Читать книгу Covered With Mud and Glory: A Machine Gun Company in Action ("Ma Mitrailleuse") - Georges Lafond - Страница 7

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I was seated under a shed of loose boards in the courtyard of Cantonment No. 77, and just tasting some excellent macaroni which the cook had warmed up for me, when Dedouche, the orderly, came to find me.

“Say, Sergeant,” he asked, “are you the intelligence officer?”

The title of “sergeant” sounds strange in the ears of a cavalryman, and I felt a little hurt in my esprit de corps; but I at once answered Dedouche’s summons, for the orderly, in spite of being at the beck and call of everyone, enjoys a certain prestige. He has a real importance, small though it be, but an importance which carries weight when he gives his opinion in the discussions of the “little staff” of the company.

This staff is the household of the quartermaster’s billets. With some slight differences it is in general composed of the quartermaster-sergeant, lacking a sergeant-major which companies of machine guns rarely have, a quartermaster-corporal, an adjutant and a mess corporal. I was admitted to the honor of taking part in the discussions of the staff on account of the detached and unusual character of my duties.

But Dedouche was summoning me. I turned and observed him leisurely. Dedouche is an excellent fellow. Without even knowing him one would guess it at first glance. He is good-natured, never in a hurry, no matter how urgent his errand, and indifferent alike to blows and invectives. He smiles under torrents of abuse and threats of the most terrible punishments, and does his duty as man of all work silently. In a word, he possesses all the qualities inherent in his duty. He is tall and spare; his face is beardless and sanctimonious; his eyes smile, but they look far away under his great round glasses with their large rims. All in all Dedouche looks like a lay brother. To complete the illusion, when he talks he has a habit of thrusting his hands into the large sleeves of his jacket and lowering his head to look over his spectacles. In civil life Dedouche was an assistant in a pharmacy in one of the large provincial cities. He knows the art of making up learned formulae. His long slim fingers manage the most fragile things with skill, and his grave voice is accustomed to the mezzotints of the laboratory.

“Yes,” I answered at last, “it is I.”

“The lieutenant wants you.”

I gulped down my plate of macaroni in two mouthfuls, swallowed the coffee which the cook, already attentive to my wants, held out to me, and followed Dedouche the two hundred yards which separated us from the billets.

Two hundred yards is nothing, and yet it is a world. In less time than it takes to tell it I learned a mass of things from Dedouche.

First, what part of the country we are from. The … first Colonials was organized in the South. So, in the hope of finding in each newcomer another “countryman,” Dedouche asked the new arrival at once,

“What part of the country are you from?”

He had some doubt about my reply. A Hussar of a regiment with an unknown number, who had given little opportunity to study his accent, might be a man from the North or the East. “One never knows with these cavalrymen,” he seemed to say, “they’re so uncertain.” So he changed the form and varied his traditional question somewhat,

“You’re not from the South, by chance, Sergeant?”

At this repetition of his offense about my title, I thought that I ought to slip in a discreet observation, so I said,

“In the cavalry, my friend, the sergeant is called ‘maréchal des logis.’ ” And then having satisfied my slightly offended esprit de corps, I replied, “Yes, mon vieux, I am from the South, in fact from the Mediterranean, from L’Herault.”

“How things happen!” exclaimed Dedouche. “I’m from Le Clapas.”

Le Clapas is the nickname given to Montpellier in the territory. And at that there came all at once a bewildering flow of words. Dedouche began to tell me, mixing it all up in an incredible confusion, about his birthplace, his adventures, his former regular occupation, in the depths of a pharmacy in a small street under the shadow of the University, his transfer from the auxiliary to active service, his wound in Champagne. All this was interspersed with frequent exclamations and repetitions, “Say, tell me, Maréchal, will this war ever be over?” and then regrets for his home land, “Say, tell me, Logis, wouldn’t it be better down there in the good sun?”

