September 4, 2025 • 50 mins
08 - In the Field. In the Field (1914-1915) by Marcel Dupont.
I have merely tried to make a written record of some of the hours I have lived through during the course of this war. A modest Lieutenant of Chasseurs, I cannot claim to form any opinion as to the operations which have been carried out for the last nine months on an immense front. I only speak of things I have seen with my own eyes, in the little corner of the battlefield occupied by my regiment.
I have merely tried to make a written record of some of the hours I have lived through during the course of this war. A modest Lieutenant of Chasseurs, I cannot claim to form any opinion as to the operations which have been carried out for the last nine months on an immense front. I only speak of things I have seen with my own eyes, in the little corner of the battlefield occupied by my regiment.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eight of In the Field nineteen fourteen nineteen fifteen.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by f n H. In
the Field nineteen fourteen, nineteen fifteen by Marcel DuPont, Chapter eight.
(00:25):
Christmas Night on Lieutenant. On Lieutenant, it's two o'clock. My
faithful waterlot held the flickering candle just in front of
my eyes to rouse me what torture it is to
be snatched from sleep at such an early hour. It
would not be anything in summer, but it was the
twenty fourth of December, and it was my turn to
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go on duty in the trenches. A nice way of
keeping Christmas. I turned over in my bed, trying to
avoid that light that tormented me. I collected my thoughts,
which had wandered far away whilst I was asleep, and
have been replaced by exquisite dreams, dreams of times in peace,
of welfare, of good cheer, and of gentle warmth. Then
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I remembered I had to take command of a detachment
of a hundred troopers of the regiment who were to
replace the hundred now in the trenches. It was nearly
a month since we had joined our army Corps near
r and every other day the regiment had to furnish
the same number of men to occupy a sector of
the trenches. It was my turn, on the twenty fourth
of December, to replace my brother officer and good friend,
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Lieutenant de la Gee, who had occupied the post since
the twenty second. I'd forgotten all this, how cold it
was Mah, Whilst what a Lot was taking himself off,
I braced myself for the necessary effort of getting out
of the warm sheets. Like a coward, I kept on
allowing myself successive respites, vowing to rise heroically after each
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I will get up as soon as what Lot has
reached the landing of the first floor. I will get
up when I hear him walking on the pavement of
the hall, or rather when I hear the entrance door
shut and his boots creaking on the gravel path. But
every noise was hushed. What Lot was already some way off,
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and I still shied at this act, which after all,
was inevitable to get out of bed in a little,
ice cold room at two o'clock in the morning. Through
the window, which had neither shutter nor curtain, I saw
a small piece of the sky, beautifully clear, in which
myriads of stars were twinkling. The day before, when I
came in to go to bed, it was freezing hard.
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That morning. The frost, I thought must be terrible. Come
up with a bound. I was on the ground and
rushed at once to the little pitch pine washstand. Rapid
ablutions would wake me up thoroughly horror. The water in
the jug was frozen. Oh not very deeply, no doubt,
but all the same I had to break a coating
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of ice at formed on the surface. However, I was
happy to feel more nimble after having washed my face
quick two warm waistcoats under my jacket, my large cloak
with its cape, my fur gloves, my campaigning cap, pulled
over my ears. And there I was, with a candle
in my hand, going down the grand staircase of the chateau.
For I was quartered in a chateau. The very word
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makes one think of a warm room, well upholstered and
well furnished, with soft carpets and comfortable arm chairs, But
alas it was nothing of the sort. The good lady
whose house it was had provided for all contingencies. The
family rooms had been prudently dismantled and double locked. A
formidable concierge had the keys, and I was happy, indeed,
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when I found the butler's room in the attics. His bed,
with its white sheets, seemed to me very desirable. And then,
as we say in time of peace, one must take
things as they come, the open hall door let in
a wave of cold air, which struck cold on my
f But I had not a minute to lose. The
detachment was to start at half past two punctually, and
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it had no doubt already formed up in the market place.
I hurried into the street. The tall pines of the
park stood out black against the silver sky, which, with
bare branches on the other trees, formed thousands of aarbusques
and strange patterns all round. Not the slightest noise was
to be heard in this limpid diphanius night, in which
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the air seemed as pure and rare as the summits
of the lofty mountains. Under my footsteps the gravel was soft,
But once I had got outside of the iron gate,
I found myself on ground as hard as stone. The
mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by
streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a
maze of furrows and inequalities, which made me stumble again
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and again. In front of the Hotel Deslax, a certain
number of the men had already lined up in front
of their horses, huddled in their cloaks, with collars turned up.
The they were stamping their feet and blowing onto their hands.
It must have been a real torture for them too
to come out of their straw litter, where they were
sleeping so snugly a few moments before, rolled up in
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their blankets. They had got a liking for the kind
of comfort peculiar to the campaigner, and invented a thousand
and one ingenious methods of improving the arrangements of their
novel garrison. Sleeping parties had been gradually organized, and sets
of seven or eight at a time enjoyed delightful nights
stretched on their clean straw. Many of them would certainly
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not be able to get the sleep if they suddenly
found themselves in a real bed, And then it is
less difficult to get up when one has gone to
bed with one's clothes on, and when the room is
not very warm, not one of them complained, not one
of them grumbled. We can always count on our brave fellows.
All present, mon Lieutenant. It was the senior non commissioned
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officers of the two squadrons assembled there who reported everyone
had got up and equipped himself at the appointed hour.
Not one was missing at roll call. They had all
assembled of their own accord. The corporals had not needed
to knock at door after door to wake the sleepers.
Asher Sirs had very quickly established simple customs and rules
of their own, which ensured the regularity of the service
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without written orders. This intelligent and spontaneous discipline is one
of the most admirable features of this campaign. It has
grown by degrees without any special orders or prescriptions from above,
with the result that the hardest labors are carried out
almost without supervision, because each man understands the end in
view and the grim necessities which it involves. They understood
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at once that this early hour was the only one
at which the relief could be effected, and every other day,
just as on that December morning, twenty five men out
of each squadron get up at half past one, equip
themselves and saddle their horses, whilst the cooks warm up
a good cup of coffee for each man. Then, without
any hurry, but at the exact moment, they form up
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in fighting order at the appointed spot. And when the
officer arrives in the dark, rain, wind snow or frost,
he is of receiving the same report. All present, mon,
Lieutenant quick Mount, we shall feel the cold less trotting
over the hardened roads this bright night and under this
brilliant moon. Two and two in silence, we issued from
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the village in the direction of Ah. I knew that
I should find a little further on at the cross
roads where the crucifix stands the fifty men of the
first half Regiment, and second Lieutenant de g who serves
under me. Yes, there he was coming to meet me
on the hard road. It was a joy to me
that chance had given me this jolly fellow for my
trench companion. I hardly knew him, for he had not
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been with us more than a few days. Taken from
the military college directly war was declared, he had first
been sent to a reserve squadron and had only just
been appointed to an active regiment, but I already knew
through my comrades of the first Squadron that he was
a daring soldier and a merry companion. So much the better,
I thought. War is a sad thing, and one must
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learn to take it gaily, a plague on gloomy spirits
and long faces. True, we can no longer wage the
picturesque war of the good old days. We shall never
know another Fontenoy, or Rivoli or Illoo. But that is
no reason why we should lose the jovial humor of
our forefathers. Thank heaven, we are preserved their qualities of
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dash and bravery. But it is more difficult to keep
a smiling face in this hideous moral warfare, which is
imposed upon even US troopers. All the more reason for
liking and admiring the cheery officers who keep up our spirits,
and g is one of them. We shook hands without speaking,
for it seemed to us that if we opened our mouths,
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the frost would get into our bodies and freeze them.
And we set off at a sharp trot along the
narrow road which, crossing the high Road to Paris, leads
to sea. There we should have to leave our horses,
cross the zone of the enemies artillery fire, and get
to the trenches on foot. The horses snorted with pleasure,
happy to warm themselves by rapid movement. Some of them
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indulged in merry capers, which were repressed not too gently
by the more sedate riders. The hoofs struck the uneven
ground with a metallic ring which must have echoed far,
and the clink of the bits and stirrups also disturbed
the sleeping country before us. The road ran straight amidst
the dark fields, a long, pale ribbon. No one thought
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of laughing or talking. Sleep seemed still to hover over
the column, and everyone knew that two days of trench
duty would be long and hard to get through, even
if the Prussians left us in peace. We passed across
which shone white on the side of the road under
the pale light of the moon, and saluted it. We
had known it from the first days and had its
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inscription by heart. Eighty non commissioned officers, corporals and soldiers
of the thirty ninth and seventy fourth Regiments of Infantry
in action pray for them. We dimly discerned the modest
wreaths of green leaves, now faded and yellow, and the
little nosegays of withered flowers attached to the arms of
this cross. Left there after the departure of the regiment,
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and undisturbed by any sacrilegious hand, we crossed the Paris
Road with its double row of trees, which in the
night appeared gigantic, And after answering the challenge of the
territorial guarding the approach to sea, we entered the village.
It appeared to be completely empty, and yet there were
two battalions of the territorials quartered there. The moon seemed
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to be amusing itself by casting the shadows of the
houses on one side of the street upon the walls
of the other in fantastic shapes. Dismount we had reached
the spot where we were to leave our horses. The
men quickly unbuckled the blankets which were to help them
endure the weary hours of the following night. They slung
them over their shoulders, and we set off towards the
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towing path of the canal. We went very slowly, as
we had at least seven or eight kilometers before us,
and a walk of eight kilometers for troopers ladened and
dressed as we were, is no light matter we found
the towing path. Walking at that hour of the night
is entirely not very alluring. However, the view was not
lacking in grandeur. On either side of the canal, the
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dark silhouettes of tall trees stood out against the sky.
Their shadows were reflected in the water, which gleamed with
a metallic luster in the moonshine. How calm and silent
it was, Who would have thought that we were at war.
Not a cannon shot, not a rifle shot, disturbed the
peace of the night. Yet as a rule, there were
no long intervals between the reports, which reminded us of
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the serious work at hand. That day, it seemed as
though some agreement had been come to by both sides
to stop killing or trying to kill. However touching such
an agreement might be, it would also be somewhat disturbing,
for one must always be aware of an enemy who
resorts so freely to tree and traps of every kind.
