No Man's Land #3

Pour Dieux et la patrie.

There is a country between fear and madness that most of us live in. A retreat beyond the humor and cynicism that is our daily bread, where trenches lie deeper still. Trenches no enemy can ever hope to conquer. It’s the only way to survive. Those that fail to find its refuge, either go insane or end up dead.

Or both.

I stumbled upon it during those dark days, after the battle overtook us. For months, the French had hounded the German flanks while we pulled back. Now we bore the full weight of the hammer strike. Beneath it, resolve shivered. As the war revealed its true nature, soldiers threw down rifles and bolted, sat down in the mud with stunned expressions on their faces, while machine guns and rifles flashed without pause.

A haze settled, clouding my thoughts. I was still aware, saw the earth bursting apart, flinging men and horses high between the trees. But I watched it unfold as though peering through a window at a scene I had no part in. Faces contorted in their final agonies as they struggled up to meet us, bayonets slicing up through the mist as they fell back. The smell of cordite stung my nostrils, burned in my lungs. The dull, irregular thud of the artillery, now moved up behind us, replaced my own frantic heartbeat.

I felt it all.

I felt none of it.

All that mattered was the rifle in my hands, the flames licking from its barrel as I aimed and pulled its trigger. All that mattered was seeing the figure at its end tighten and crumple to the ground. All that mattered was staying alive.

Some will name us brave, those holding the line and firing, while the men who ran and broke down beside us are looked upon with contempt. But I won’t. We’ve been sent to this place as weapons, like the shells that are brought in with endless columns of trucks each day. Not until we’ve been sent on our murderous journey, do we really know our potential. Some shells burrow into the earth like harmless hunks of steel; those that find their target twist apart in a million different ways. I was a sophomore at the university of Louvain, studying Germanic languages. I was to be a teacher. The man next to me was a butcher from Wijnegem. Faced with our own destruction, one fought while the other ran. Both of us, desperate to stay alive.

Most of these stories are told, too, but not to judge. They are cautionary tales for the fresh blood that finds its way down into this hell. They come with open faces, with a youth and innocence that cuts my heart loose, sends it wheeling down into my gut. There’s pain and sadness, as if in mourning. Though I cannot tell which loss I’m facing: theirs, or mine. Because they will lose. This ravenous earth will take it all. Even their lives, if our lessons are not heeded.

Most will learn quick. Gazing out across the frozen wasteland, where even now the refuse lies half submerged and the corpses languish beneath the sun’s pale eye. Bloated hands and rotten faces that show bony grins and mouths agape, echoing their last screams into the void. Sitting watch through endless hours, they will breathe it in. It will cling to them, until it soaks them through. Like us, they will consider it, contemplate its meaning. And, like us, they will fail to find answers. But it will eat away at the dangerous dreams they’ve brought down with them, more than the stories we offer. They will feel the empty, breathless gravity of the graveyard beyond pulling at them, and they will recognize these thoughts of heroes and cowards for the dangerous lies they are.

Because there is no heroism in what I did when the Germans rose to meet us during those black October days, when everything went down in blood and smoke. In what I’ve done every day since. It’s simple instinct, to cling to life. To fight for it. I have seen true courage, true bravery, and it has little to do with taking lives.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Here, too, we are stranded, in between the heroes they make us out to be, and the cowards that are our shadow. This uncomfortable lie, held up for the sake of the home front, for our country, is yet another kind of madness in a world that no longer recognizes it.

But perhaps that’s because it was always there. More and more, I’ve become convinced that this war—and those that have come before it— is not new. It’s just a new link in a chain of resentment and retribution that stretches all the way back to the dawn of time. Violence begetting violence, perpetuated by minds unable to resist the lure of hatred and destruction. Willing to sacrifice all in the name of victory.

These thoughts are mine, sanded and polished during the long nights, when the batteries pound the silence apart and flares arch overhead, burning away the blanket of darkness. On those endless watches, I can admit the truth: that Ribière was right. They hungered for this. There are a lot of ways for the mind to come undone. Some had unraveled long before the first soldiers marched. And we followed them without question, believing them to be our betters.

When all they wanted was our sacrifice.

I saw it clear when the tide began to turn against us and the line groaned beneath the German pressure. In our darkest hour, they appeared like priests, their speeches like sermons, delivered on the threshold of their church of death and torment. I’ve learned to hate them, these cloying words, extolling the virtues of the perfect soldiers they know us to be. Of our glorious purpose. During, I often think about Ribière and dread the terrible cost that will be exacted.  

I remember the first one, delivered by a French Sergeant. The days were a mindless grind back then. I held the line for hours, shooting and reloading until my head swam with cordite and my fingertips burned from fumbling jammed, scalding hot shell casings from the chamber. At some point, we were rotated out, made to run ammunition for the rifles. Backbreaking labor, done on an empty stomach after days without sleep. We had just gotten a brief “rest”. The lot of us sat numbed between the dead and wounded, when the sergeant showed up, accompanied by two other officers.

We all found our legs somehow. My head hummed, seemed to breathe in and out. I had to make a physical effort to concentrate on the man’s words. They were delivered in French, which most of the Flemish soldiers didn’t speak. Those that did, could only make out scraps beneath the bursting shells. As a former student, my French was good enough to make out the gist—which turned my insides to turn to water.

