A Fable

The narrative returns to the day the men refused to attack. General Charles Gragnon is given the choice whether “to accept or refuse to command the attack” (20). He feels as though he has been chosen by fate to be the perfect soldier. After being raised in an orphanage, he joined the Army and quickly gained promotion through the ranks until—two years before—his destiny inexplicably seemed to slow down. He is asked by corps commander Lallemont to lead an attack which, in his expertise, Gragnon realizes is “intended to fail” (23). He understands that Lallemont intends to sacrifice these men to save his own position. Then, he realizes that he has no choice but to accept because he has nowhere to go. He selects a regiment, and when he watches over the attack, however, he looks up at the battlefield to survey his troops and sees nothing. In his trenches, officers and non-commissioned officers (N.C.O.s) are gesticulating and shouting at the men who have not advanced toward the enemy trenches. Gragnon understands what has happened. He wonders whether he should just wait for the enemy to attack him, thereby killing his mutinous troops and removing his problem for him.

Lallemont arrives in a car to collect Gragnon, who wants permission from General Bidet to execute the 3,000 mutinous men. Lallemont assures Gragnon that he is not to blame for the failed attack, as “it’s simple nameless war which decimates our ranks” (30). The rest of the front has fallen eerily quiet. They arrive at the command center in a nearby chateau, where American and British commands are also present. Gragnon makes “his formal request for permission to have the whole regiment executed” (34). The group commander assures him that “it has ceased to matter” (35) whether the men are executed. He sends Gragnon back to his quarters to await a summons. Instead, Gragnon asks to be taken to the front line even though the regiment will likely already have been disbanded. He asks the car to stop, as he is struck by the sudden silence. Fearing the “unbearable golden silence” (37), he tells the driver to continue. An artillery major is standing by waiting for orders. In the distance, an artillery battery fires a salvo, quickly followed by another.

Gragnon enters the brigade’s headquarters in the cellar of a ruined farm. An aide tells him that the whole French front has been remanded while the artillery has been ordered to fire exclusively on no-man’s land. The German army, like the French, have not attacked. The enlisted men, he explains, have wholly refused to attack. Gragnon suggests that the men disobeying orders and the high command ignoring this disobedience is a personal attack on himself. He returns to division headquarters, located inside an appropriated country home. There, he finds a message from headquarters summoning him to a meeting on Wednesday. Inside his aide’s room is a chest. Inside the chest is a collection of writing by a now-dead aide who wanted a way to make himself a hero. There is also a book from which the dead aide hoped to learn about heroism and glory. Gragnon reads the book while the lights are lit, and food is brought to him. He falls asleep while reading.

When he wakes and goes to the headquarters and finds the group commander in “in his flannel nightshirt and cap in the gaudy bed” (52). Gragnon tries to offer his written resignation, but the group commander burns it over a candle and insists that he attend the meeting at headquarters. War and conflict are inevitable, the group commander explains, until the “rank and file” (54) men learn to abandon concepts like nationalism and patriotism. Gragnon must be punished, he says, so that the rank-and-file men do not learn that they have the power to stop the war. He says that Gragnon’s fate will be glorious.