“Don’t come with me, chum. I don’t want to be a prisoner; I’d sooner be killed.”
“But it’s a Frenchman,” answers the other.
They draw near and make themselves recognized. At barely 200 yards from the fort they have come upon a detachment of the 298th. They are taken to the rear, they are given wine to drink—wine, when they have drunk no water for thirty-six hours!—they are examined.
Out of thirty-five only five miss the roll-call. Vanier goes to rejoin his colonel at the rest billets, where he finds his regiment once more.
“I promote you to corporal,” said the colonel, embracing him.
That is how Stretcher-bearer Vanier won his stripes.
IV
SOME ONE RE-ENTERS THE FORT
Cadet Buffet, of the 141st Regiment, who assisted Captain Tabourot when the latter was dying, and who left the fort during the night of June 4–5 with a detachment of his company, also belongs to the 1916 class. He is the son of a working man. When quite a child he lost his mother, and was brought up at an orphanage. He proved an excellent pupil, gained his Bachelor’s degree in classics, and was being trained for the teaching profession when the war caught him in its grasp. The would-be schoolmaster is short and slim. He wears a small beard, and his face is scarred with the marks of bomb-splinters and flame-jets. When he arrives at divisional headquarters his eyes are almost haggard, and he seems to be in that state of agitation which precedes a nervous breakdown. Nevertheless, in dealing with the combats in the interior of the fort, with the German field-works, with the German positions, he furnishes such accurate reports and draws such shrewd conclusions that the Divisional Commander sends him to the headquarters of the sector.