The Debacle - Emile Zola [138]
So Maurice chipped Lapoulle:
‘I say, chum, if you prefer that job go and give them a hand!’
For some little time the batteries on Saint-Menges had been at it like fury, and the hail of shells had got thicker. Captain Beaudoin, still nervously going up and down in front of his company, decided to approach the colonel. It was a pity to wear down the men’s morale for hours and hours without giving them anything to do.
‘I have no orders,’ was the colonel’s stoical answer.
Once again General Douay was seen galloping past, followed by his staff. He had just had a meeting with General de Wimpffen, who had hurried there to beg him to hold on, which he thought he could promise to do, but on the strict understanding that the Calvary of Illy, on his right, would be defended. If the Illy position was lost he could answer for nothing and retreat would be inevitable. General de Wimpffen declared that troops from the 1st corps were going to occupy the Calvary, and indeed almost at once a regiment of Zouaves could be seen taking it over. Hence General Douay, now reassured, agreed to send the Dumont division to support the 12th corps which was very hard pressed. But a quarter of an hour later, as he was on his way back from seeing that his left was in good shape, he uttered an oath on looking up and seeing that the Calvary was deserted, the Zouaves had gone, the plateau had been abandoned and the hellish fire from the Fleigneux batteries was in any case making it untenable. In desperation, foreseeing disaster, he was hastening towards the right when he ran into a stampede of the Dumont division falling back in disorder and panic, mixed up with the remains of the 1st corps. The latter, after its withdrawal, had not succeeded in regaining its morning positions, abandoning Daigny to the XIIth Saxon corps and Givonne to the Prussian Guard, forced northwards through the Garenne woods and bombarded by batteries the enemy was placing on every hilltop from one end of the valley to the other. The terrible ring of iron and fire was tightening, a part of the Guard was continuing its advance on Illy from east to west, rounding the hills, while from west to east, behind the XIth corps, now in possession of Saint-Menges, the Vth was steadily moving on past Fleigneux, bringing its guns further forward with insolent unconcern, so convinced of the ignorance and impotence of the French troops that it did not even wait for the infantry to support it. It was midday, and the whole skyline was ablaze, thundering and cross-firing at the 7th and 1st corps.
Then, as the enemy artillery was thus preparing for the final attack on the Calvary, General Douay made up his mind to make a last effort to recapture it. He dispatched orders, threw himself in person into the midst of the fugitives from the Dumont division, succeeded in forming a column which he hurled on to the plateau. It held good for several minutes, but the bullets were whistling by so thick and fast, and such a storm of shells was sweeping over the bare fields that panic broke out at once, throwing the men back down the slopes, bowling them along like wisps of straw blown by a sudden squall. The general obstinately sent in more regiments.
A dispatch rider, as he galloped by, shouted an order to Colonel de Vineuil through the frightful din. The colonel was already standing in his stirrups and his face was radiant. With a great wave of his sword towards the Calvary he shouted:
‘Our turn at last, boys! Up there and at ’em!’
Deeply stirred, the 106th began to move. The Beaudoin company was one of the first to get to its feet, amid jokes among the chaps who said they were rusty