A Visit to Three Fronts: June 1916Doyle, Arthur Conan
History
A Visit to Three Fronts: June 1916
Doyle, Arthur Conan
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
French officers above a certain rank develop and show their own
individuality. In the lower grades the conditions of service enforce a
certain uniformity. The British officer is a British gentleman first,
and an officer afterwards. The Frenchman is an officer first, though
none the less the gentleman stands behind it. One very strange type we
met, however, in these Argonne Woods. He was a French-Canadian who had
been a French soldier, had founded a homestead in far Alberta, and had
now come back of his own will, though a naturalised Briton, to the old
flag. He spoke English of a kind, the quality and quantity being
equally extraordinary. It poured from him and was, so far as it was
intelligible, of the woolly Western variety. His views on the Germans
were the most emphatic we had met. 'These Godam sons of'--well, let us
say 'Canines!' he would shriek, shaking his fist at the woods to the
north of him. A good man was our compatriot, for he had a very recent
Legion of Honour pinned upon his breast. He had been put with a few men
on Hill 285, a sort of volcano stuffed with mines, and was told to
telephone when he needed relief. He refused to telephone and remained
there for three weeks. 'We sit like a rabbit in his hall,' he
explained. He had only one grievance. There were many wild boars in the
forest, but the infantry were too busy to get them. 'The Godam
Artillaree he get the wild pig!' Out of his pocket he pulled a picture
of a frame-house with snow round it, and a lady with two children on
the stoop. It was his homestead at Trochu, seventy miles north of
Calgary.
* * * * *
It was the evening of the third day that we turned our faces to Paris
once more. It was my last view of the French. The roar of their guns
went far with me upon my way. Soldiers of France, farewell! In your own
phrase I salute you! Many have seen you who had more knowledge by which
to judge your manifold virtues, many also who had more skill to draw
you as you are, but never one, I am sure, who admired you more than I.
Great was the French soldier under Louis the Sun-King, great too under
Napoleon, but never was he greater than to-day.
And so it is back to England and to home. I feel sobered and solemn
from all that I have seen. It is a blind vision which does not see more
than the men and the guns, which does not catch something of the
terrific spiritual conflict which is at the heart of it.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
--He is trampling out the vineyard where the grapes of wrath are stored.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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