It was as well not to celebrate Christmas too obtrusively. Besides,
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I did not think that we were the only ones
keeping vigil at that hour. From time to time we
passed small groups of infantry, haggard, dusty, and heavily laden,
marching in ranks with their arms slung by threes and fours,
without speaking, striding slowly as though they were trying to
measure the length of the road. Some of them were
carrying curious objects fastened to sticks, pots or big cans,
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perhaps baskets. Where were they going or what were they doing?
We did not ask. Every man has his own job.
If those fellows were going that way, they had their orders,
and nobody troubled himself about their object. All was well.
The clattering of the chaseurs on the uneven road lent
a little life to the picture. Perhaps they were talking together,
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but if so, it was in an undertone, a whisper almost.
And suddenly the enemy let us know that he was
also keeping watch. Far ahead of us, near sea, a
rocket went up into the clear sky and then fell slowly,
very slowly, in the form of an intensely brilliant ball,
lighting up the surrounding country. Wonderfully we knew them well,
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those formidable German rockets, which seemed as though they would
never go out, and shed a pallid and yet blinding light.
We knew that as soon as they were lighted, everybody
who happened to be within range of the enemy's rifle
fire had at once to lie flat on the ground
and not move or raise his head so long as
the light was burning. Otherwise shots would be fired from
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all directions, mowing down the vegetation and cutting up the
earth all around him. This time we were well outside
the range, and we watched the dazzling star in front
of us without halting the shepherd's star, said she solemnly.
Strange shepherds. Indeed, must they have been who carried carbines
as their crooks, and were provided with cartridges enough to
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send a hundred and twenty of their fellow creatures into
the next world. Dar seemed to hang for a moment
some yards from the ground, then slowly, slowly, as though
exhausted by its effort, it fell to the ground and
went out. The night seemed less clear and less diaphanous.
We had now reached the glass works, and it was
there that we were to leave our cooks. No one
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would have supposed that this large factory lay idle, and
that the hundreds of workmen employed there were dispersed. On
the contrary, it seemed to have retained all the animation
of the prosperous enterprise it had been before the war.
It was a large square of massive buildings, almost a
miniature town, planted on the side of the canal, like
an outlying bastion of the suburbs of Ah. The low
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white walls, crowned with tiles, had the stunted appearance of
military works, but a nearer view gave rather the illusion
of the life in a busy factory. At night time,
the gateway opened on a courtyard, the furnace fire shining
here and there. Shadowy forms passed backwards and forwards, enlivening
the dim scene with the bustle of a hive. Came
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out by fives or sixes, laden with different kinds of burdens,
and disappeared into the darkness, making for mysterious goals. In
front of the open gate, other figures were unloading heavy
cases from vans. These quondam glass works were now a
depot for the army supply service, and a huge kitchen
which administered and fed the whole sector of trenches of
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which hours formed a part. The Germans knew this so
every day, and many times a day, their guns fired
a few salvos of shells on the huge quadrilateral, But
our good troopers were none the worse. Instead of working
in the large buildings, part of which had already been
destroyed by shells, they utilized the vast basements of the factory.
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There were the stores, and there they had their kitchens,
where they worked day and night to supply their comrades
in the trenches with the hot, abundant food, which twice
a day made them forget for a few minutes the
hardships of the cold, the rain, and the mud. Our
column halted under the bleak wall at the wide gateway.
A cent snoll was on duty, standing motionless, muffled in
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heavy gray cloak, and through it our cooks passed, disappearing
into the darkness. Under the guidance of the liaison officer
of the preceding detachment. Whilst waiting for his return from
the journey through the labyrinth ash, your sirs had a
short rest before beginning the most difficult part of their journey,
the last stage on the way to the trenches we
were to occupy. I took the opportunity of talking with
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an infantry captain who was there walking up and down
with his face buried in a thick muffler, with his
hands in his pockets of his heavy overcoat, on the
sleeves of which three small pieces of gold lace were discernible. Eh,
pien mont capitain? Anything new, Oh, nothing except my opinion
that you will not be disturbed either to day or
to morrow. Since yesterday evening they have not fired one shot,
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and they were singing hymns till midnight. You may be
pretty sure they'll redouble their orimus this Christmas night. So
you may sleep soundly unless all this is merely a
faint and to night, yes, you're right, unless to night.
The column started, and, guided by the liaison, orderly, we
followed the high road for some hundred yards. The shells
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had transformed it into a series of gorges, peaks, ravines
and hills. We had to jump over big branches cut
from the trees by the projectiles. It was a road
that would not be a cheerful one on moonless nights.
Fortunately for us, that particular night was extremely bright. Everything
around us could be distinguished. We could even divine about
fifteen hundred yards to our right the Solitary Tree, the
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famous tree standing alone in the middle of the vast
bear plain, which marked the center of our sector of
our trenches, and where I knew I should find the
dugout belonging to the offices of our regiment. I was
very much tempted to jump the ditch at the side
of the road and cut across the fields to the
final point of our march. He would have taken about
twenty minutes and have saved us a long, difficult journey
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through the communication trench. But our orders were very precise.
We were not to take short cuts, even on dark nights,
much less on starlit nights. Our chiefs do well to
be cautious on our behalf, for it is certain that,
though fully alive to the danger of such a route,
there was not one of my hundred fellows who would
have hesitated to dash across the country to save himself.
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A few hundred yards we came to the mouth of
the approach trench, four or five huge steps cut into
the chalky clay. The frost had made them slippery, and
we had to keep close to the edge of the
bank to avoid stumbling behind me. I heard some of
the men sliding down heavily, and a din of mess
tins rolling away amidst laughter and jokes. A merry heart
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goes all the way, and I knew my chasseurs would
soon pick themselves up and make up for lost time.
This was essential, for the approach trench had ramifications and
unexpected cross passages, which might have led a laggard astray.
We went forward slowly. The communication trench was at right
angles to the enemy's trenches to prevent him from emfilating
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it with his shells. It had been cut in zigzags,
and I hardly know of a more laborious method of
progression than that of taking ten paces to the right,
marking a sharp turn, and then taking ten paces to
the left, and so on, in order to cover a
distance which, as the crow flies, would not have been
more than fifteen hundred yards. The passage was so narrow
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that we touched the walls on either side. The moonlight
could not reach the ground. We trod on, and we
stumbled incessantly over the holes and inequalities caused by the
late rains and hardened by the frost. Now and again
we slid over ice that had formed on the little
pools through which our comrades had been paddling for two
days before, and this was some consolation for the severity
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of the frost, preferable one hundred times to the horrors
of the rain. At last we debouched into our trenches,
where our predecessors were impatiently waiting for us. Two days
and two nights is a long time to go without sleeping,
without washing, without having any other view than the walls
of earth that shut you in. They were all eager
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to go back over the same road they had come
by two days before, to get to their horses again,
their quarters, their friends, in short, their home. So we
found them quite ready to go, blankets rolled up and
slung over their shoulders, and knapsacks in their places under
their cloaks. Whilst the non commissioned officers of each squadron
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went to relieve the men at the listening posts, I
brushed past the men lined up against the wall, and
went towards the solitary tree, which seemed to be stretching
out its gaunt arms. To protect our retreat, I had
to turn to the right in a narrow passage which
went round the tree and ended in three steep steps
cut into the earth down which I had to go
to reach the dugout. My old friend Lagie was waiting
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for me at the bottom of this den, stretched out
on two chairs, warming his feet at a tiny iron
st stove, perched upon a heap of bricks. By the
light of the one candle, he looked imposing and serious.
His tawny beard, which had been allowed to grow since
the war, spread like a fan over his chest and
gave him a look of Henry the Fourth. I knew
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that this formidable exterior concealed the merriest companion and the
most delightful sly joker that ever lived, so I was
not much impressed by his thoughtful brow and his dreamy eye.
Well what's the news, I asked, We are all freezing,
he replied, I rather suspected it. Besides this fact, which
we had discovered before him, Legigue could only confirm what
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the infantry captain had told me shortly before. You are
going to have a most RESTful night, my dear fellow,
and I advise you to have a Christmas Manger arranged
at the foot of the solitary tree, and at midnight
to sing Christmas Awake in chorus. We know some hymns
as well as the Germans. I had no lack of
desire to put this proposal into action. But such pious
customs as these would not perhaps have been quite in
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harmony with the tactical ideas of our commanding officer. Still,
I promised Leji I would do my best for the
realization of his dream. Goodbye and good luck, he said. Goodbye,
I replied, and he went away into the darkness. At
the end of the little passage that led to the trench,
I could see the men who had just relieved, passing
in a single file towards the communication trench by which
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we had come, their dark forms defiled in closely and rapidly.
Having completed their task, they were happy to be free
to get back to their squadrons, and as they passed
they cracked their jokes at the others who had to stay.
These answered back, but not in the most amiable manner. Then,
little by little silence settled down upon the scene. Every
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man was at his post, some kept watch, others walked
about in the bottom of the trench, or busied themselves
with repairing or improving the indifferent shelters their predecessors had
left them. G had gone to take the watch, on
which the junior officers of the units defending the sector
relieved every other three hours. So there I was alone,
alone in the midst of my brave chasseurs, with the
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duty of guarding those five hundred yards of trenches, a
very small peace at that time, of the immense French
line behind us, thousands of our fellows were sleeping in
perfect confidence, relying upon this thin rampart we formed in
front of them. And farther away still were the millions
of frenchmen and French women, who, under their family roof
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or that of their hosts, were resting in peace because
of our sleepless nights, our limbs stiffened by the cold,
our carbines pointed through the loopholes of the trenches. Thus
were we to celebrate the merry festival of Christmas. There
was no doubt that far away, among those who were
keeping the sacred vigil, more than one would think of
us and sympathize with us. No doubt many a one
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among us would feel a touch of sadness that evening,
thinking of his home. But none, not one, I felt sure,
would wish to quit his post, to get away from
the front. Military honor, glorious legacy of our ancestors. Who
could have foreseen that it would be implanted so naturally
and so easily in the young souls of our soldiers.
