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Updated: May 20, 2025
There is a curious feeling, almost innate in men, that though they are bound to speak truth, in speaking to a single person, they may lie as much as they please, provided they lie to two or more people at once. There is the same feeling about killing: most people would shrink from shooting one innocent man; but will fire a mitrailleuse contentedly into an innocent regiment.
The Telly cameras which watched you as, crouched almost double, you scurried into the fire area of a mitrailleuse or perhaps a Maxim; the Telly cameras which swung in your direction speedily, avidly, when a blast of fire threw you back and to the ground; the Telly cameras with their zoom lenses which focused full into your face as life leaked away. The Spanish aficionados never had it so good.
And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were whooping and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the balls of a mitrailleuse, and the can rocked and gyrated, spurring us to haste as it constantly changed the range. Presently it was merely a twist of ragged tin. Then in the little silence, as we paused, a voice spoke irritatingly.
You see the gunner crouched down behind his weapon, but you aim at where the pilot ought to be there are two men aboard the German craft and press on the release hard. Your mitrailleuse hammers out a stream of bullets as you pass over and dive, nose down, to get out of range. Then, hopefully, you re-dress and look back at the foe. He ought to be dropping earthward at several miles a minute.
The man that dived ahead of you becomes mixed up with the topmost German. He is so close it looks as if he had hit the enemy machine. You hear the staccato barking of his mitrailleuse and see him pass from under the German's tail. The rattle of the gun that is aimed at you leaves you undisturbed. Only when the bullets pierce the wings a few feet off do you become uncomfortable.
He has recommended me to his 'mecanos, who are the real type of the clever Parisian, inventive, lively and good humored...." Next day he gives some details of his billet, and adds: "I have had a mitrailleuse support mounted on my machine, and now I am ready for the hunt.... Yesterday at five o'clock I darted around above the house at 1700 or 2000 meters. Did you see me?
Deep and bitter were the curses which he poured upon those vandals; but I stood beside him, and I did not hear half that he said, for my eyes were fixed on the mitrailleuse standing on the garden path under the trees. My fingers itched to pull the lever and to scatter withering death among them. It slowly came into my mind how good it would be to kill these defilers.
He turned and ran for his life, leaving the cattle to their fate, while the steam mitrailleuse of the Titans to which all man's engines of destruction are but pop-guns roared on for three days and nights, covering the greater part of the island with ashes, burying crops, breaking branches off the trees, and spreading ruin from which several estates never recovered; and so the 30th of April dawned in darkness which might be felt.
Serrez les rangs, tas de bleus!" yelled an officer, riding along the edge of the road, revolver in one hand, naked sabre flashing in the other. A dozen artillerymen were pushing a mitrailleuse up behind the overturned wagon. It stuck in the ditch. "À nous, la ligne!" they shouted, dragging at the wheels until a handful of fantassins ran out and pulled the little death machine into place.
This second sentence may well give us heart of hope considering the horde of French terms which invaded our tongue in the long years of the Great War. If camion and avion, vrille and escadrille supply no permanent need of the language they may soon become obsolete, just as mitrailleuse and franc-tireur slipped out of sight soon after the end of the Franco-Prussian war of fifty years ago.
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