The Debacle - Emile Zola [142]
‘Number one, fire!… Number two, fire!’
The six rounds went off, the guns recoiled and were brought back, while the sergeants saw that their range was much too short. They adjusted it and the operation began again, always the same, and it was this slow precision, the mechanical job coolly done which kept up the men’s morale. Their gun, like a favourite animal, gathered a little family round it, drawn close together by their common occupation. It was the tie that bound them, their one care, for which everything existed – waggon, vans, horses and men. Hence the great cohesion of the whole battery, calm and serene like a well-run household.
The first salvo had been greeted with cheers by the 106th. At last they were going to shut those Prussian guns up. But there was immediate disappointment when they saw that the shells stopped half way and mostly went off in the air before reaching the thickets over there in which the enemy artillery was concealed.
‘Honoré,’ Maurice went on, ‘Honoré says that the others are all old crocks compared with his… Oh, his gun, he’d sleep with it, you’ll never find another like it! Look at his doting eyes, and how he has it wiped in case it should be too hot!’
He was joking with Jean, for they both felt cheered by the fine calm bravery of the gunners. But after three rounds the Prussians had readjusted their fire: too long at first, it had become so accurate that the shells were falling straight on the French guns, while the latter, for all their efforts to lengthen the range, were still not getting there. One of Honoré’s gunners, the one to the left of the muzzle, was killed. His body was pushed aside and the loading went on with the same careful, unhurried regularity. Projectiles were coming down from all directions and exploding, but round each gun the same methodical operations went on – charge and shell put in, range checked, shell fired, gun wheeled back into position – as though the men found their job so absorbing that it prevented their seeing or hearing anything else.
But what struck Maurice most was the attitude of the drivers fifteen metres to the rear, sitting bolt upright on their horses, facing the enemy. Adolphe was there, broad-chested, with his heavy fair moustache in the middle of his red face, and you really had to be jolly brave to watch the shells coming straight at you, without batting an eyelid or even being able to bite your thumbs to take your mind off it. The gun crews who were working had something else to think about, but the drivers, motionless, could see nothing but death and had plenty of leisure to think about it and wait for it to come. They were forced to stand facing the enemy because if they had turned their backs men and beasts might have been seized by an irrestible urge to run away. Seeing the danger you face up to it. There is no heroism less in evidence or greater.
Yet another man had had his head blown off, two of the horses on one van were agonizing with their bellies ripped open, and the enemy was keeping up such a murderous fire that the whole battery was going to be put out of action if they hung on to the same position. This terrible bombardment must be foiled in spite of the difficulties of a change of position. Without further hesitation the captain called out the order:
‘Limber up!’
The dangerous movement was carried out with marvellous speed: the drivers about-turned again and brought up the limbers, which the gun crews coupled to the guns. But in carrying out this movement they had strung themselves out into a long front which the enemy took advantage of to redouble his fire. Three more men were lost. The battery cantered on, described an arc over the fields and took up its position some fifty metres further to the right, beyond the 106th on a little eminence. The guns were uncoupled, the drivers once again found themselves facing