My affection for the French people continues to grow. They are not more gallant in action than the American is at heart, and they are less gallant at heart, but the French politeness which irritates some people seems to me to express a desire to be inoffensive to one’s fellows.
Our interpreter and lecturer speaks English very well, and is an excellent fellow. He has served in the Arabian division of the French Army, and in the French lines also. He says the Arabians are volunteer veterans of the French Army and make some of their best fighters. They cannot stand bombardment and so are used only for attacks. They go over the top with bayonets, swords, revolvers, cutlasses, and war cries. They throw the weapons away in the order mentioned, as they close with the enemy. At the finish, they are using only cutlasses, and they take no prisoners. They fight like devils, and ask no quarter. We see many of them around the aviation school. They have fine, sensitive features, and those novel, keen but dreamy eyes of the Orient. Their carriage is proud, and their smile disarming.
The Senegalese are another interesting factor in the French fighting forces. They, too, are volunteers, and of the finest aggressive troops used only in attacks. Great, stalwart blacks from Africa, with intelligent faces and a rather indolent air, which impresses one as masking a latent virility. They little suggest the man-eating head-hunters that they are. They are of many tribes, and are distinguished by a tribal mark in the form of great scars, which have mutilated their features since childhood. One will have great symmetrical slashes cutting each cheek diagonally; another a large cross upon his forehead; another a ring of little pie cuts enclosing his eyes, nose, and mouth, and anyone able to remember their strange name can recognize the tribe by the mark.
They tell some terrible stories of these men. It is rumored that at this camp two of them went wild under the influence of liquor and killed and ate two members of an enemy tribe. In an attack these men are worse than the Arabs and outbutcher the Huns. The Germans fear them like death. In the advance, when they come upon a German who may be playing ’possum, they drive the bayonet in an inch or so to test him out and sink it to the hilt if he moves. They charge with their teeth showing, and do their nicest work with a weapon which is a cross between a butcher’s cleaver and a corn knife. They are called “trench cleaners” and return with strings of human ears and heads, which after boiling make good skull trophies. Yet these vicious Africans make reliable soldiers, and one sees them standing guard night and day in prison camps and aviation schools.
There is a great Russian camp near here in which thousands of Russians are held in detention. There was a mutiny of Russian troops in the French lines and they sent them down here. They will not fight or work, but only wander about the landscape eating good food. Something will, no doubt, be done with them as soon as it is possible to focus on the Russian question, but this is cause enough for the French to hate the Russians. A man in Russian uniform is mobbed in the streets of Paris now. Officers there are forced to go about in civilian clothes. It is very hard on some of the conscientious aviators who are anxious to fight. For a time they were quite broken-hearted and disconsolate. But now it has been arranged that Russian escadrilles will be formed as part of the French service. One of these Russians, with whom I’ve struck quite a friendship, is a great, six-foot-two fellow, with a splendid face and a genial nature. He has served three years in the Russian cavalry, and was describing their life. They travel in groups of six for reconnaissance work and are gone from their companies days at a time. One will forage the meat, another the bread, another the drink, and so on. Their experiences are fascinating, but too long to tell here. He spoke highly of the valor of the Cossacks. He said he had seen a Cossack attack an entire company of German infantry single-handed. (As he told it, a light came in his eyes and he lowered his head, making gestures with his big hands. His name is Redsiffsky.) The Cossack drew up in front of the Germans, looked on one side and then the other, drew his long saber and raising in his saddle charged into the heart of them. His great frame swayed and his saber cut circles of blue light about his horse’s head as he slashed down man after man. A German’s arm would be severed as it raised to strike; a German’s head would roll down its owner’s back; a German’s body would open from neck to crotch. Still the Cossack on rearing horse slashed through and the Germans crowded in. Then the Cossack’s mount went down, stabbed from beneath, and with a final slash, the Russian threw his saber and drew his poniard from his belt. He ripped and stabbed at the Germans as they closed in for the final sacrifice. His life was marked by seconds then, but every second paid till a telling musket in full swing descended on his skull. When the Germans withdrew, nine of their number stayed behind and seven left with aid. Of the Russian, nothing was to be found. The German revenge had been complete, but a Cossack had died.
Your Son.
December 19, 1917.
Dear Uncle:
Please consider this a Christmas letter. It will not arrive on Christmas, it isn’t even written on Christmas, but the Christmas spirit is responsible for its writing, and wishes for a “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” go with it to you, Aunt Virgie, and all my Cleveland friends.
There are a whole bunch of us sitting at the same table writing home. We have just discovered that we are to have permission to Paris for Christmas. The result is that it has required three-quarters of an hour for me to write this much. Between the silences are bursts of conversation connected by laughter.