“The old ’uns are still down there. Are they to be left there, they in front and we behind?”
No one looks reluctant. The officers have no need to insist. But the “old ’uns” will not hear of giving up the position, which they consider a good one, since the field of fire is perfect but for that confounded drop in the ground where the Boches vanish as if through a trap-door.
The 75-gun plays its part in the affray. Its curtain fire, at the foot of Hardaumont, works wonders. From the parapets one sees legs and arms flying in the air. The reinforcements will not come. They are urgently needed.
Night has fallen. A second lieutenant attached to the Brigade Staff and dispatched to this part of the battlefield comes down from the fort at a run. In spite of the cold, he is perspiring when he reaches headquarters.
“A drink!” he shouts, like Gargantua at his birth. He is surrounded, importuned, plied with eager questions; every one wants to know. The main part of the village has held out, but the fort? The assault must have been terrific. Who holds the fort?
“It’s all over,” answers the officer laconically, snatching up a water-bottle.
“What do you mean--it’s all over? The fort has been captured?”
In the inner courtyard of a Verdun barracks, around a vast washing-place, there is a swarm of dark-blue riflemen and light-blue infantrymen who have just been fighting side by side, fraternally, and who seem ready to come to blows in order to gain a place and draw near to the delicious stream of running water. Will a regular system of shifts have to be established? The line regiment (158th) and the battalion of light infantry (3rd) were relieved together last night. They went on firing up to the moment of going off, for they were defending the fort and village of Vaux, which the enemy is attacking so desperately.
The battle is, for the time being, ancient history, since they have come back from it. After so many rough nights, they open their shirts and bare their arms, to let their skins grow warm in the spring sun. No doubt the guns continue to rumble and the columns of smoke rise from bombarded Jardin-Fontaine; aeroplanes flit about in the sky, encircled by the white wreaths of smoke which the shell-bursts send up to them. But no one takes any notice; there is water to wash oneself with and to drink.