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Updated: June 23, 2025
A descendant of Racine, a well-known figure at the opera, was travelling in the Metro when he spotted a poilu with a string of ten medals on his breast. The old aristocrat went over to the soldier and apologised for speaking to him. "But," he said, "I have never seen any poilu with so many decorations. You must be of the very bravest."
At the far end of the room was a great general drinking croute-au-pot with the simple appetite of a French poilu who would have been a splendid mark for anyone careless of his own life and upholding the law of frightfulness as a divine sanction for assassination.
Then, undefeated though outnumbered, they gripped their enemies about the waist and wrestled with them, while some, a few only, for the art does not come naturally to the poilu, dealt swinging blows with their fists, and, driving a way through the Germans, escaped into the passage.
Madame Waddington had brought a large box of chocolates and she passed a piece over the shoulder of each soldier, who interrupted the more serious business of the moment to be polite. Other people bring them flowers, or cigarettes, and certainly there is no one in the world so satisfactory to put one's self to any effort for as a poilu. On her manners alone France should win her war.
"So it is you, you two," he said, regarding them for some few seconds "you two, Henri and Jules names which every poilu seems to know most thoroughly then, attention!
Everything might be worse than it is, says the Poilu, and so he has composed a Litany. Every regiment has a different version, but always with the same basis. "Of two things one is certain: Either you're mobilised or you're not mobilised. If you're not mobilised, there is no need to worry; if you are mobilised, of two things one is certain: Either you're behind the lines or you're on the Front.
The French soldiers off duty should have been resting in the caves and dug-outs which have been prepared for them, but most of them were out on the terraces in different parts of the city, smoking and casually watching the effect of the German or of their own fire. I inquired of one poilu whether he would be glad to leave Verdun, and he laughingly replied: "One might be worse off than here.
When she spoke it was of small domestic abuses: the exorbitant prices she had had to pay for food; the way in which the soldiery had stolen her pots and pans; the insolence she had experienced when she had lodged complaints against the men before their officers. And the boy he wanted to be a poilu.
The French poilu had no money at all, and the English Tommy had plenty. But it made no difference in the big things." Meanwhile Timmy, upstairs, had performed what was for him quite an elaborate toilet.
The editor of "Les Humbles" goes on to clear the ground of what he terms "the false literary vanguard," telling the chauvinist writers what he thinks of them. This lettered poilu, a blunt fellow, does not mince matters: "I have come from this war whose praises you are singing I who write.... I have my honourable mention, my war cross: I never wear it.
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