None of us who lived constantly in his immediate neighborhood ever knew any other expression on his firm, cold, almost mystical face. His hair was poorly cut, his beard was thin and long, and his voice was gentle, very gentle, so gentle that one might call it a sad sing-song. All in all he had none of the outward appearance of the conventional commander.
Nevertheless he was one of the best.
Good reputations, they say, take longest to establish. Only legends come to life spontaneously. His kindliness and honesty must have belonged to the legends, because in less than a week there was not a single man in the battalion who did not speak of him with respect and admiration.
“He’s a chic type,” they said.
“He’s a man.”
And the men, who love to see their commander among them, living their life, sharing their labors and fatigue, experiencing the same trials, knew at once that he did not belong to that distant and unknown hierarchy which transmits its orders from an ivory throne.
From the day he took over his command, he wanted to see everything for himself and all the positions in the sector.
With his knotty baton in his hand, he went through all the communication trenches, the first-line trenches, into the saps, verified the riflemen’s posts, and, it was said, spent nights in the picket posts.
When the battalion relieved the 38th at Méharicourt, the commandant’s post which was assigned to the major was in an immense house in the middle of a park which was not much destroyed.