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My memory of this tour I have just made is full of puzzled-looking men. I have seen thousands of poilus sitting about in cafes, by the roadside, in tents, in trenches, thoughtful. I have seen Alpini sitting restfully and staring with speculative eyes across the mountain gulfs towards unseen and unaccountable enemies.
You do not understand, Mademoiselle, what our good lady has done. The wonderful rugs she has sold that off the library floor, which, they say, the old count himself brought from Bagdad. And the books all her library have gone to the convalescent hospitals, or to the poilus in the trenches. For they, poor men, need the distraction of reading."
He knew what he wished to do and what he believed he could do best. "Soon men began to fall. The stretcher bearers were too few to give quick attention to all, but Jean was there. With his bandages he bound as best he could the wounds of his comrades, and quenched their thirst from his canteens. Many were the suffering poilus who blessed the little soldier of mercy that day.
A fortress might, and indeed would, be smashed by German artillery; but trenches were more movable, more replaceable, objects, and the picks and spades of poilus could easily repair damage. "Nice little hole eh?" smiled Jules. "But I don't see any sign of that German." "Nor I. Let's get on. I've an uneasy feeling in my mind that he's up to some particularly vile sort of mischief.
The French batteries to our left were firing at the Germans, the German batteries were firing at the French trenches and the roads, and the machine guns rattled ceaselessly. I saw the poilus hurrying up the muddy roads of the slope of the Bois-le-Prêtre vague masses of moving blue on the brown ways.
They fought with the French through Belleau Wood, heartening the brave, tired, discouraged poilus, and after they came out upon the other side the name of the battlefield was changed to the 'Wood of the American Marines. Mr. Gibbons says that when Marshal Foch began his great offensive, which in cosmic importance is second only to creation, he selected the units in which he had the most faith.
Besides, since the outskirts of Paris, we had been in the zone de guerre, constantly stopped and stared at by sentinels. The only cars we passed, going east or west, were occupied by officers, or crowded with poilus, therefore the shabby little taxi became of almost startling interest.
In one small cantonment where two hundred Poilus sang, shouted, ate, drank and danced together to the strain of a wheezy gramophone, or in one word were "resting," I started to investigate the various kinds of pets owned by the troopers. Cats, dogs and monkeys were common, whilst one Poilu was the proud possessor of a parrot which he had purchased from a refugee obliged to fly from his home.
The officer's face was radiant at such a compliment, which, let us observe, was thoroughly well deserved; for if the poilu, the common soldier of the French armies facing the Germans, had fought well, his officer had indeed set him a magnificent example. Much need, too, had the poilus holding the Verdun salient for the best of officers.
Marjorie, who really wasn't used to men, colored a little at this marital remark, and then said that she supposed that it must have been hard not to do it in the trenches. "Oh, that was only the poilus," said Francis, and went on into a flood of details about keeping the men neat for the sake of their morale.
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