With Joffre at Verdun Part 20

"Let's take a seat in the very centre, search for food, and sit down to a leisurely dinner," he said, his voice choked with satire. "Better still, let's ring a bell, if there's one, and ask that Max individual to come in and join us; he'd enjoy it, wouldn't he?"

"The demon! He'd have shot me in another minute. But still, here we are!"

"And the sooner we get out of it the better. That water's made me feel far better, and I can stand now, I believe. Yes, giddy a bit, but I can still stick to my pins, and that's something. What do we do--eh?

Here, pull off the uniforms of a couple of these fellows, they'll not miss them, and let's change clothes as quickly as we can. Don't forget, too, that once we've changed we are Germans--Brandenburgers, 6th Brigade fellows, who've attacked the fort and helped to capture it.

No more French after we've got into our disguises."

The suggestion came glibly enough, and sounded extremely simple; yet when the two--shaken after that terrific fight on the stairway, and once again by the explosion which Henri had manoeuvred--came to attempt the task they found it almost beyond them, for your German, as a general rule, is of no mean stature. Even in days when rations may be reduced owing to the British blockade, which holds up supplies destined for the German Empire, German recruits are still plump and fat, and Brandenburgers not less so than their fellows. Thus the task of turning dead men over and filching their garments, hard enough in any case, was made more difficult in the darkness, particularly so for young fellows such as Jules and Henri, who were not stoutly built like the Germans.

"Slip on any sort of an old coat and helmet at first," Henri advised, "then if that Max comes back we can push our way in amongst the bodies of the fallen, and he'll be none the wiser. Later, when we have the opportunity, we can make a more leisurely search, and perhaps we shall be lucky in finding garments that fit us."

It was a fortunate thing, indeed, that they decided on such a plan.

For as they went about the hall, stooping over the bodies of the fallen, endeavouring to select and discover clothes likely to suit their own stature, a loud order was heard from behind the battered end of the hall, and presently some twenty men inarched in, the short and snappy officer leading them.

"Pull out the fellows who are still alive, or not too seriously injured," he commanded. "Leave the dead till later on. Now hurry!"

Parties of stretcher-bearers followed the soldiers, and, starting at once, began to bend over the fallen forms lying about the hall, turning men over, dragging the dead aside, and lifting those who were wounded out of the ma.s.s. Coming to a distant corner, not so far indeed from the exit leading to the stairway which Jules and Henri had defended, a party of bearers discovered a pack of Germans lying in all directions, their limbs stretched in the most fantastic postures, some on their sides, their heads resting on an arm as if they were sleeping; others on their faces, their arms doubled up beneath them; and others, again, on their backs, stiff and stark already.

"Dead!" said the commander of the party, a junior non-commissioned officer. "On one side with him!"

"Dead!" repeated one of the bearers, leaning over another figure.

"Here, he's not a big man, I can manage him single-handed."

"As dead as any," cried a third, and seemed quite jovial about it.

"Here we are! He's no weight at all--quite a puny fellow for a Brandenburger."

They dragged perhaps half a dozen bodies away from the corner to the far wall, and laid them in a row beside others already collected; then, gathering up the wounded and carrying them outside, they returned again, completing their task after some few minutes.

"Light up!" Max, that short and snappy German officer, commanded. "Get a fire going, and let us resume the meal. One moment though! Have any of you seen a sign of those Frenchmen--the two whom we were about to shoot?"

"One there, sir," came the answer, while a bearer holding a torch lit up that part of the hall by the wall against which Jules and his fellow-prisoner had been stationed. "He's dead--a piece of masonry, dislodged by the explosion, fell on him."

Max seized the torch from the man, and, striding forward, bent over the figure of the _poilu_, and, turning the body with his foot--for this German was an individual possessed of little feeling, indeed a heartless wretch, a callous fellow--he placed the torch nearer, and stared at the face of the Frenchman.

"Burr! Not my man! And no one has seen the other?"

"No one!"

"Then we will wait till morning and search the place. Now, let the men turn to at their meal. Sergeant, wake me in an hour's time, when I will go round and inspect the sentries."

Gradually the fire in the centre of the hall died down, while men nodded as they sat on blocks of fallen masonry, or on forms which had been dragged into the hall. Darkness slowly penetrated to every corner of the place and almost hid the Germans. Then a figure stirred, one of the dead sat up slowly and nudged another of the dead beside him. One of the nodding figures seated upon a form on the far side of the fire yawned, stretching his arms widely, kicked the ashes from the dying embers with a heavy boot, and looked about him. Then his hair rose on his head, while his eyes protruded in the most horrible manner.

Perspiration dropped from his forehead, his hands shook, and his limbs trembled, as he gaped at those two dead figures sitting up and regarding him closely.

"Dead men sit up and look at me! Dead men!" he spluttered, and slowly rose to his feet.

There was a frozen look on the wretch's face now, and he kept his eyes on those two figures as if he had no power to turn them away, as if, like a serpent, they fascinated him. Then of a sudden he gave vent to a loud scream and dashed from the hall, upsetting his comrades as he did so.

"Down! Dead men again! Lower! What a business!" groaned Jules as he flopped himself on to the flags once more, his face turned towards Henri.

