Round about Bar-le-Duc

by Susanne R. Day

Perhaps that is why the hale, hearty, often dirty, and by no means always respectful poilu has been neglected. Woman seeing him wounded had no eye for him whole. Besides, he is rather a bewildering thing; his gods are not her gods, his standards not her standards, she is—dare I whisper it?—just a little afraid of him, as we are apt to be of the thing we do not understand. All her instinct has bidden her banish him from her orbit, but insensibly, inevitably he is beginning to move in it, to worm himself in. Wounded, she has him at her mercy, and when, repaired, patched and nursed into the semblance of a man again, he goes back to the trenches surely she can never think of him in the old way, or look at him from the old angle? As your true democrat is at heart a complete snob, the poor poilu used to be, and is probably to a large extent still, looked down upon as an inferior being. Conscription rubbed the hero from him, but the human being is beginning to emerge.

It is possible that in the hospitals another revolution is taking place which, if unseen and unguessed at, may be scarcely less far-reaching in its effects than the old. It has at least drawn the women outside the charmed circle of the home, it is bringing them hourly into contact with a side of life which, but for the war, might have remained a closed book whose pages they would always have shrunk from turning. Such close contact with human agony, endurance and death cannot leave them unmoved, and though they have not yet thoroughly mastered the knack of making hospitals HOMES, though many little comforts, graces and refinements that we think essential are missing, still, when one remembers the overwhelming ignorance with which they began and the difficulties they had to contend with, we must concede that they have done wonders. For, unlike our V.A.D.s, they did not step into up-to-date, well-appointed wards with lynx-eyed sisters, steeped in the best traditions, waiting to instruct them. Experience was their teacher. They were amateurs doing professional work, and without discredit to them we may sympathise with the soldiers who, transferred from a hospital under British management to one run by their own compatriots, wept like children. Which shows that though we may deny him the quality, the poilu appreciates and is grateful for a good dose of judicious petting.

III

Yes! The poilu deserves our sympathy. He is, to my mind, one of the most tragic figures of the war. He is pursued by a fatalism as relentless as it is hopeless, and whether he is ill or well is subjected to much unnecessary discomfort. He hates war, he hates the trenches, he loathes the life of the trenches, he wants nothing so much in the world as his own hearthstone. He is often despairing, and convinced of defeat. ("Mademoiselle, never can we drive the Boche from his trenches, never!") and yet he goes on. There lies the hero in him—he goes on. Not one in a hundred of him has Tommy's cheery optimism, unfailing good-humour, cheerful grumble and certainty of victory. And yet he goes on! He sings L'Internationale, he vows in regiments that "on ne marchera plus. C'est fini"—but he goes on. He is really rather wonderful, for he has borne the brunt of heavy fighting for more than three years, and behind him is no warm barrage of organised care, of solicitude for his welfare, or public ministration to shield him from the devils of depression and despair. His wife, his sister, his mother may pinch and starve to send him little comforts, but he is conscious of the pinching, he has not yet got the great warm heart of a generous nation at his back. Think of his pay, of his separation allowances (those of the refugees, one franc twenty-five per day per adult, fifty centimes per day per child), and then picture him fighting against heavy odds, standing up to and defying the might of Germany at Verdun. Isn't he wonderful?

He seems to have no hope of coming through the war alive. In canteen, in the train, in the kitchens of the refugees you may hear him say, "At Verdun or on the Somme, what matter? It will come some time, and best for those to whom it comes quickly."

"Ceux qui cherchent la mort ne la trouve jamais." The speaker was a quick, vivid thing, obviously not of the working classes. He had been cité (mentioned) more than once, and offered his stripes with a view to a commission several times, but had always refused them. "For me, I do not mind, but think of the responsibility ... to know that the lives of others hung upon you, your coolness, quickness, readiness of decision. Impossible! And it is the sergeants who die. The mortality among them is higher than in any other rank. They must expose themselves more, you see.... Oh yes, there are men who are afraid, and there are men who try to die." It was then he added, "But those who seek death never find it. The man who hesitates, who peers over the top of the trench, who looks this way and that, wondering if the moment is good, he gets killed; but the man who is not afraid, the man who wants to die, he rushes straight out, he rushes straight up to the Boche ... he is never hurt."

And then he and his companion talked of men who longed to die, who courted death but in vain. Both expressed a quiet, unemotional conviction that Death would come to them before long. And both wore the Croix de Guerre.

Old Madame Leblan—you remember her?—had a nephew whom she loved as a son. He and her own boys had grown up together, and she would talk to me of Paul by the hour. He saw all the Verdun fighting, and before that much that was almost as fierce; he visited her during every leave, he brought her and her family gifts, napkin-rings, pen-handles, paper-cutters, finger-rings, all sorts of odds and ends made in the trenches from shell-cases and the like. He was always cheery, always sure he would come again. Paul was like a breeze of sunny wind, he never lost heart, he never lost hope—until they gave him his commission. He refused it over and over again. Then his Colonel, taxing him with want of patriotism, forced him to accept it. That week he wrote to Madame. He told her of his promotion, adding, "In a fortnight I shall get leave, so I am looking forward to seeing you all, unless...."

She showed me the letter. She pointed to that significant "unless...."