Melle was not a great battle, but it was a victory, "our first victory," said the men proudly, the first canto of their Iliad. And the troops which gained this victory were under fire for the first time. They came from the five ports, mainly from Brittany, which provides four-fifths of the combatants for naval warfare. And the majority of them, setting aside a few warrant-officers, were young apprentices taken from the dépôts before they had finished their training, but well stiffened by non-commissioned officers of the active list and the reserve. The officers themselves, with the exception of the commanders of the two regiments (Captains Delage and Varney), who ranked as colonels, and the battalion commanders (Captains Rabot, Marcotte de Sainte-Marie, and De Kerros, 1st Regiment; Jeanniot, Pugliesi-Conti, and Mauros, 2nd Regiment), belonged for the most part to the Naval Reserve. It was, in fact, a singular army, composed almost entirely of recruits and veterans, callow youths and greybeards. There were even some novices of the Society of Jesus, Father de Blic and Father Poisson,[15] serving as sub-lieutenants, and a former Radical deputy, Dr. Plouzané,[16] who acted as surgeon. The percentage of casualties was very high among the older men at the beginning of the campaign, and this has been made a reproach to them. If a great many officers fell, it was not due to bravado, still less to ignorance of the profession of arms, as has been suggested[17]; but leaders must preach by example, and there is only one way of teaching others to die bravely. We must not forget that their men were recruits, without homogeneity, without experience, almost without training. The _moral_ of troops depends on that of their chiefs. "If you go about speaking to no one, sad and pensive," said Monluc, "even if all your men had the hearts of lions, you would turn them into sheep." This was certainly the opinion of the officers of the brigade, and notably of him who commanded the 2nd Regiment, Captain Varney, "always in the breach," according to an eye-witness, "going on foot to the first lines and the outposts and even beyond them, as at Melle. Here," adds the narrator, "he was on an armoured car, but ... on the step, entirely without cover, to give confidence to his men." One of the officers of his regiment, Lieutenant Gouin,[18] wounded in the foot in the same encounter, refused to go to the ambulance until the enemy began to retreat; Second-Lieutenant Gautier,[19] commanding a machine-gun section, allowed a German attack to advance to within 60 metres, "to teach the gunners not to squander their ammunition," and when wounded in the head, said: "What does it matter, since every one of my 502 bullets found its billet?" Moreover, the chief of these gallant fellows, Rear-Admiral Ronarc'h, had proved himself a strategist on other battle-fields; the Minister's choice was due neither to complaisance nor to chance.