This famous 22nd regiment of Dragoons was raised in 1635 and took part in all the great wars in which the French were engaged before the Revolution. It fought under the Republic and then with Napoleon's armies—at Austerlitz (1805); Jena (1806); Eylau (1807); Oporto (1809). It saw service with the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, the Army of the Rhine, the Grande-Armee, in the War in Spain, the Campaign in Saxony, the Campaign in France (1814). The regiment was disbanded in 1815 at the close of the Napoleonic Wars and was not raised again until 1873. The first great charge of the 22nd Dragoons in the Great War occurred on the night of September 10-11, 1914. It has since been fighting heroically "For France and Civilization." Lieut. Mallet has fought his way up in the ranks with the Dragoons. He presents the unconquerable spirit of France in his book: "Impressions and Experiences of a French Trooper." It is dedicated: "To my Captain, Count J. de Tarragon, and to my two comrades, 2nd Lieut. Magrin and 2nd Lieut. Clère—who fell all three on the field of honour in defense of their country." One of his stories is recorded herewith by permission of his publishers, E. P. Dutton and Company: Copyright 1916.
[1] I—STORY OF PEASANT GIRL ON THE YSER
The battle finished (September 10, 1914) the pursuit of the conquered army commenced and kept the whole world in suspense, with eyes fixed on this headlong flight towards the north, which lasted till the end of the month, and which was to be the prelude of the great battles of the Yser.
The region round Verberie was definitely cleared of Germans and was become once more French. The little town for some days presented an extraordinary spectacle.
We entered the town after having received the formal assurance of the 5th Chasseurs, who went farther on, that all the country was in our hands. Some divisional cyclists were seated at the roadside. We asked them for news of the 22nd, and their reply wrung our hearts. They knew nothing definite, but they had met a country cart full of our wounded comrades, who had told them that the regiment had been cut up.
No one could tell us where the divisional area was to be found. The division itself appeared to have been dismembered, lost and in part destroyed. We thought that we were the only survivors of a disaster, and, once the horses were in shelter in an empty abandoned farm stuffing themselves with hay, we wandered sadly through the streets destroyed by bombardment and by fire in search of such civilians as might have remained behind during the invasion.
A little outside the town we at last found a farm where two of the inhabitants had stayed on. The contrast between them was touching. One was a paralysed old man unable to leave his fields, the other was a young girl of fifteen, a frail little peasant, and rather ugly. Her strange green eyes contrasted with an admirable head of auburn hair, and she had heroically insisted on looking after her infirm grandfather, though all the rest of the family had emigrated towards the west. She had remained faithful to her duty in spite of the bombardment, the battle at their very door and the ill-treatment of the Bavarian soldiers who were billeted in the farm. Distressed, yet joyous, she prepared a hasty meal and busied herself in quest of food, for it was anything but easy to satiate eleven men dying of hunger when the Germans, who lay hands on everything, had only just left.
She wrung the neck of an emaciated fowl which had escaped massacre, and, by adding thereto some potatoes from the garden, she served us a breakfast, washed down with white wine, which made us stammer with joy, like children. One needs to have fasted for five days to have felt the cutting pains of hunger and of thirst in all their horror, to appreciate the happiness that one can experience in eating the wing of a scraggy fowl and in drinking a glass of execrable wine tasting like vinegar. She bustled about, and her pitying and motherly gestures touched our hearts. While we ate she told us the most astonishing story that ever was, a story acted, illustrated by gestures, which made the scenes live with remarkable vividness.
She told us how, faithful to her oath, she was alone when the Bavarians came knocking at her door, how she lived three days with them, a butt for their innumerable coarsenesses, sometimes brutally treated when the soldiers were sober, sometimes pursued by their gross assiduities when they were drunk; how one night she had to fly half naked through the rain, slipping out through the venthole of the cellar, to escape being violated by a group of madmen, not daring to go to bed again, sleeping fully dressed behind a small copse; how at last French chasseurs had put the Bavarians to flight and had in their turn installed themselves in the farm, and how among them she felt herself protected and respected.