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Updated: June 23, 2025
And when finally in an endless chain of verses, a comedian, mimicking a poilu with his kit on his back, recited his vicissitudes with the army police, and got mixed up in his interpretation of R.A.T., G.Q.G. etc., they burst into round after round of applause, calling and recalling their favourite, while their sides shook with laughter, and the tears rolled down their cheeks.
The cellar listens sympathetically. The boy says nothing, but keeps his eyes fixed on the soldiers. In about twenty minutes the bombardment ends, and the bolder ones go out to ascertain the damage. The soldier's purchases are lying on the counter. These he stuffs into his musette, the cloth wallet beloved of the poilu, and departs.
"It's a sort of fetish I feel I must carry around with me," he explained. "When I've got it in my hand, I don't seem to care a damn what I do. When I haven't, I miss it. Remember the story of Sir Walter Scott's boy with the butter? Something like that, you know. But in its bare state it's not a pretty sight for the mother." "It ought to have a name," said I. "The poilu calls his bayonet Rosalie."
I regret to add that a poilu near by disrespectfully referred to it as "another of the horrors of war," adding that in times of peace there was some kind of personal liberty, where as now "a man could not have toothache without being forced to have it ended, and that there was no possibility of escaping a dentist who hunted you down by motor."
It is barbarism as well as the barbarian which France is fighting, and the French know it, are profoundly conscious of it, from the cool, dispassionate philosopher, like Bergson or Boutroux or Hovelaque, to the girl conductor on the tram, the dirty poilu in the trench.
Even the humblest poilu in the trenches, the simplest working-woman in France, know that they are giving themselves not merely in the righteous cause of self-defense, but in the world's cause in defense of its best tradition, its highest ideals. Their cause is big enough to consecrate them. Therefore a new, a larger, a more vital life has already begun for invaded and unconquered France!
Some French gunners ran to meet us. The sight that met them must have seemed novel, even to a poilu of two and a half years' understanding. Supposing that the aeroplane had crashed, they came to see if we were dead or injured.
To our surprise we caught sight of the jaunty blue figure of a poilu, and then a band of slouching green-coated prisoners who were digging in their heavy leisurely manner. Mademoiselle Froissart inquired for the village of Evricourt. "Mais c'est ici, Madame," replied the soldier with a grin. "Here!" We stared.
The poilu has no faith at all now, if he ever had, save faith in his country, so engrained that he lets the life-loving blood of him be spilled out to the last drop, cursing himself and everything for his heroic folly. We had a young Spaniard of the Foreign Legion in our hospital who had been to Cambridge, and had the "outside" eyes on all things French.
"You never see them?" "Only when we attack them or they attack us." An old poilu, with a friendly smile revealing a jagged reef of yellow teeth, whispered to me amiably: "See them? Good Lord, it's bad enough to smell them. You ought to thank the good God, young man, that the wind is carrying it over our heads." "Any wounded to-day?" "Yes; a corporal had his leg ripped up about half an hour ago."
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