Home Fires in France

by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

IV

I glance at my calendar in dismay. Is it possible that three months have gone, and that it is time for Amieux to have another "permission"? How long the week of his furlough always seems, how the three months between race away! Of course we have the greatest regard for Amieux. We feel that his uniform alone (he is a chasseur alpin who has been a first-line fighter since the Battle of the Marne) would entitle him to our services, but more than that, his personality commands our respect, sound, steady, quiet Amieux whose sturdy body is wounded in one place after another, who is repaired hastily in the nearest hospital and uncomplainingly goes back to the trenches, his sleeve decorated with another one of the V-shaped marks which denote wounds. The only trouble with Amieux as a household hero is a total dearth of subjects of conversation. You see, he is a glass-blower by profession. We often feel that if we were not as ignorant of glass-blowing as Amieux is of everything else, we could get on famously with him. As it is ...

"Oh bon jour, M. Amieux," I say, jumping to my feet, "welcome back to the rear! All well?"

"Yes, madame," he says with as ponderous an emphasis on the full-stop as that of any taciturn New England farmer.

"Well, has it been hard, the last three months?" I ask.

"No, madame."

I draw a long breath.

"Do the packages we send, the chocolate, the cigarettes, the soap—do they reach you promptly?"

"Yes, madame. Thank you, madame."

The full-stop is more overpowering with each answer.

I resort to more chatter, anything to fill that resounding silence. "Here we have been so busy! So many more American volunteers are coming over for the Ambulance service, my husband has not a free moment. The children never see him. My little daughter is doing well in school. She begins to read French now. Of course the little son doesn't go to school, but he is learning to speak French like a French baby. It has been so cold here. There has been so little coal. You must have heard, the long lines waiting to get coal ..." I stop with almost a shrug of exasperation. As well talk to a basalt statue as to Amieux, impassive, his rough red hands on his knees, his musette swollen with all the miscellaneous junk the poilu stuffs into that nondescript receptacle, his cap still firmly on his head ... formal manners are not specialties of Amieux. And then I notice that one leg is thrust out, very stiff and straight, and has a big bulbous swelling which speaks of a bandage under the puttees.

I glance at it. "Rheumatism? Too much water in the trenches?"

He looks down at it without a flicker on his face. "No, madame, a wound."

"Really? How did it happen this time?"

He looks faintly bored. They always hate to tell how they were wounded. "Oh, no particular way. A shell had smashed up an abri, and while I was trying to pull my captain out from under the timbers another shell exploded near by."

"Did you save the captain?"

"Oh yes. He was banged up around the head. He's all right now."

"Were you there with him? How did it happen you weren't buried under the wreck too?"

"I wasn't there. I was in a trench. But I saw. I knew he was there."

I am so used to Amieux's conversational style that I manage even through this arid narration to see what had happened. "Do you mean to say that you left the trench and went out under shell-fire to rescue your captain! And they didn't give you a decoration! It's outrageous not recognizing such bravery!"

He shuffles his feet and looks foolish. "The captain wanted to have me cited all right. He's a chic type, but I said he'd better not."

"Don't you want the croix de guerre?" I cry, astounded at such apathy even from Amieux.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind. It's my mother."

"Don't you suppose your mother would love to have her son decorated?" I feel there must be some absurd misunderstanding between us, the man seems to be talking such nonsense.

"Well, you see, my mother ... my only brother was killed last winter. Maman worries a good deal about me, and I told her, just so she could sleep quietly, you know, I have told her my company isn't near the front at all. I said we were guarding a munitions depot at the rear."

"Well ..." I am still at a loss.

"Well, don't you see, if I get the croix de guerre for being under fire, maman would get to worrying again. So I told my captain I'd rather he'd give it to one of the other fellows."