Part 10 (1/2)
From one to another the officer pa.s.sed, questioning them in the same friendly manner, inviting their confidence, listening to their stories, extolling their actions with words which reached the ears of their comrades.
”And you,” he said at last, arriving at the gallant Henri, and tapping him on the breast with a friendly finger, while he ran his eye over this young soldier, admiring his clean, well-bred, active appearance, the set of his figure, his healthy looks, and the perky little moustache which Henri still boasted. ”Well, you,” he asked, ”mon enfant?”
”I, mon Capitaine? Well, I have seen but little more than the heart of Ruhleben camp,” Henri told him; ”for I was there, a prisoner for many weary months.”
”And then, did our friend, the Hun, think so little of you that he set you free?” asked the officer, his eyes twinkling. ”Hardly that, I am sure, my friend, for you look as though you could do some fighting.”
Henri smiled back at him.
”No, Monsieur le Capitaine,” he told him; ”it was not because they wished to set me free that I am here, but because they couldn't help it. I escaped--I and two other comrades, one of whom was British.”
”Ah! And you escaped--you and two comrades, one of whom was British; and because you wished--all of you, no doubt--to fight for your country?”
”That is so,” Henri admitted at once. ”We were eager to fight the Hun, and we have joined the French army at the first opportunity.”
It was the same when the officer questioned Jules, and in a trice he realized that the two had made their escape from Ruhleben together.
”Tiens!” he cried; ”one little moment. Two young Frenchmen who escaped from Germany and an Englishman with them--mais oui! but--vraiment! I have read this same story quite lately. Ah! I have it. You, then, are Henri and Jules for certain?”
The two young soldiers admitted the fact with rising colour, while the glances of every man in the squad were cast at them, and the Sergeant, that smart little fellow who had first dressed the line and adjusted every buckle and every accoutrement, turned a pair of admiring eyes on them. As for the officer, he gripped each one by the hand and shook it warmly.
”It's an example to us all, mes enfants,” he told the squad. ”There is great honour to our big friend here who has seen such fighting throughout the first days of the war, the Retreat, that Battle of the Marne where we smashed the crowing German, the conflict near Arras and round Ypres, which barred the progress of our enemy. To such a man there is undying honour. But here we have two who, though wretched, no doubt, while confined in a German prison, half-starved, by all accounts, bullied and browbeaten, could yet have remained in that camp safe from the danger of warfare. But they wished to help their country; and see them here, joining up with our forces at the very first moment. And so, Jules and Henri, you would wish to go to the front almost immediately?”
The two nodded their a.s.sent.
”And you have had training?”
”Pardon, monsieur,” said the Sergeant, opening a book and placing his finger on the name first of Henri and then of Jules; ”here is their record. Three years ago they did their training and attended manoeuvres, and were reported on as excellent conscripts. In the ordinary way they would attend a few drills here, perhaps go through a short instruction in musketry and bayonet exercises, and then be drafted to the front.”
”Bien! There is little else after that for them to learn but bombing and the warfare peculiar to trench fighting--such as the conduct of trench-mortars, catapults, and other weapons of a similar description--that they can well learn at the schools of instruction just behind the front. Pa.s.s them for the front, Sergeant. Put them down to go with a new draft which leaves for Verdun to-morrow evening.
Good luck, my friends! I wish, indeed, that I could come with you.”
”Re-form line!” bellowed the Sergeant, or, rather, he snapped the order, and at his words those who had stood forward a pace stepped back just as smartly, while every head turned as the men dressed the line.
”Dismiss!” bellowed the Sergeant, and in a moment the squad broke up, each man going off to his own quarters. As for Henri and Jules, they spent some busy hours in making ready for the coming journey; and, boarding the train with a draft of men the following evening, they found themselves behind the Verdun lines after a longish journey.
They were near the spot selected by the ”All Highest”, by the Kaiser, the would-be lord of the world, who had determined to make one more gigantic effort to crush the French and to defeat his enemies.
CHAPTER IX
A Terrific Bombardment
There is no need to tell how Henri and Jules, now converted into _poilus_, joined the troops in their billets behind the lines at Verdun; how they went to a school of instruction, where they were coached in the minute and delicate, if not peculiar, art of bombing; how they learnt, in fact, to conduct trench warfare, and prepared for closer contact with the enemy. Nor need we tell how presently they were drafted into the city of Verdun, where it lies beside the River Meuse in a sleepy hollow facing the heights beyond, which lay between it and the Germans. After a residence there in billets, they crossed the river, and, mounting those heights, gained at length the communication-trenches which gave access to the French positions in the neighbourhood of Hautmont.
