Mars-la-Tour, Late Morning

La ligne de feu, 16 août 1870
Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (PD)

"Were you there, Sergent?"

Maurice Leduc looked up from where he was sitting at the side of the old barn which his platoon was living in. "Was I where?"

Leduc seemed annoyed at being interrupted, Kossakowski had the impression that the sergeant didn't like him all that much.

"Mars-la-Tour. With Lieutenant de Caumont."

Leduc's face went blank for a moment, then he shuddered involuntarily. "Yes, I was."

Leduc stood up and looked at the newspaperman, "Walk with me."

Kossakowski said not a word, he simply fell in beside the Frenchman as he began to stroll away from the barn. Not towards the town, but towards the open fields nearby which in summer would yield fodder for the Swiss cows, but now lay underneath a blanket of snow.

When they were some distance from the barn, Leduc stopped. He quickly ran the cuff of his greatcoat over his face. Turning away from Kossakowski, he began to speak.

"I was a fairly new sergent then. Oh, I'd been in the Army for quite a few years, but a fondness for drink and a lack of motivation kept me from getting promoted and staying at whatever rank I held. I was a good enough soldier to not get shown the door, but I was lazy. Made corporel in Crimea, almost lost it after coming back to France, I was in a brawl. But at Solferino I fought well enough to be reinstated as a corporel. At some point between Crimea and this war starting, I think I grew up. At least I became a better soldier."

"You see, I had joined the Army to get away from the family farm in Normandy. That farm had been in my family for generations, my younger brother was keen to be a farmer, I was not. It would have been my inheritance if I had stayed, but I didn't stay. As soon as I was old enough, I joined the Army. Haven't been home since."

"Do you write your family?" Kossakowski asked.

Leduc shook his head, "No, I do not. What is there to say? What is there to ask? I went home once, after the Crimea, I had nothing in common with my father, my brother, or anyone else in the nearby village. I had no desire to stay, they had no desire to hear my stories. So I left, never to return."

"Were none of your family soldiers? Most of France seems to have ancestors who marched with the Emperor, and I mean the first one, not his nephew."

"My grandmother had an uncle who marched with Napoléon, went all the way to Moscow, came all the way back. Lost two fingers on his left hand at Leipzig and was invalided out. But when the Emperor returned from Elba, apparently the old fool rejoined the colors and marched into Belgium."

"He didn't return from that one."

"You never met him?"

"No, but I would have liked to, my old granny was rather fond of him. She told me stories of him and his campaigns. Made it all sound like an adventure. Now that I'm older, I realize old Uncle Pierre didn't tell her the things all soldiers want to forget."

Kossakowski stayed silent, figuring it best to let Leduc set the pace. He'd either talk, or he'd walk away.

Leduc's eyes went blank, he was looking towards the horizon, which with the Swiss mountains wasn't that far away, but wasn't really seeing anything. In his mind's eye he could picture those young Germans advancing, and dying by the dozen. Then he started talking.

"We were going through our ammunition very quickly. I swear that my rifle barrel was hot enough to glow red. We had to rummage through the cartridge boxes of the dead and the wounded to replenish our bullets."

"I remember tearing open young Anton's cartridge box, he protested loudly but he couldn't stop me, his hands were busy trying to stuff his guts back into his belly. But the kid wanted to fight, refused to believe he was dying. He was tugging at my trouser leg as I reloaded and fired, over and over I fired."

"When I was nearly out again, I realized that Anton was no longer tugging at my pants, when I looked down, I saw that he had died. He was only seventeen I think."

"Young." Kossakowski offered.

"Yes, too young to be out there on that field, but he was there. A good kid, a good soldier, he went down at the first volley. Some German kid probably didn't even know he'd killed Anton. Odds are, that German kid died that day. We killed hundreds of the bastards. But then their damned artillery came up once more."

"We fell back, had to, we were getting slaughtered by those Krupp guns. But we had come so close to driving the Prussians back across the Moselle. We destroyed an entire battalion, though our colonel sent message after message begging for reinforcements to roll up the entire German army, nothing. We had them, we could have ended the war then and there, but our generals were either too stupid or too timid to do anything."

"So we withdrew towards Rezonville. As we did so, the cavalry came up to cover the withdrawal. The guard cuirassiers charged the Prussian infantry, and were cut to pieces. More of our lads came up and held the Prussians back long enough for us to get clear. But it was obvious, we'd been licked."

"Is that when the Prussians launched their cavalry attack?" Kossakowski asked.

"Yes, but ..." Leduc broke off and turned abruptly on his heel, heading back towards his bivouac.

Kossakowski watched him go, realizing that Leduc was done talking for now.