Within their youthful bodies, the same hearts were already beating
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as those of the immortal veterans of the epic days
of France. Men a fashioned by war. Ten o'clock came
on Christmas Eve to find that our day had passed
in almost absolute calm. It had been a glorious winter day,
a day of bright sunshine and pure clear air. The
Germans had hardly fired at all. A few cannon shots
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only had replied to our artillery, which let off its
heavy guns every now and then upon their positions from
the heights behind us. And then night came be and
I had just finished our frugal meal. We had promised
to pay a visit to the territorials who occupied the
trenches to the right and left of ours. Our chasseurs
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had been posted in that particular section, so that in
case of an attack they might form a solid base
for the territorials to rely upon. They did not conceal
their confidence in our men or their admiration for them,
and their officers had no scruples in asking for our
advice when difficult cases arose. In fact, that very afternoon,
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the captain commanding the company to our right had come
to my dugout to arrange with me about the patrols
that had to be sent that night in advance of
the line. Wrapped in our cloaks, we came out of
our warm retreat. The night was just like the previous one, starlit,
bright and frosty, a true Christmas night for times of peace.
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In our trenches, one half of the men were awake
in obedience to the orders. Carbines were loaded and placed
in the loopholes, and the guns were trained upon the
enemy in front of us. At the end of the
narrow passages which led to our listening posts, I knew
that our sentries were alert, with eye and ear crouching
in their holes in pairs. No one could approach that
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broad network of wire which protected us without being immediately
perceived and shot. At the bottom of the trenches, the
men on watch were talking softly together and stamping on
the ground to combat the intense cold. Those who were
at rest, lying close together at the bottom of the
little dugouts they had made for themselves in the bank,
were sleeping or trying to sleep. More than one of
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them has succeeded, for resounding snores could be heard behind
the blankets, pieces of tent, canvas and sacking, and all
the various rags with which they ingeniously stuffed up the
entrances to their rustic alcoves. One wondered how they could
overcome the sufferings. The cold must have caused them so
far to be able to sleep calmly. The five months
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of war had hardened their bodies and accustomed them to
face cold, heat, rain, dust or mud with impunity. In
this hard school, better than in any other, men of
iron are fashioned who last out a whole campaign and
are capable of the supreme effort when the hour comes.
We arrived at the Territorial's trench one sirmont sheer comarade.
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It was the second lieutenant whom I met at the entrance.
He was a man of forty two, thin, pale and
bearded in the shadow. His eyes shone strangely under the
skirts of his great coat. He had his hands buried
in his trouser pockets, his elbows stuck out from his body.
His knees were bent, his teeth chattered, and he was
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gently knocking his heels together. It isn't warm, eh, I asked,
Oh no, And then you see this sort of work
is hardly the thing for fellows of our age. Our
blood isn't warm enough. And however you cover yourself up,
there is always a chink by which the cold gets in.
The worst of all is one's hands and feet, and
there's nothing to be done for it. Wouldn't it be
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much better to trust to us, give us the order
to fix mayonets and drive those boshes out of their
trenches over there? You'd see if the territorials couldn't do
it as well as the regulars, and then one would
have a chance of getting warm. I felt sure that
he spoke the truth, and that his opinion was shared
by the majority of his companions. But our good comrades
of the territorial force have no conception of the vigor,
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the suppleness, and of the fullness of youth required to
charge up to the enemy's line under concentrated fire, and
to cut the complex network of barbed wire that bars
the road. Achiss were well advised in placing these troops
where they were in those lines of trenches scientifically constructed
and protected, where their courage and tenacity would be invaluable
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in case of attack, and where they would know better
than the others how to carry out the orders given
to us. Hold on till death, leave to the young
soldiers the sublime and perilous task of rushing upon the
enemy when he is hidden behind the shelter of his
fore guards, his parapets, and his artificial brambles, and intrust
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to the brave territorials the more obscure and not less
glorious work of mounting guard along our front. I could
make them out in the moonlight, standing so silent and alert,
in groups of two or three, perched on the edge
of the earth, which raised them to the height of
the parapet, And they had their eyes wide in the
open darkness, looking towards the enemy. Their loaded rifles were
(29:12):
placed in front of them between two clods of hardened earth.
They neither complained nor uttered a word, but suffered nobly.
They understand that they must ah. Where now were the
fine tirades of pothouse orators and public meetings? Where now
were the oaths to revolt the solemn denials, and the
blasphemies pronounced against the fatherland. All was forgotten, wiped out
(29:37):
from the records. If we could have questioned those men
who stood there, shivering, chilled to the bone, watching over
the safety of the country, not one of them certainly
would have confessed that he was ever one of the
renegades of yore. And yet if one were to search
among the bravest, among the most resigned, among the best,
thousands of them would be discovered. Heaven grant that this
(29:59):
miracle wrought by the war may be prolonged far beyond
the days of the struggle, and then we shall not
think that our brother's blood has been spilt in vain.
We brushed past them, they did not even turn around. Eyes, mind,
and will were absorbed in the dark mystery of the
silent landscape stretching out before them. But the night, though
(30:20):
it was bright, gave everything a strange appearance, transformed all
living things and increased their size, made the stones, the stacks,
and the trees move as it seemed to our weary eyes,
cast fitful shadows where there were none, and made us
hear murmurs which sounded like the muffled tramp of troops
marching cautiously. Those men watched because they felt that there
(30:42):
was always the danger of a surprise attack, of a
sudden rush of Teutons, who had crawled up through the
grass of the fields. They had piled on their backs
empty sacks, blankets and old rags for warmth, and way
on their mufflers two or three times around their necks.
They had taken all possible precor for carrying out their
duty to the very last. And although our hearts had
(31:04):
been hardened by the unprecedented miseries of this war, we
were seized with the pity and admiration. Presently one of
them turned round and said to us, HALLO, they're lighting
up over there now. I jumped up on to the
ledge and saw, in fact lights shining in three different
places some way off. After looking attentively, I guess the
(31:26):
meaning of this quite unusual illumination. In the rear of
the trenches. The lights came up from some large fir
trees placed there under cover of night, and beautifully lightened up.
With my glasses, I can make them out distinctly, and
even the figures dancing round them, we could hear their
voices and shouts of merriment. How well they had arranged
the whole thing. They had even gone as far as
(31:48):
to light up their Christmas trees with electricity, so as
to prevent our gunners from using them as an easy target.
In fact, every few minutes, all the lights on a
tree were suddenly put out, and only appeared some minutes afterwards.
We had thrilled instinctively. Suddenly there arose all over the
wide plain, solemn and melodious singing. We still remembered singing
(32:10):
of a similar kind we had recently heard in Big
Schute on a tragic occasion. And here were the same
tuneful voices again, singing a hymn of the same kind
as those they sang further to the north before shouting
their hurrahs for the attack. But we did not fear
anything of that kind. Now we had the impression that
this singing was not a special prayer in front of
(32:32):
our little sector of trenches, but that it was general
and extended, without limits, over the whole of our provinces
violated by the enemy over Champagne, Lorraine, Picardy. Resounding from
the North Sea to the Rhine. The territorial trench was
full of noiseless animation. The men came up out of
(32:53):
their little dugouts without a word, and the whole company
was soon perched upon the ledge. There was a silence
among ami, as if each man felt uneasy or perhaps jealous,
of what was going on over there. Then, as if
to order, along the line of German trenches, other hymns
rang out, and one choir seemed to answer the other.
(33:15):
The singing became general, quite close to us in the
trenches themselves in the distance, round their brightly littered trees
to the right to the left. It resounded softened by
the distance. What a stirring, name, grandiose impression those hymns
made floating over the vast field of death. I felt
(33:36):
intuitively that all this had been arranged long before, that
they might celebrate their Christmas with religious calm and peace.
At any other time, no doubt many a clumsy joke
would have been made, and no little abuse hurled at
the singers, but all that had been changed. I divined
some regret among our brave fellows that we were not
(33:57):
taking part in a similar festival. Was it not Christmas Eve?
Had we not been obliged by our duty to give
up the delightful family gathering which unites us yearly round
the symbolic yule log. This year, our mothers, our sisters,
and our children were keeping up the time honored and
pious custom alone. Why did not our larger family of
(34:19):
to day join in singing together around lighted fir trees.
Our territorials did not speak, but their thoughts flew from
the trenches, and the regrets of all were fused in
a common feeling of melancholy. Little by little the singing
died away, and absolute silence fell once more upon the country.
(34:41):
I went with G as far as his watch post.
He had to resume his duty as officer of the
watch from eleven o'clock in the evening to two o'clock
in the morning. The post consisted of a kind of
small block house, strongly built and protected by two case
mates with machine gun's placed so as to command the
enemy's trenches. A machine gunner was all was on guard,
and could call the others at the slightest alarm to
(35:03):
work the gun. These men were quartered in a kind
of tunnel hollowed out close by, and at the first
signal would have been ready to open fire with their
terrible engines of destruction. In the center of the block house,
a padded sentry box was arranged made of a number
of sand bags, in which, by means of a loophole,
the officer of the watch could observe the whole sector
(35:24):
entrusted to us, and by means of a telephone station
close at hand, he could communicate at any moment with
the commander of the sector At the glass works. G
had put on the goat skin coat handed to him
by the officer. He relieved this officer was a second
Lieutenant of territorials and looked completely frozen. Here, my dear fellow,
he said, I leave you the goat skin provided for
(35:46):
the use of the officer on duty. I should have
liked to give it to you well warmed, but I
feel like an icicle myself. G was nevertheless glad to
have it. After wishing him good luck, I left him
to get back to my hut, for in spite of
my cloth oak, the frost was taking hold of me too.
The faithful what Loot had done his best to keep
our little stove going. Profiting by Ludgie's example, I stretched
(36:09):
myself on two chairs with my feet towards the fire,
I gradually got warmer and at the same time somewhat melancholy.
What a curious Christmas Eve, certainly I had never heard
of one passed in such a place. The walls were
made of a grayish friable earth, which still showed the
marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation.
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The furniture was simple and not very comfortable. At the
back was the bed, made of a little straw, already
well tossed over by a number of sleepers. This straw
was kept in by a plank fixed to the ground
and forming the side of a modest couch against the wall.
Opposite the stove was the table. This table, which had
to serve for writing and feeding, and perhaps for a
(36:51):
game of cars. This table, which was required to fill
out the part of all tables of all rooms of
any house, was strange, to say a night table. I
wondered who had brought it there and who had chosen it.
But such as it was, it served the purpose pretty well.
We used it for dinner and found it almost comfortable,
And upon it I signed a number of reports and orders.
