Covered With Mud and Glory: A Machine Gun Company in Action ("Ma Mitrailleuse"). Georges Lafond
reason to, for on that Monday, February fifteenth, I joined the second company of machine guns of the … first Colonials at the front. It was snowing and the fields of Picardy were one vast white carpet on which the auto-trucks traced a multitude of black lines to the accompaniment of pyrotechnics of mud.
Two days before I had left my depot in a small garrison town in the center of Provence, which lay smiling in the sun and already bedecked with the first flowers of spring. At Lyons I found rain, at Saint-Just-en-Chaussee, snow, and I got off the train in a sea of mud.
In the dim light of a February dawn, the station at Villers appeared to be encumbered with the supplies of half-a-dozen regiments. My car was high on its wheels and at the end of the train farthest from the unloading platform. At the other end of the platform near the entrance to the station, I found a rolling bridge for unloading animals, but it was useless to ask those busy people to help me push this weighty contrivance to the car.
So I looked at Kiki—Kiki is my horse—who had but recently arrived from Canada and was scarcely broken after his two months’ training at the depot.
“Kiki, mon vieux,” I said, “you must make up your mind to do as I did and jump. Remember that you are a Canadian, and every self-respecting Canadian should know how to jump as soon as he is born.”
I delivered this kind invitation from the ground and I urged him on by pulling on the reins. Kiki was not at all frightened. He came to the edge of the car, snuffed the air, carefully calculated the distance, bent lightly on his hind legs, and jumped to the ground without a flutter.
“The … first Colonials?” the military commissioner said to me. “I don’t know exactly, but you’ll find it somewhere along twenty or thirty miles to the east at Proyart or Harbonnières, or perhaps at Morcourt. There’s a little of it all about there.”
So Kiki and I, in the morning mist, went slowly along roads covered with snow and grease in search of the second company of machine guns.
Proyart is a small village hidden in a hollow of this plain of Picardy which from a distance resembled a well-stretched, vast white carpet. Here the villages are sheltered in depressions and one only sees them when he reaches the level of their steeples. It was at Proyart that altogether accidentally, thanks to a sign about as large as my hand and already partly rubbed out, I found the staff of the … first Colonials.
An orderly condescended to move a few steps and point out to me at the end of the street to the right the billets of the quartermaster of the second company of machine guns.
There was a court—a sewer, as a matter of fact—which was completely filled by a pool of filth which left only a narrow passage of a foot or two by each wall. In a corner was a tangle of barrels, farm implements, and broken boxes, and on that a mass of wet straw, manure, snow, and mud.
At the farther end of the court was a small door with glass panels—with a glass panel—for only one remained. The spaces were conveniently filled by thick layers of the Petit Parisien, Matin, Le Journal, Echo de Paris, the great dailies which arrived intermittently at Proyart.
I went in. Kiki wanted to go in, too, but the door was low and he was carrying his complete pack. Inside was a ruined kitchen. The chimney still remained, and there was a large table made of a door stretched on two barrels, which took up the middle of the room. In each corner, against the walls, were improvised beds, straw mattresses, and heaps of clothes under which I surmised there were bodies.
“The door, nom de Dieu!” shouted a voice.
In front of the chimney was a man struggling desperately with a fire. The watersoaked wood refused to burn, and the man flooded it with shoe grease, which, when it melted, threw out jets of yellow flame and filled the room with a pungent odor and smoke.
“The door, the door! What did he tell you!” cried in different tones voices which came from the heaps of covers.
It was true that a breath of cold air and a swirl of snow had rushed into the smoky dark hall when I came in. I shut the door and asked,
“Is this the second company of machine guns?”
“What of it? What do you want of the second machine guns? It’s here. And after that what do you want? Papers, again? Zut! They have no idea of bothering people at this hour. Leave them on the table and come back in half an hour.”
This diatribe emanated from a pile thicker than the rest, in the chimney corner. At this obsession of papers, of lists to be signed, I guessed he was a sergeant or a quartermaster, and I kept on:
“Don’t worry. There are no papers. I am the mounted intelligence officer attached to this company.”
“M … !” shouted several voices in the four corners of the room, while I watched arms and muffled heads rise up.
“Mince! So we have a mounted officer now! Wonderful! They’re certainly fitting us out in style. What won’t they do next? Then, that’s all right, vieux. Come on in and let us see you. And you have a horse? Where is your horse? Bring him in; make him come. It must be cold out in the court.”
The first burst of curiosity soon passed, the torrent of words exhausted itself, and the forms which had stirred a moment ago quieted down anew. A more peremptory voice now started in shouting invectives at the orderly who was still struggling with the rebellious wood.
“Say, Dedouche. Do you think we’re Boche sausages that you want to smoke us out? Don’t you know anything? We’ll have to wear glasses. That’s no way to light a fire. What did you learn when you were a boy?”
“The grease is full of water and won’t even burn.”
“Use the oil in the lamp, then.”
The first result of the immediate execution of this order was to fill the room with a black stifling cloud which was enough to make one weep. In the middle of this smoke the orderly, Dedouche, coughed, spat, sputtered, while I heard him storm:
“In God’s name, how that stinks! How that stinks!”
The quartermaster, doubtless on account of the smoke and the smell, now deigned to get up. He was a young man, large, light complexioned, and his checks were red and fat. He had just a suspicion of a moustache. His ears were hidden in a cap which had wings that pulled down. One could scarcely see his eyes they were so puffed out with sleep and smoke.
“So you’re the intelligence officer? Sit down. Dedouche, make a cup of coffee. I’ll make a note of your transfer, and then you can try to find a place for yourself until the lieutenant comes. Oh, you’ve time, you know. He never comes before ten o’clock.”
“But, Quartermaster, it’s nearly ten now.”
“No, you’re joking. Ten o’clock. My word, it’s true. Oh, there, get up all of you. It’s ten o’clock. And that salaud of a Dedouche hasn’t lighted the fire. Come, come, hurry up, the lieutenant is coming!”
And as though this were the magic word, the lieutenant came in, leaving the door wide open behind him. It was time; they were almost suffocated.
The lieutenant was a large man, thin and well set up. His bearing indicated resolution. His brown hair was cut very short, according to the regulations. A close-cropped black moustache streaked his sunburned face. The general effect of his personality was that of a man cool and headstrong.
“Oh, he has the coolness of a Colonial,” the machine gunners repeated ad nauseam.
“Isn’t there any way to get you up?” exclaimed the lieutenant. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. It’s after ten o’clock.”
Then he saw me through the cloud of smoke and questioned me with a glance. The quartermaster broke in before I could reply,
“It’s the mounted intelligence officer, Lieutenant.”
“Oh, good! … Good morning. …