On these occasions M. Plancot used to tell stories of the citizens of Cambrai, who are never too busy for a joke. In peace time these stories had sent streets, wineshops, and market into roars of laughter, and they reminded me very forcibly of Tillier’s wonderful uncle Benjamin.
A wicked fellow once sent to all the hunchbacks of the district requesting them to call on a certain solicitor with reference to an important inheritance. At the appointed hour he and some of his friends watched from the window of the opposite house and enjoyed the delightful comedy—seventeen outraged and weeping hobgoblins storming the office of the unfortunate lawyer.
There was the story, too, of an old spinster who lived opposite, and who was distinguished by a long and slender neck strangely bent to one side. Twenty years before she had been notoriously eager to marry. Six young fellows presented themselves, and to each she gladly gave the permission to speak to her parents. The next Sunday a capacious coach drove up in which sat the six young men, each with a bouquet in his hand. In terror she locked the door and hid herself, and the suitors delighted the neighbourhood by playing the fool in the street.
Again: A notorious young Cambresian went to the market and asked a peasant’s wife, pointing to a soft, round, and appetizing cheese covered with green mould:
“What is the price of this cheese?”
“Twenty sous, sir.”
He paid her the twenty sous.
“So the cheese is now mine?”
“To be sure, sir.”
“And can I do what I like with it?”
“Well, of course!”
Smack! he threw the cheese in her face and fled.
On the 25th of July we left the dear little town and entrained for Flanders. We had read in the papers that an artillery duel was raging there such as the world had never seen.
We detrained in Staden to the distant thunder of guns and marched through the unfamiliar landscape to our camp. On either side of the dead-straight road were green and fruitful fields, raised up in plots like flowerbeds, and luscious, well-watered meadows surrounded by hedges. There were clean farmhouses scattered here and there, with low thatched or tiled roofs, and on the walls bundles of tobacco-plants hung out to dry. The countryfolk on the roads were of German type, and their rough speech had a pleasant, homely sound. We spent the afternoon in the farm gardens to avoid being seen from the air. Now and then the shells of heavy naval guns could be heard rushing hoarsely overhead from far back and then exploding not far from us. A number of men of the 91st Regiment who were bathing in one of the numerous little streams were killed.
Towards evening I had to go with an advance detachment to the front line to prepare for the relief, and we went through Houthulst Forest and the village of Koekuit to the reserve battalion. On the way we had to “break step” once or twice on account of some heavy shells. In the darkness I heard the voice of a recruit: “The officer never lies down!”
“He knows what he is about,” an older soldier informed him. “Wait till a proper one comes, and he’ll be the first to lie down!”
The man had noticed the principle I always followed: “Only take cover when it is necessary, and then do it quickly.”
It is true that only the experienced can judge of the necessity, and feel the end of the shell’s trajectory before the recruit has even recognized the light warning whisper in the air.
Our guides, who did not seem to be quite sure of themselves, took us along an endless box-trench. Such is the name for trenches that are not dug in the ground, because the water would stand in them at once, but built up above its level with sandbags and fascines. Then we went along the side of a terribly dishevelled wood, from which a few days before, according to our guides, a regimental staff had been driven by the small matter of one thousand 24-centimetre shells. “Things seem to be done on a large scale here,” I thought to myself.
After we had wandered backwards and forwards through thick undergrowth, we came to a halt in a piece of ground overgrown with weeds and fringed by a marshy swamp in whose black pools the moonlight was reflected. Our guide had abandoned us, and all the while shells were falling somewhere and slinging up the mud that splashed back again into the water. At last the miserable guide returned to receive the full volley of our wrath and to announce that he had found the way. Nevertheless, he again led us astray till we came at last to a dressing-station over which shrapnel shells were bursting in couples at short and regular intervals. The bullets and empty cases rattled through the branches. The M.O. on duty gave us a sensible fellow, who took us on to the Mäuseburg, the headquarters of the reserve line.
From there I went straight on to the company of the 225th Regiment that our 2nd Company was to relieve. It took me a long search in the shell-pitted country before I found a few ruinous houses that were fortified inside by reinforced concrete. One had been smashed in the day before by a shell and the occupants squashed like mice beneath the falling roof-plate.
I spent the rest of the night in the company commander’s overcrowded concrete blockhouse. He was an honest front-line swine who, with his orderlies, was passing the time over a bottle of schnapps and a good chunk of pork, with frequent intervals during which he listened to the steadily increasing shellfire and shook his head. Then he would fall to bemoaning the