(37:14):
Together with the two chairs, the stove, the bed, and
some nails to hang my clothes on the table completed
the furniture of the home where I meditated on that
December night. The candle stuck in a bottle flickered at
the slightest breath and threw strange shadows on the walls.
It was the hour of solitude and silence, the hour
of meditation, and of sadness too. Now and then that evening,
(37:38):
dark thoughts were flying about in that smoky den, assailing
me in crowds and taking possession of my mind. I
could not drive them away. It was one of those moments,
those very fleeting moments when courage seems to fail and
one gives way with a kind of bitter satisfaction. I
remembered that months and months had passed since I seen
(38:00):
any of those belonging to me, and I conjured up
in my mind the picture of the Christmas Eve they
were keeping too at that same hour, at the other
end of France. And the dear good friends I had
left in Paris and in Ruin, Where were they at
that moment? What were they doing? Were they thinking of me?
How I should have liked to enjoy the wonderful power
(38:21):
possessed by certain heroes in Arabian nights, which would have
allowed me to see at that moment a vision of
the loved ones far away. Were they talking about me,
sitting together round the fire? I thought that this war
had been a splendid thing to us chasseurs, as long
as we were fighting as cavalry, scouring the plains, searching
the woods, galloping in advance of our infantry, and bringing
(38:44):
them information which enabled them to deal their blows or
parry those of the enemy, trying to come up with
the Prussian covery which fled before us. But this trench warfare,
this warfare in which one stays for days and days
in the same position, in which ground is gained yard
by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in
(39:05):
which each side clings to the ground it has won,
digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in
it sooner than give it up. What warfare for cavalry.
We have devoted ourselves to it with all our hearts,
and the chiefs who have had us under their orders
have never failed to commend us. But at times we
feel very weary, and during inaction and solitude our imaginations
(39:29):
begin to work. Then we recall our regiment in full
gallop over the fields and plain we hear the clank
of swords and bits, we see once more the flash
of the blades, the motley line of the horses. We
evoke the well known figures of our chiefs on their charges.
That night my mind became more restless than ever before.
It broke loose. It leapt away and lived again the
(39:52):
unforgettable stages of this war, Charleroi, Guize, the Marne, the
defense of chargon Bridge, montmor Reems, Belgium, Big Shute. And
then it fell back into the gloomy dugout, where the
flame of the single candle traced disquieting shadows on the wall. Suddenly,
a cold breath of air blew into my retreat. The
(40:13):
door opened abruptly, and at the top of the steps,
a man stooping over the floor of the passage called
to me in an undertone, Mon, lieutenant, come and see
something is happening. With a bound, I sprang up from
my shelter and climbed up the ledge. Listen, mon lieutenant.
That night in the trenches was destined to overwhelm me
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with astonishment, and this one surpassed all that I could
imagine I should like to be able to impart the
extraordinary impression I felt, But one would have to have
been there that night to be capable of realizing it.
Over that vast and silent plain, in which everything seemed
to sleep, and where no other sound was heard, there
resounded from afar a voice whose notes, in spite of
(40:57):
the distance, reached our ears. What an extraordinary thing it was.
That song, vibrating through the boundless night, made our hearts
beat and stirred us more than the most perfectly ordered
concert given by the most famous of singers. And it
was another hymn unknown to us, coming from the German
trenches far away on our right. The singer must have
(41:19):
been standing out in the fields on the edge of
their line. He must have been moving, coming towards us,
and passing slowly along the enemy's positions. For his voice
came gradually nearer and became louder and clearer. Every now
and then it ceased, and then hundreds of other voices
responded in chorus, with some phrases which formed the refrain
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of the hymn. Then the soloists began again and came
still nearer to us. He must have come from the
considerable distance, for our chasseurs had already heard him for
some time before they decided to call me. Who could
this man have been. Who must have been sent all
along the front of the troops to pray whilst each
German company waited for him so as to join in
(42:02):
with him in prayer, some minister, no doubt, who had
come to remind the soldiers of the sanctity of that
night and the solemnity of the hour. Soon we heard
the voice coming from the trenches straight in front of us.
In spite of the brightness of the night, we could
not distinguish the singer, for the two lines at that
point were four hundred yards apart. But he was certainly
(42:22):
not hiding himself, for his deep voice would never have
sounded so rich and clear to us had he been
singing at the bottom of their trenches. Again, it ceased,
and then the Germans directly in front of us, the
soldiers occupy in the work's opposite hours, those men whom
we were bound to kills as soon as they appeared,
and whose duty it was to shoot us as soon
(42:43):
as we showed ourselves, Those men calmly took up the
refrain of the hymn with its sweet and mysterious words.
They too must have come to the edge of their
trench and struck up their hymn with their faces towards us,
For their notes came to us clearly and distinctly. I
looked along the line of our trench. All our men
too were awake and looking on. They had all got
(43:06):
on to the ledge, and several had left the trench
and were in the field listening to the unexpected concert.
No one was offended by it, No one laughed at it. Rather,
there was a trace of regret in the attitudes and
the faces of those who were nearest to me. And
yet it would have been such a simple matter to
put an end to that scene. Are volley fired by
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the troop there, and it would all stop and drop
back into the quiet of other knights. But nobody thought
of such a thing. There was not one of our
chasseurs who would not have considered it a sacrilege to
fire upon those praying soldiers. We felt, indeed, that there
are hours when one can forget that one is there
to kill. This would not prevent us from doing our duty.
(43:49):
Immediately afterwards, the voice drew further away, and retreated slowly
and majestically towards the trenches situated at the place known
as the Troopers of Seas, where our two lines approached
each other within a distance of fifty yards. How much
more touching the sight must have been from there. I
(44:10):
wished my post had been in that direction, so that
I might have been present at the scene, might have
heard the words and distinguished the figure of the pastor
walking along the parapets made for hurling out death and
blessing those who next day might be no more ping.
A shot was heard, the stupid bullet, which had perhaps
(44:30):
found its mark. At once there was dead silence, not
a cry, not an oath, not a groan. Somemond had
thought he was doing well by firing on that man.
A pity. We should gain nothing by preventing them from
keeping Christmas in their own way, and it would have
been a nobler thing to reserve our blows for other hecatombs.
(44:51):
I know that the barbarians would not have hesitated had
they been in our place, and that so many of
our priests had fallen under their strokes that they could
not reasonably have repro coroached us. There are people who
will say that our hatred should embrace everything German, that
we should be implacable towards everything bearing that name, and
spare none of the excreated race, which has been the
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cause of so many tears, so much blood, so much mourning.
Never Mind, I think in this case it would have
been better not to have shot. A shot fired not
far from us on our left brought me up from
my shelter. It seemed strange, after that complete calm of
the night. It was seven o'clock, the sun was magnificent
(45:35):
and had already bathed the deserted plain, the fields, the
heights of s and the ruined village. In the distance
towards the east, the towers of the Cathedral of Ars
stood out proudly against the golden sky. I looked and
saw that all my chasseurs standing on the ledges, waiting
with interest a scene which seemed to be going on
in front of the trenches occupied on our left by
(45:55):
the territorials. I got up by the side of one
of them explained to me what was happening on, Lieutenant.
It's the infantry fellows who have just killed a hare
that ran between the two lines. They're going to fetch it,
And in fact I saw this strange sight. Two men
had gone out in full daylight from their trenches and
(46:16):
were advancing with hesitating steps towards the enemies. Behind them
were a hundred inquisitive heads looking out above the embrasures
arranged between the sacks of earth. A few soldiers who
had come out of the trench were even sitting on
the bank of chalky earth. It was certainly such a
scene as I had hardly expected to witness. What was
the captain of the company occupying the trench doing. But
(46:39):
my astonishment became stupefication when I saw hundreds of heads
that fringed the enemy's trenches. I at once sent g
and a non commissioned officer with the following order to
all our men, no one is to show himself. Every
man to his fighting post, carbines loaded and ready to fire.
(47:00):
Woman's opposite became suspicious on seeing our line so silent
and no man showing himself. They too, waited on the
alert behind their loopholes. But along the rest of their front,
their men kept on coming out of their trenches, unarmed
and making merry and friendly gestures. I became uneasy and
wondered how this unexpected comedy might end. Ought I to
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have those men fired upon, who were not quite opposite
to us, and whose opponents seemed rather inclined to make
a Christmas truce. Our two infantrymen had come to the
spot where the hare had fallen, very nearly half way
between the French and German lines. One of them stooped
down and got up again, proudly brandishing his victim in
the enemy's faces. At once there was a burst of
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applause from the German lines. They called out, Comaradin, Comaradin,
this was going too far. I saw two unarmed Russians
leave their trench and come forward with their hands raised
towards the two frenchmen. So I consulted, g ought we
to fire. I confess it would be rather unpleasant for
me to order our fellows to fire upon these unarmed men.
(48:06):
On the other hand, can we allow the least intercourse
between the barbarious nation that is still treading our soil
and our good brothers in arms, who were pouring out
their blood every day to reconquer it. Fortunately, the officer
who commanded the Saint Theory Artillery, and who had observed
this scene with his glasses spared me a decision which
(48:26):
would have been painful to me. Pong Pong pong pong
four shells passed hissing over our heads, and burst with
admirable precision two hundred yards above the German trenches. The
artillery officer seemed to have placed with a delicate hand
the four little white puffs of smoke, which equal distant
from each other, appeared to mark out the bounds in
the heavens of the frontier line he wished to forbid
(48:49):
the enemy to pass on the earth. The Germans did
not fail to understand this graceful warning. With cries of
rage and protest. They ran back to their shelters, and
our French me did the same, and, as though to
mark the intentional kindness of what he had just done,
hardly had the last the spikee helmets disappeared behind the parapets,
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when again the same hissing noise was heard, and Pong
pong poo pong four shells dropped, this time full upon
the whitish line formed along the green plain by the
upturned earth of their trenches. In the midst of the smoke,
earth and rubbish of all kinds were seen flying as
chasseurs cried bravo. Everyone felt that the best solution had
(49:31):
been found and rejoiced at this termination of the brief
Christmas truce. And now our minds were free to rejoice
in the great day itself, in company with our good troopers.
In the night there had arrived, well packed in smart hampers,
the bottles of champagne which Major B had presented to
his men, And we were looking forward to the time
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only a few hours hence, when the soup would be
upon the table, and we should keep our Christmas by
letting off the corks in the direction of the German trenches.
