Et même à fon lupt.
Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvages
Car ils s’ébattent soir et matin
Avant d’être envoyés aux sages
Dans une mar’ d’eau de Laubin.
But France is a nation of prose writers; at the fort there are many more authors of memoirs than of songs. Memoirs abound.[28] Why is it that men who have never before tried to record their experiences in writing should feel impelled to recount the happenings of their campaign, and to describe their feelings of discouragement during a lengthy imprisonment? Do they do it to relieve tedium? Have they an obscure need of confession? Or do they consider the circumstances of their life in war-time so exceptional as to deserve the honour, in their view an extraordinary one, of written record? In my opinion this last motive predominates. Rightly or wrongly, the “little soldiers of the republic” regard the present conflict in an epic light, and at bottom, notwithstanding their ingrained tendency to grumble, are not a little flattered at being among the heroes of this affair. They know that as long as men exist people will continue to talk about the great war, and that in the schools children will learn the names of the battles in which their fathers have fought and suffered. They want to be able to astonish their little ones, to be able to say: “I was there; I fought in this battle; read my account of the matter and you will see how everything happened, what my leaders did, and when I received my wound.” Men, Frenchmen above all, whatever their station, have such a hunger for fame.
Yesterday I came across Maze on the slopes, wearing his great red chéchia, which accentuates his stature, already considerable. His shirt was drying in the wind, tied to the lightning-conductor, and flapping like a flag. He was sitting behind the parapet, sheltered from the wind, and was reading. “What may you be reading?”—“My battle.”—“Can I look at it?”—“Here you are.”
In his note-book, worn and dog’s-eared, the following account was pencilled on the pages he showed me. I reproduce it verbatim, with its mistakes in spelling:
It was on August 19th that our company set out from the village of Couture. We crossed the fields to rejoin the Metz road. After we had marched two kilometres along this road, we took shelter in a wood in order to avoid being seen by a German areoplane. After a short hault here, we started off once more towards Fresne-en-Saulnois. We left this village on our left to march upon Auron and Vivier. We found trenches made by the enemy and some dead horses. In the evening we were before Duron and Vivier, the Germans having left these two villages a couple of hours earlier. We, the company “146,” occupied all the exits from the villages. At about half past eight in the evening the company shoulders knapsacks and we go to the outposts before Frémery. We passed a fairly quiet night, a few shots were fired towards midnight, and we thought there was a night attack, but it was only a skirmish between patrols. Next day, August 20th, at three in the morning the captain commands us to extend in skirmishing order, for we had been warned that the enemy is in front of us. In two or three leaps we reach the crest of a little hill in front of us. At this moment we receive a few bullets which oblige us to assume the ofensive. The lieutenant orders us to fire at five hundred yards upon the enemy advancing towards the crest. At this moment our comrade Arnold, the cook, comes from the village of Frémery, the bombardment of which has just begun, he held in his hands two pales of coffee which he brings to his section, although the captain told him to go back. But, he listening only to the commands of his own courage and coolness, succeeds in joining his section which was then engaged with the enemy. On reaching the line he began to distribute the coffee, but hardly had he begun when he was hit near the left eye not seriously, which stopped him for a moment. But this did not hinder him from continuing his round, stopping from time to time to fire his rifle. It was when he had nearly reached the end of the line of skirmishers that he was hit on the right rist. At this moment he was close to the sergeant-major, who was lying at full length in a furrow and who with the aid of his soup spoon was digging a hole for his head; at this moment we had no orders, for most of the non-coms and privates had been killed or wounded.—The sub-lieutenant gives the order to retire to those who are able, but the sergeant-major stoped where he was saying to a man who was near him and who was wounded. “No slackers here” giving him a blow with the flat of his sword.—At this moment, the Germans make their charge and come close up to us, the sergeant-major lifted his arms into the air, crying, “quarter! my wife my child.”—A little while after we were under the guard of some German soldiers, who conducted us as best they could to the hospital at Lucy. On the way the sergeant-major said to us that but for his spoon he would perhaps be a dead man?
I was touched by this little story. Maze thinks only of praising Arnold’s heroism. He says not a word about his own wound, although this was severe. He was struck in the neck, and the bullet is still beneath the shoulder-blade. One day he stripped in my presence and I felt the projectile. At the same time I had a good view of the sun, the stars, and the nymphs wherewith his chest is decorated, framing the great portrait of Carpentier which Maze had had tattooed while in Paris.