This man lived a regular life apart from dangerous contingencies, and was unacquainted with worldly ambitions and political strife, but he went to war knowing nothing of it, and considering it only a little and then through a professional view-point, as a sort of great drama in which he was going to play a comparatively passive rôle.
Under the cap and great coat of the infantryman, bristling all over with equipment, he was the typical “poilu”—the poilu of tradition. His large beard covered the front of his brown coat, and this gave him the proud appearance of a veteran.
At first he was going to sacrifice this thick beard which he had spared since his liberation from his regiment, but his officers wanted him to keep it. That brought him a place at the head of the company on the march, and he drew all eyes. He was the poilu.
His reputation as a musician who played on any and all instruments was quickly known throughout the cantonments. So he was at all the ceremonies and all the merrymakings. In the morning on a harmonium carried to an open field he might accompany a military mass said by stretcher-bearers, while that evening he might play on a chance piano, perhaps on the same harmonium, at improvised concerts, accompanying jolly, broad songs sung by amateurs and playing the national hymns of the Allies, and astonishing even himself in the patriotic choruses.
And this man to whom everything that was not classical or the Gregorian chant was strange, who for twenty years of his life had taught successive generations Méhul, Gluck, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, to whom Massenet, Delibes and Gounod seemed profane, surprised himself by pounding out on a badly-tuned piano and singing with all his might the refrains of “Viens Poupoule,” popular marches, and the ballads of the faubourg.
The soldiers had quickly named him “Father Music” and this nickname pleased him immensely.
That night an order came from the commanding officer:
“Two companies of machine guns will go with the utmost haste to Hill 174, northwest of Herbècourt, to stop the enemy which is trying to outflank our right.”
At three o’clock in the morning we were at the position indicated.
A small chapel with a cross was situated on the top of the hill. The open space in front commands the road which descends gradually toward the Méréaucourt woods where the enemy is concealed.