Our young fellow officers were already anticipating this peaceful salvo,
which would certainly be heard by the enemy. End of
Chapter eight. End of In the Field nineteen fourteen, nineteen
(50:14):
fifteen by Marcel DuPont. Recording by f N H Visit
w W W dot Book Ranger, dot Co, dot u
K
Chapter eight of In the Field nineteen fourteen nineteen fifteen.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by f n H. In
the Field nineteen fourteen, nineteen fifteen by Marcel DuPont, Chapter eight.
(00:25):
Christmas Night on Lieutenant. On Lieutenant, it's two o'clock. My
faithful waterlot held the flickering candle just in front of
my eyes to rouse me what torture it is to
be snatched from sleep at such an early hour. It
would not be anything in summer, but it was the
twenty fourth of December, and it was my turn to
(00:46):
go on duty in the trenches. A nice way of
keeping Christmas. I turned over in my bed, trying to
avoid that light that tormented me. I collected my thoughts,
which had wandered far away whilst I was asleep, and
have been replaced by exquisite dreams, dreams of times in peace,
of welfare, of good cheer, and of gentle warmth. Then
(01:08):
I remembered I had to take command of a detachment
of a hundred troopers of the regiment who were to
replace the hundred now in the trenches. It was nearly
a month since we had joined our army Corps near
r and every other day the regiment had to furnish
the same number of men to occupy a sector of
the trenches. It was my turn, on the twenty fourth
of December, to replace my brother officer and good friend,
(01:31):
Lieutenant de la Gee, who had occupied the post since
the twenty second. I'd forgotten all this, how cold it
was Mah, Whilst what a Lot was taking himself off,
I braced myself for the necessary effort of getting out
of the warm sheets. Like a coward, I kept on
allowing myself successive respites, vowing to rise heroically after each
(01:54):
I will get up as soon as what Lot has
reached the landing of the first floor. I will get
up when I hear him walking on the pavement of
the hall, or rather when I hear the entrance door
shut and his boots creaking on the gravel path. But
every noise was hushed. What Lot was already some way off,
(02:15):
and I still shied at this act, which after all,
was inevitable to get out of bed in a little,
ice cold room at two o'clock in the morning. Through
the window, which had neither shutter nor curtain, I saw
a small piece of the sky, beautifully clear, in which
myriads of stars were twinkling. The day before, when I
came in to go to bed, it was freezing hard.
(02:38):
That morning. The frost, I thought must be terrible. Come
up with a bound. I was on the ground and
rushed at once to the little pitch pine washstand. Rapid
ablutions would wake me up thoroughly horror. The water in
the jug was frozen. Oh not very deeply, no doubt,
but all the same I had to break a coating
(02:59):
of ice at formed on the surface. However, I was
happy to feel more nimble after having washed my face
quick two warm waistcoats under my jacket, my large cloak
with its cape, my fur gloves, my campaigning cap, pulled
over my ears. And there I was, with a candle
in my hand, going down the grand staircase of the chateau.
For I was quartered in a chateau. The very word
(03:21):
makes one think of a warm room, well upholstered and
well furnished, with soft carpets and comfortable arm chairs, But
alas it was nothing of the sort. The good lady
whose house it was had provided for all contingencies. The
family rooms had been prudently dismantled and double locked. A
formidable concierge had the keys, and I was happy, indeed,
(03:43):
when I found the butler's room in the attics. His bed,
with its white sheets, seemed to me very desirable. And then,
as we say in time of peace, one must take
things as they come, the open hall door let in
a wave of cold air, which struck cold on my
f But I had not a minute to lose. The
detachment was to start at half past two punctually, and
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it had no doubt already formed up in the market place.
I hurried into the street. The tall pines of the
park stood out black against the silver sky, which, with
bare branches on the other trees, formed thousands of aarbusques
and strange patterns all round. Not the slightest noise was
to be heard in this limpid diphanius night, in which
(04:26):
the air seemed as pure and rare as the summits
of the lofty mountains. Under my footsteps the gravel was soft,
But once I had got outside of the iron gate,
I found myself on ground as hard as stone. The
mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by
streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a
maze of furrows and inequalities, which made me stumble again
(04:50):
and again. In front of the Hotel Deslax, a certain
number of the men had already lined up in front
of their horses, huddled in their cloaks, with collars turned up.
The they were stamping their feet and blowing onto their hands.
It must have been a real torture for them too
to come out of their straw litter, where they were
sleeping so snugly a few moments before, rolled up in
(05:10):
their blankets. They had got a liking for the kind
of comfort peculiar to the campaigner, and invented a thousand
and one ingenious methods of improving the arrangements of their
novel garrison. Sleeping parties had been gradually organized, and sets
of seven or eight at a time enjoyed delightful nights
stretched on their clean straw. Many of them would certainly
(05:32):
not be able to get the sleep if they suddenly
found themselves in a real bed, And then it is
less difficult to get up when one has gone to
bed with one's clothes on, and when the room is
not very warm, not one of them complained, not one
of them grumbled. We can always count on our brave fellows.
All present, mon Lieutenant. It was the senior non commissioned
(05:53):
officers of the two squadrons assembled there who reported everyone
had got up and equipped himself at the appointed hour.
Not one was missing at roll call. They had all
assembled of their own accord. The corporals had not needed
to knock at door after door to wake the sleepers.
Asher Sirs had very quickly established simple customs and rules
of their own, which ensured the regularity of the service
(06:15):
without written orders. This intelligent and spontaneous discipline is one
of the most admirable features of this campaign. It has
grown by degrees without any special orders or prescriptions from above,
with the result that the hardest labors are carried out
almost without supervision, because each man understands the end in
view and the grim necessities which it involves. They understood
(06:38):
at once that this early hour was the only one
at which the relief could be effected, and every other day,
just as on that December morning, twenty five men out
of each squadron get up at half past one, equip
themselves and saddle their horses, whilst the cooks warm up
a good cup of coffee for each man. Then, without
any hurry, but at the exact moment, they form up
(06:59):
in fighting order at the appointed spot. And when the
officer arrives in the dark, rain, wind snow or frost,
he is of receiving the same report. All present, mon,
Lieutenant quick Mount, we shall feel the cold less trotting
over the hardened roads this bright night and under this
brilliant moon. Two and two in silence, we issued from
(07:22):
the village in the direction of Ah. I knew that
I should find a little further on at the cross
roads where the crucifix stands the fifty men of the
first half Regiment, and second Lieutenant de g who serves
under me. Yes, there he was coming to meet me
on the hard road. It was a joy to me
that chance had given me this jolly fellow for my
trench companion. I hardly knew him, for he had not
(07:45):
been with us more than a few days. Taken from
the military college directly war was declared, he had first
been sent to a reserve squadron and had only just
been appointed to an active regiment, but I already knew
through my comrades of the first Squadron that he was
a daring soldier and a merry companion. So much the better,
I thought. War is a sad thing, and one must
(08:06):
learn to take it gaily, a plague on gloomy spirits
and long faces. True, we can no longer wage the
picturesque war of the good old days. We shall never
know another Fontenoy, or Rivoli or Illoo. But that is
no reason why we should lose the jovial humor of
our forefathers. Thank heaven, we are preserved their qualities of
(08:27):
dash and bravery. But it is more difficult to keep
a smiling face in this hideous moral warfare, which is
imposed upon even US troopers. All the more reason for
liking and admiring the cheery officers who keep up our spirits,
and g is one of them. We shook hands without speaking,
for it seemed to us that if we opened our mouths,
(08:47):
the frost would get into our bodies and freeze them.
And we set off at a sharp trot along the
narrow road which, crossing the high Road to Paris, leads
to sea. There we should have to leave our horses,
cross the zone of the enemies artillery fire, and get
to the trenches on foot. The horses snorted with pleasure,
happy to warm themselves by rapid movement. Some of them
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indulged in merry capers, which were repressed not too gently
by the more sedate riders. The hoofs struck the uneven
ground with a metallic ring which must have echoed far,
and the clink of the bits and stirrups also disturbed
the sleeping country before us. The road ran straight amidst
the dark fields, a long, pale ribbon. No one thought
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of laughing or talking. Sleep seemed still to hover over
the column, and everyone knew that two days of trench
duty would be long and hard to get through, even
if the Prussians left us in peace. We passed across
which shone white on the side of the road under
the pale light of the moon, and saluted it. We
had known it from the first days and had its
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inscription by heart. Eighty non commissioned officers, corporals and soldiers
of the thirty ninth and seventy fourth Regiments of Infantry
in action pray for them. We dimly discerned the modest
wreaths of green leaves, now faded and yellow, and the
little nosegays of withered flowers attached to the arms of
this cross. Left there after the departure of the regiment,
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and undisturbed by any sacrilegious hand, we crossed the Paris
Road with its double row of trees, which in the
night appeared gigantic, And after answering the challenge of the
territorial guarding the approach to sea, we entered the village.
It appeared to be completely empty, and yet there were
two battalions of the territorials quartered there. The moon seemed
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to be amusing itself by casting the shadows of the
houses on one side of the street upon the walls
of the other in fantastic shapes. Dismount we had reached
the spot where we were to leave our horses. The
men quickly unbuckled the blankets which were to help them
endure the weary hours of the following night. They slung
them over their shoulders, and we set off towards the
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towing path of the canal. We went very slowly, as
we had at least seven or eight kilometers before us,
and a walk of eight kilometers for troopers ladened and
dressed as we were, is no light matter we found
the towing path. Walking at that hour of the night
is entirely not very alluring. However, the view was not
lacking in grandeur. On either side of the canal, the
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dark silhouettes of tall trees stood out against the sky.
Their shadows were reflected in the water, which gleamed with
a metallic luster in the moonshine. How calm and silent
it was, Who would have thought that we were at war.
Not a cannon shot, not a rifle shot, disturbed the
peace of the night. Yet as a rule, there were
no long intervals between the reports, which reminded us of
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the serious work at hand. That day, it seemed as
though some agreement had been come to by both sides
to stop killing or trying to kill. However touching such
an agreement might be, it would also be somewhat disturbing,
for one must always be aware of an enemy who
resorts so freely to tree and traps of every kind.
It was as well not to celebrate Christmas too obtrusively. Besides,
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I did not think that we were the only ones
keeping vigil at that hour. From time to time we
passed small groups of infantry, haggard, dusty, and heavily laden,
marching in ranks with their arms slung by threes and fours,
without speaking, striding slowly as though they were trying to
measure the length of the road. Some of them were
carrying curious objects fastened to sticks, pots or big cans,
(12:30):
perhaps baskets. Where were they going or what were they doing?
