Under Fire

Henri Barbusse

Description

Henri Barbusse's Under Fire: The Story of a Squad (in the original French Le Feu: journal d'une escouade) was one of the first novels about World War I. Published at the end of 1916, it was based on Barbusse's experiences as a French soldier on the Western Front. The novel, written primarily as the episodic journal entries of an unknown narrator, follows a French squad in the brutal face of the German Invasion. Compared to the many war stories before it, Under Fire is marked by a gritty realism that squares firmly with the death and squalor of trench warfare.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781775415589
• Langue: English

Extrait

UNDER FIRE
THE STORY OF A SQUAD
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HENRI BARBUSSE
Translated by
FITZWATER WRAY
 
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Under Fire The Story of a Squad First published in 1917.
ISBN 978-1-775415-58-9
© 2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
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Contents
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1 - The Vision 2 - In the Earth 3 - The Return 4 - Volpatte and Fouillade 5 - Sanctuary 6 - Habits 7 - Entraining 8 - On Leave 9 - The Anger of Volpatte 10 - Argoval 11 - The Dog 12 - The Doorway 13 - The Big Words 14 - Of Burdens 15 - The Egg 16 - An Idyll 17 - In the Sap 18 - A Box of Matches 19 - Bombardment 20 - Under Fire 21 - The Refuge 22 - Going About 23 - The Fatigue-Party 24 - The Dawn Endnotes
 
