When Fletcher stepped out into the street he felt very conspicuous as if accusing eyes were upon him from all directions, but after a while he began to feel easier as he realized that the people around him were intent solely on their own troubles. Looking up the crowded street towards St. Martin Square he saw a coil of black smoke indicating a fire, and even as he watched he saw a shell burst to what must have been the very middle of the square.
He turned and started hurrying the other way, going with the general drift. The noise was pandemonium---the thunder of the guns, the wail of shells screaming through the air and the earsplitting blasts as they blew up were bad enough, but the roar of the crowd, that was worse. Everyone seemed to find it necessary to shout, and the fact that they were shouting in what, to him, was a foreign language didn't help.
Once a man grasped him by the arm and bawled a string of gibberish into his face and Fletcher said, "Sorry, old boy, but I can't tell a word you're saying," and threw the arm off. It was only when he turned away that he realized that he himself had shouted at the top of his voice.
The crowd was mainly civilian, although there were a lot of soldiers, some armed but most not. The majority of the soldiers seemed to be unwounded and quite fit apart from their tiredness and the glazed terror in their eyes, and Fletcher judged that these were men who had faced an artillery barrage for the first time in their lives and had broken under it. But there were wounded men, trudging along holding broken arms, limping with leg wounds, and one most horrible sight, a young soldier staggering along with his hands to his stomach, the red wetness of his viscera escaping through his slippery fingers.
The civilians seemed even more demoralized than that soldiery. They ran about helter-skelter, apparently at random. One man whom Fletcher observed changed the direction of his running 6 times in as many minutes, passing and repassing Fletcher until he was lost in the crowd. He came upon a young girl in a red dress standing in the middle of the street, her hands clapped to her ears and her beauty distorted as she screamed endlessly. He heard her screams for quite a long time as he fought his way through that agony of terror.
He finally decided he had better get into a side street away from the press, so he made his way to the pavement and turned the first corner he came to. It was not so crowded and he could make better turn, a point he made a mental note of when the time came to drive out the car. He soon came upon a young soldier sitting on an orange box, his rifle beside him and one sleeve of his tunic flapping loose. Fletcher stopped and said, "Is your arm broken, sir?"
The young man looked up uncomprehendingly, his face gray with fatigue. Fletcher tapped his own arm. "Le bras," he said, then made a swift motion as if breaking a stick across his knee. "Broken?"
"Oui," the soldier said dully.
"I'll help you," said Fletcher and he squatted down to help the soldier remove his tunic. He kicked the orange box to pieces to make splints and then bound up the arm. "You'll be all right now," he said, and departed. But he left bearing the man's tunic and rifle---he now had his props.
The tunic was a tight fit so he wore it unbuttoned; the trousers didn't match and he had no cap, but he didn't think that mattered---all that mattered was that he looked approximately like a soldier and so had a proprietary interest in the war. He lifted the rifle and worked the action to find the magazine empty and smiled thoughtfully7. That didn't matter, either; he had never shot anybody in his life and he didn't intend to start doing so now.
Gradually, by a circuitous route which he carefully marked on the map, he made his way to the eastern edge of the city by the coast road. He was grateful to see that here the crowds were less and the people seemed to be somewhat calmer. Along the road he saw a thin trickle of people moving out, a trickle that later in the day would turn into a flood. The sooner he could get Cubbins in the car, the better it'd be for everyone concerned, so he turned back, looking at his watch. It was later than he thought---nearly 10:00.
Now he found he was moving against the stream and progress was more difficult and would become even more so as he approached the disturbed city center. He looked ahead and saw the blazon of smoke in the sky spreading over the middle area---the city was beginning to burn. But not for long, he thought grimly. Not if Riley's right.
He pressed on into the chaos that was once Trois Fourches, pushing against the bodies that pressed against him and ruthlessly using his rifle butt to clear his way. Once he met a soldier, fighting his way clear and they came face to face; Fletcher reversed his rifle and manipulated the bolt with a sharp click, thinking, what do I do if he doesn't get the idea? The soldier nervously eyed the rifle muzzle pointing at his belly, half-heartedly made an attempt to lift his own gun but thought better of it, and retreated, slipping away into the crowd. Fletcher grinned mirthlessly and went on his merry way.
He wasn't too far from the Nationale when the pressure of the crowd became so much that he couldn't move. Christ! he thought; we're sitting ducks for a shell-burst. He tried making his way back, but found that as hard as going forward---something was evidently holding the crowd up, something immovable.
He found out what it was when he struggled far enough back, almost to the street corner. A military unite had debouched from the side street and formed a line across the main thoroughfare, their guns pointing at the crowd. Men were being hauled out of the crowd and lined up in a clear space, and Fletcher took one good look and tried to duck back. But he was too late. An arm shot out and grabbed him, pulling him bodily out of the crowd and thrusting him to join the others. Martinet was busy rounding up his dissolving army.
He looked at the group of men which he had joined. They were all soldiers and all unwounded, looking at the ground with hangdog expressions. Fletcher hunched his shoulders, drooped his head and mingled unobtrusively with them, getting as far away from the front as possible. After a while an officer came and made a speech at them. Fletcher couldn't understand one damn word of it, but he got the general idea of the argument. They were deserters, quitters under fire, who deserved to be shot, if not at dawn, then sooner. Their only hope of survival was to go and face the guns of Sorel for the greater glory of Esperance and President Martinet.
To make his point the officer walked along the front row of men and arbitrarily selected six. They were marched across to the front of a house---poor, bewildered, uncomprehending sheep---and suddenly a machine-gun opened up and the little group staggered and fell apart under the hail of bullets. The officer calmly walked across and put a bullet into the brain of one screaming wretch, then turned and gave a sharp order.
The deserters were galvanized into action. Under the screams of bellowing non-coms they formed into rough order and marched away down the side street, Fletcher among them. He looked at the firing squad in the truck as he passed, then across at the six corpses. Pour encourager les autres, he thought.
Fletcher had been drafted into Martinet's army!
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