“I would draw special attention to the bravery shown by Lieutenant Huret, Cadet Tocabens, and above all, Sergeant-Major Farjon, who richly deserves the Military Medal.”
After each onset there is the same moving refrain, the same list of officers and N.C.O.’s dead or wounded.
The first postcard written by Lieutenant Gontal on June 5 from the hospital is addressed to his Colonel. The second is for his wife at Toulouse. “After fighting near Verdun for twenty days,” he tells her, “I was wounded by a bullet in the stomach. I was picked up on the battlefield by Germans and taken prisoner. The doctor thinks he will pull me through. Cheer up! I fell as a soldier should; honour is not lost. But I was broken-hearted, for henceforth the War Cross is out of the question.”
A month later, on July 13, he gives fuller details, but the same idea haunts him. “The brave fellows,” he says of his company, “nearly all got killed or wounded on the spot, and not one officer came out of the battle unscathed.” Then he adds: “How is it that my wound was not mortal? Once more Providence has intervened. Well, it will be the proudest boast of my life not to have yielded one inch of ground and to have fallen at the post that my country had entrusted to me. All this, you know, makes me forget my pain and throws a halo round the memory of all the gallant lads of my company who were killed there.”
Finally, in August, he seems to have recovered from his wound and to be quite hopeful again. He asks his people in a graceful bit of writing for some ten-centime cigars—“those good cigars of our sweet France, from which there rises, subtle and sly, the blue smoke that is like a corner of heaven mirrored in our lovely clear waters, the smoke in which you can see our hills, our great forests, our dear land with its twenty centuries of glory, honour, and faith—in short, that France for which I and so many others have so gladly given up the best part of our lives.” To make his exile bearable, he will no doubt write verses. Is it not fitting to quote these letters from a prisoner before reverting to that day of June 1?
In the course of this great day, the scouts, who had almost all volunteered, ensured the connections with unflagging devotion. One of them arrived at the Commander’s headquarters in Fumin Wood, crossing—by what a marvellous stroke of luck!—a very heavy curtain fire.
“You might have waited a few moments,” says the Colonel to him in a fatherly tone.
The man points to the envelope.
“Yes, sir, but he has written ‘urgent.’”
Two others are sent from the regiment to brigade headquarters. On the way, one of them is killed by a 105, and the despatch that he was carrying is lost. His comrade goes back to the Colonel’s headquarters, asks for a copy of the despatch, and starts off again to carry out his mission.