THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE.

BY LIEUT. F. J. SALMON.

We had been away from our area for several days on a special mission and were the guests of the French Staff at X. The programme for the day included a visit to an observation post, the exact position of which was not known to our guide, and it was necessary to call at a French battery and pick up someone to show us the way. A very cheering description of the situation at Verdun by an officer who had just come from there had kept us rather later than usual at lunch, a fact to which we owed our escape from a very unpleasant bit of ‘strafing.’ We had still some 200 yards to go to reach the battery when the Huns started shelling it furiously. A few ‘overs’ came within about 100 yards of us and there was rather an unpleasant whirr of splinters, so we took refuge behind a house.

The crash of the first salvo had aroused a good woman and her baby and she came out, smiling, to see what was happening. Carrying the baby, she went out into the road and stood in the line of fire watching the fun. She occasionally dodged back behind the wall when the bits flew too near, just as a child would run from a snowball. She said her man was in the ‘Chasseurs Alpins’ and had been in the Vosges since the beginning—he was not afraid of the Boches, why should she be? A French ‘poilu’ passing by scolded her for exposing the child and she disappeared.

After five minutes of hot shelling the Huns stopped, and Lieutenant M., our guide, proposed that we should continue. The Hun usually caters for those people who ‘carry on’ at once, so we decided to visit a friend whose office was only two doors off. Lieutenant R. was delighted to see us. Yes, this particular Boche battery was ‘dégoûtant.’ It fired like a mitrailleuse, yes, and some of the ‘overs’ came this way. He had the honour to announce to us that ‘there was an unexploded 77-shell in his ceiling—no, it had not been there long and was probably still warm.’ Two more rounds battery fire then came over and we judged the trouble past for the time being. When we reached the battery we found they had had a bad time. It was an old territorial field battery—there was probably not a gunner less than forty in it. One of the guns had had a direct hit. The wheel and part of the carriage were smashed. Two of the other gun emplacements had been knocked in. The German battery responsible for this had been located, and the bearded old Frenchmen were getting ready for retaliation. Three of the guns were already ready for action, and efforts were being made to heave the broken one up on to a temporary carriage so that at least one more shot might be got out of it! A telephone message had been sent up from the brigade asking them to have a guide ready for us, but the matter had been forgotten. There was far more excitement about this than about the bombardment. Lieutenant M. called up the Sergeant-Major and ‘strafed’ him unmercifully. The Sergeant-Major was ‘désolé,’ but at the moment he had been ‘très occupé.’ He was ‘confus’ and would ‘mon capitaine’ accept his apology—the ‘cochons de Bosches’ were far more responsible than he was. Lieutenant M. said it was all right, called him ‘mon vieux,’ and we departed for our post with a fit-up guide who persisted that he did not know the way, but who nevertheless got us there in the end and we had a good look at the enemy lines and the country beyond. On our return we passed a small cottage which had been hit by something big. More than half of it had been blown away and there was no roof left at all. The chimney, however, was still there and it poured forth a defiant stream of smoke as the owner cooked his dinner in a temporary shelter near the fireplace.

The French Headquarters mess was more than usually cheery that evening. The enemy had had another setback at Verdun.

The British, too, were going to take over more line from the French, and this brought the subject round to Great Britain and what she was doing in the war. This was a point I should have preferred to have left undiscussed at a time when the French were engaged in perhaps the greatest struggle in the war with, apparently, no direct assistance from us. Our hosts, however, insisted that, under the circumstances, we were doing a good deal more than could be expected of us. They were unanimous that the most remarkable achievement of this greatest of all wars was the raising of our large Imperial army. It was one thing to make good use of a working organisation as the Germans had, but, as staff officers, they would have believed it impossible for any country to have done what we have done. Each one was able to show the insuperable difficulties that would have arisen in his own department, and there was nothing one could do but bow and agree with them.

Next morning we were off again on our rounds, this time with a different guide, Captain R.

We had a good view of the enemy’s lines from what had once been a child’s nursery. Poor kid! if she could see her playroom now! On the floor were a dismembered doll and part of a brick puzzle. The only furniture was a broken chair by the window and a toy cot in the corner of the room; the rest had been taken for some neighbouring billet. Near the window was a field telephone, and, on the wall near by, some printed instructions to artillery observers. The walls were decorated with numerous sketches, some of them quite well done, of French artillerymen and famous generals. A large hole in the wall and the familiar sickly smell of ‘tear shell’ showed that the enemy had detected the post and that it was no place to loiter in.

After seeing many interesting things that one cannot write about we reached one of the big ruined towns near the line, where we were entertained to lunch by two French officers. This lunch was one of the most memorable of my experiences at the front.

These officers, being engaged on very special and important work, were persona grata in the town and had a free hand in the matter of billets. At the time of our visit they were living in a house that might have been in Park Lane. A marble hall and staircase, luxuriously furnished rooms and all modern appointments—central heating, electric light, electric bells. The dining-room had every aspect of peace, wealth, and comfort. The table linen and service were of the best. The captain’s servant had evidently been a chef in private life. There were four courses and a variety of the best wines. All this was within less than a mile of the German front line, a fact which it would have been impossible to realise had it not been for the occasional desultory crack of a rifle and the regular crash and swirl of the French batteries firing over our heads! Our hosts were excellent fellows, as amusing and full of ‘esprit’ as only the French can be. They had been in the town over a year and had been shelled out of two other billets. They showed us the remains of their last home which had been even more luxurious than the present one. One could only gather some vague idea of what it had been like from the carved oak mantel-piece showing over a pile of débris at the end of the drawing-room and the torn tapestry hanging from the walls. They had taken to the cellar just in time!

Experience had taught our friends to gauge the Hun’s intentions to a nicety. A shell would pass close to the house and burst on the other side of the road. ‘That’s all right—only a short one for such and such a public building.’ The Frenchmen put another tune on the gramophone and the next ‘marmite’ goes several streets away. On another occasion a heavy shell is heard coming over from another direction. It explodes with a resounding ‘crump’ a long way down the street. That comes from one of the batteries that shell this part of the town and our two officers have their coffee served in the cellar!

This knowing when to take to the cellar is a distinct characteristic of the French. They are not for taking any unnecessary risks as some of us are, but, when a dangerous job has to be done, they will go about it with a careless gaiety that is wholly unforced. It is this spirit which is holding up the French soldier to the admiration of the whole world; the spirit that has kept the German hordes out of Verdun, and that will continue to keep them at bay till the time is ripe for a concerted effort of the allied forces.