We did not ask. Every man has his own job.
If those fellows were going that way, they had their orders,
and nobody troubled himself about their object. All was well.
The clattering of the chaseurs on the uneven road lent
a little life to the picture. Perhaps they were talking together,
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but if so, it was in an undertone, a whisper almost.
And suddenly the enemy let us know that he was
also keeping watch. Far ahead of us, near sea, a
rocket went up into the clear sky and then fell slowly,
very slowly, in the form of an intensely brilliant ball,
lighting up the surrounding country. Wonderfully we knew them well,
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those formidable German rockets, which seemed as though they would
never go out, and shed a pallid and yet blinding light.
We knew that as soon as they were lighted, everybody
who happened to be within range of the enemy's rifle
fire had at once to lie flat on the ground
and not move or raise his head so long as
the light was burning. Otherwise shots would be fired from
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all directions, mowing down the vegetation and cutting up the
earth all around him. This time we were well outside
the range, and we watched the dazzling star in front
of us without halting the shepherd's star, said she solemnly.
Strange shepherds. Indeed, must they have been who carried carbines
as their crooks, and were provided with cartridges enough to
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send a hundred and twenty of their fellow creatures into
the next world. Dar seemed to hang for a moment
some yards from the ground, then slowly, slowly, as though
exhausted by its effort, it fell to the ground and
went out. The night seemed less clear and less diaphanous.
We had now reached the glass works, and it was
there that we were to leave our cooks. No one
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would have supposed that this large factory lay idle, and
that the hundreds of workmen employed there were dispersed. On
the contrary, it seemed to have retained all the animation
of the prosperous enterprise it had been before the war.
It was a large square of massive buildings, almost a
miniature town, planted on the side of the canal, like
an outlying bastion of the suburbs of Ah. The low
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white walls, crowned with tiles, had the stunted appearance of
military works, but a nearer view gave rather the illusion
of the life in a busy factory. At night time,
the gateway opened on a courtyard, the furnace fire shining
here and there. Shadowy forms passed backwards and forwards, enlivening
the dim scene with the bustle of a hive. Came
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out by fives or sixes, laden with different kinds of burdens,
and disappeared into the darkness, making for mysterious goals. In
front of the open gate, other figures were unloading heavy
cases from vans. These quondam glass works were now a
depot for the army supply service, and a huge kitchen
which administered and fed the whole sector of trenches of
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which hours formed a part. The Germans knew this so
every day, and many times a day, their guns fired
a few salvos of shells on the huge quadrilateral, But
our good troopers were none the worse. Instead of working
in the large buildings, part of which had already been
destroyed by shells, they utilized the vast basements of the factory.
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There were the stores, and there they had their kitchens,
where they worked day and night to supply their comrades
in the trenches with the hot, abundant food, which twice
a day made them forget for a few minutes the
hardships of the cold, the rain, and the mud. Our
column halted under the bleak wall at the wide gateway.
A cent snoll was on duty, standing motionless, muffled in
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heavy gray cloak, and through it our cooks passed, disappearing
into the darkness. Under the guidance of the liaison officer
of the preceding detachment. Whilst waiting for his return from
the journey through the labyrinth ash, your sirs had a
short rest before beginning the most difficult part of their journey,
the last stage on the way to the trenches we
were to occupy. I took the opportunity of talking with
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an infantry captain who was there walking up and down
with his face buried in a thick muffler, with his
hands in his pockets of his heavy overcoat, on the
sleeves of which three small pieces of gold lace were discernible. Eh,
pien mont capitain? Anything new, Oh, nothing except my opinion
that you will not be disturbed either to day or
to morrow. Since yesterday evening they have not fired one shot,
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and they were singing hymns till midnight. You may be
pretty sure they'll redouble their orimus this Christmas night. So
you may sleep soundly unless all this is merely a
faint and to night, yes, you're right, unless to night.
The column started, and, guided by the liaison, orderly, we
followed the high road for some hundred yards. The shells
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had transformed it into a series of gorges, peaks, ravines
and hills. We had to jump over big branches cut
from the trees by the projectiles. It was a road
that would not be a cheerful one on moonless nights.
Fortunately for us, that particular night was extremely bright. Everything
around us could be distinguished. We could even divine about
fifteen hundred yards to our right the Solitary Tree, the
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famous tree standing alone in the middle of the vast
bear plain, which marked the center of our sector of
our trenches, and where I knew I should find the
dugout belonging to the offices of our regiment. I was
very much tempted to jump the ditch at the side
of the road and cut across the fields to the
final point of our march. He would have taken about
twenty minutes and have saved us a long, difficult journey
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through the communication trench. But our orders were very precise.
We were not to take short cuts, even on dark nights,
much less on starlit nights. Our chiefs do well to
be cautious on our behalf, for it is certain that,
though fully alive to the danger of such a route,
there was not one of my hundred fellows who would
have hesitated to dash across the country to save himself.
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A few hundred yards we came to the mouth of
the approach trench, four or five huge steps cut into
the chalky clay. The frost had made them slippery, and
we had to keep close to the edge of the
bank to avoid stumbling behind me. I heard some of
the men sliding down heavily, and a din of mess
tins rolling away amidst laughter and jokes. A merry heart
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goes all the way, and I knew my chasseurs would
soon pick themselves up and make up for lost time.
This was essential, for the approach trench had ramifications and
unexpected cross passages, which might have led a laggard astray.
We went forward slowly. The communication trench was at right
angles to the enemy's trenches to prevent him from emfilating
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it with his shells. It had been cut in zigzags,
and I hardly know of a more laborious method of
progression than that of taking ten paces to the right,
marking a sharp turn, and then taking ten paces to
the left, and so on, in order to cover a
distance which, as the crow flies, would not have been
more than fifteen hundred yards. The passage was so narrow
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that we touched the walls on either side. The moonlight
could not reach the ground. We trod on, and we
stumbled incessantly over the holes and inequalities caused by the
late rains and hardened by the frost. Now and again
we slid over ice that had formed on the little
pools through which our comrades had been paddling for two
days before, and this was some consolation for the severity
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of the frost, preferable one hundred times to the horrors
of the rain. At last we debouched into our trenches,
where our predecessors were impatiently waiting for us. Two days
and two nights is a long time to go without sleeping,
without washing, without having any other view than the walls
of earth that shut you in. They were all eager
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to go back over the same road they had come
by two days before, to get to their horses again,
their quarters, their friends, in short, their home. So we
found them quite ready to go, blankets rolled up and
slung over their shoulders, and knapsacks in their places under
their cloaks. Whilst the non commissioned officers of each squadron
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went to relieve the men at the listening posts, I
brushed past the men lined up against the wall, and
went towards the solitary tree, which seemed to be stretching
out its gaunt arms. To protect our retreat, I had
to turn to the right in a narrow passage which
went round the tree and ended in three steep steps
cut into the earth down which I had to go
to reach the dugout. My old friend Lagie was waiting
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for me at the bottom of this den, stretched out
on two chairs, warming his feet at a tiny iron
st stove, perched upon a heap of bricks. By the
light of the one candle, he looked imposing and serious.
His tawny beard, which had been allowed to grow since
the war, spread like a fan over his chest and
gave him a look of Henry the Fourth. I knew
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that this formidable exterior concealed the merriest companion and the
most delightful sly joker that ever lived, so I was
not much impressed by his thoughtful brow and his dreamy eye.
Well what's the news, I asked, We are all freezing,
he replied, I rather suspected it. Besides this fact, which
we had discovered before him, Legigue could only confirm what
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the infantry captain had told me shortly before. You are
going to have a most RESTful night, my dear fellow,
and I advise you to have a Christmas Manger arranged
at the foot of the solitary tree, and at midnight
to sing Christmas Awake in chorus. We know some hymns
as well as the Germans. I had no lack of
desire to put this proposal into action. But such pious
customs as these would not perhaps have been quite in
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harmony with the tactical ideas of our commanding officer. Still,
I promised Leji I would do my best for the
realization of his dream. Goodbye and good luck, he said. Goodbye,
I replied, and he went away into the darkness. At
the end of the little passage that led to the trench,
I could see the men who had just relieved, passing
in a single file towards the communication trench by which
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we had come, their dark forms defiled in closely and rapidly.
Having completed their task, they were happy to be free
to get back to their squadrons, and as they passed
they cracked their jokes at the others who had to stay.
These answered back, but not in the most amiable manner. Then,
little by little silence settled down upon the scene. Every
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man was at his post, some kept watch, others walked
about in the bottom of the trench, or busied themselves
with repairing or improving the indifferent shelters their predecessors had
left them. G had gone to take the watch, on
which the junior officers of the units defending the sector
relieved every other three hours. So there I was alone,
alone in the midst of my brave chasseurs, with the
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duty of guarding those five hundred yards of trenches, a
very small peace at that time, of the immense French
line behind us, thousands of our fellows were sleeping in
perfect confidence, relying upon this thin rampart we formed in
front of them. And farther away still were the millions
of frenchmen and French women, who, under their family roof
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or that of their hosts, were resting in peace because
of our sleepless nights, our limbs stiffened by the cold,
our carbines pointed through the loopholes of the trenches. Thus
were we to celebrate the merry festival of Christmas. There
was no doubt that far away, among those who were
keeping the sacred vigil, more than one would think of
us and sympathize with us. No doubt many a one
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among us would feel a touch of sadness that evening,
thinking of his home. But none, not one, I felt sure,
would wish to quit his post, to get away from
the front. Military honor, glorious legacy of our ancestors. Who
could have foreseen that it would be implanted so naturally
and so easily in the young souls of our soldiers.
