With the French in France and SalonikaDavis, Richard Harding
History
With the French in France and Salonika
Davis, Richard Harding
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
The chauffeur of an army automobile must make his way against cavalry,
artillery, motor-trucks, motor-cycles, men marching, and ambulances
filled with wounded, over a road torn by thousand-ton lorries and
excavated by washouts and Jack Johnsons. It is therefore necessary for
him to drive with care. So he drives at sixty miles an hour, and tries
to scrape the mud from every wheel he meets.
In these days of his downfall the greatest danger to the life of the
war correspondent is that he must move about in automobiles driven by
military chauffeurs. The one who drove me from the extreme left of the
English front up to hill 516, which was the highest point of the French
front, told me that in peace times he drove a car to amuse himself. His
idea of amusing himself was to sweep around a corner on one wheel,
exclaim with horror, and throw on all the brakes with the nose of the
car projecting over a precipice a thousand yards deep. He knew perfectly
well the precipice was there, but he leaped at it exactly as though it
were the finish line of the Vanderbilt cup race. If his idea of amusing
himself was to make me sick with terror he must have spent a thoroughly
enjoyable afternoon.
The approaches to hill 516, the base of the hill on the side hidden from
the Bulgarians, and the trenches dug into it were crowded with the
French. At that point of the line they greatly outnumbered the English.
But it was not the elbow touch of numbers that explained their
cheerfulness; it was because they knew it was expected of them. The
famous scholar who wrote in our school geographies, "The French are a
gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," established a tradition.
And on hill 516, although it was to keep from freezing that they danced,
and though the light wines were melted snow, they still kept up that
tradition and were "gay."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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