The Debacle - Emile Zola [67]
‘Yes, yes.’
There was a pause, and glancing at Maurice Jean saw that his eyes were closing and that he was on the point of falling down.
‘Now, now lad… Hold yourself up, for God’s sake… Give me your gun a minute, that’ll give you a rest… We’re going to leave half the blokes on the road, and it isn’t possible to go much further today, God knows!’
Straight ahead he had just caught sight of Oches, with its few miserable hovels terraced on a hillside. It is dominated by the church, all yellow and perched up high among the trees.
‘That’s where we’re going to sleep tonight, for certain.’
He had guessed right. General Douay, seeing the exhaustion of his troops, gave up hope of ever making La Besace that day. But what settled it for him was the arrival of the supply train, this damned convoy he had been dragging after him ever since Rheims, the three leagues of which – vehicles and animals – so terribly hampered his march. From Quatre-Champs he had ordered it to be sent straight on to Saint-Pierremont, and it was only at Oches that the vehicles rejoined the main body, and in such a state of exhaustion that the horses were refusing to move. It was five o’clock already and fearing to get involved in the gorge of Stonne, the general thought he should give up the idea of finishing the day’s march laid down by the marshal. So they stopped and camped, the baggage down below in the meadows, guarded by one division, while the artillery took up a position behind on the higher ground, and the brigade that was to act as rearguard the next day stayed on a bluff opposite Saint-Pierremont. Another division, of which the Bourgain-Desfeuilles brigade was a part, bivouacked behind the church on a broad plateau flanked by an oak wood.
Night was already falling when at last the 106th could settle down on the edge of this wood, for there had been so much confusion about the choice and allocation of sites.
‘To hell with it!’ Chouteau said furiously, ‘I’m not going to eat anything, I’m going to sleep!’
That was the universal chorus. Many of them hadn’t the strength to put up their tents, and went off to sleep where they fell, like inert lumps. And besides, before you could eat you would have to have an issue from the commissariat, and the commissariat, which was waiting for the 7th at La Besace, was not at Oches. In the general break-up and loss of control there was not even the bugle call for orderly corporals. Food was just catch as catch can. From that time on there were no more regular issues, and soldiers had to live on the rations they were supposed to have in their packs, and their packs were empty, very few could find a crust or even the crumbs of the abundance they had contrived to live on at Vouziers. There was some coffee left and so the less tired still had some sugarless coffee.
When Jean wanted to share by eating one of his biscuits and giving Maurice the other, he saw that he was fast asleep. It crossed his mind to wake him up, but then he stoically put the biscuits back in his pack, with infinite care as though he were hiding some gold, and he himself made do with coffee like the others. He had insisted on the tent being put up and in it they were all lying flat out when Loubet came back from an expedition bringing some carrots from a nearby field. There was no possibility of cooking them, so they munched them raw, but that only aggravated their hunger. They made Pache quite ill.
‘No, no, let him sleep on,’ Jean said to Chouteau who was shaking Maurice to give him his share.
‘Ah,’ said Lapoulle, ‘tomorrow, when we are in Angoulême, we shall get some bread… I once had a cousin who was a soldier in Angoulême. Good garrison there.’
There was general stupefaction. Chouteau shouted:
‘Angoulême, what do you mean?… That silly sod thinks he’s in Angoulême!’
It was impossible to get any explanation out of Lapoulle. No, he thought they were going to Angoulême. He was the one who, when they had sighted Uhlans that morning, had maintained that they were Bazaine’s men.
The camp fell into inky blackness and a deathly