I was elbowed, urged to translate. But before I had a chance to relay his message, everything fell apart in chaos and confusion. We were sorted into ragged groups of strangers, captained by men who spoke a foreign language. And as we moved up the line, there was no more need for explanations. Faces grew tight and there was no more talk, only the thud of the battery’s report, striking the taut drumhead of my midriff.

The sergeant went ahead, atop his horse. In the final moment, he turned to face us, the horse beneath him dancing, nervous so close to the battle. His eyes moved over mine and I saw no reason in them but something wild and feverish, straining to break free. Raising his sword, he shouted: “Dieux et patrie.”

It came to me then that his country was not mine. But it was too late. Already man and horse spilled across the top to the right, a movement that swept up the trench to meet us, sucked us along without mercy.

As I gained the top, fear found me again, the world rushing back in a thundering roar. Beyond, the field writhed, its toiling figures briefly lit by bursting flame. As we began to stumble down the hill like ants, I caught sight of the cavalry to our right. They were streaming between the trees when the earth erupted beneath them. For an instant, one of the horses was caught in the white hot center of the blast, raised several meters into the air, its rider still firmly seated on its back. Of its front legs, only a single stump remained. Its lower jaw hung loosely, tongue lolling out, like the maw of a monstrous creature. As it rose, its intestines slipped from its torn belly, uncoiling as they reached for the ground.

Seeing it, the full weight of the situation began to sink in, and I could feel the delicate balance of sanity shifting. The air came alive with angry hornets, men snapping away beneath their stings as we ran. Up ahead, a man disappeared in a shell crater. I passed him struggling to get up when a second soldier fell in after, burying his bayonet in his back. Despite it all, a yell went up from the men and they sped up, rushing towards their own destruction.

Where we met, my memory shattered. All that’s left is fragments of steel and screams. My own panting breath and the cold sweat that clings to my skin as I’m ripped from sleep’s oblivion.

When I emerged from the trenches of the soul, we were back at rest. I looked around at unfamiliar faces without comprehension, afraid to ask the questions that lay heavy at the back of my throat. In time the answers would follow: of our regiment, only nine had made it back. Friends, townspeople. Gone, along with my memories. But by the time order reasserted itself and I returned to our section, I had gone over twice more and had seen the true face of the war.

I’d also met Ribière.

It was just after our second sortie—a memory I’d pay to erase. We had gone up behind the cavalry, sent ahead to create a gap so we could sweep to the middle, create room for the field guns. We’d made it almost a hundred meters before the machine guns sprang to life. Minutes later, we struggled back behind two surviving grenadiers, our uniforms covered in blood and dirt. My ears were still ringing with the screams of dying horses so I thought I’d misunderstood when the officer told us to go back.

“There’s no one left,” the trooper said, saving me the effort of answering.

“If you don’t do your duty,” the officer bit back, “that may well be the case.”

The cavalrymen exchanged a glance above us. The jaw of the speaker stiffened.

“I came here to fight for my country,” he said. “Not to commit suicide.”

Blood crept up into the officer’s face. “Insubordination!” he sputtered.

“We cannot return—,” the trooper began, then ducked in his saddle when mortar fire exploded behind us. He recovered quickly but what I had taken for composure was, in fact, mortal fear.

“You will turn around right now!” the officer yelled. The way he held up a reprimanding finger to the rider would’ve been comical under different circumstances.

The cavalryman kept his eyes ahead and spurred his horse. As he moved past the officer, I felt a stab of compassion for them. Proud and tall, they looked out of place, anachronistic. Their wars lay behind them, in different ages. Perhaps no less brutal, but at least evenly matched.

There was another explosion as the trooper steered the horse down the incline. As I watched, his head snapped to the side, a clotted spurt of blood and brains arching black against the lead sky. Shocked, I watched as he slumped in his saddle, began to lean to the left. Oblivious, his horse sauntered on.

A gunshot went off next to me and I heard the whinny of the second man’s horse. I snapped around to see the officer aiming his revolver down the incline, understood what had happened.

Another shot rang out.

The officer’s first shot had struck the cavalryman in the shoulder. The horse beneath him, already nervous after what had happened on the battlefield, became spooked when the man pulled on the reigns in surprise. But before the man had a chance to gain control, the officer fired again.

The horse reared, and the bullet meant for its rider buried itself in the animal’s rump, just below the saddle. Mad with fear and pain, the horse began to buck. The cavalryman, unable to hold on with a wounded shoulder, was thrown. He hit the dirt head first, one foot still caught in the stirrup. The horse bucked and kicked out, dragging the unmoving man along, each jerk bringing the man closer to the horse’s pistoning hindquarters. Again the horse kicked out and this time there was a sickening crunch as the horse’s hooves came down with five hundred kilograms behind them, staving in the man’s skull and chest.

I swallowed, watching the man’s legs twitch. Once. Twice. My eyes kept sliding to his face, now a red ruin, pinned in place by the horse’s muscular leg. To the right, the officer had moved closer, in case the job needed finishing. When the man stilled, he lowered his revolver.

As if the horse had been waiting for this signal, it bolted. Its former rider, his foot still caught in the stirrup, had no choice but to follow. After a brief hesitation, the officer gave pursuit, barking at the men to shoot the damned animal, for God’s sake.

---

END OF PART 3