"Six o'clock--the bombardment has just begun again. The stretcher-bearer, L----, has just been leaning a few moments--worn out--against the wall of my dug-out. His good, honest face is hollow, his eyes, with their blue rims, seem starting out of his head. '_Mon Capitaine_, I'm used up. There are only three stretcher-bearers left. The others are dead or wounded. I haven't eaten for three days, or drunk a drop of water.' His frail body is only held together by a miracle of energy. Talk of heroes--here is a true one!
"Eleven o'clock. Message from the Colonel. 'Owing to circumstances the 101st cannot be relieved.'
"What a disappointment for my poor fellows! Lieutenant X---- is lost in admiration of them. I daresay--but I have only thirty-nine of them left."
"The order for relief has come. We shall leave our dead behind us in the trench. Then-comrades have carefully placed them out of the passage-way.... There they are--poor sentinels, whom we leave behind us, in a line on the parados, in their blood-stained uniforms--solemn and terrible guardians of this fragment of French soil, which still in death they seem to be holding against the enemy."
But the enemy advances inexorably, and within the fort the dead and dying multiply.
"Captain Tabourot fought like a lion," says another witness. "He was taller than any of us. He gave his orders briefly, encouraged us, and placed us. Then he plunged his hand into the bag of bombs, and, leaning back, threw one with a full swing of the arm, aiming each time. That excited us, and we did our best."
But meanwhile the enemy is stealing up behind, between the trench and the fort. Captain Tabourot is mortally hit, and is carried into the dressing-station within the fort. Commandant Raynal, himself wounded, comes to see him. "No word of consolation, no false hope. The one knows that all is over; the other respects him too deeply to attempt a falsehood." A grasp of the hand--a word from the Commandant: "Well done, _mon ami_!" But the Captain is thinking of his men. "_Mon Commandant_--if the Boches get through, it is not the fault of my company. They did all they could." Then a last message to his wife. And presently his name is carried through the dark by a carrier-pigeon down to the Headquarters below: "The enemy surrounds us. I report to you the bravery of Captain Tabourot, seriously wounded. We are holding out." And a few hours later: "Captain Tabourot of the 142nd has died gloriously. Wound received in defending the north-eastern breach. Demand for him the Legion of Honour."