The First of July by Elizabeth Speller

Author:Elizabeth Speller [Speller, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781480448186
Google: 8b0KAQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17654699
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2013-11-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Jean-Baptiste, France, February 1916

JEAN-BAPTISTE HAD COME TO EXPECT death. Probably the next day. Early on, he’d thought death would take other soldiers who’d been there longer. Since then, he’d learned that death was no respecter of natural justice, but was in fact a great practical joker of the nastiest sort, like Lucien Laporte at school. A bullet in the forehead: that was fair. Being blown into a hundred glistening bits of meat: that was fair, though not so good for your comrades. Being bayoneted was fair; gas was vicious but war. But dying from a septic foot or drowning in a puddle or being kicked by a mule: where was the glory in that? You didn’t have to travel across France and sleep in a trash pile—death could have found you at home for that.

Everybody knew death was out there, and it seemed the higher-ups were currently making preparations to entice him in. They were flaunting themselves. There had been a visit by little General Joffre and even the president.

Usually, officers were little seen from day to day and, when they emerged from their billets, were men of few words and no conversation, except with each other, somehow both focused and indifferent. The ones who wanted to save their own skins, just as their men did, only more elegantly, were as dangerous as the ones who were all “They shall not pass.” Their own platoon commander, Aspirant Collinette, was scarcely more than a boy, a cadet. Some claimed to have seen him surreptitiously reading a book on how to fight wars.

The men around Jean-Baptiste put what remained of their trust in Sergeant Folz, a blocky, grizzled man who had fought the fuzzy-wuzzies and run two through at once on one of their own spears. He was a brute but a survivor, and his prestige came from bringing his men through. Captain Joubert, who was the section commander, wore wire-rimmed spectacles and reminded Jean-Baptiste of the schoolmaster back in Corbie. He was glad that, unlike the two previous captains, Joubert didn’t have a saber. An officer with a nineteenth-century saber seemed to betray a worrying level of misunderstanding. Rather than telling them what the hell was happening or reciting the virtues of the Republic that had sent them to be slaughtered, Joubert trotted out little mottoes when he briefed them. Yesterday’s was “Never overestimate your enemy.”

Some men said the Germans were using the time to dig a wide tunnel right under the French positions at Verdun and attack them from the rear. For a while Jean-Baptiste found it hard to sleep in the burrow he’d cut into the trench side, thinking of Germans moving noiselessly below and behind him. Some said the British were coming to reinforce them. “Ah, perfidious Albion,” said the captain when Folz asked him if it was true.

On February 11, they were ordered to prepare for battle. For months, Jean-Baptiste had kept a small piece of paper and a stub of pencil. Not for the first

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.