I Show The River Valley Like A Trench, And The
Hills Above It Shaded, Till The Mountainous Upper Part, The Vosges, Is
Put In Black.
I chose the decline of the day for setting out, because
of the great heat a little before noon and four hours after it.
Remembering this, I planned to walk at night and in the mornings and
evenings, but how this design turned out you shall hear in a moment.
I had not gone far, not a quarter of a mile, along my road leaving the
town, when I thought I would stop and rest a little and make sure that
I had started propitiously and that I was really on my way to Rome; so
I halted by a wall and looked back at the city and the forts, and drew
what I saw in my book. It was a sight that had taken a firm hold of my
mind in boyhood, and that will remain in it as long as it can make
pictures for itself out of the past. I think this must be true of all
conscripts with regard to the garrison in which they have served, for
the mind is so fresh at twenty-one and the life so new to every
recruit as he joins it, he is so cut off from books and all the
worries of life, that the surroundings of the place bite into him and
take root, as one's school does or one's first home. And I had been
especially fortunate since I had been with the gunners (notoriously
the best kind of men) and not in a big place but in a little town,
very old and silent, with more soldiers in its surrounding circle than
there were men, women, and children within its useless ramparts. It is
known to be very beautiful, and though I had not heard of this
reputation, I saw it to be so at once when I was first marched in, on
a November dawn, up to the height of the artillery barracks. I
remembered seeing then the great hills surrounding it on every side,
hiding their menace and protection of guns, and in the south and east
the silent valley where the high forests dominate the Moselle, and the
town below the road standing in an island or ring of tall trees. All
this, I say, I had permanently remembered, and I had determined,
whenever I could go on pilgrimage to Rome, to make this place my
starting-point, and as I stopped here and looked back, a little way
outside the gates, I took in again the scene that recalled so much
laughter and heavy work and servitude and pride of arms.
I was looking straight at the great fort of St Michel, which is the
strongest thing on the frontier, and which is the key to the circle of
forts that make up this entrenched camp. One could see little or
nothing of its batteries, only its hundreds of feet of steep brushwood
above the vineyards, and at the summit a stunted wood purposely
planted. Next to it on the left, of equal height, was the hog back of
the Cote Barine, hiding a battery. Between the Cote Barine and my
road and wall, I saw the rising ground and the familiar Barracks that
are called (I know not why) the Barracks of Justice, but ought more
properly to be called the Barracks of petty tyrannies and good
fellowship, in order to show the philosophers that these two things
are the life of armies; for of all the virtues practised in that old
compulsory home of mine Justice came second at least if not third,
while Discipline and Comradeship went first; and the more I think of
it the more I am convinced that of all the suffering youth that was
being there annealed and forged into soldiery none can have suffered
like the lawyers. On the right the high trees that stand outside the
ramparts of the town went dwindling in perspective like a palisade,
and above them, here and there, was a roof showing the top of the
towers of the Cathedral or of St Gengoult. All this I saw looking
backwards, and, when I had noticed it and drawn it, I turned round
again and took the road.
I had, in a small bag or pocket slung over my shoulder, a large piece
of bread, half a pound of smoked ham, a sketch-book, two Nationalist
papers, and a quart of the wine of Brule - which is the most famous
wine in the neighbourhood of the garrison, yet very cheap. And Brule
is a very good omen for men that are battered about and given to
despairing, since it is only called Brule on account of its having
been burnt so often by Romans, Frenchmen, Burgundians, Germans,
Flemings, Huns perhaps, and generally all those who in the last few
thousand years have taken a short cut at their enemies over the neck
of the Cote Barine. So you would imagine it to be a tumble-down, weak,
wretched, and disappearing place; but, so far from this, it is a rich
and proud village, growing, as I have said, better wine than any in
the garrison. Though Toul stands in a great cup or ring of hills, very
high and with steep slopes, and guns on all of them, and all these
hills grow wine, none is so good as Brule wine. And this reminds me of
a thing that happened in the Manoeuvres of 1891, _quorum pars magna_;
for there were two divisions employed in that glorious and fatiguing
great game, and more than a gross of guns - to be accurate, a hundred
and fifty-six - and of these one (the sixth piece of the tenth battery
of the eighth - I wonder where you all are now? I suppose I shall not
see you again; but you were the best companions in the world, my
friends) was driven by three drivers, of whom I was the middle one,
and the worst, having on my Livret the note 'conducteur mediocre'.
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