Covered with mud and glory

by Georges Lafond

To

Denys Maurin

the quartermaster-sergeant, wounded heroically before Soissons, in testimony of a sincere friendship which was born under shell-fire, which grew amid the horrors of grim madness, and which was firmly fixed through sharing common hopes and common joys;

I dedicate these simple pages
which are only a modest contribution to the monumental narrative which these anonymous epics of every day would make

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A TRIBUTE TO THE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE

By Georges Clemenceau

I watch our blue-uniformed men at war, as they pass with a friendly and serious look, generously covered with mud. This is the artillery—slow marching—which is moving its cannon under a fantastic camouflage, a mockery of reality. A glistening slope of soaked earth is set in a frame of shattered trees, twisted into indescribable convulsions of anguish with the gaping wounds inflicted by the storm of iron. On their horses, already covered with winter shag, the poilus, slouched in all sorts of positions, having no suggestion of the rigid form of the manœuvre, are going from one battlefield to another without any other thought except that of just keeping on going.