XXI
THE CROSS OF HONOUR FOR THE FLAG OF
THE NAVAL BRIGADE!
Paris, which is above all other towns famous for its noble impulses, was fêting some days ago our Naval Brigade from the Yser—or rather the last survivors of the heroic Brigade, the few who had been able to return. It was well done thus to make much of them, but alas! how soon it will all be forgotten.
To-day, in honour of the Brigade, of which three-quarters were annihilated, our well-beloved and eminent Minister of Marine, Admiral Lacaze, has given instructions that the glorious Order of the Day, in which the commander-in-chief bade them farewell, should be posted up on all our ships of war. It ends with these words:
"The valiant conduct of the Naval Brigade on the plains of the Yser, at Nieuport, and at Dixmude will always be to the Forces an example of warlike zeal and devotion to their country. The Naval Brigade and their officers may well be proud of this new and glorious page which they have inscribed on their records."
Indeed this Order posted up on board the ships will be more permanent than the welcome that Paris gave them; but alas! this likewise will be forgotten, too soon forgotten.
As it was decided when this Brigade of picked men were disbanded to preserve their flag for the Army so that their memory might be perpetuated, could not the Cross of Honour be attached to a flag of such distinction? This idea, it seems, has been entertained, but perhaps—I know nothing of the matter—there is some impeding clause in the regulations, for I seem to remember to have read there that before it can be decorated with the Cross a flag must have been unfurled on the occasion of a great offensive or a splendid feat of arms. Now the case of our Naval Brigade is so unprecedented that no regulations could have made provision for it. How could they have unfurled their flag in that unparalleled conflict since in those days they still had none? This Brigade, hastily organised on the spur of the moment, was thrown into the firing-line without that incomparable symbol, the tricolour, which all the other brigades possessed before they set out. It was not until later, long after the great exploits with which they won their spurs, that their flag was presented to them, at a time when they had a somewhat less terrible part to play. In such circumstances I venture to hope that the regulation may be relaxed in their favour. If this flag of theirs were decorated, all the sailors who received it with such joy over there, that day when all its three colours were still new and brilliant, would feel themselves distinguished at the same time as the flag itself, and later, in future days, when their descendants came to look at it, poor, sacred, tattered remnant, tarnished and dusty, this Cross, which had been awarded, would speak to them more eloquently of sublime deeds done on the Belgian Front.
They can never be too highly honoured, the Naval Brigade, of whom it has been officially recorded:
"No troops in any age have ever done what these have done."
And here is an extract from a letter which, on the day when they were disbanded, after reviewing them for the last time, General Hély d'Oissel wrote to the captain of the Paillet, who was then commanding the Brigade, a letter which was read to all the sailors, drawn up in line, and which brought tears to their honest eyes:
"I should be happy to preserve the Brigade State (the terrible roll of dead, officers, non-commissioned officers, and men) as an eloquent witness of the immense services rendered to the country by this admirable Brigade, which the land forces are proud to have had in their ranks, and which I, personally, am proud to have had under my command during more than a year of the war.
"This morning when I saw your magnificent sailors filing past with such cheerfulness and precision, I could not but feel a poignant emotion when I reflected that it was for the last time."
Indeed it was just there, in the blood-drenched marshes of the Yser, that for the second time, and finally, the onrush of the barbarians was broken. The two great decisive reverses suffered by that wretched Emperor of the blood-stained hands were, everyone knows, the retreat from the Marne and then that check in Belgium, in the face of a very small handful of sailors of superhuman tenacity.
They were not specially selected, these men sublimely stubborn; no, they were the first to hand, chosen hastily from among the men in our ports. They had not even gone away to fight, but quietly to police the streets of Paris, and from Paris, one fine day, in the extremity of our peril, they were dispatched to the Yser, without preparation, inadequately equipped, with barely sufficient food, and told simply:
"Let yourselves be killed, but do not suffer the German beast to pass! At all costs resist for at least a week, to give us time to come to the rescue."
Now they held out, it will be remembered, indefinitely, in the midst of a veritable inferno of fire, shrapnel, clamour, crumbling ruins, cold, rain, engulfing mud, and ever since that day when they brought to a standstill the onrush of the beast, France felt that she was saved indeed.
Indeed, as a general rule, it is sufficient to take any honest fellows whatsoever, and merely by putting a blue collar on them, you transform them into heroes. In the Chinese expedition, among other instances, I have seen at close quarters the very same thing: a small handful of men, taken haphazard from one of our ships, commanded by very young officers who had only just attained their first band of gold braid, and this assembly of men, hastily mustered, suddenly became a force complete in itself, admirable, united, disciplined, zealous, fearless, capable of performing within a couple of days prodigies of endurance and daring.
Oh that Brigade of the Yser, whose destiny I just missed sharing! I had plotted desperately, I admit, for the sake of being attached to it, and I was about to gain my end when an obstacle arose which I could never have foreseen and which excluded me inexorably. To have to renounce this dream when it was almost within my grasp will be for me unto my life's end a subject of burning and tormenting regret. But at least let me comfort myself a little by paying my tribute of admiration to those who were there. Let me at least have this little pleasure of working to glorify their memory. Therefore I herewith beg on their behalf—not only in my own name, for several of my comrades in the Navy associate themselves in my prayer, comrades who were likewise not among them, the disinterested nature of whose motives cannot consequently be questioned—I beg herewith on their behalf almost confidently, although the regulation may prove me in the wrong, that it may be accorded to them, the distinction they have earned ten times over, at which no one can take umbrage, and that a scrap of red ribbon be fastened to their flag.