Note 54 — X. IN THE TRENCHES

In less critical circumstances the same accident had happened to Second-Lieutenant Gautier, and was the occasion of an amusing little scene, which might have been taken from Léonec and Gervèze's sketches of Marines: "Yesterday I was going at the Germans with machine-guns at 1,200 metres on a road from which I finally cut them off. All of a sudden the guns jammed. I yelled from my blockhouse: 'What's the matter?' 'Guns jammed.' 'Tell the gunner from me that he's an ass.' The communicator, a worthy Breton fisherman, repeated gravely: 'The Lieutenant says that the gunner is an ass.' The gunner was one Primat. A few days later, on November 10, in submerged Dixmude, this same Primat (the orderly of the Second-Lieutenant), who had survived his officer, used his machine-guns with such skill and coolness against a German column that he stopped it dead, mowing down three sections."