The N.C.O.’s are more and more surprised. The Boche inspires them with growing repugnance which every minute becomes almost unbearable. Before them they have the spectacle of a shameless coward who is already preparing to cry “Kamerad,” and to yield at the command of “Hands up!” The sight of this German preparing for treason had amused the French for a moment, at once thereafter to fill them with disgust.
This revolting and ignominious scene was not, however, yet over; this poltroon had not shown the full extent of his baseness. He had the audacity, he who, during his rule over two hundred and fifty Frenchmen, had in a way martyrised them, and treated them worse than he would have treated animals; he who had been rough, violent, brutal, pitiless and severe, actually he had the audacity to make a request, to beg for the meanest of favours from those whom he had downtrodden. He now began to cringe, and he inspired us with supreme disgust when he begged the interpreter to be so kind as to give him a letter of recommendation which he could use in case he fell into the hands of the French.
There was general consternation among the N.C.O.’s on hearing this request. Some of them in disgust proposed to kick him out of the room. He understood well the scorn that he excited, but still he sat there, insensible to shame, swallowing the opprobrium his demand had aroused, provided that he obtained satisfaction.
All protest; they cry with all the strength of their lungs the judgment they would like to see meted out to the Boche for his conduct; they insist that one ought not to give anything to safeguard the life of this shameless tyrant, who had done everything to bring suffering on his men.
But already a sergeant was standing up, holding in his hand a piece of paper on which he had just been writing something.
“What is it?” some one asks him.
“The desired letter of recommendation.”
“No, you are joking. You will never have the ‘face’ to recommend that animal to the French.”
But the sergeant gravely replies: “I do what I think I ought to do. Let me alone.”
All the N.C.O.’s were astonished; the sergeant was a man respected for his high moral qualities and the position he had held in the civil world. He enjoyed the best reputation of all the sergeants for his kindness, humanity, his pity for the sufferings of others. Many times he had had the courage to champion his comrades unjustly punished. Often they had heard him deplore the deaths of the heroes the war was carrying off, whose efforts united might have brought about universal goodwill; but they had never thought him sensitive to the extent of protecting the life of a man whose brutality and cowardice were so notorious.