“It ought not to be allowed,” declares a new hand.
Modestly, as if it were an everyday incident, a Corporal of the 158th tells some light infantrymen of his share in the last engagement, that of the evening of March 16 in Vaux village, which is half French, half German, and is intersected by barricades and trenches:
“I was in the village, near the barricade. After the Jack Johnsons, the look-out men told us that _they_ were coming in masses. The parapets are manned. The Lieutenant says: ‘Don’t hurry, my lads, let them come up.’ When _they_ are within easy range, our men open fire. The Boches were seen to fall like ninepins. Still they came on again, and yet again. They have plenty of self-confidence.”
And now the talk flies to and fro like the crackling of musketry fire. The names of dead and wounded are mentioned, but there is no sadness, no lingering over them: it is a matter of Fate, who chooses those whom it pleases her to strike. The praises of the stretcher-bearers are sung: guided by cries or by instinct, they bring in the wounded, even that blind man who, erect between the lines, walked with his hands in front of him, without knowing where, haggard and howling. As for the dead, burying them was out of the question. Gratitude is expressed towards the cooks, who roll about their field-kitchens under shell-fire and carry rations to the troops. A burly Swiss who has enrolled himself for the duration of the war, “without any idea that it would last so long,” he adds, “otherwise----,” receives these grateful words as a personal compliment:
“Well, you can’t run with a great load on your back.”
The Colonel whom I met at the Carrières headquarters--a thin face with clear-cut outlines, blue eyes, usually soft, but now and then showing a glint of steel, slight build, keen nerves, with an unswerving ascendancy over his men, whom he knows how to inspire with his hatred of the Boches (hatred dies down so quickly in our race)--can speak of nothing but his regiment:
“Hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, and all the time that din and that menace of big shells crashing, they bore it all without a murmur. You pass down the lines; every man follows you with his eyes, centres his hopes in you, believes in you. You acquire such a feeling of confidence. You cannot help leading them well.”