“Only two of us lived to rejoin our army, Lieutenant Barres and myself. Barres’s leg was shattered, hopelessly crippling him for the infantry, but when the wounds healed—France could not spare so brave a man, so they strapped him to the seat of a plane in the winged section of the army, where he is still fighting!”
The sharp click, click of crutches tapped across the floor as Barres of the Aviation Squad came into the fringe of light. He saluted, then broke in upon Fouquet’s story.
“But you do not tell them, mon camarade, but for you I would have died with the rest! He does not tell you, sir, that he put his own chance of escape into peril by dragging me—a helpless burden—with him!”
He looked at Fouquet with an anxious frown, “I thought there might be enquiry about to-day. You are—?”
A look flashed between them, the love of men who have faced death together.
“Yes, Barres, I shall need you. It is the history of the Avengers I am telling—to explain—”
He turned to the Americans.
“In the years of struggle that came after the retreat, our women of France have taken the places of men behind the lines, while our soldiers held the Front. But when Russia freed herself the news filtered through the provinces that the women of Russia when the revolution needed them formed themselves into the Battalion of Death. We also heard that German women were in the army.
“Then the flame of a common inspiration touched the widows of the —nth. They sought and found each other and petitioned as their right that they be entered and drilled as the —nth Battalion of Avengers.
“Military objections refused them again and again, but the women stood as firm in their purpose as their men who had held the post of rear guard. Always they asked, Why should France be left a nation of sorrowful women only? Let the widowed women of the —nth take the place of men in the chance of death—they would welcome it—and so save men to France.