Within their youthful bodies, the same hearts were already beating
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as those of the immortal veterans of the epic days
of France. Men a fashioned by war. Ten o'clock came
on Christmas Eve to find that our day had passed
in almost absolute calm. It had been a glorious winter day,
a day of bright sunshine and pure clear air. The
Germans had hardly fired at all. A few cannon shots
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only had replied to our artillery, which let off its
heavy guns every now and then upon their positions from
the heights behind us. And then night came be and
I had just finished our frugal meal. We had promised
to pay a visit to the territorials who occupied the
trenches to the right and left of ours. Our chasseurs
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had been posted in that particular section, so that in
case of an attack they might form a solid base
for the territorials to rely upon. They did not conceal
their confidence in our men or their admiration for them,
and their officers had no scruples in asking for our
advice when difficult cases arose. In fact, that very afternoon,
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the captain commanding the company to our right had come
to my dugout to arrange with me about the patrols
that had to be sent that night in advance of
the line. Wrapped in our cloaks, we came out of
our warm retreat. The night was just like the previous one, starlit,
bright and frosty, a true Christmas night for times of peace.
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In our trenches, one half of the men were awake
in obedience to the orders. Carbines were loaded and placed
in the loopholes, and the guns were trained upon the
enemy in front of us. At the end of the
narrow passages which led to our listening posts, I knew
that our sentries were alert, with eye and ear crouching
in their holes in pairs. No one could approach that
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broad network of wire which protected us without being immediately
perceived and shot. At the bottom of the trenches, the
men on watch were talking softly together and stamping on
the ground to combat the intense cold. Those who were
at rest, lying close together at the bottom of the
little dugouts they had made for themselves in the bank,
were sleeping or trying to sleep. More than one of
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them has succeeded, for resounding snores could be heard behind
the blankets, pieces of tent, canvas and sacking, and all
the various rags with which they ingeniously stuffed up the
entrances to their rustic alcoves. One wondered how they could
overcome the sufferings. The cold must have caused them so
far to be able to sleep calmly. The five months
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of war had hardened their bodies and accustomed them to
face cold, heat, rain, dust or mud with impunity. In
this hard school, better than in any other, men of
iron are fashioned who last out a whole campaign and
are capable of the supreme effort when the hour comes.
We arrived at the Territorial's trench one sirmont sheer comarade.
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It was the second lieutenant whom I met at the entrance.
He was a man of forty two, thin, pale and
bearded in the shadow. His eyes shone strangely under the
skirts of his great coat. He had his hands buried
in his trouser pockets, his elbows stuck out from his body.
His knees were bent, his teeth chattered, and he was
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gently knocking his heels together. It isn't warm, eh, I asked,
Oh no, And then you see this sort of work
is hardly the thing for fellows of our age. Our
blood isn't warm enough. And however you cover yourself up,
there is always a chink by which the cold gets in.
The worst of all is one's hands and feet, and
there's nothing to be done for it. Wouldn't it be
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much better to trust to us, give us the order
to fix mayonets and drive those boshes out of their
trenches over there? You'd see if the territorials couldn't do
it as well as the regulars, and then one would
have a chance of getting warm. I felt sure that
he spoke the truth, and that his opinion was shared
by the majority of his companions. But our good comrades
of the territorial force have no conception of the vigor,
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the suppleness, and of the fullness of youth required to
charge up to the enemy's line under concentrated fire, and
to cut the complex network of barbed wire that bars
the road. Achiss were well advised in placing these troops
where they were in those lines of trenches scientifically constructed
and protected, where their courage and tenacity would be invaluable
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in case of attack, and where they would know better
than the others how to carry out the orders given
to us. Hold on till death, leave to the young
soldiers the sublime and perilous task of rushing upon the
enemy when he is hidden behind the shelter of his
fore guards, his parapets, and his artificial brambles, and intrust
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to the brave territorials the more obscure and not less
glorious work of mounting guard along our front. I could
make them out in the moonlight, standing so silent and alert,
in groups of two or three, perched on the edge
of the earth, which raised them to the height of
the parapet, And they had their eyes wide in the
open darkness, looking towards the enemy. Their loaded rifles were
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placed in front of them between two clods of hardened earth.
They neither complained nor uttered a word, but suffered nobly.
They understand that they must ah. Where now were the
fine tirades of pothouse orators and public meetings? Where now
were the oaths to revolt the solemn denials, and the
blasphemies pronounced against the fatherland. All was forgotten, wiped out
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from the records. If we could have questioned those men
who stood there, shivering, chilled to the bone, watching over
the safety of the country, not one of them certainly
would have confessed that he was ever one of the
renegades of yore. And yet if one were to search
among the bravest, among the most resigned, among the best,
thousands of them would be discovered. Heaven grant that this
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miracle wrought by the war may be prolonged far beyond
the days of the struggle, and then we shall not
think that our brother's blood has been spilt in vain.
We brushed past them, they did not even turn around. Eyes, mind,
and will were absorbed in the dark mystery of the
silent landscape stretching out before them. But the night, though
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it was bright, gave everything a strange appearance, transformed all
living things and increased their size, made the stones, the stacks,
and the trees move as it seemed to our weary eyes,
cast fitful shadows where there were none, and made us
hear murmurs which sounded like the muffled tramp of troops
marching cautiously. Those men watched because they felt that there
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was always the danger of a surprise attack, of a
sudden rush of Teutons, who had crawled up through the
grass of the fields. They had piled on their backs
empty sacks, blankets and old rags for warmth, and way
on their mufflers two or three times around their necks.
They had taken all possible precor for carrying out their
duty to the very last. And although our hearts had
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been hardened by the unprecedented miseries of this war, we
were seized with the pity and admiration. Presently one of
them turned round and said to us, HALLO, they're lighting
up over there now. I jumped up on to the
ledge and saw, in fact lights shining in three different
places some way off. After looking attentively, I guess the
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meaning of this quite unusual illumination. In the rear of
the trenches. The lights came up from some large fir
trees placed there under cover of night, and beautifully lightened up.
With my glasses, I can make them out distinctly, and
even the figures dancing round them, we could hear their
voices and shouts of merriment. How well they had arranged
the whole thing. They had even gone as far as
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to light up their Christmas trees with electricity, so as
to prevent our gunners from using them as an easy target.
In fact, every few minutes, all the lights on a
tree were suddenly put out, and only appeared some minutes afterwards.
We had thrilled instinctively. Suddenly there arose all over the
wide plain, solemn and melodious singing. We still remembered singing
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of a similar kind we had recently heard in Big
Schute on a tragic occasion. And here were the same
tuneful voices again, singing a hymn of the same kind
as those they sang further to the north before shouting
their hurrahs for the attack. But we did not fear
anything of that kind. Now we had the impression that
this singing was not a special prayer in front of
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our little sector of trenches, but that it was general
and extended, without limits, over the whole of our provinces
violated by the enemy over Champagne, Lorraine, Picardy. Resounding from
the North Sea to the Rhine. The territorial trench was
full of noiseless animation. The men came up out of
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their little dugouts without a word, and the whole company
was soon perched upon the ledge. There was a silence
among ami, as if each man felt uneasy or perhaps jealous,
of what was going on over there. Then, as if
to order, along the line of German trenches, other hymns
rang out, and one choir seemed to answer the other.
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The singing became general, quite close to us in the
trenches themselves in the distance, round their brightly littered trees
to the right to the left. It resounded softened by
the distance. What a stirring, name, grandiose impression those hymns
made floating over the vast field of death. I felt
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intuitively that all this had been arranged long before, that
they might celebrate their Christmas with religious calm and peace.
At any other time, no doubt many a clumsy joke
would have been made, and no little abuse hurled at
the singers, but all that had been changed. I divined
some regret among our brave fellows that we were not
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taking part in a similar festival. Was it not Christmas Eve?
Had we not been obliged by our duty to give
up the delightful family gathering which unites us yearly round
the symbolic yule log. This year, our mothers, our sisters,
and our children were keeping up the time honored and
pious custom alone. Why did not our larger family of
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to day join in singing together around lighted fir trees.
Our territorials did not speak, but their thoughts flew from
the trenches, and the regrets of all were fused in
a common feeling of melancholy. Little by little the singing
died away, and absolute silence fell once more upon the country.
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I went with G as far as his watch post.
He had to resume his duty as officer of the
watch from eleven o'clock in the evening to two o'clock
in the morning. The post consisted of a kind of
small block house, strongly built and protected by two case
mates with machine gun's placed so as to command the
enemy's trenches. A machine gunner was all was on guard,
and could call the others at the slightest alarm to
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work the gun. These men were quartered in a kind
of tunnel hollowed out close by, and at the first
signal would have been ready to open fire with their
terrible engines of destruction. In the center of the block house,
a padded sentry box was arranged made of a number
of sand bags, in which, by means of a loophole,
the officer of the watch could observe the whole sector
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entrusted to us, and by means of a telephone station
close at hand, he could communicate at any moment with
the commander of the sector At the glass works. G
had put on the goat skin coat handed to him
by the officer. He relieved this officer was a second
Lieutenant of territorials and looked completely frozen. Here, my dear fellow,
he said, I leave you the goat skin provided for
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the use of the officer on duty. I should have
liked to give it to you well warmed, but I
feel like an icicle myself. G was nevertheless glad to
have it. After wishing him good luck, I left him
to get back to my hut, for in spite of
my cloth oak, the frost was taking hold of me too.
The faithful what Loot had done his best to keep
our little stove going. Profiting by Ludgie's example, I stretched
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myself on two chairs with my feet towards the fire,
I gradually got warmer and at the same time somewhat melancholy.
What a curious Christmas Eve, certainly I had never heard
of one passed in such a place. The walls were
made of a grayish friable earth, which still showed the
marks of the pick that had been used for the excavation.
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The furniture was simple and not very comfortable. At the
back was the bed, made of a little straw, already
well tossed over by a number of sleepers. This straw
was kept in by a plank fixed to the ground
and forming the side of a modest couch against the wall.
Opposite the stove was the table. This table, which had
to serve for writing and feeding, and perhaps for a
(36:51):
game of cars. This table, which was required to fill
out the part of all tables of all rooms of
any house, was strange, to say a night table. I
wondered who had brought it there and who had chosen it.
But such as it was, it served the purpose pretty well.
We used it for dinner and found it almost comfortable,
And upon it I signed a number of reports and orders.
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Together with the two chairs, the stove, the bed, and
some nails to hang my clothes on the table completed
the furniture of the home where I meditated on that
December night. The candle stuck in a bottle flickered at
the slightest breath and threw strange shadows on the walls.
