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Other soldiers Chasseurs Alpins in sky-blue coats, French artillery men in their dark-blue jackets, Belgian soldiers wearing shiny top-hats with eye-shades, or dinky caps with gold or scarlet tassels, and English Tommies in mud-coloured khaki strolled about the car, and nodded their heads towards it as though to say, "That has killed off a few Germans, by the look of it.
It rained all the way: rained in such floods and cataracts that the very rocks of the mountain seemed to dissolve and turn into mud. As we slid down through it we met strings of Chasseurs Alpins coming up, splashed to the waist with wet red clay, and leading pack-mules so coated with it that they looked like studio models from which the sculptor has just pulled off the dripping sheet.
Their murmurs rose to violent protest on behalf of the poilu. "C'est un heros, tout de meme. Cinq mois dans les tranches! C'est affreux! Mais oui, il est soul, mais pour quoi pas! Apres cinq mois sur le front qu'est-ce que cela signifie? Ca n'a aucune importance!" A dandy French officer of Chasseurs Alpins stepped into the center of the scene and tapped the policeman on the shoulder.
My friend Raymond Bon was a sergeant in the 27th battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins. He left for the front in August, 1914, with the other recruits of the 1915 class, which means that he was hardly twenty years of age; and he won his stripes on the battlefield, after being twice named in dispatches.
On one side of the road was a rustic inn, on the other, among the firs, a chalet occupied by the brigade Head-quarters. Everywhere about us swarmed the little "chasseurs Alpins" in blue Tam o'Shanters and leather gaiters.
English soldiers gave them a passing glance, and went on to places where they might be made like this, without faces, or jaws, or noses, or eyes. By their uniforms I saw that there were Chasseurs Alpins, and Chasseurs d'Afrique, and young infantrymen of the line, and gunners.
Then came Dick Carleton, alone, for Schuyler had firmly refused to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship, and half a dozen smart, merry little officers of the Chasseurs Alpins, stationed at Mentone, and up at the lonely fort on Mont Agel.
And again: "Oh, how cold the rain is, and how severe the weather I For our faith in France I have offered God to let me be wet and soaked to the very bones." The story of the Abbe Armand, in the 14th battalion of the Chasseurs Alpins, is that of a hero.
So high had they climbed, so acclimatised to the mountains did these soldier-trees seem, that I named them for myself the Chasseurs Alpins of the forest. "We shall have fine weather to-morrow," said Joseph, as we left the snow and came to what he called the "terre grasse," which was greasy and slippery under foot.
The fighting in the other part of the Vosges had to do principally with the valley of the Fecht. The stream runs from Schlucht and Bramont east, and proceeds past Münster and Metzeral. On its right bank is the railroad from Colmar to Metzeral. The heights in the upper part of the valley were held by the Chasseurs Alpins; and they desired to take both towns.
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