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One night, when the upper floor was covered with sleeping men, an improvised infantryman who had been relieved from duty walked in, and, preparatory to taking his stand at the fire, threw his musket carelessly in the corner. A loud report and angry exclamations immediately followed.
He left for Lorraine about the end of March; but he had been on his way for only a few days, when he learned that the allies, instead of following him as he had hoped, had headed for Paris, driving before then the weak debris of Mortier's and Marmont's corps who, positioned on the heights of Montmartre, attempted to defend the city without any help from the National Guard except an occasional infantryman.
They're led about just for show!" remarked another. "Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers. "I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more like a bird than a man."
Instead, he walked with the bent-kneed swing of the French infantryman, that tireless but awkward marching step which renders the French Army so mobile. He carried all the impedimenta of a man going into the trenches, an extra jar of water, a flat loaf of bread strapped to his haversack, and an intrenching tool jingling at his belt.
Nevertheless, he had adopted Guynemer, and this was not the least of the conqueror's conquests. The infantryman had not been jealous of Guynemer; he had felt his fascination, and instinctively he divined a fraternal Guynemer. When the French official dispatches reported the marvelous feats of the aviation corps, the infantry soldier smiled scornfully in his mole's-hole: "Them again!
Sounds as if they meant a rush, eh? The infantryman nodded. 'Will they stop shelling before they rush? he shouted. 'Not till their men are well out in front. Their guns can keep going over their heads for a bit. Are you through, Jackson? Tell the Battery to "eyes front." It looks like an attack.
As a general rule she is a charming woman. Who is the infantryman of Paris into whose ear there have not dropped, like bullets in the day of battle, thousands of words uttered by the passer-by, and who has not caught one of those numberless sayings which, according to Rabelais, hang frozen in the air?
If it is true for our cavalrymen, it is also true for the English cavalrymen. The reason is that on the field of battle the role of the infantryman against a firm adversary requires more coolness and nerve than does the role of the cavalryman. It requires the use of tactics based on an understanding of the national characteristics of ourselves and of our enemies.
In modern war the infantryman hasn't much of a chance. Strategy nowadays consists in arranging for the mutual slaughter of infantry by the opposing guns, each general trusting that his guns will do the greater slaughter. And half gunnery is luck. The day before yesterday we had a little afternoon shoot at where we thought the German trenches might be.
It is probably from this that we get the word gun. The most interesting of all the guns used in the Great War has only a number for its name. It is the famous French '75, and takes this name merely from a measurement. The special weapon of the foot soldier, or infantryman, is the bayonet. This is a short blade which the foot soldier fixes on the muzzle of his rifle before he advances to an attack.
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