Part 10 (2/2)
The next number was thus announced: ”Le Camarade Millet will sound, first, all the French bugle-calls and then the Boche ones.” Le Camarade Millet, a big man with a fine horseshoe beard, stood at the edge of the stage, said, ”la Charge francais” and blew it on the bugle; then ”la Charge boche,” and blew that. ”La Retraite francais--La Retraite boche,”
etc. Another salvo of applause was given to le Camarade Millet.
”Le Camarade Roland.”
Le Camarade Roland was about twenty-one or two years old, but his eyes were old and wise, and he had evidently seen life. He was dark-haired and a little below medium height. The red scar of a wound appeared just below his left ear. After marking time with his feet, he began a kind of patter song about having a telephone, every verse of which ended, ”Oh, la la, j'ai le telephone chez moi” (I've a telephone in my house). ”I know who is unfaithful now--who have horns upon their brow,” the singer told of surprising secrets and unsuspected affaires de c?ur. The silly, music-hall song may seem ba.n.a.l now, but it amused us hugely then. ”Le Camarade Duclos.”
”Oh, if you could have seen your son, My mother, my mother, Oh, if you could have seen your son, With the regiment”--sang Camarade Duclos, another old-eyed youngster. There was amiable adventure with an amiable ”blonde” (oh, if you could have seen your son); another with a ”jolie brune” (oh, ma mere, ma mere); and still another lecon d'amour. The refrain had a catchy lilt to it, and the poilus began humming it.
”Le Camarade Salvatore.”
The newcomer was a big, obese Corsican mountaineer, with a pleasant, round face and brown eyes. He advanced quietly to the side of the stage holding a ten-sou tin flute in his hand, and when he began to play, for an instant I forgot all about the Bois-le-Pretre, the trenches, and everything else. The man was a born musician. I never heard anything more tender and sweet than the little melody he played. The poilus listened in profound silence, and when he had finished, a kind of sigh exhaled from the hearts of the audience.
There followed another singer, a violinist, and a clown whose song of a soldier on furlough finished with these appreciated couplets:--
”The Government says it is the thing To have a baby every spring; So when your son Is twenty-one, He'll come to the trenches and take papa's place. So do your duty by the race.”
In the uproar of cheers of ”That's right,” and so on, the concert ended.
The day after the concert was Sunday, and at about ten o'clock that morning a young soldier with a fluffy, yellow chin beard came down the muddy street shouting, ”le Mouchoir, le Mouchoir.” About two or three hundred paper sheets were clutched tightly in his left hand, and he was selling them for a sou apiece. Little groups of poilus gathered round the soldier newsboy; I saw some of them laughing as they went away. The paper was the trench paper of the Bois-le-Pretre, named the ”Mouchoir”
(the handkerchief) from a famous position thus called in the Bois. The jokes in it were like the jokes in a local minstrel show, puns on local names, jests about the Boches, and good-humored satire. The spirit of the ”Mouchoir” was whole-heartedly amateur. Thus the issue which followed a heavy snowfall contained this genuine wish:--
”Oh, snow, Please go, Leave the trench Of the French; Cross the band Of No Man's Land To where the Boche lies. Freeze him, Squeeze him, Soak him, Choke him, Cover him, Smother him, Till the beggar dies.”
This is far from an exact translation, but the idea and the spirit have been faithfully preserved. The ”Mouchoir” was always a bit more squeamish than the average, rollicking trench journal, for it was issued by a group of medical service men who were almost all priests. Indeed, there were some issues that combined satire, puns, and piety in a terrifying manner. Its editors printed it in the cellar of the church, using a simple sheet of gelatine for their press.
I wandered in to see the church. The usual number of civilians were to be seen, and a generous sprinkling of soldiers. Through the open door of the edifice the sounds of a mine-throwing compet.i.tion at the Bois occasionally drifted. The abbe, a big, dark man of thirty-four or five, with a deep, resonant voice and positive gestures, had come to the sermon.
”Brethren,” said he, ”in place of a sermon this morning, I shall read the annual exposition of our Christian faith” (exposition de la foi chretienne). He began reading from a little book a historical account of the creation and the temptation, and so concise was the language and so certain his voice that I had the sensation of listening to a series of events that had actually taken place. He might have been reading the communique. ”Le premier homme was called Adam, and la premiere femme, Eve. Certain angels began a revolt against G.o.d; they are called the bad angels or the demons.” (Certains anges se sont mis en revolte contre Dieu; il sont appelles les mauvais anges ou les demons.) ”And from this original sin arrives all the troubles, Death to which the human race is subjected.” Such was the discourse I heard in the church by the trenches to the accompaniment of the distant chanting of The Wood.
Going by again late in the afternoon, I saw the end of an officer's funeral. The body, in a wooden box covered with the tricolor, was being carried out between two files of muddy soldiers, who stood at attention, bayonets fixed. A peasant's cart, a tumbril, was waiting to take the body to the cemetery; the driver was having a hard time con-trolling a foolish and restive horse. The colonel, a fine-looking man in the sixties, came last from the church, and stood on the steps surrounded by his officers. The dusk was falling.
”Officiers, sous-officiers, soldats.
”Lieutenant de Blanchet, whose death we deplore, was a gallant officer, a true comrade, and a loyal Frenchman. In order that France might live, he was willing to close his eyes on her forever.”
The officer advanced to the tumbril and holding his hand high said:--
”Farewell--de Blanchet, we say unto thee the eternal adieu.”
The door of the church was wide open. The sacristan put out the candles, and the smoke from them rose like incense into the air. The tumbril rattled away in the dusk. My mind returned again to the phrases of the sermon,--original sin, death, life, of a sudden, seemed strangely grotesque.
It would be hard to find any one more courteous and kind than the French officer. A good deal of the success of the American Ambulance Field Sections in France is due to the hospitality and bon acceuil of the French, and to the work of the French officers attached to the Sections.
In Lieutenant Kuhlman, who commanded at Pont-a-Mousson, every American had a good friend and tactful, hard-working officer; in Lieutenant Maas, who commanded at Verdun, the qualities of administrative ability and perfect courtesy were most happily joined.
The princ.i.p.al characteristic of the French soldier is his reasonableness.
Chapter IX
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