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Updated: May 15, 2025
On arrival he insisted on being shaved. As no shaving brush was available the "piou-piou" in the next bed lathered him with his tooth brush. The French cooking did not appeal to him, and he grumbled continuously. The directress of the hospital sent her own cook from her chateau to cater for Mr. Atkins. An elaborate menu was prepared.
That was how Rire-pour-tout died, piou-piou; laughing to the last. Sacre bleu! It was a splendid end; I wish I were sure of the like." And Claude de Chanrellon drank down his third beaker, for overmuch speech made him thirsty. The men around him emptied their glasses in honor of the dead hero.
Your Corporal will demoralize the army of Africa, monsieur!" "He shall have an ounce of cold lead before he does. What in?" "He will demoralize it," said Cigarette, with a sagacious shake of her head. "If they follow his example we shan't have a Chasseur, or a Spahi, or a Piou-piou, or a Sapeur worth anything " "Sacre! What does he do?"
When he went out, he always asked his adversary, 'Where will you like it? your lungs, your heart, your brain? It is quite a matter of choice; and whichever they chose, he shot there. Le pauvre Rire-pour-tout! He was always good-natured." "And did he never meet his match?" asked a sous-officier of the line. The speaker looked down on the piou-piou with superb contempt, and twisted his mustaches.
He died with his arms round the neck of the soldier who told me the story, unashamed of his own tears. Round this man's neck also were clasped the arms of a German officer when a week previously the French piou-piou went across the field of a battle one of the innumerable skirmishes which had been fought and won four days before another French retirement.
Talking was thirsty work; the story was well known in all the African army, but the piou-piou, having served in China, was new to the soil.
Atkins felt so disposed, he would summon a piou-piou to give him a French lesson, or else request the various inmates of the ward to sing to him. He would in turn render that plaintive ditty "Down by the Old Bull and Bush." A nurse who spoke a little English translated his song to the French soldiers.
Tommy, who had expected to fight mixed up in some weird way with "le petit Piou-Piou," had not yet seen a Frenchman in action. In a vague way he fancied that "the Frenchies" had "let him down." He knew nothing of the battles of Charleroi and Namur, nor of the defence of Verdun, and the French were getting dreadfully unpopular with him.
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