"S--s--s.h.!.+ Shut up! They are all on their feet again. Confound that fellow! It was bad luck his suddenly looking up and finding us sitting here staring at him. We've got to move," whispered Henri.

"Soon too," Jules told him, "precious soon. My, isn't that Max in a rage, and aren't the lot of them bothered!"

Yet not so bothered that the noise which followed that piercing scream did not subside quickly. After all, screams were not unusual in those days of strenuous combat, when Germans were driven to the a.s.sault, time and again, and death and destruction were so near them--that terrible sh.e.l.l-fire which smote them from the missiles of the French 75's, the raking hail of bullets from machine-guns, the detonation of exploding missiles, the roar, the crash, the smoke, the ever-present danger. All had told on the nerves, not of one man here and there, but on hundreds of the Kaiser's soldiers. Men went mad in those days of attack on Douaumont, just as they went mad in the onslaught at Ypres in October, 1914; just, indeed, as they had lost their reason during other terrible periods. Yes, your German war lord is no sympathetic commander.

Losses, frightful losses, do not frighten or trouble him so long as he is reasonably sure of obtaining his objective.

And German losses had been frightful enough in all conscience since the war started. Those losses were telling upon the German ranks now--had been telling for a considerable period--and were likely in the months coming, towards the end of 1916, to tell so severely, that it might be beyond the power of the Central Empires to hold their lines any longer.

Yes, men went mad often enough, and no doubt the man in question was another such unfortunate individual.

"Confound him!" growled Max. "Why didn't he get shot as we came to the fort, or in the attack on that stairway? What's he want to disturb our rest for when we want every minute of rest we can get? for soon those Frenchmen will be returning. Turn in again, you men. We'll search for that rascal in the morning."

But would they? For listen: as the night grew older, as darkness became denser above the shattered fort of Douaumont, and the fire died down so that the Brandenburgers holding that central hall were no longer visible, figures began to collect behind the French trenches--the active, eager figures of gallant Bretons of the 20th Corps, a crack corps, to whom the task had been a.s.signed of recapturing the fortress. A gun opened far behind, a rocket soared, and then a wave of figures poured over the parapet of the trenches and ten thousand shouting, furious Frenchmen streamed down upon the debris of Douaumont--that "corner-stone" of the defences of the salient, of the capture of which the Kaiser had boasted so loudly.

"What's that? French shouts! French bugles! A counter-attack! Get up," Henri whispered in Jules's ear. "We've got to take our chance to join them'."

CHAPTER XVIII

A Sinister German

What a sight that 20th French Corps--those n.o.ble Bretons--would have presented had it been daylight when they leapt from their trenches and advanced in one stupendous rush upon the captured fort of Douaumont!

Filled with elan, determined to throw the invader backward, stung by the loss of trenches which had been French but a little while before, and eager beyond all words to bring a.s.sistance to that gallant yet sadly-thinned line which had staved off the Kaiser's hordes, this 20th Corps--the first of the reserves which General Petain had been able to rush to the scene of action--hurled itself impetuously at the Germans.

Star-sh.e.l.ls burst into flame overhead, showing das.h.i.+ng _poilus_, flickered from the tips of bayonets and lit up the smoke from exploding sh.e.l.ls, where a canopy of it hung about the devoted heads of that gallant corps. In the darkness, in the fitful light cast by those sh.e.l.ls, now and again augmented by the flas.h.i.+ng beams of an electric search-light, a desperate hand-to-hand conflict took place.

The line of Bretons was halted for a few moments as it met the Germans, it wavered, perhaps, here and there just a trifle, and then it swept on as a flood sweeps down a road, was.h.i.+ng the debris of the 6th Brigade of the Brandenburg Corps before it, submerging hundreds, and trampling not a few into the mud and into the pit-holes and craters dug everywhere by German sh.e.l.ls.

"They come! A counter-attack! Prepare to receive the enemy!"

It was Max, that snappy little German officer, who gave the command and called his men about him.

"Man every loophole! And hold on at whatever cost! You--you are fit to fight," he suddenly snapped, turning upon one of the wounded wretches who had suffered from that explosion caused by the bomb tossed by Henri. "You are skulking, my friend. Up! Seize a rifle! Get to your loophole!"

The man staggered. His eyes were bloodshot, his clothing torn and tattered after the explosion, with one arm swinging loose in its sleeve. He looked at this peremptory officer in dazed fas.h.i.+on.

Indeed, like Henri and Jules, he had been more than half stunned, and his wits were still wool-gathering.

"Seize a rifle! Go to a loophole, eh?" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Fool! Yes! Fight--fight for your life; fight for your Fatherland!"

Max shouted at him. "Here--here's a rifle," he went on, tearing one from beneath the body of a fallen soldier, and handing it to him. "Now off with you, at once!"

"At once? Fight at once?" the man stammered, while those who watched, even in that fitful light--for the fire built by the officer in the far corner was still burning--noticed that a dribble of blood was oozing from the corner of his lips, "but, sir----" he began.

"No 'buts'!" bellowed Max at him; "to your duty!"

The man gripped weakly at the rifle, turned obediently to carry out the order, and then, staggering a pace or two, fell full length on the floor.