It must be added that these men left F—— five days before under a gloomy impression. News had just got through of our regiment of regulars who since the very beginning had been fighting a few miles away from us, though we had never come across them. And what news it was! Leaving Longuyon on the morning of the 21st, engaged that evening at Ethes, and thrown back on Tellencourt, they had been, so to speak, volatilised, during those two days. Their losses had been enormous. One battalion had been wiped out and another was missing—the only hope was that the whole of it might have been taken prisoners—the third had been saved by the self-possession of a company commander.
When one thought of the recruiting, to a great extent local—The regulars! All the young harvest! The flower of the country! A great many of our poilus had a younger brother, sometimes two or three, among these troops which were said to be exterminated. They were to be seen with anxious eyes, and quivering nostrils, hazarding some name or other, in an agony of suspense. Details were generally lacking, but a trenchant reply would sometimes come:
"Killed, killed!"
"Killed?"
"Exactly."
What a blow it was. Some of them staggered, but most of them bowed their heads and said nothing. Then seized with compassion, I would go up to them.
"Poor old chap!" I soothed them with a vague hope—how many of the missing would turn up again?
What I was more anxious about than anything else was, as may be imagined, the general situation. What was happening? I feverishly questioned Langlois.