True Stories of the Great War, Volume 6 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
History
True Stories of the Great War, Volume 6 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
At the end of the show they invited me to fill out their automobile
on the morrow. Nearly every other motor had been commandeered by the
authorities for the "Service Militaire" and bore on the front the
letters "S. M." Our car was by no means in the blue-ribbon class. It
had a hesitating disposition and the authorities, regarding it as more
of a liability than an asset, passed it over.
But the correspondents counted it a great stroke of fortune to have any
car at all; and, that they might continue to have it, they kept it at
night carefully locked in a room in the hotel. They had their chauffeur
under like supervision. He was one of their kind, and with the cunning
of a diplomat obtained the permit to buy petrol, most precious of all
treasures in the field of war. Indeed, gasoline, along with courage and
discipline, completed the trinity of success in the military mind.
II--STORIES OF THE WAR PHOTOGRAPHERS IN BELGIUM
With the British flag flying at the front, we sped away next morning
on the road to Termonde. At Melle we came upon the blazing cottages
we had seen pictured the night before. Here we encountered a roving
band of Belgian soldiers who were in a free and careless mood and
evinced a ready willingness to put themselves at our disposal. Under
the command of the photographers, they charged across the fields with
fixed bayonets, wriggled up through the grass, or, standing behind the
trenches, blazed away with their guns at an imaginary enemy. They did
some good acting, grim and serious as death. All except one.
This youth couldn't suppress his sense of humor. He could not, or would
not, keep from laughing, even when he was supposed to be blowing the
head off a Boche. He was properly disciplined and put out of the game,
and we went on with our manoeuvers to the accompaniment of the clicking
cameras until the photographers had gathered in a fine lot of realistic
fighting-line pictures.
One of the photographers sat stolidly in the automobile smoking his
cigarette while the others were reaping their harvest.
"Why don't you take these too?" I asked.
"Oh," he replied, "I've been sending in so much of that stuff that I
just got a telegram from my paper saying, 'Pension off that Belgian
regiment which is doing stunts in the trenches.'"
While his little army rested from their manoeuvers the
Director-in-Chief turned to me and said:
"Wouldn't you like to have a photograph of yourself in these
war-surroundings, just to take home as a souvenir?"
That appealed to me. After rejecting some commonplace suggestions, he
exclaimed: "I have it. Shot as a German Spy. There's the wall to stand
up against; and we'll pick a crack firing-squad out of these Belgians.
A little bit of all right, eh?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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