on the morning of august 21 they crossed the boundary. hurrahs from the men—they were going forward to conquer! they were going to deliver this brave little country from the barbaric invader who had laid it waste. coco was thrilled with the nobility of their mission. “vive la france!” he shouted with all the rest; but alas, the approaching thunderstorm soon damped his spirits. the rain poured down in torrents, down the back of his neck and into his shoes. coming to a halt, they bivouacked in a wide field. it thundered and it lightened. soaked and cheerless, the regiment tried19 to sleep. the fires wouldn’t burn. one couldn’t even smoke a cigarette. as coco turned on his side the water oozed under him sloshily.
he dozed off, however, after a while, only to be awakened by a punch in the ribs. “listen!” fran?ois was saying. “what’s that?”
“thunder, of course!” coco, irritated, rolled over again, opened his eyes after a while, and saw fran?ois still sitting up, alert.
“that’s not thunder!” he exclaimed. “listen! it’s cannonading!”
coco sat up now quickly enough. others woke up to swear at them—and then they listened, too.
“look!” cried fran?ois. galloping down the road came a dispatch rider. he halted, was challenged by the sentry, and turned in at the colonel’s headquarters. then he was off again, splattering, clattering20 through the mud. then a bugle call: “fall in!” all over the field the wet men jumped up, slung on their belts, grabbed their rifles and formed dismally in the rain. as they stood waiting, word ran down the column—fran?ois passed it to coco—“the enemy!” an ammunition wagon drove up—boxes of cartridges were distributed. “load!” ordered the captains. the ranks were fairly buzzing now, everyone asking questions, nobody answering. a whistle blew. “forward, march!” coco had no thought of the rain now! the guns grew louder, but still no enemy was visible. the cannonading slackened, grew faint, thundered off in another direction, died, began again far away. but the rumbling was always ahead—the regiment was marching nearer and nearer the fighting. and so on to bertrix, fifteen miles from the frontier. coco rather liked bertrix. bertrix rather21 more than liked coco. the pretty little luxemburg town welcomed him and all the other young “piou-pious” as its saviors. nothing was too good for the french soldier boys who had come to deliver them from the huns. what do you want—cigarettes? beer? bacon? it was quite a jolly affair, with the streets full of smiling women and young girls smiling too, bringing fruit and eggs and preserves, and good, fresh butter.
coco was already a hero—and, after eight days without meat, that bacon was certainly good! how they all laughed and chattered! but the old men stood apart and listened anxiously; for, through all that rejoicing there came steadily the distant sound of guns. surely the germans were coming nearer! if they ever got to bertrix—the old men shook their heads with foreboding.
again the whistle blew—forward! the22 enemy was only a few miles away now; it was getting exciting. the boys, proud, patriotic, confident, started “la marseillaise” and the song was taken up by the whole column—“marchons! marchons!” they sang—but coco was singing, he admits, to keep up his courage, as he tramped on through the mud to be shot at. he tried to keep in mind that he was marching on gloriously to fight for his country; but he couldn’t help thinking of what he had heard of those terrible machine guns at liége and namur.
halt! the captain whipped out his field glasses—everybody gazed eagerly ahead. there it was, there! coming steadily nearer, flying low—a german aeroplane—a “taube” reconnoitering. there was a quick order. as the whir of the motor grew nearer the lieutenant of coco’s platoon pointed. “aim!” fifteen rifles were thrown up, covering the monoplane.23 “steady, now, men—wait till she comes near enough—now, fire!”
coco fired, jammed down the lever of his gun, shot again, again. almost over their heads the flyer seemed to stop, turned, volplaned swiftly down—it was too good to be true—swept lower in a wide curve. then men, shouting, ran for it as it swooped into the field beside the road. coco ran for his first sight of a german.
two officers in khaki, limp and pale, were strapped to the seats. one was unconscious, with a red hole in his neck. the other painfully unfastened his strap, and came forward, staggering. he saluted the captain stiffly, a queer smile on his blond german face. coco heard him say in perfect french:
“i am badly wounded, monsieur. this is my last trip, i’m afraid. ah, well; you are going to beat us in the end, no doubt. with all your allies there’s little hope for us.24 but you’ll have to shed a good deal of blood before you win!” then he suddenly collapsed. coco saw him fall on the ground in a faint.
“it gave me a mighty queer feeling,” coco told me, “to look at that dark spot of blood gradually growing bigger and bigger over that officer’s breast. i remember that i wondered if it had been my rifle ball that had wounded him. and that other german, too—i wondered if i had already killed a man. if i had, why wasn’t it murder? what was the difference between war and murder, anyway? of course these barbarians were invading my country, but—yes, it was my duty to protect france, but—well, i had to give it up. you know there are priests fighting in the ranks, too, in this war, m’sieur! they must know. it’s all right, i suppose—and yet there is always that ‘but’ when you see a thing like that. well,25 it was too exciting then for much philosophy. you see, the cannons were getting louder all the time, and the whistle blew and we marched on again. but somehow we didn’t feel much like singing any more!”
near rising ground they halted. the officers hurried forward, and with field glasses inspected the country ahead; then called the column on. now they were actually in the danger zone—a wide expanse of fields, dotted with farms here and there, and across, a mile away, were woods, dark, sinister. it was a sunny afternoon; the odor of the damp, warm earth was clean and pungent. there were wide stretches of yellow stubble fields, where the wheat had been lately cut. some sheaves were still standing, as if the war had interrupted the harvest, half done.
as they advanced cautiously the cannonading ceased. somehow to coco the silence was more dreadful even than that incessant26 muffled reverberation. but those woods yonder—what dangers were they hiding? every eye was strained in that direction.
deploying to the left of the road, coco’s company made for a whitewashed farmhouse half a mile away, across the fields. the other companies fanned out to either side.
no one seemed to know just what was going to happen. coco’s lieutenant, a jolly, talkative young fellow who had always used to keep his platoon roaring at his jokes, was now unwontedly serious and silent. coco watched him. he marched on with his field glasses held constantly to his eyes, tripping over roots and bushes and stones and swearing as he went.
on and on toward that dark, mysterious wood through beet fields, across ditches, over hedges they went, till they came to a cross-road leading into the farm. here they halted.
27
coco, nervous, apprehensive, jumped at hearing his name called out. “cucurou! bracques! lemaitre! go forward and reconnoiter! careful, now, men!”