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To the memory of the comrades who fell by my sideat Crouy and on Hill 119
January, May, and September, 1915
1 - The Vision
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MONT BLANC, the Dent du Midi, and the Aiguille Verte look across atthe bloodless faces that show above the blankets along the galleryof the sanatorium. This roofed-in gallery of rustic wood-work on thefirst floor of the palatial hospital is isolated in Space andoverlooks the world. The blankets of fine wool—red, green, brown,or white—from which those wasted cheeks and shining eyes protrudeare quite still. No sound comes from the long couches except whensome one coughs, or that of the pages of a book turned over at longand regular intervals, or the undertone of question and quiet answerbetween neighbors, or now and again the crescendo disturbance of adaring crow, escaped to the balcony from those flocks that seemthreaded across the immense transparency like chaplets of blackpearls.
Silence is obligatory. Besides, the rich and high-placed who havecome 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 walkingsoftly. She brings newspapers and hands them about.
"It's decided," says the first to unfold his paper. "War isdeclared."
Expected as the news is, its effect is almost dazing, for thisaudience feels that its portent is without measure or limit. Thesemen of culture and intelligence, detached from the affairs of theworld and almost from the world itself, whose faculties are deepenedby suffering and meditation, as far remote from their fellow men asif they were already of the Future—these men look deeply into thedistance, 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 vastpurity, the silence is filled with the dire disclosure of a momentbefore.
War!
Some of the invalids break the silence, and say the word again undertheir breath, reflecting that this is the greatest happening of theage, and perhaps of all ages. Even on the lucid landscape at whichthey gaze the news casts something like a vague and somber mirage.
The tranquil expanses of the valley, adorned with soft and smoothpastures and hamlets rosy as the rose, with the sable shadow-stainsof the majestic mountains and the black lace and white of pines andeternal snow, become alive with the movements of men, whosemultitudes swarm in distinct masses. Attacks develop, wave by wave,across the fields and then stand still. Houses are eviscerated likehuman beings and towns like houses. Villages appear in crumpledwhiteness as though fallen from heaven to earth. The very shape ofthe plain is changed by the frightful heaps of wounded and slain.
Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearingfrom its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One'seyes follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River ofDeath. To north and south and west ajar there are battles on everyside. Turn where you will, there is war in every corner of thatvastness.
One of the pale-faced clairvoyants lifts himself on his elbow,reckons and numbers the fighters present and to come—thirtymillions of soldiers. Another stammers, his eyes full of slaughter,"Two armies at death-grips—that is one great army committingsuicide."
"It should not have been," says the deep and hollow voice of thefirst in the line. But another says, "It is the French Revolutionbeginning again." "Let thrones beware!" says another's undertone.
The third adds, "Perhaps it is the last war of all." A silencefollows, then some heads are shaken in dissent whose faces have beenblanched anew by the stale tragedy of sleepless night—"Stop war?Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease."
Some one coughs, and then the Vision is swallowed up in the hugesunlit peace of the lush meadows. In the rich colors of the glowingkine, the black forests, the green fields and the blue distance,dies the reflection of the fire where the old world burns andbreaks. Infinite silence engulfs the uproar of hate and pain fromthe dark swarmings of mankind. They who have spoken retire one byone within themselves, absorbed once more in their own mysteriousmalady.
But when evening is ready to descend within the valley, a stormbreaks over the mass of Mont Blanc. One may not go forth in suchperil, for the last waves of the storm-wind roll even to the greatveranda, to that harbor where they have taken refuge; and thesevictims of a great internal wound encompass with their gaze theelemental convulsion.
They watch how the explosions of thunder on the mountain upheave thelevel clouds like a stormy sea, how each one hurls a shaft of fireand a column of cloud together into the twilight; and they turntheir wan and sunken faces to follow the flight of the eagles thatwheel in the sky and look from their supreme height down through thewreathing mists, down to earth.
"Put an end to war?" say the watchers.—"Forbid the Storm!"
Cleansed from the passions of party and faction, liberated fromprejudice and infatuation and the tyranny of tradition, thesewatchers on the threshold of another world are vaguely conscious ofthe simplicity of the present and the yawning possibilities of thefuture.
The man at the end of the rank cries, "I can see crawling thingsdown there"—"Yes, as though they were alive"—"Some sort of plant,perhaps"—"Some kind of men"—
And there amid the baleful glimmers of the storm, below the darkdisorder of the clouds that extend and unfurl over the earth likeevil spirits, they seem to see a great livid plain unrolled, whichto their seeing is made of mud and water, while figures appear andfast fix themselves to the surface of it, all blinded and borne downwith filth, like the dreadful castaways of shipwreck. And it seemsto them that these are soldiers.
The streaming plain, seamed and seared with long parallel canals andscooped into water-holes, is an immensity, and these castaways whostrive to exhume themselves from it are legion. But the thirtymillion slaves, hurled upon one another in the mud of war by guiltand error, uplift their human faces and reveal at last a bourgeoningWill. The future is in the hands of these slaves, and it is clearlycertain that the alliance to be cemented some day by those whosenumber and whose misery alike are infinite will transform the oldworld.
2 - In the Earth
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THE great pale sky is alive with thunderclaps. Each detonationreveals together a shaft of red falling fire in what is left of thenight, and a column of smoke in what has dawned of the day. Upthere—so high and so far that they are heard unseen—a flight ofdreadful birds goes circling up with strong and palpitating cries tolook down upon the earth.
The earth! It is a vast and water-logged desert that begins to takeshape under the long-drawn desolation of daybreak. There are poolsand gullies where the bitter breath of earliest morning nips thewater and sets it a-shiver; tracks traced by the troops and theconvoys of the night in these barren fields, the lines of ruts thatglisten in the weak light like steel rails, mud-masses with brokenstakes protruding from them, ruined trestles, and bushes of wire intangled coils. With its slime-beds and puddles, the plain might bean endless gray sheet that floats on the sea and has here and theregone under. Though no rain is falling, all is drenched, oozing,washed out and drowned, and even the wan light seems to flow.
Now you can make out a network of long ditches where the lave of thenight still lingers. It is the trench. It is carpeted at bottom witha layer of slime that liberates the foot at each step with a stickysound; and by each dug-out it smells of the night's excretions. Theholes themselves, as you stoop to peer in, are foul of breath.
I see shadows coming from these sidelong pits and moving about, hugeand misshapen lumps, bear-like, that flounder and growl. They are"us." We are muffled like Eskimos. Fleeces and blankets and sackingwrap us up, weigh us down, magnify us strangely. Some stretchthemselves, yawning profoundly. Faces appear, ruddy or leaden,dirt-disfigured, pierced by the little lamps of dull andheavy-lidded eyes, matted with uncut beards and foul with forgottenhair.
Crack! Crack! Boom!—rifle fire and cannonade. Above us and allaround, it crackles and rolls, in long gusts or separate explosions.The flaming and melancholy storm never, never ends. For more thanfifteen months, for five hundred days in this part of the worldwhere we are, the