, beaming.

We had started off again at dawn, and now stood waiting for orders. The Captain had sent the battery forward down the lane leading to the main road to Verdun. The horses splashed about in the water running out from a drinking-trough hard by, and spattered us liberally with mud. After waiting till the sun was well up, we unbridled and gave the teams some oats.

Reserve regiments of the Army Corps began to file by--the 301st, 303rd, and 330th. The men were white with dust up to the knees. Stubbly beards of eight days' growth darkened their faces and gave them a haggard appearance. Their coats, opened in front and folded back under their shoulder-straps, showed glimpses of hairy chests, the veins in their necks standing out like whipcord under the weight of their packs. These reservists looked grave, resolute, and rather taciturn.

They swung by with a noise like a torrent rushing over pebbles, the sight of our guns bringing a smile of pleasure to their faces. The foremost battalions climbed up the hill. There were so many men that nothing could be seen of the road, nor even of the red breeches. The moving human ribbon scintillated with reflections cast by kettles, shovels, and picks.

We had filled our water-bags, and some of the soldiers, as they streamed past, replenished their drinking tins from them. Then they strode on, their lips glued to the brims, restraining the swing of their step in order not to lose a drop of the precious liquid.

At last the battery moved on. But it was only to camp at Azannes, about a mile south-east of Ville-devant-Chaumont, where we were hardly any nearer to the enemy. On the road a continual cloud of dust was raised by guns and wagons, motors full of superior officers, and squadrons of cavalry escorting red-tabbed Staffs. The horses were smothered in it, and our dark uniforms soon became grey, while our eyebrows and unshorn chins looked as if they had been powdered. Paris motor-omnibuses, transformed into commissariat wagons, put the final touch as they lumbered by, and left us as white as the road itself.

"Limber up, quick now, come along!"

The order was repeated by the N.C.O.'s, and the Captain, who passed us spurring his horse, said simply:

"We are going into action."

Then, followed by the gun-commanders, trumpeters, and battery-leaders, he set off at a gallop.