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Into a small estaminet at the end of the rue des Trois Cailloux, beyond the Hotel de Ville, came one day during the battles of the Somme two poilus, grizzled, heavy men, deeply bronzed, with white dust in their wrinkles, and the earth of the battlefields ingrained in the skin of their big, coarse hands. They ordered two "little glasses" and drank them at one gulp. Then two more.
It has the two capital defects of its virtues. It is too fond of forms and too mistrustful. The French nature is sane and cynical. Well, it's natural! The French lie just halfway between north and south; their blood is too mingled for enthusiasm, and their culture too old. I never realised how old France was till we went to Arles. In our crowded train poilus were packed, standing in the corridors.
Any day you go into the town to do hospital commissions you may see the hospital donkey-cart with the charming grey donkey outside the Café de l'Univers or what not, and know that Charles is within. He beguiles our poilus, and they take little beguiling. Wine is too plentiful in France. The sun in the wines of France quickens and cheers the blood in the veins of France.
CHORUS: Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We're on the job to-day! Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! We'll seal you so you'll stay! We'll put you up in ginger in the good old Yankee way While we are canning the Kaiser. Hear the song we're singing on the shining roads of France; Hear the Tommies cheering, and see the Poilus prance; Africanders and Kanucks and Scots without their pants While we are canning the Kaiser.
As she was not a nurse she was obliged to do the most menial work, which not infrequently consisted in washing the filthy poilus wounded after weeks of fighting without a bath or change of clothing. Sometimes the dirt-caked soldiers were natives of Algiers.
He had, for instance, strongly objected to Annette, so attractive, and in 1914 only thirty-four, going to her native France, her "chere patrie" as, under the stimulus of war, she had begun to call it, to nurse her "braves poilus," forsooth! Ruining her health and her looks! As if she were really a nurse! He had put a stopper on it. Let her do needlework for them at home, or knit!
Some are leaning over the shoulder of a pal who has just received a Paris paper, others chuckling together at the jokes of their own French journal the "Echo du Ravin," the "Journal des Poilus," or the "Diable Bleu": little papers ground out in purplish script on foolscap, and adorned with comic-sketches and a wealth of local humour.
Very eagerly, then, for every one of the men in Henri's party was anxious to escape capture, and eager to rejoin the French forces and again fight the Germans, the poilus scrambled about in the battered trench, or closely adjacent to it, taking up cartridges, despoiling the dead of their haversacks, from which they ejected all but the food contents, while every man loaded himself with as many water-bottles as he could conveniently carry.
The culprit twisted her hands; her whole body fairly convulsed with restrained sobs. "Answer me at once! Do you hear me?" Annette hesitated, and then throwing herself in her mother's arms, blurted out, "Oh, mamma, I just couldn't help it! All the others were so proud of their poilus, and I haven't any one at the front; not even a god-son!"
If there is any possibility of her remaining without being in danger " "What danger?" demanded Madame Dupay, clicking her tongue. "Do these countrymen of yours intend to let the Boches overrun our country again? Our poilus drove them back and kept them back." Ruth saw she could say nothing to appease the rising wrath of the family.
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