["VERDUN BELLE"]
This is the story of Verdun Belle, a trench dog, who adopted a young leatherneck, followed him to the edge of the battle around Chateau-Thierry and was waiting for him when they carried him out. It is a true story.
Belle was a setter, shabby white, with great splotches of chocolate brown in her coat. Her ears were brown and silken. She was under size and would not have stood a chance among the haughtier breeds shown in splendor at dog shows in Madison Square Garden. But the marines in the regiment to which she attached herself thought there never was a dog like her since the world began.
No one in the regiment knew whence she came or why. When she joined the outfit in a sector near Verdun, she singled out one of the privates as her very own and attached herself to him for the duration of the war. The young marine would talk long and earnestly to her, and every one declared that Belle could "comprè" English.
She used to curl up at his feet when he slept or follow silently to keep him company at the listening post. She would sit hopefully in front of him whenever he settled down with his laden mess kit, which the cooks always heaped extra high in honor of Belle.
Belle was as used to war as the most weather-beaten French poilu. The tremble of the ground did not disturb her and the whining whir of the shells overhead only made her twitch and wrinkle her nose in her sleep. She was trench-broken. You could have put a plate of savory pork chops on the parapet and nothing would have induced her to go after them.
She weathered many a gas attack. Her master contrived a protection for her by cutting down and twisting a French gas mask. At first this sack over her nose irritated her tremendously; but once, when she was trying to claw it off with her forepaws, she got a whiff of the poisoned air. Then a great light dawned on Belle; and after that, at the first alarm, she would race for her mask. You could not have taken it from her until her master's pat on her back told her everything was all right.
In the middle of May, Belle presented a proud but not particularly astonished regiment with nine confused and wriggling puppies, black-and-white, or, like the mother, brown-and-white, and possessed of immense appetites. Seven of these were alive and kicking when the order came for the regiment to pull up stakes and speed across France to help stem the German tide north of the troubled Marne.