To be quite honest, the group is not so æsthetic as a picture of Versailles. These men are too great for much ceremony. With a jerky step the general advances; his brusque movements reveal the homage of his emotion before the bravest of the brave. Slowly he passes along the line, while the adjutant reads in a stirring voice the high deeds in the citations. And the military medal quivers on each noble breast at the recollection of the tremendous drama lived through. And the general utters a comrade’s congratulation, shakes a friendly hand, expresses a good wish. Then the flag salutes, while the drums rumble in these hearts drunk with love of country. At the greeting of the flag of the glorious Chasseurs, a rag torn by machine guns, something gets hold of our throats, which the trumpets hurt with their sublime peal. If there are more beautiful spectacles, I do not know them. One minute here is worth years.
And I have said nothing of the people about, silent, all in mourning, their souls full of tears, which finally brim over. Men, hats off, motionless as statues, proud of becoming great through their children. Mothers, with seared faces, superbly stoic under the eye of the greater maternity of the great country. The children in the ecstasy of feeling about them something greater than they can understand, but already certain that they will understand some day this immortal hour. And not a cry, not a word sounds in the air, nothing but the great silence of the courage of all of them. Then everyone goes away, firm and erect, to a glorious destiny. In every heart La France has passed.
Note.—A few days before M. Clemenceau, premier of France, was called to power, he returned from a visit to the Aisne front and published his impressions in his paper, L’Homme Enchainé, now L’Homme Libre. When he became premier, L’Illustration republished this “Tribute to the Soldiers of France,” and it has since been widely reproduced and admired throughout France. The present English translation by Harry Kurz was printed in the New York Tribune, to the editors of which grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint here.
PREFACE
Sergeant-Major Georges Lafond, of the Territorial Hussars, the author of this book, was in South America at the time of mobilization. He returned to France as soon as possible and joined his corps, but asked to be assigned as intelligence officer to the machine-gun sections of the ... first regiment of Colonial Infantry.
With this picked corps, which has been decimated several times, he took part in the engagements in Champagne, on the Somme, at Lihons, Dompierre, Herbécourt, and notably in the days from the first to the fifth of July, where the regiment earned its second citation and received the fourragère.
Lafond was discharged after the battles of Maisonnette, and wrote this book of recollections in the hospital at Abbeville, and afterwards at Montpellier, where he had to undergo a severe operation.