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One orderly a new one whom I strongly suspected of being an embusqué was unearthed in our rounds from under one of the beds, and came in for a lot of sarcasm, to the great joy of the patients who had all behaved splendidly. With the exception of Pierre and the porter on the surgical side, every man jack of them, including the Adjutant, had fled to the cave.
Now an embusqué is a slacker who lies in the safe ambush of a soft job. And an embusqué manqué is a slacker who fortuitously has failed to win the fungus wreath of slackerdom. She flushed deep red. "Je ne suis pas malhonnête, monsieur." Doggie spread himself elbow-wise over the table. The girl's visible register of moods was fascinating. "Pardon, Mademoiselle Jeanne. You are quite right.
I knew months ago I could never sing again in opera. I was coining money in New York, and would be now if they hadn't dug me out as a slacker an embusqué whatever you like to call it. I was a conscientious objector: that is, my conviction was it would be sinful to risk a bullet in a chest full of music, like mine a treasure-chest. But the fools didn't see it in that light.
I am only an ignorant girl, half bourgeoise, half peasant, monsieur, but I have my woman's knowledge and I know there is a difference between you and the others. You are a son of good family. It is evident. You have a delicacy of mind and of feeling. You were not born to be a soldier." "Mademoiselle Jeanne," cried Doggie, "do I appear as bad as that? Do you take me for an embusqué manqué?"
In the street car, the other afternoon, I had to explain that I was a Spaniard to some girls who were wondering why I was not at the front. . . . One of them, as soon as she learned my nationality, asked me with great simplicity why I did not offer myself as a volunteer. . . . Now they have invented a word for the stay-at-homes, calling them Les Embusques, the hidden ones. . . . I am sick and tired of the ironical looks shot at me wherever I go; it makes me wild to be taken for an Embusque."
The more I saw the splendour of the fight the French were fighting, the more I felt like an embusque what the British call a "shirker." So I made up my mind to go into aviation. A special channel had been created for the reception of applications from Americans, and my own was favourably replied to within a few days.
Imboscato is a term very frankly used in the Italian army, generally though not necessarily as a term of reproach. It corresponds with the French "embusqué," one who shelters in a wood, for which we in English have no precise equivalent. It is used by an Italian to indicate one who runs, or is thought to run, less risk of death than the speaker.
The Latin mind is directer than the English, and its standards shall I say? more primitive; it gets more directly to the fact that here are men who will not fight. And it is less charitable. I was asked quite a number of times for the English equivalent of an embusque. "We don't generalise," I said, "we treat each case on its merits!"
No train has come into Arras for two long years now. We lunched in a sunny garden with various men who love Arras but are weary of it, and we disputed about Irish politics. We discussed the political future of Sir F. E. Smith. We also disputed whether there was an equivalent in English for embusque. Every now and then a shell came over an aimless shell.
You are fighting, not because you are short of a job, but because you want to help England. How if you could help her better than by commanding a battalion or a brigade or, if it comes to that, a division? How if there is a thing which you alone can do? Not some embusque business in an office, but a thing compared to which your fight at Loos was a Sunday-school picnic.
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