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"Come, Pierrette, take your work, my dear," said Sylvie, with treacherous softness, noticing that the girl was watching the colonel's game. She usually affected to treat Pierrette well before company. This deception irritated the honest Breton girl, and made her despise her cousin. She took her embroidery, but as she drew her stitches she still watched Gouraud's play.
"By midday," says the typed compte-rendu of operations, which, signed by General Gouraud's own left hand, lies before me "the enemy appeared entirely blocked in all directions and the battle-position fixed by the General Commanding the Army was intact."
A few days after our Strasbourg visit we drove, furnished with General Gouraud's notes and maps, up into the heart of the "front de Champagne." You cross the wide, sandy plains to the north of Châlons, with their scanty pine-woods, where Attila met his over-throw, and where the French Army has trained and manoeuvred for generations.
General Gouraud, the hero of Gallipoli, was in command of the French forces on the right, while General Mangin and General de Goutte held the left. Most of the Americans taking part in the battle were under the command of these noted generals, and strong Italian and British forces were with General Gouraud's army. The French constituted about 70 per cent of the Allies engaged.
Gouraud's caution, not to say his distrust, was constantly excited by the results of his alliance with Vinet. It certainly appeared that the lawyer had got the lion's share in their enterprise. Vinet controlled the paper, he reigned as sole master over it, he took the revenues; whereas the colonel, the responsible editor, earned little.
When we were working out our scheme for the attack of the 29th Division and 156th Brigade the day before yesterday, as well as Gouraud's attack of yesterday, we had reckoned that the Turkish High Command would get to realize by about 11 a.m. on the 28th that an uncommon stiff fight had been set afoot to the sou'-west of Krithia.
Between July 16th and the Armistice, the British took 188,700 prisoners, the French 137,000, and the Americans 43,000. Before we left Strasbourg on our way to the "front de Champagne," armed with General Gouraud's maps and directions, an hour or two of most interesting conversation threw great light for me on that other "field of victory" Alsace-Lorraine. We brought an introduction to Dr.
Gouraud's plans for his big attack are now quite complete. A million pities we cannot attack simultaneously. That we should attack one week and the French another week is rotten tactically; but, practically, we have no option.
When Rogron turned to go home, recalled by a sense of his dinner-hour, Vinet stopped the colonel from following him by taking Gouraud's arm. "Well, colonel," he said, "I am going to take a fearful load off your shoulders; you can do better than marry Sylvie; if you play your cards properly you can marry that little Pierrette in two years' time."
The French bear the brunt of this fire and Gouraud's cool decision to ignore it in favour of bigger issues marks the contrast between the fighter who makes little of the enemy and the writer who makes much of him. I look upon Gouraud more as a coadjutor than as a subordinate, so it is worth anything to me to find that we see eye to eye at present.
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