One of the prisoners was wounded, and he was hauled to the hospital by the chap with whom I share my quarters. I went to have a look at the German—always an object of curiosity out here. Had to shoulder my way through a crowd to get there. He lay on a stretcher, poor devil, hollow-eyed, thin, with a ragged beard—an object of pity, suffering and afraid for his life. His gray overcoat lay beside him and near it stood his clumsy hobnailed boots. German or no German, he was a human being in a bad situation—a peasant obviously, and deadly afraid.
Suddenly, a half-baked civilian—always the most belligerent class—reached up and plucked contemptuously at his leg, with an unpleasant epithet. Then a fine thing happened. A French soldier, lying near by on a stretcher, severely wounded, raised up his head and looked sternly at the crowd. "Enough," he said, "he is a Boche, I grant you; but first of all remember that he is a soldier, wounded and in your power!"
We were at lunch yesterday when a friend rushed in to say that an aeroplane fight was starting, almost directly overhead. A big French reconnaissance plane was diving for safety, with a Fokker close behind and German shrapnel bursting all around, when a tiny French fighting machine appeared far above, plunging down like a falcon on its quarry. The Fokker turned too late: the Nieuport, rushing downward at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, looped the loop around the German. Two bursts of machine-gun fire came down faintly to our ears, and the next moment it was evident that the German was hit. Slowly at first, the Fokker began to fall—this way and that, like a leaf falling in still air, growing larger each moment before our eyes, until it disappeared behind a hill. High over the lines, scorning burst after burst of German shrapnel, the tiny Nieuport sailed proudly back and forth, as if daring any Boche pilot to rise and try his luck. In the thrill of the superb spectacle, one forgot that the poor chap (a good sportsman, if he was a German!) had lost his life.
April, 1917
I have met some interesting types lately. One is Jean B——, a sergeant of infantry. Jean has been about the world a good bit, and when the war broke out was just finishing a contract in Spain. He promptly came to France and volunteered, and had only fifteen days of training before being sent to the front for a big attack. Knowing nothing of military matters and having distinguished himself in the first day's fighting, he was made a corporal at once; and next day, when the attack began again, he and his squad were the first to jump into a section of German trench. There, abandoned in the hasty retreat, was a brand-new German machine-gun and forty sacks of ammunition. Jean is a canny boy, and before the officers had got to where he was, he had his men hide gun and cartridges in a clump of bushes.
The French made a gain of about two miles at this point, and owing to the nature of the ground,—artillery emplacements, and so forth,—the new lines were nearly a mile apart. Under these conditions, both sides were constantly making daylight patrols in the broken country between the trenches; and as Jean's captain was a good judge of men, he let him take his squad out daily, to do pretty much as he pleased. Pledging his men to absolute secrecy, Jean had them hide machine-gun and ammunition a little way in front of the new French lines, and then gave them a brief drill, in mounting and dismounting the gun, tripod, and so forth. (He had worked in an ordnance factory, by the way.) Each man carried either a part of the gun or a few belts of cartridges.
One morning, just before dawn, they crawled up close to the Germans and hid themselves in a brushy watercourse—mitrailleuse set up and ready for action. Presently there were sounds of activity in front, and as day broke, they made out thirty or forty Germans, who, so far away and out of sight of the French, were out in the open, working on a new trench. Jean's men began to get excited and wanted action, but he calmed them, whispering to be patient. He himself is the most excitable man in the world—except in emergencies; a jovial type, with black hair and a pair of merry gray eyes set in a red, weather-beaten face.
Hour after hour they bided their time, until the Germans, only seventy-five yards away, assembled in a group for a rest. Lying on his belly behind the gun, Jean sighted and pulled the lever, spraying lead into the unfortunate Boches until the last belt of two hundred cartridges had raced through. Then it was all hands dismount the gun and retreat at top speed. Sneaking "home" by devious ways, they smiled to see shells begin to smash into the position they had so lately left.
At supper that evening (the meal known universally as "la soupe"), the colonel came strolling down the trench with Jean's subaltern. The lieutenant nodded and pointed, then called Jean over.
"Ah," said the colonel, smiling, "so this is the type who was on patrol this morning—hum. I was in an advanced observation post on the hill above you and saw the whole affair with my glasses. And how many of those poor Germans did you kill?"