The Debacle - Emile Zola [112]
A fusillade burst out at the lower end of Floing, but was over almost at once, and Captain Beaudoin’s company was ordered to fall back three hundred metres. They were entering a huge square cabbage-field when the captain snapped out:
‘Everybody down!’
They had to lie flat. The cabbages were wet with heavy dew, and their thick greeny-yellow leaves retained drops as pure and bright as big jewels.
‘Set your sights at four hundred,’ the captain called out next.
Maurice supported the barrel of his rifle on a cabbage in front of him. But you couldn’t see anything down at ground level like this, for the earth stretched on and was quite featureless, cut up by greenery. He nudged Jean, who was stretched out on his right, and asked him what the hell they were supposed to be doing. Jean, as an experienced soldier, showed him a battery they were installing on a near-by hillock. Clearly they had been positioned here to support this battery. Out of curiosity he stood up to see whether Honoré and his cannon were involved, but the reserve artillery was in the rear, protected by a clump of trees.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ bawled Rochas, ‘lie down, will you!’
Maurice had hardly got down again before a shell whistled overhead. From then on they never stopped. The range was only gradually adjusted, the first came well beyond the battery, which began to fire also. As a matter of fact many shells did not explode because they were deadened in soft earth, and at first there were plenty of jokes about the clumsiness of these bloody sauerkraut-eaters.
‘Oh well,’ said Loubet, ‘their fireworks are duds.’
‘I expect they’ve pissed on them!’ added Chouteau with a grin.
Even Lieutenant Rochas joined in.
‘I told you those silly sods can’t even aim straight with a cannon!’
But then a shell burst ten metres away, spattering the company with earth. Although Loubet said something funny about the chaps getting out their clothes-brushes, Chouteau went pale and stopped talking. He had never been under fire, nor for that matter had Pache or Lapoulle, in fact nobody in the squad except Jean. Eyelids fluttered over worried eyes, and voices went thin as though they could not get out properly. Maurice had sufficient self-control to make an attempt at self-examination: he was not afraid yet, for he didn’t think he was in any danger, and all he felt was a slight discomfort under the diaphragm, while his mind went blank and he couldn’t put two ideas together in his head. Yet if anything his hopes were rising in a sort of elation since he had been struck with admiration at the discipline of the troops. He reached the state of no longer doubting victory if they could get close to the enemy with the bayonet.
‘Funny,’ he remarked, ‘it’s full of flies.’
Three times already he had heard what he took for a swarm of bees.
‘Oh no,’ laughed Jean, ‘they’re bullets.’
Other faint buzzings passed over. The whole squad looked round and began to take interest. It was irresistible, the men screwed their necks round and couldn’t keep still.
‘Look here,’ Loubet advised Lapoulle, delighting in his simplicity, ‘when you see a bullet coming all you’ve got to do is put one finger up in front of your nose like this, and that cuts the air and the bullet passes to the right or the left.’
‘But I can’t see them,’ said Lapoulle.
At explosion of laughter burst around him.
‘Oh the artful old devil, he can’t see them! Open your optics, you fool! Look, there’s one, there’s another!… Didn’t you spot that one?