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We sent a much disinfected, carbolic-smelling round robin of thanks to "James W. Beckett, Junior," son of the western railway king. As I drove to the gare of St. Raphael, I thought of the kind boys who had helped our poor poilus, and especially of James Beckett.
That desperate attack made during the darkness broke down as others had done, and the Germans those who were left of them fled to the cover of the evergreen pine-trees, leaving the poilus of General Joffre's armies to stagger back to their battered trenches, there to prepare not to rest, not to sleep, for that was out of the question but to resist still further. Falling Back
He touched a lock of hair which lay against her cheek. "A bit of it of you " A band of poilus marching through the street, saw him cut it off. But they did not laugh. They had great respect for a thing like that and it happened every day when men went away from their women. They separated with a promise of perhaps a reunion in Paris, if he could get leave and if she could be spared.
The sergeant of Henri's platoon, one arm dangling helpless by his side, stretched out a brawny hand and gripped our hero's, while Jules the somewhat hysterically inclined Jules laughing uproariously, would have embraced the gallant Henri if the latter would have allowed it. Officers shook hands with their men, while poilus turned and congratulated one another: for the thing was done.
She held the bag of money in her arms for a moment, then, kissing it, placed it in the hands of the captain. "'And I, monsieur le Capitaine, give it to our beloved France. She needs it more than does the Little Mathilde, and with it Mathilde sends her love to the brave poilus of her beautiful France."
Even in Modena, on the boundary-line of Italy, when I was returning to France, and sharing a lonely Christmas with the conductor of the wagon-lit, we were held up by train-robbers, who took our money and then pinned medals on us. Until we reached Paris we did not know why. It was only later we learned that in the two days' campaign the poilus was benefited to the sum of many millions of francs.
Very quietly, with that sang-froid which the French possess, perhaps, above all others, with determination written on every face, both young and old, and with heroism shining from their features, those gallant poilus, all along the line sweeping across the crest of the hills facing the Germans a stretch of ground ploughed deep now into a hundred furrows, shattered and shell-swept, and blasted in a thousand places into deep pits and craters watched first as those small advance-parties, sent by the enemy to reconnoitre the situation, were shot down or driven back to shelter; and watched now with straining eyes and with many an exclamation as a horde of grey-coated infantry debouched from the evergreen woods encircling the eastern and northern slopes of the approaches to their position, and, forming up there, advanced steadily to attack them.
From the table by the window of the cafe of "Nos Braves Poilus" where Small and Judkins and Chrisfield had established themselves with their pay crisp in their pockets, they could see the little front garden of the house across the road, where, behind a hedge of orange marigolds, Andrews sat on the doorstep talking to an old woman hunched on a low chair in the sun just inside the door, who leant her small white head over towards his yellow one.
To his surprise, for he had not thought that she spoke English, she answered him. "It is not. It is my eyes; yes, but they are not to be described so flatteringly." Yet she was smiling and the blush had spread again to cheeks and chin, flushing them delightfully. "It is a superstition of these ignorant poilus. And of others, also. In fact, there are some who are afraid."
French poilus, detrained at Amiens station for a night on their way to some other part of the front, jostled among British soldiers, and their packs were a wonder to see. They were like traveling tinkers, with pots and pans and boots slung about their faded blue coats, and packs bulging with all the primitive needs of life in the desert of the battlefields beyond civilization.
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