The Debacle - Emile Zola [115]
General Bourgain-Desfeuilles listened goggle-eyed.
‘Good God!’ he said. ‘So long as we know… For my part I don’t give a damn anyway!’
He galloped away, not really interested at bottom, having only looked upon the war as a quick means of gaining promotion to general of division, and only too anxious that this stupid campaign should come to an end as soon as possible, as it was proving so unsatisfactory to everybody.
Then there came a burst of mirth from the soldiers of the Beaudoin company. Maurice said nothing, but he was of the same opinion as Chouteau and Loubet, who went off into scornful laughter. Gee up! Whoa back! Any old way you like! Look at that fine lot of officers who were all hand in glove and never looked after number one – I don’t think! When you had officers like that wasn’t the best thing you could do to go off and have a kip? Three commanders-in-chief in three hours, three clots who didn’t even quite know what there was to do and gave different orders! No, straight, it was enough to make God Almighty in person lose his temper and throw his hand in! And then the inevitable accusations of treason began again – Ducrot and Wimpffen were out for Bismarck’s three million, same as MacMahon.
General Douay had stayed alone at the head of his staff, looking into the distance at the Prussian positions, lost in an utterly depressing dream. For a long while he examined Le Hattoy, shells from which were falling at his feet. Then, having turned towards the plateau of Illy, he summoned an officer to take an order over to the brigade of the 5th corps he had borrowed from Wimpffen the day before and which linked him up with General Ducrot’s left. Once more he was clearly heard saying:
‘If the Prussians captured the Calvary we couldn’t hold on here for an hour, but would be thrown back into Sedan.’
He left, disappearing with his escort round a bend in the sunken road, and the gunfire redoubled its intensity. Perhaps they had spotted him. The shells, which so far had only been coming from straight in front, now began to rain down obliquely from the left. They were the batteries on Frénois and another battery on the Iges peninsula, and they were directing a cross-fire with those on Le Hattoy. The whole plateau of Algérie was being swept by them. From then on the situation of the company became terrible. Men concerned with watching what was happening in front of them had this new worry in their rear and did not know which threat to dodge. Three men were killed in quick succession, and two wounded men were screaming.
So it was that Sergeant Sapin met the death he was expecting. He had turned round and he saw the shell coming when it could no longer be avoided.
‘Ah, here it is!’ was all he said.
His little face, with its big, beautiful eyes, was merely deeply sad, with no terror. His belly was split open. He moaned:
‘Oh, don’t leave me here, take me away to the ambulance, please… Take me away!’
Rochas wanted to shut him up, and was on the point of telling him brutally that with a wound like that there was no point in upsetting all his comrades. But then he was touched:
‘Poor old chap, just wait a bit for the stretcher-bearers to come for you.’
But the wretched man went on, crying now, maddened by the dream of happiness departing with his life-blood.
‘Take me away, take me away…’
Captain Beaudoin, whose jangled nerves were no doubt exasperated by this moaning, asked for two willing men who would carry him into a little spinney close by, where there must be a mobile ambulance. With one bound Chouteau and Loubet leaped up, forestalling the others, and seized the sergeant, one by the shoulders and the other by the feet, and started carrying him off at the double. But on the way they