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Christmas Day and the day after were devoted exclusively to the man in the trenches, to obtain money to bring him home on leave. Those days were les journees du poilu. The services of the best black-and-white artists in France were commandeered. For advertising purposes they designed the most appealing posters.
In the center of the garden, at the meeting-point of several paths, a mossy fountain was flowing into a greenish basin shaped like a seashell, and in this basin a poilu was washing his clothes.
Nothing, it was argued, could be worse than what these leaders had brought upon the country, and a change from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat could not well be inaugurated at a more favorable conjuncture. In truth the bourgeoisie were often as impatient of the restraints and abuses as the homecoming poilu.
And one thought of what the poilu can be like; of our Christmas dinner-table at the hospital under the green hanging wreaths and the rosy Chinese lanterns, the hum, the chatter, the laughter of free and easy souls in their red hospital jackets.
Other spies took the trouble to disguise themselves in rags and turbans, and, mixing with the Tommies, sold them sweetmeats, fruit, and cigarettes. The spy told the Tommy he was his ally, a Serbian refugee; and Tommy, or the poilu, to whom Bulgarians, Turks, and Serbians all look alike, received him as a comrade. "You had a rough passage from Marseilles," ventures the spy.
"I will keep it as a mascot," said the poilu, scrunching it up and thrusting it into his pouch. "It'll keep me in mind of that saligaud of a German officer I killed. He was a chic fellow, tout de meme. A boy."
The man interested me considerably, for he was a splendid figure compact, alert, with hair cropped like a poilu, vivid with life as a sporting terrier so I inquired what he did for a living when he wasn't covert shooting.
First to find an English soldier apologizing for looking into a house, and then to find him talking French like a poilu." Doggie said, with a little touch of national jealousy and a reversion to Durdlebury punctilio: "I hope, mademoiselle, you have always found the English soldier conduct himself like a gentleman." "Mais oui, mais oui!" she cried, "they are all charming.
Covering his breast were glittering stars and crosses, which showed how brilliant had been his services in this and other wars. He is a remarkable man, this soldier with the beard of a poilu and the eyes of a poet, and, unless I am greatly mistaken, he is destined to go a long, long way. It was the sort of dinner that one marks with a white milestone on the road of memory.
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