It was the hour of solitude and silence, the hour
of meditation, and of sadness too. Now and then that evening,
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dark thoughts were flying about in that smoky den, assailing
me in crowds and taking possession of my mind. I
could not drive them away. It was one of those moments,
those very fleeting moments when courage seems to fail and
one gives way with a kind of bitter satisfaction. I
remembered that months and months had passed since I seen
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any of those belonging to me, and I conjured up
in my mind the picture of the Christmas Eve they
were keeping too at that same hour, at the other
end of France. And the dear good friends I had
left in Paris and in Ruin, Where were they at
that moment? What were they doing? Were they thinking of me?
How I should have liked to enjoy the wonderful power
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possessed by certain heroes in Arabian nights, which would have
allowed me to see at that moment a vision of
the loved ones far away. Were they talking about me,
sitting together round the fire? I thought that this war
had been a splendid thing to us chasseurs, as long
as we were fighting as cavalry, scouring the plains, searching
the woods, galloping in advance of our infantry, and bringing
(38:44):
them information which enabled them to deal their blows or
parry those of the enemy, trying to come up with
the Prussian covery which fled before us. But this trench warfare,
this warfare in which one stays for days and days
in the same position, in which ground is gained yard
by yard, in which artifice tries to outdo artifice, in
(39:05):
which each side clings to the ground it has won,
digs into it, buries itself in it, and dies in
it sooner than give it up. What warfare for cavalry.
We have devoted ourselves to it with all our hearts,
and the chiefs who have had us under their orders
have never failed to commend us. But at times we
feel very weary, and during inaction and solitude our imaginations
(39:29):
begin to work. Then we recall our regiment in full
gallop over the fields and plain we hear the clank
of swords and bits, we see once more the flash
of the blades, the motley line of the horses. We
evoke the well known figures of our chiefs on their charges.
That night my mind became more restless than ever before.
It broke loose. It leapt away and lived again the
(39:52):
unforgettable stages of this war, Charleroi, Guize, the Marne, the
defense of chargon Bridge, montmor Reems, Belgium, Big Shute. And
then it fell back into the gloomy dugout, where the
flame of the single candle traced disquieting shadows on the wall. Suddenly,
a cold breath of air blew into my retreat. The
(40:13):
door opened abruptly, and at the top of the steps,
a man stooping over the floor of the passage called
to me in an undertone, Mon, lieutenant, come and see
something is happening. With a bound, I sprang up from
my shelter and climbed up the ledge. Listen, mon lieutenant.
That night in the trenches was destined to overwhelm me
(40:35):
with astonishment, and this one surpassed all that I could
imagine I should like to be able to impart the
extraordinary impression I felt, But one would have to have
been there that night to be capable of realizing it.
Over that vast and silent plain, in which everything seemed
to sleep, and where no other sound was heard, there
resounded from afar a voice whose notes, in spite of
(40:57):
the distance, reached our ears. What an extraordinary thing it was.
That song, vibrating through the boundless night, made our hearts
beat and stirred us more than the most perfectly ordered
concert given by the most famous of singers. And it
was another hymn unknown to us, coming from the German
trenches far away on our right. The singer must have
(41:19):
been standing out in the fields on the edge of
their line. He must have been moving, coming towards us,
and passing slowly along the enemy's positions. For his voice
came gradually nearer and became louder and clearer. Every now
and then it ceased, and then hundreds of other voices
responded in chorus, with some phrases which formed the refrain
(41:41):
of the hymn. Then the soloists began again and came
still nearer to us. He must have come from the
considerable distance, for our chasseurs had already heard him for
some time before they decided to call me. Who could
this man have been. Who must have been sent all
along the front of the troops to pray whilst each
German company waited for him so as to join in
(42:02):
with him in prayer, some minister, no doubt, who had
come to remind the soldiers of the sanctity of that
night and the solemnity of the hour. Soon we heard
the voice coming from the trenches straight in front of us.
In spite of the brightness of the night, we could
not distinguish the singer, for the two lines at that
point were four hundred yards apart. But he was certainly
(42:22):
not hiding himself, for his deep voice would never have
sounded so rich and clear to us had he been
singing at the bottom of their trenches. Again, it ceased,
and then the Germans directly in front of us, the
soldiers occupy in the work's opposite hours, those men whom
we were bound to kills as soon as they appeared,
and whose duty it was to shoot us as soon
(42:43):
as we showed ourselves, Those men calmly took up the
refrain of the hymn with its sweet and mysterious words.
They too must have come to the edge of their
trench and struck up their hymn with their faces towards us,
For their notes came to us clearly and distinctly. I
looked along the line of our trench. All our men
too were awake and looking on. They had all got
(43:06):
on to the ledge, and several had left the trench
and were in the field listening to the unexpected concert.
No one was offended by it, No one laughed at it. Rather,
there was a trace of regret in the attitudes and
the faces of those who were nearest to me. And
yet it would have been such a simple matter to
put an end to that scene. Are volley fired by
(43:27):
the troop there, and it would all stop and drop
back into the quiet of other knights. But nobody thought
of such a thing. There was not one of our
chasseurs who would not have considered it a sacrilege to
fire upon those praying soldiers. We felt, indeed, that there
are hours when one can forget that one is there
to kill. This would not prevent us from doing our duty.
(43:49):
Immediately afterwards, the voice drew further away, and retreated slowly
and majestically towards the trenches situated at the place known
as the Troopers of Seas, where our two lines approached
each other within a distance of fifty yards. How much
more touching the sight must have been from there. I
(44:10):
wished my post had been in that direction, so that
I might have been present at the scene, might have
heard the words and distinguished the figure of the pastor
walking along the parapets made for hurling out death and
blessing those who next day might be no more ping.
A shot was heard, the stupid bullet, which had perhaps
(44:30):
found its mark. At once there was dead silence, not
a cry, not an oath, not a groan. Somemond had
thought he was doing well by firing on that man.
A pity. We should gain nothing by preventing them from
keeping Christmas in their own way, and it would have
been a nobler thing to reserve our blows for other hecatombs.
(44:51):
I know that the barbarians would not have hesitated had
they been in our place, and that so many of
our priests had fallen under their strokes that they could
not reasonably have repro coroached us. There are people who
will say that our hatred should embrace everything German, that
we should be implacable towards everything bearing that name, and
spare none of the excreated race, which has been the
(45:13):
cause of so many tears, so much blood, so much mourning.
Never Mind, I think in this case it would have
been better not to have shot. A shot fired not
far from us on our left brought me up from
my shelter. It seemed strange, after that complete calm of
the night. It was seven o'clock, the sun was magnificent
(45:35):
and had already bathed the deserted plain, the fields, the
heights of s and the ruined village. In the distance
towards the east, the towers of the Cathedral of Ars
stood out proudly against the golden sky. I looked and
saw that all my chasseurs standing on the ledges, waiting
with interest a scene which seemed to be going on
in front of the trenches occupied on our left by
(45:55):
the territorials. I got up by the side of one
of them explained to me what was happening on, Lieutenant.
It's the infantry fellows who have just killed a hare
that ran between the two lines. They're going to fetch it,
And in fact I saw this strange sight. Two men
had gone out in full daylight from their trenches and
(46:16):
were advancing with hesitating steps towards the enemies. Behind them
were a hundred inquisitive heads looking out above the embrasures
arranged between the sacks of earth. A few soldiers who
had come out of the trench were even sitting on
the bank of chalky earth. It was certainly such a
scene as I had hardly expected to witness. What was
the captain of the company occupying the trench doing. But
(46:39):
my astonishment became stupefication when I saw hundreds of heads
that fringed the enemy's trenches. I at once sent g
and a non commissioned officer with the following order to
all our men, no one is to show himself. Every
man to his fighting post, carbines loaded and ready to fire.
(47:00):
Woman's opposite became suspicious on seeing our line so silent
and no man showing himself. They too, waited on the
alert behind their loopholes. But along the rest of their front,
their men kept on coming out of their trenches, unarmed
and making merry and friendly gestures. I became uneasy and
wondered how this unexpected comedy might end. Ought I to
(47:22):
have those men fired upon, who were not quite opposite
to us, and whose opponents seemed rather inclined to make
a Christmas truce. Our two infantrymen had come to the
spot where the hare had fallen, very nearly half way
between the French and German lines. One of them stooped
down and got up again, proudly brandishing his victim in
the enemy's faces. At once there was a burst of
(47:44):
applause from the German lines. They called out, Comaradin, Comaradin,
this was going too far. I saw two unarmed Russians
leave their trench and come forward with their hands raised
towards the two frenchmen. So I consulted, g ought we
to fire. I confess it would be rather unpleasant for
me to order our fellows to fire upon these unarmed men.
(48:06):
On the other hand, can we allow the least intercourse
between the barbarious nation that is still treading our soil
and our good brothers in arms, who were pouring out
their blood every day to reconquer it. Fortunately, the officer
who commanded the Saint Theory Artillery, and who had observed
this scene with his glasses spared me a decision which
(48:26):
would have been painful to me. Pong Pong pong pong
four shells passed hissing over our heads, and burst with
admirable precision two hundred yards above the German trenches. The
artillery officer seemed to have placed with a delicate hand
the four little white puffs of smoke, which equal distant
from each other, appeared to mark out the bounds in
the heavens of the frontier line he wished to forbid
(48:49):
the enemy to pass on the earth. The Germans did
not fail to understand this graceful warning. With cries of
rage and protest. They ran back to their shelters, and
our French me did the same, and, as though to
mark the intentional kindness of what he had just done,
hardly had the last the spikee helmets disappeared behind the parapets,
(49:09):
when again the same hissing noise was heard, and Pong
pong poo pong four shells dropped, this time full upon
the whitish line formed along the green plain by the
upturned earth of their trenches. In the midst of the smoke,
earth and rubbish of all kinds were seen flying as
chasseurs cried bravo. Everyone felt that the best solution had
(49:31):
been found and rejoiced at this termination of the brief
Christmas truce. And now our minds were free to rejoice
in the great day itself, in company with our good troopers.
In the night there had arrived, well packed in smart hampers,
the bottles of champagne which Major B had presented to
his men, And we were looking forward to the time
(49:51):
only a few hours hence, when the soup would be
upon the table, and we should keep our Christmas by
letting off the corks in the direction of the German trenches.
Our young fellow officers were already anticipating this peaceful salvo,
which would certainly be heard by the enemy. End of
Chapter eight. End of In the Field nineteen fourteen, nineteen
(50:14):
fifteen by Marcel DuPont. Recording by f N H Visit
w W W dot Book Ranger, dot Co, dot u
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