COVERED WITH MUD AND GLORY [Illustration: “HE’S HIT,” SERGEANT LACE CRIES SUDDENLY. AND INDEED HE IS HIT. _See page 101_] COVERED WITH MUD AND GLORY _A Machine Gun Company in Action_ (“MA MITRAILLEUSE”) BY GEORGES LAFOND SERGEANT-MAJOR, TERRITORIAL HUSSARS, FRENCH ARMY; INTELLIGENCE OFFICER, MACHINE GUN SECTIONS, FRENCH COLONIAL INFANTRY _With a Preface by_ MAURICE BARRÈS _of the French Academy_ _Translated by_ EDWIN GILE RICH INCLUDING “A TRIBUTE TO THE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE” BY GEORGES CLEMENCEAU [Illustration] BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1918 BY SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. To the Memory of MY COMRADES of the second company of machine guns of the ... first Colonials who fell at the battle of the Somme in July, 1916, and of the Aisne in April, 1917; To LIEUTENANTS MAISONNAVE AND DUPOUY in remembrance of the hours of fine, sincere comradeship we lived together; To DENYS MAURIN the quartermaster-sergeant, wounded heroically before Soissons, in testimony of a sincere friendship which was born under shell-fire, which grew amid the horrors of grim madness, and which was firmly fixed through sharing common hopes and common joys; _I dedicate these simple pages_ which are only a modest contribution to the monumental narrative which these anonymous epics of every day would make A TRIBUTE TO THE SOLDIERS OF FRANCE BY GEORGES CLEMENCEAU I watch our blue-uniformed men at war, as they pass with a friendly and serious look, generously covered with mud. This is the artillery—slow marching—which is moving its cannon under a fantastic camouflage, a mockery of reality. A glistening slope of soaked earth is set in a frame of shattered trees, twisted into indescribable convulsions of anguish with the gaping wounds inflicted by the storm of iron. On their horses, already covered with winter shag, the poilus, slouched in all sorts of positions, having no suggestion of the rigid form of the manœuvre, are going from one battlefield to another without any other thought except that of just keeping on going.