Fournier isn’t dead, Captain Juvin saw him, just wounded, he told the parents of Lieutenant Fournier:
‘I can assure you that there was a German field dressing-station at the spot where he fell.’
‘In that German dressing-station,’ said Isabelle, ‘lay all of our hopes.’
And everyone agrees: Captain Boubée de Gramont launched a pointless and dangerous attack. He said:
‘It is essential that we go after the Hun.’
Testimony of Private Angla:
‘The look-outs had warned us, Huns everywhere. The Captain was off his head, he said “I’ve got the black-rot all through me, say your prayers, lads, in my Company we’re all dead men”.’
Fournier was falling back with his infantry when the Captain made him turn and go after the enemy.
Suddenly there are shouts, all hell breaks loose.
‘It’s a German dressing-station that’s been overrun,’ said Baqué.
‘I’m stuck with a captain who is a swine and so tiresome you could weep,’ said Fournier.
A field dressing-station.
They attacked it, a ‘desperate and heroic’ action. Captain de Gramont, Lieutenants Fournier, Imbert and their men versus a field-station, the Red Cross and German stretcher-bearers.
Bugles, the gallop at Monfaubert, the earth shakes, Hans can see nothing, but he can hear. A French rider held back in reserve comes up to him, Hans stirs, the man puts one hand on his sabre, a voice says ‘No!’, it’s a bad dream, wake up, dream something else, there’s no sabre, none of it’s real, Hans shakes, I know why I left Hans, because he was never there, physically he was there, he called me Lena, smiled when I looked at him, but he didn’t like being there, or rather he didn’t like the person he was when he was there, he called me Lena but it wasn’t quite him, he always gave me the impression that I was dealing with a replacement, he’d sent me a replacement who was a great deal less interesting than he was, than the person he’d set his mind on becoming, and this replacement took only a blundering sort of interest in me. And in this story I became less desirable, I interested the Hans I had in front of me less than the Hans who would come later, there was this replacement who watched the both of us to see what we might turn into from the point of view of the Hans who would come later. He did not want me as I was, he tried to look at his watch, his innocent fingers crept towards his waistcoat pocket, all this is splitting hairs, I can sum it all up by saying that he was a pain in the neck, he didn’t try to change me but he left me to confront someone who wasn’t really there and with whom I couldn’t really be myself, he was sweet, though still a pain in the neck, irritating and adorable.
The earth quakes, no one is going to kill Hans, it’s not done, anyway it’s a dream, dream another dream, think of the things you love.
Eighty thousand dead and two weeks later, on 22 September, came Saint-Rémy.
‘Captain Gramont wouldn’t listen, Lieutenant Fournier and Lieutenant Imbert wept because they could see the Captain was leading us to our deaths,’ Private Angla told Jacques Rivière.
In Rivière’s view, Alain-Fournier did not attack a dressing-station. The wood at Saint-Rémy is also known as Knights’ Wood.
In his ditch at Monfaubert Hans is afraid and ashamed, he looks at Johann, his partially severed head, the blood has flowed copiously from Johann’s neck.
The dressing-station attacked at a run, the orders of a captain who says:
‘I’ve got the black-rot right through me.’
‘A French war crime,’ say the Germans, ‘those responsible were shot.’
‘Not a dressing-station but a cart carrying stretchers,’ is the response on the French side.
‘A fine, a great, a just war,’ writes Henri Alban Fournier to Isabelle just before he was killed.
And to Pauline:
‘We must not think anything that cuts the ground from under our feet.’
A dressing-station attacked by French forces: a report by Commandant Uecker, officer commanding the German 2nd Medical Corps:
‘At Saint-Rémy, a group of French infantry led by two officers killed eight stretcher-bearers and shot the three wounded men being treated in the dressing-station.’
On 24 November 1914, to a German military court, Private Meerländer:
‘On 22 September, I saw French soldiers killing the wounded men on our stretchers, our men surrounded the Frenchmen and shot them all.’
‘Untrue,’ say the officials of the Association of the Friends of Jacques Rivière and Alain-Foumier, ‘it is simply not true that Alain-Fournier was shot for attacking a field dressing-station, and anyway it wasn’t a dressing-station ambulance but a cart carrying a few stretchers.’
Chapter 2. 1914, The Lake
In which the intensity of the French cavalry charge reaches new heights.
In which the achievement of President Poincaré is compared with that of the Pieds Nickelés.
In which we learn how Lena Hotspur fell in love with Hans Kappler.
In which questions are asked about the true death of Alain-Fournier.
In which Hans and Lena suddenly hear cracking coming from the lake on which they are skating.
It engulfs us, we organise: all falls down,
We reorganise: then we too all fall down,
Monfaubert, 4 September 1914
Seven hundred paces a minute, Monfaubert, dragoons at full gallop, six hundred rounds in the same minute is the rhythm of the Spandau machine gun, two machine-gun posts at least have begun to open up but not until well after the start of the charge, where have these Frenchmen come from? The dragoons gallop on.
In close formation, the front line of riders six abreast per troop, three troops, less than thirty paces now from the objective, going at a tremendous lick, lashed by the devil himself. The machine-gun fire intensifies, shaking their tripods, cutting clear swathes through the horsemen who are closing fast. A few Germans, flat helmets with red flash, run hither and thither, rush forward, fall back, work the bolts of their rifles, hardly bother to take aim, fire at will, no time for concerted volleys.
Some dragoons ride into the crossfire from the machine guns and are shot in the back, the tide of dragoons is already on the enemy, a fusion of fear and furious voices lacerated by gunshots, lance thrusts, sabre blows, many riders have kept the curving sabre of 1882, despite the official ruling requiring the use of the straight sabre, the curved sabre is two-edged, cut and thrust, magnificent strokes, the point for the first shock, then slash with sharp blade to follow-up.
In the mêlée, the sabres rain down on a nest of machine-gunners, on heads not wearing helmets, on rifles held up to parry the blows, kill in order to live, screams from the Germans or perhaps the horsemen, no one can say, the advance continues, the breakthrough continues with bare steel, shock, speed, men leap forward or take avoiding action, we must achieve the breakthrough, strike at their very heart or else go down in the attempt.
Lena, Hans is no longer keen on the idea of horse rides at twilight, he is with her in autumn in a house with a garden, together they peruse catalogues of flowers and vegetables to plant in beds in the spring, they examine the packets of seeds, they open them, Hans laughs and jumbles up sweet peas and cress, broad beans, gladioli, pansies and spinach, she smacks his hand, they fool around trying to sort them all out again, they go outside, into the garden, it is morning, they walk a little way, the sun is still a pleasant red disc, a hazy round plate.