



Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.









Under Fire

The Story of a Squad


By

Henri Barbusse

(1874-1935)



Translated by Fitzwater Wray



  To
  the memory of
  the comrades who fell by my side
  at Crouy and on Hill 119

  January, May, and September 1915





Contents


     I.  The Vision
    II.  In the Earth
   III.  The Return
    IV.  Volpatte and Fouillade
     V.  Sanctuary
    VI.  Habits
   VII.  Entraining
  VIII.  On Leave
    IX.  The Anger of Volpatte
     X.  Argoval
    XI.  The Dog
   XII.  The Doorway
  XIII.  The Big Words
   XIV.  Of Burdens
    XV.  The Egg
   XVI.  An Idyll
  XVII.  The Sap
 XVIII.  A Box of Matches
   XIX.  Bombardment
    XX.  Under Fire
   XXI.  The Refuge
  XXII.  Going About
 XXIII.  The Fatigue-Party
  XXIV.  The Dawn




UNDER FIRE



I

The Vision


MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across at the
bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the gallery of the
sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on the first
floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space and overlooks the
world. The blankets of fine wool--red, green, brown, or white--from
which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrude are quite still. No
sound comes from the long couches except when some one coughs, or that
of the pages of a book turned over at long and regular intervals, or
the undertone of question and quiet answer between neighbors, or now
and again the crescendo disturbance of a daring crow, escaped to the
balcony from those flocks that seem threaded across the immense
transparency like chaplets of black pearls.

Silence is obligatory. Besides, the rich and high-placed who have come
here from all the ends of the earth, smitten by the same evil, have
lost the habit of talking. They have withdrawn into themselves, to
think of their life and of their death.

A servant appears in the balcony, dressed in white and walking softly.
She brings newspapers and hands them about.

"It's decided," says the first to unfold his paper. "War is declared."

Expected as the news is, its effect is almost dazing, for this audience
feels that its portent is without measure or limit. These men of
culture and intelligence, detached from the affairs of the world and
almost from the world itself, whose faculties are deepened by suffering
and meditation, as far remote from their fellow men as if they were
already of the Future--these men look deeply into the distance, towards
the unknowable land of the living and the insane.

"Austria's act is a crime," says the Austrian.

"France must win," says the Englishman.

"I hope Germany will be beaten," says the German.

They settle down again under the blankets and on the pillows, looking
to heaven and the high peaks. But in spite of that vast purity, the
silence is filled with the dire disclosure of a moment before.

War!

Some of the invalids break the silence, and say the word again under
their breath, reflecting that this is the greatest happening of the
age, and perhaps of all ages. Even on the lucid landscape at which they
gaze the news casts something like a vague and somber mirage.

The tranquil expanses of the valley, adorned with soft and smooth
pastures and hamlets rosy as the rose, with the sable shadow-stains of
the majestic mountains and the black lace and white of pines and
eternal snow, become alive with the movements of men, whose multitudes
swarm in distinct masses. Attacks develop, wave by wave, across the
fields and then stand still. Houses are eviscerated like human beings
and towns like houses. Villages appear in crumpled whiteness as though
fallen from heaven to earth. The very shape of the plain is changed by
the frightful heaps of wounded and slain.

Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearing
from its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One's eyes
follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River of Death. To
north and south and west afar there are battles on every side. Turn
where you will, there is war in every corner of that vastness.

One of the pale-faced clairvoyants lifts himself on his elbow, reckons
and numbers the fighters present and to come--thirty millions of
soldiers. Another stammers, his eyes full of slaughter, "Two armies at
death-grips--that is one