Here again is a lad, a young soldier of the last class of 1916 sent to
the front. He is almost a child, but he has the patience and courage of
a man. A terrible wound in the spine, cutting it open to the marrow,
did not cause him to despair. To his weeping parents he said: "Don't
weep, dearest mother, I shall recover, I shall get well, I shall go
home with you, to be your little boy again," and in panting voice he
went on to praise the skill of the doctors, the tenderness of the
infirmière, saying, "Yes, she hurts me terribly at times, so I must cry
out, but she is so good, so kind, I forgive her when the dressing is
over."
Further on, a man with a shattered shoulder suffers atrociously, but
tells me with a cheerful grin that he is glad to have seen it, to
have found himself surrounded by Germans with raised arms shouting
"Kamerad!" One of the lady visitors offering to be his amanuensis (as
he cannot write), he accepted with joy, and then, blushing, said: "But
you see, Madame, it is a bit difficult, I am accustomed to calling
my wife by a pet name; if I began my letter otherwise she would not
believe it was from me."
"Yes, and how do you wish it to begin?" asked the lady. "Well, Madame,
I always called her 'my little Rat'."
"All right, here goes for 'my little Rat'."
One more instance: A pale, emaciated man of middle age, with both hands
amputated, suffering a martyrdom without a murmur, without a reference
to what happened to him on the battlefield, accepts with gentle
politeness the cakes and chocolates offered to him. Seeing a large
letter on his bed, I asked if he had news from home. "No, madame, it is
from the government announcing that I am decorated with the Médaillé
Militaire and the Croix de Guerre. Please read it to me."
"N———, cannon-servant, was admirable for devotion and sang froid;
when a shell wrecked his cannon and killed all his companions,
severely wounded himself in both hands, he remained at his post alone,
notwithstanding his atrocious pain, to guard the remains of his
companions and his cannon."
To people upheld by such ideals, inspired with such patriotism, to
whom France means all that is sacred and beautiful, "defeat cannot
come." Until the detested enemy has been thrown across the Rhine, no
suggestion of peace would be welcome; they will even call on the dead
to defend their beloved land, as witnessed in the following story,
vouched for by General Zurlinden, from whom I have also obtained some
of the above facts:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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