”And how do you like it?” the Sergeant in command of the platoon to which they were attached asked them as the dawn broke on the following morning, and every man in the trench stood to his arms in case of an attack by the enemy. ”See you, Jules, and you too, Henri,”--for let us explain that our two young heroes were not entirely unknown to their comrades, that is unknown by name or by reputation; indeed, the regiment to which they were now attached had, like many another regiment, read of their exciting escape from Ruhleben, gloried in the event and in the spirit it showed, and were ready to welcome them heartily--”you two, Henri and Jules, here is a loophole for each of you. You see the parapet of the trench is strengthened with logs cut from the forest, and if you are careful not to poke your heads up above the parapet you have little to fear from enemy bullets. Look away down below you; the ground slopes gradually, and there is nothing to obstruct your fire but the stumps of trees which were cut down months ago. Now, look still farther, and I will tell you something of the position: there, to the left of you, is Brabant, just round the corner of the hill, though you can't quite see it, and to the left of that again, the river, with the village of Forges just across the water, and Bethincourt and the Mort Homme Hill close to it. Now look to your right. There's Gremilly lying near the railway, and farther along still, beyond Ormes, is Cincery, and south of it Etain, while immediately beyond are the heights of Douaumont, with Vaux closely adjacent.”
Peering through their loopholes, Jules and Henri spent a useful and interesting half-hour in watching the scene before them. They were standing in a trench dug across the gentle slope of a hill which at one time, in those days of peace preceding the war, had been thickly clad with fir-trees--a slope now denuded altogether, and presenting only innumerable stumps, standing up like so many sentinels, while those nearer to the trenches had barbed wire stretched between them, making a metal mesh which would require most strenuous efforts to break. Not a soul was to be seen in front of them; not a figure flitted through the woods in the direction of the Germans' position, while as for the Boche, there was not one in evidence, though during that half-hour they detected the line which indicated the enemy trenches, and heard more than once the snap of a rifle.
”And it is ever thus, Henri and Jules,” the Sergeant told them. ”We stand to arms in the early morning, just as now, waiting for the attack which, it is whispered, will be made upon us, and which never comes.
Indeed, to me it seems that the Germans have for days past given up all idea of an advance in this direction; and sometimes not even a rifle is fired, while the cannon is never heard.”
If no one was to be seen in front of the French fire-trenches; or in front of the cunning pits where machine-guns were hidden, there was yet ample movement, and plenty of people, close at hand to drive ennui from the minds of Henri and his comrade. There were soldiers everywhere along the trench--merry fellows, who sat about the fire--for in this month of February the early mornings were very chilly--who smoked their pipes and laughed and chatted, and who watched as breakfast was made ready. There were men carefully attending to trench-mortars, others polis.h.i.+ng their rifles, and yet others again who had crept by deep tunnels to the cunning positions in front and were busily attending their machine-guns; and behind, along the communication-trenches, in the support and reserve trenches, in a hundred and more dug-outs, there were more _poilus_ with officers amongst them, hearty, confident individuals, living a curious existence, which had now lasted so many months that it seemed to have been their life from the very commencement. Farther beyond still, it was impossible to see, for Henri and Jules had their duties and might not leave the regiment; yet in hundreds of hollows there was hidden the deadly French soixante-quinze--the 75-millimetre quick-firing gun, which from the commencement of this gigantic conflict has controlled and beaten German guns of a similar calibre. Yet again, behind them, were other bigger guns, splendidly dug in and hidden cleverly with straw-thatched roofs, many of them no doubt once filling the embrasures of Douaumont and other forts which in times of yore had gained for Verdun the reputation of impregnability. Yet German leviathan guns had proved that they could now smash Douaumont or any other fortress to pieces within a few hours, whereas in the old times it had been a matter of days, when even the artillery was sufficiently powerful. Modern invention, high explosives, and scientific artillery had altered modes of defence, and the fort at Douaumont and the forts elsewhere encircling the sleepy town of Verdun were now but sh.e.l.ls of masonry, mere billets for soldiers, while the guns were ranged out in the open.