Fear by Gabriel Chevallier

Author:Gabriel Chevallier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2011-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

2

THIRTY BELOW

‘A soldier hates his own lieutenant more than the

lieutenant in the enemy army.’

Maurice Barrès28

THE NEW ACTING COMPANY commandant is Captain Bovin, a man already well known throughout the regiment.

This captain had for some time held the role of adjutant to the colonel and in this capacity he was feared, especially by other officers and staff. The men at the front, on the other hand, feared no one, on the basis that: ‘they can’t move us any further forward!’ Those I had spoken to depicted Captain Bovin as a kind of eminence grise, distributing favours and blame as he liked; here, blame can often get you killed… Crossing him meant jeopardising your career, if not your life, and it was easy to do, either with outbursts of temperament or youthful behaviour, or, fatally, by displaying your independence. He was also condemned by many for abusing his power by giving himself several laudatory mentions in dispatches, notably at Verdun, where he had stayed safely at the rear with the quartermaster. As an administrator whose paperwork kept him out of danger, he was accused of using this same paperwork against those who were risking their lives.

But his favoured position had just come to an end. The regiment had a new colonel at its head and this colonel considered that a captain with his eye on a commandant’s shoulder stripes needed to have served at the front.

Captain Bovin lives up to his reputation in his appearance and behaviour. He’s about fifty, very tall, with a jaundiced complexion. He has yellow teeth, the cruel smile of a Moor, the eyes of a Chinaman; he is bearded, greying, with a slow, solemn walk, and a hypocritical air of austerity. I find him mediocre, fussy, mean-spirited: he has the mind of an office manager combined with that of a barracks adjutant, with full power over a hundred and fifty men. The type of man you loathe at first sight, a man who likes to intimidate people, and who also likes – more seriously and always a bad sign – servility in his subordinates. In short, we all knew it was a bad day for the company when he turned up. We also got the strong impression that his batman was spying on us.

My own relations with such a man could only be difficult and were unlikely to end well. He ordered me to draw up a map of the entire sector, a task which cost me ten days’ torture. In a temperature of twenty below, I had to measure abandoned trenches, with the snow up to my knees, and stand still on the ground checking deviations and noting down figures. My shoes froze to my feet. Once I’d completed the map, the captain sent me straight back to the front line. I was back in the squad.

This sector lies at an altitude of about 1,000 metres. Our company is attached to the other battalion, on the top of the mountain, a part of whose slopes we hold.

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