Charles is shy and very modest, and no bigger than so many French youths—he is only twenty-two—with dark-brown hair and blue eyes with very black centres, and a moustache that never succeeds in looking more than three weeks old. Being, however, brave, he does not let his maimed condition unduly trouble him, but runs his errands (all that he can now do) and whistles as he runs, and is glad to be alive at all, instead of dead, as so many of his comrades are and as his Colonel is, as I shall tell.
At the Front Charles's duties were these. A despatch—a pli, as they call it—would be given him either back of the lines to deliver in the trenches, or in the trenches to deliver back of the lines, and in order to get there, if fighting was in progress, it was necessary for him to crawl for perhaps one or two kilometres on his stomach. On a certain day of intense activity, Charles in his trench was handed one of these critical missives for the commanding officer, who was a kilometre or so behind, and this he placed in his satchel and then began the hazardous journey.
No one ever knows when the supreme moment of his life is coming; nor did Charles, but it was then.
This being a terrific day—as a matter of fact it was during the famous battle for the Maison du Passeur, when the French and Germans were losing and retaking trenches for hours—he had to crawl all the way, only to come suddenly upon the body of the commanding officer himself stretched dead in a carrot field.
To Charles's mind there was then but one thing to do, and that was, as he had been unable to deliver the message, to take it back to the sender. He therefore started on the return journey, and was only a few yards from his trench, and still un-hit, when he found a wounded officer on the ground. Here was a new problem, but necessarily having to stand up and throw aside all precautions, Charles got him as well as he could on his back and, still un-hit, half carried, half supported, him to the trench, and was at once away again with his despatch. It was at this moment that an exploding shell hurled the satchel from big hands and flung it on the open ground between the French trenches and the enemy's, which were here separated only by a few yards. At any cost the despatch must not fall into German hands, and Charles, who miraculously had not been injured by the explosion, began instantly to climb out of the trench to recover it, and this in spite of a sergeant, who called to him to keep under cover. But Charles, having one idea and one only, and that was to save from the foe the despatch that had been entrusted to him, succeeded in reaching it and securing it; and then came another shell that shattered his arm.
That is all he remembers; but he must have rolled back to the bottom of the trench, where he was found, two days later, still clutching the satchel. And after that, although he remembers the coffee he was given to drink, all is a haze until he came fully to himself in hospital and found that no longer had he a right arm.
Such is the story of Charles's effort for his country.
Now I do not claim for Charles that he is any braver or has a finer sense of duty than many another French soldier; but this I know, that when he recovered he was summoned to the Invalides to receive not only the Croix de Guerre but the Médaille Militaire with the palm, which corresponds to our Victoria Cross, and that now, although, having left the Army, he no longer wears uniform but merely such poor civilian clothes as he can afford as a messenger, when he walks along the Boulevards—which he does as seldom as he can, so shy is he—there is not an officer, seeing the ribbons on his coat, who does not salute this little plumber with as much punctilio as though he were General Joffre himself; and, blushing crimson, Charles returns the salute.
