The Debacle - Emile Zola [116]
‘Look here, he’s dead,’ declared Loubet. ‘Let’s drop him!’
Chouteau stuck to it furiously.
‘Get a move on, you lazy sod! I’m not bloody well dumping him here and getting called back!’
They held to their course with the body as far as the spinney, threw it down under a tree and cleared off. They were not seen again until evening.
The fire intensified, the battery close by had been reinforced with two guns and in the mounting din Maurice was seized by fear, insane fear. At first he had not had this cold sweat and painful sensation of collapse in the pit of the stomach, the irresistible urge to get up and run, screaming. Perhaps even now it was only due to thinking too much, as happens in sensitive and nervous natures. But Jean, who was keeping an eye on him, gripped him with his strong hand and made him stay near him, reading this fit of cowardice in the worried darting of his eyes. He swore at him softly and paternally, trying to shame him out of it with harsh words because he knew that you put courage back into men by giving them a kick up the backside. Others had got the shivers too. Pache had tears in his eyes and was whimpering with a soft, involuntary wail, like a little child’s, which he could not stop. And then Lapoulle had an accident – such an upset of the bowels that he pulled his trousers down there and then, with no time to get to the hedge. He was cheered and they threw clods of earth at his bare arse displayed to bullets and shells. Many of them were taken short in this way, and relieved themselves amid obscene mirth which restored everyone’s courage.
‘You cowardly bugger,’ Jean was saying to Maurice, ‘you’re not going to shit yourself like them… I’ll sock you one on the jaw if you don’t behave yourself!’
He was putting new heart into him with these rough words when all of a sudden, four hundred metres in front of them, they saw ten or so men in dark-coloured uniforms coming out of a little wood. They could tell by their pointed helmets that they were Prussians at last, the first Prussians they had seen within range of their rifles since the beginning of the campaign. Other squads of them followed the first, and in front of them they could make out the little clouds of dust sent up from the ground by shells. It was all clearly defined, the Prussians were sharply outlined like little tin soldiers set out in perfect order. Then, as the shells rained thicker they went back and disappeared into the trees.
But the Beaudoin company had spotted them and could still see them there. Rifles had gone off of their own accord. Maurice was the first to fire his, and Jean, Pache, Lapoulle and all the others followed. No order had been given, and the captain wanted to stop the firing and only gave in when Rochas waved his arm indicating that the men needed this relief. So at last they were firing, they were using this ammunition they had been carting round for over a month without ever letting any off! Maurice above all was heartened, with something to do for his fear, intoxicating himself with detonations. The edge of the wood looked dreary and not a leaf stirred, nor had a single Prussian reappeared. They were firing all the time at motionless trees.
Having glanced up, Maurice was surprised to see Colonel de Vineuil a few paces away, on his big horse, man and beast quite undisturbed as though made of stone. With his face to the enemy the colonel waited in the hail of bullets. The whole 106th must have closed in there, other companies were lying in the adjoining fields and the rifle-fire was spreading from one to another. A little to the rear Maurice also saw the flag and the strong arm of the subaltern who was bearing it. But now it was not that ghostly flag half lost in the morning mist. In the blazing sun the golden eagle shone forth and the silk tricolor gleamed in brilliant tones in spite of all the wear and tear of battles. Against the blue sky, in the hurricane of gunfire, it floated like a flag of victory.
Why shouldn’t they win now that they were fighting?