One of the principal elements of the new Foreign Legion were the Garibaldians, who showed immense fervour. They formed a part of the 10th Division under General Gouraud in the Argonne, and with them were the six grandsons of Garibaldi. Their tactics were extraordinarily impetuous, and in a three-days' fight they lost 800 men. The special corps into which they were formed was disbanded on Italy's declaration against Austria, but their valour had been such that Joffre expressed his sense of honour in commanding them.
Wherever it has fought, whether to-day or yesterday, the Foreign Legion has always left a record of valour, daring and devilry. An amusing story is recalled from Crimean days, when Canrobert stopped in front of a Legionary and asked him what sort of shoes he was wearing? Strange shoes indeed! for he had blackened his feet, having sold his boots for eau de vie. But episodes such as this are ever typical of a corps that sells its shoes for a little brandy, and its life for a spice of glory.
The colonial troops of the French Army were called, until a few years ago, Marine Infantry, and were attached directly to the Navy. Nowadays the system adopted is that of some regiments in the British Army; that is to say, one battalion remains at home whilst the other battalions serve in the colonies. They wear a dark blue uniform with yellow epaulettes. During the course of the war their composition became very mixed, and negroes and tribesmen from the Soudan were embodied with them. In this case also the colonial troops are perhaps less adapted to European warfare than they are to their own special field of action in the colonies against insurrectionary tribes.
A very fine corps, which covered itself with glory at Dixmude, is the Marine Fusiliers. The force retreated to Dixmude when their original mission, which was to defend Antwerp, failed, owing to the collapse of the Belgian defence. Here they held their ground with the greatest heroism for over a month, though the original plan was that they should be relieved in a few hours, and at this spot a peculiarly tragic incident took place. A second in command, a naval captain, Janiaud, went up to take the surrender of two German companies of infantry, which were surrounded by the Marines. The Germans seized the captain and kept him prisoner. The Fusiliers then opened fire, which was briskly returned by the Germans, but during the short engagement which ended in the capitulation of the enemy force, the captain was shot dead by two German officers with their revolvers. After this act of treachery, which took place in November 1914, the Marine Fusiliers swore to take no further prisoners, a resolution to which they have rigorously held in their various engagements ever since.
CHAPTER XIX
THE AIRMAN IN WAR
"Ah, monsieur, you fly like a bird!" said an admirer one day to Pégoud.
"A bird!" was the famous reply, "Les oiseaux ne savent pas voler!" ("The birds don't know how to fly!") And indeed the bird-man, soaring at immense height and incredible speed, has left the little denizen of the air far behind. The wings of the machine are rigid, it is true, but also they are tireless; and the skill of the inventor and science of the mathematician have excelled the pulsing wings of flesh and feather. A few years back—ten years ago to be exact—the birds must have tittered as they watched at Bagatelle the fearsome efforts of the ugly ducklings of the early days of aviation. On November 13, 1906, a famous date in the history of flying, Santos Dumont flew 220 metres in twenty-one seconds, that is, at the rate of nearly thirty-eight kilometers an hour. He had won the prize of the Aero Club for a hundred meters in a straight line. The experiments began at ten in the morning, but the test was not accomplished until late in the afternoon. Two enormous birds spreading their white wings of canvas—the one belonging to Santos Dumont and the other to Blériot—lay upon the green carpet of the ground. A crowd of enthusiasts, amongst whom were some of the great names in aeronautics, such as M. Archdeacon, the Marquis de Dion, Surcouf, Louis Renault and M. Besançon, were upon the ground surrounding the two pioneers and eagerly discussing the theories of lighter than air and heavier than air—that is, the bag filled with hydrogen that floated in air, or the aeroplane which flew by its own means of engine and wings. The machine of Santos Dumont was a weird-looking thing. Some compared it with an ibis or heron as it rose into the air with its long neck outstretched and its wings spread—a strange thing like an antediluvian bird. Its planes were formed of canvas frames divided into cubes, so that at one angle it looked like a flying cupboard. The square box-like head in front was the steering apparatus. The tail of the beast was represented by the screw continually lashing its way through the air. The pioneer sat in a little cage arrangement between the planes, so that his head and body emerged and he had the appearance of riding astride. The first starts were a little unpromising. The machine rose a few inches, and then a few yards, and came to earth abruptly in each case. In three separate attempts it flew one hundred and fifty yards in all, achieving, in the third attempt, eighty yards in seven seconds. But it was not until the light was failing that the machine really rose to any height. It then flew at six metres from the ground at a tremendous rate. The airman, however, was forced to descend for fear of an accident to the crowd, which was following his movements with impassioned interest. He had won the prize of the Aero Club for sustained flight, an advance, at any rate, upon the series of leaps in the air which had passed for flight before that. It was said that the Wright brothers had flown twenty-five miles; but that was in America, and, besides, the Parisians were not very sure about it; but here in France it was the first time that mortal man had flown over the heads of humanity by mechanical means. The Blériot-Voisin machine, though very ingenious in its construction, did not succeed that day; Santos Dumont, the little plucky Brazilian, was the real conqueror: future laurels were being reserved for M. Blériot. The French, indeed, have pioneered in the air. The brothers Montgolfier were the first to make ascents in their balloon; and the balloon originally appeared as a military engine for observation above the battle-field of Fleurus, where the Revolutionary General Jourdan vanquished the Austrians in 1794. The dirigible is also largely the product of French invention.
One of the amazing features of the war was the rapid development of aviation after the outbreak of hostilities. In a few months only the aeroplane emerged from its experimental stage and appeared as a highly finished and accurate instrument of war. An immense stride was attained when the machine was first adapted by the French to carry cannon, which enabled the attack upon another aeroplane to be made in the horizontal plane instead of vertically, as was necessary when one machine had to mount above another in order to drop bombs or flèchettes—one of those refinements of cruelty which the present war has produced. Incidentally, there are some who say that the German flèchettes, launched from the skies, were of such inferior steel that they buckled up when they touched a hard object. However that may be (and we have no reason to complain of such an arrangement), weight, whether in the form of cannon or other armaments, was constantly added to the aeroplane, and the problem then arose as to the maintenance of speed. In the aerial machine, speed is the first requisite, especially nowadays when it is necessary to mount and mount, perhaps, to six thousand yards to overfly the enemy craft, be he Zeppelin or fellow airman. And a few minutes make all the difference—the difference of kilometers—in the pursuit; thus speed must always be combined with those offensive properties that are being gradually added to the battle-plane.
And a third difficulty was that of starting the machine quickly in pursuit of an enemy travelling at the great heights that are now customary—and indeed obligatory—with the development of anti-aircraft artillery. Naturally the machine even of the speedier sort loses time as it mounts spirally or in a series of inclined planes to give battles to the Zeppelin or Fokker. Would it be possible to turn the observation balloon into a sort of perch for the airman, so that he would be suspended always midway between earth and sky ready instantly (if one may suppose him able to detach himself) to fly away in pursuit of the stranger? Yet in the present stage of development such a desideratum is difficult of realisation. The airman must start from the ground or return to it every time he wants to overhaul his engine or replenish his reservoirs. That is his touch with solid realities: otherwise one might suppose him flying for days, never setting foot to earth, the modern Guardian Angel, hovering eternally in the heavens.