The Debacle - Emile Zola [42]
Meanwhile Lapoulle every now and then was humping up his pack with a jerk of the shoulders. On the pretext that he was the strongest he had been loaded with the implements common to the whole squad, the big stewpan and the can with the water. This time they had even entrusted him with the company shovel, making out it was an honour. Not that he minded, but laughed away at a song with which Loubet, the tenor of the squad, was enlivening the tedious march. As for Loubet, his pack was celebrated, and you could find a bit of everything in it: underclothes, spare shoes, needle and thread, brushes, chocolate, a knife, fork and spoon, a mug, to say nothing of the regulation rations of biscuits and coffee; and although the rounds of ammunition were there too, and on top of the lot the rolled blanket, tent and pegs, it all looked as though it weighed nothing, so skilled was he at packing his trunk, as he called it.
‘Fucking awful country, though!’ Chouteau repeated at intervals, casting a contemptuous eye on the dreary plains of this barren Champagne.
The vast stretches of chalky earth went on and on without end. Never a farm, never a soul, nothing but flights of rooks like specks of black on the grey immensity. Far away to the left some pine woods, almost black, crowned the gentle undulations where the sky began, while to the right the course of the Vesle could be made out by an unbroken line of trees. And in that direction, behind the hills, they had seen for the last league a huge amount of smoke going up in billows that finally united to blot out the horizon with a terrifying cloud of fire.
‘What’s burning over there?’ everybody was asking.
The explanation ran from end to end of the column. It was the Châlons camp which had been blazing for two days, set on fire by the Emperor’s order to prevent hoards of supplies falling into Prussian hands. The rearguard cavalry, it was said, had been ordered to set fire to a great warehouse called the yellow store, full of tents, tent-pegs, matting beds, and to the new store, a huge enclosed shed in which were piles of messtins, boots, blankets, enough to equip another hundred thousand men. Stacks of forage, also fired, were burning like giant torches. At this sight, witnessing these livid, swirling clouds rolling over the distant hills and filling the sky with mourning for the irreplaceable, the army marching across the dreary plain fell into a sullen silence. Under the sun no sound could be heard except the beat of their steps, but heads were turned willy-nilly towards the ever spreading smoke which, like a doom-laden cloud, seemed to be following the column for yet another league.
Cheerfulness came back at the main halt in a field of stubble where the soldiers could sit on their packs and have a bite to eat. The big square biscuits were meant for dunking in soup, but the little round ones, crisp and light, were a real treat that had only the one drawback that they made you terribly thirsty. When his turn came, Pache, by request, sang a hymn that the whole squad took up as a chorus. Jean smiled good-naturedly and let them get on with it, and Maurice’s confidence began to return as he saw everybody’s enthusiasm and the orderliness and good humour of this first day’s march. The rest of the stage was covered in the same perky way, but the last eight kilometres seemed tough. They had left the village of Prosnes to their right and had abandoned the main road and cut across fallow land and some sandy heathland dotted with little plantations of pine, and the whole division, followed by its endless supply column, wound its way in and out of these woods, ankle-deep in the sand. The waste land stretched ever further, and there was nothing to be seen in it but a straggling flock of sheep guarded by a big black dog.
At last, at about four, the 106th halted at Dontrien, a village on the banks of the Suippe. The little stream runs between clumps of trees and the ancient church in its churchyard is completely shaded by a huge horse-chestnut. The regiment pitched its tents on the left bank in a sloping