In these different attempts to get nearer to the term “maréchal de logis,” I observed Dedouche’s obvious good will, but what interested me most was a little advance knowledge about the company.

So Dedouche sketched in a few words a picture of it, which was absolutely accurate, as I was able to appreciate later.

“The lieutenant is a very chic type. No one would think to look at him that he is from the South, too. He appears cold and hard, like that, but it’s not natural; he puts it on. He’s good-hearted at bottom. He’s a Basque and isn’t afraid of anything. You ought to have seen him in Champagne at Massiges. Oh, and then we have besides his fellow countryman, Sub-Lieutenant Delpos, a blond. He’s not here now; he’s down at Morcourt with the echelon. He’s a type too, not stuck-up, but he’s agreeable and good-humored.

“Oh, those in the billets,” Dedouche sketched with a vague wave of the hand, as if to say something like this: “They’re of no importance; they’re brothers, friends, and not worth talking about.” Perhaps his gesture meant something else, but that’s what I thought it meant.

And as if he were responding to my implied question, he went on:

“—there is only the drummer who’s from the South, too; he’s what they call the ‘quartermaster corporal,’ I don’t know why. He’s a good fellow, but he does not talk. At least he only talks rarely, and he’s from Marseilles, too; no one would think it to see him. He makes me mad most of the time.

“Oh, the rest! The corporal of infantry is from Paris. I don’t know him. He only came five or six days ago. He hasn’t told us anything yet; he only sings. And what songs! Good God, they’re enough to make one blush!

“The juteux—the adjutant,” interrupted Dedouche, for he rarely used slang. With the exception of “pinard” and “tacot,” which have become hallowed and have taken an official place even in the most refined language of the armies, Dedouche rarely used a vulgar or misplaced word in his conversation. This was not because he was opposed to it nor from false modesty, but because his occupation as a “scientist” had given him the habit of using good language.

“The adjutant,” went on Dedouche, “he’s not an adjutant. He’s a brother, a father, a friend, a man, what! Never a word of anger, never a punishment, always agreeable and kind. And in spite of that he’s had a career. He’s been in Morocco, China, and Madagascar, and no one knows where else. He’s been in the service eleven years, but you wouldn’t think it to look at him.”

This running biography brought us to the open door which framed the lieutenant’s tall figure.

“Say, Margis” (the lieutenant knew his military terminology and this abbreviation was not without zest), “are you rested from your journey?”

“I wasn’t tired, Lieutenant.”

“How about your horse?”

“No more than I was. Do you think that after three days stretched out on the straw in his car, without moving … ?”

“Then, if you are willing, we’ll both go to the echelon.”

“All right, Lieutenant.”

A question must have framed itself on my face, for he added almost at once:

“Yes, the echelon, the fighting train, the cavalry. You’ll be more at home there. We left it below at Morcourt, seven or eight miles away, on account of the shells that fall here sometimes. Horses, you know, cost more than men, so we have to economize them. It is understood, then? We’ll go about noon. Saddle both horses. Meet me here.”

Then he strode off and joined a group of officers who were coming up the main street of the village to the church.

Dedouche was already full of attention for me—just think of a man from home on the “little staff”—and he now burst forth eagerly:

“Don’t trouble yourself, Logis. I’ll tell the groom to saddle the horses and bring them here.”

The smoke still persisted in the dark, littered confusion of the room, but combined with it now was an odor of burnt grease mixed with the moldy smell of a ragout with onions and strong cheese. In addition, spread out on the table, were the remnants of a meal, which had just been finished, the rolls, the account books and reports.

The quartermaster-corporal, the silent fellow from Marseilles, immersed in reading Le Soleil du Midi, did not even condescend to look up. In response to my friendly good-by, he let a scarcely perceptible “adieu” slip through his lips.

The quartermaster was stretched out on a dirty mattress thrown on the ground, and juggling two packages of English cigarettes, while he sang at the top of his lungs—and what a voice he had!—the latest song: