The Debacle - Emile Zola [143]
This time Maurice uttered a cry. Once again, in three rounds, the Prussian batteries had readjusted their fire, and the third shell had fallen right on Honoré’s gun. He was seen leaping forward and feeling the fresh damage with a trembling hand – a big piece chipped off the bronze muzzle. But the gun could still be loaded, and the routine went on after they had cleared the wheels of the body of another of the crew, whose blood had splashed on to the gun-carriage.
‘No, it isn’t young Louis,’ Maurice went on, thinking aloud. ‘There he still is, laying his gun, though he must be wounded, for he’s only using his left arm… Poor little Louis, his marriage with Adolphe was doing so well as long as he, the foot-slogger, for all his superior education, remained the humble servant of the driver, the mounted man…’
Jean, who had kept quiet, broke in with a cry of anguish:
‘They’ll never hold out, we’re done for!’
It was true, and in less than five minutes this second position had become as untenable as the first. Projectiles rained down upon it with the same precision. One shell demolished one gun and killed a lieutenant and two men. Not one of the rounds went astray, so that if they stuck there any longer there would not be a single cannon or gunner left. It was a crushing, overwhelming defeat.
Then the captain’s voice rang out a second time:
‘Limber up!’
The movement started again, the drivers galloped, did their about-wheel so that the crews could hitch up the guns. But this time in the middle of the manoeuvre a splinter of shell went through Louis’s throat and tore away his jaw, and he fell across the trail he was in the act of picking up. And as Adolphe was coming up, just when the line of teams was sideways on, there was a furious volley: he fell with his chest split open and arms flung out. In a final convulsion he put his arms round the other man, and they remained twisted together in a fierce embrace, wedded even in death.
Already, in spite of slain horses and the disorder the murderous volley had spread in the ranks, the whole battery was climbing a slope and establishing itself further forward, a few metres from where Maurice and Jean were lying. For the third time the guns were uncoupled, the drivers found themselves facing the enemy while the crews opened fire again at once with obstinate, invincible heroism.
‘It’s the end of everything!’ said Maurice in a broken voice.
It really seemed as though earth and sky were intermingled. Rocks split and dense smoke sometimes darkened the sun. In the midst of the frightful din the horses looked dazed and stupefied, with their heads down. The captain stood out wherever he was, for he was too tall. He was cut in two and fell like a broken flagstaff.
It was above all round Honoré’s gun that the activity went on, unhurried and steadfast. Stripes or no stripes, he had to get down to the job, for only three of his crew were left. He did the laying and pulled the striker while the three others went to the ammunition waggon, loaded, worked with the cleaning brush and ramrod. They had asked for men and horses from the reserve to fill the gaps made by death, but these were a long time coming and meanwhile they had to make do. The maddening thing was that they were still not reaching target and their shells almost all exploded in the air without doing much harm to those terrible batteries on the other side whose fire was so deadly accurate. But Honoré suddenly let out an oath that could be heard above all the noise of firing – of all the bad luck, the right wheel of his gun had been smashed! Fuck it all, with one leg gone the poor old girl was pitched on her side, nose in the earth, all lopsided and no good for anything! He wept bitter tears and put his groping hands round her neck as though he could set her on her feet again by the sheer warmth of his affection. A gun that was the best of them, the only one to have landed a few shells over there! Then he was