Part 22

With each "Crack! Il tombe des obus," the big bass-drum boomed like the shell he sang of. His voice was as tense and metallic as a taut string, and he snapped out the lilting line in swift staccato as if he were flaying his audience with a whip. Man after man on the hillside took up the irresistible rhythm in an undertone, and "Cracked" with the singer. In front of me was being created a folk-song. The bitterness and glory of their life were being told to them, and they were hearing the singer gladly. Their leader was lifting the dreary trench night and death itself into a surmounting and joyous thing.

"When you've made your entrenchment, then you must go and guard it without preliminaries. All right; go ahead. But just as you're moving, you have to squat down for a day and a night--yes, for a full twenty-four hours--because things are hot. Somebody gives you half a drop of coffee. Thirst torments you. The powder-fumes choke you."

Here and there in the crowd, listening intently, men were stirring. The lad was speaking to the exact intimate detail of their experience. This was the life they knew. What would he make of it?

"Despite our sufferings, we cherish the hope some day of returning and finding our parents, our wives, and our little ones. Yes, that is my hope, my joyous hope. But to come to that day, so like a dream, we must be of good cheer. It is only by enduring patience, full of confidence, that we shall force back our oppressors. To chase away those cursed Prussians--Crack! We need the obus. My captain calling, 'Crack! More, still more of those obus!' Giving them the bayonet in the bowels, we shall chase them clean beyond the Rhine. And our victory will be won to the waltz of the obus."

It was a song out of the heart of an unconquerable boy. It climbed the hillock to the top. The response was the answer of men moved. His song told them why they fought on. There is a Belgium, not under an alien rule, which the shells have not shattered, and that dear kingdom is still uninvaded. The mother would rather lose her husband and her son than lose the France that made them. Their earthly presence is less precious than the spirit that passed into them out of France. That is why these weary men continue their fight. The issue will rest in something more than a matter of mathematics. It is the last stand of the human spirit.

What is this idea of country, so passionately held, that the women walk to the city gates with son and husband and send them out to die? It is the aspect of nature shared in by folk of one blood, an arrangement of hill and pasture which grew dear from early years, sounds and echoes of sound that come from remembered places. It is the look of a land that is your land, the light that flickers in an English lane, the bells that used to ring in Bruges.

+----------------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcribers note: In the original and html version this poem is| |centered, in this text is is rendered flat to the margin. | +----------------------------------------------------------------+

LA VALSE DES OBUS

Chers amis, je vais Vous chanter des couplets, Sur la guerre, A l'Yser. Pour vous faire savoir, Que la vie, tous les soirs, Aux tranchees, N'est pas gaie. A peine arrive, 'l Faut aller travailler. Qu'il fasse noir' ou qu'il y ait clair de lune, Et sans fair' du bruit, Nous allons pres de l'ennemi, Remplir des sacs pour fair' des abris.

Ir et IIe Refrain

Chaqu' fois que nous sommes aux tranchees, Crack! Il tombe des obus.

Nous sommes tous la, le dos courbee Crack! Encore un obus. Les shrapnels pour nous divetir, Au travail, nous font deguerpir. Mais, et qui nous ennuie le plus, Crack! se sont les obus.

L'abri termine, 'l Faut aller l'occuper, Sans facons. Allez-donc. Pas moyen d' se bouger Donc, on doit y rester Accroupi, Jour et nuit, Pendant la chaleur, Pour passer vingt-quatr' heures. On nous donn' une d'mi gourde de cafe. La soif nous tourmente, Et la poudre asphyxiante, Nous etouffe au dessus du marche.

III

Malgre nos souffrances, Nous gardons l'esperance D' voir le jour, De notr' retour De r'trouver nos parents, Nos femmes et nos enfants. Plein de joie, Oui ma foi, Mais pour arriver, A ce jour tant reve, Nous devons tous y mettre du coeur, C'est avec patience, Et plein de confiance, Que nous repouss'rons les oppresseurs.

Refrain

Pour chasser ces maudits All'mands Crack! Il faut des obus. En plein dedans mon commandant, Crack! Encore des obus. Et la baionnett' dans les reins, Nous les chass'rons au dela du Rhin. La victoire des Allies s'ra due A la valse des obus.

There is little value in telling of suffering unless something can be done about it. So I close this book with an appeal for help in a worthy work.

REMAKING FRANCE

There was a young peasant farmer who went out with his fellows, and stopped the most powerful and perfectly equipped army of history. He saved France, and the cause of gentleness and liberty. He did it by the French blood in him--in gay courage and endurance. He was happy in doing it, or, if not happy, yet glorious. But he paid the price. The enemy artillery sent a splinter of shell that mangled his arm. He lay out through the long night on the rich infected soil. Then the stretcher bearers found him and lifted him to the car, and carried him to the field hospital. There they had to operate swiftly, for infection was spreading. So he was no longer a whole man, but he was still of good spirit, for he had done his bit for France. Then they bore him to a base hospital, where he had white sheets and a wholesome nurse. He lay there weak and content. Every one was good to him. But there came a day when they told him he must leave to make room for the fresher cases of need. So he was turned loose into a world that had no further use for him. A cripple, he couldn't fight and he couldn't work, for his job needed two arms, and he had given one, up yonder on the Marne. He drifted from shop to shop in Paris. But he didn't know a trade. Life was through with him, so one day, he shot himself.

That, we learn from authoritative sources, is the story of more than one broken soldier of Joffre's army.

To be shot clean dead is an easier fate than to be turned loose into life, a cripple, who must beg his way about. Shall these men who have defended France be left to rot? All they ask is to be allowed to work. It is gallant and stirring to fight, and when wounded the soldier is tenderly cared for. But when he comes out, broken, he faces the bitterest thing in war. After the hospital--what? Too bad, he's hurt--but there is no room in the trades for any but a trained man.

Why not train him? Why not teach him a trade? Build a bridge that will lead him from the hospital over into normal life. That is better than throwing him out among the derelicts. Pauperism is an ill reward for the service that shattered him, and it is poor business for a world that needs workers. If these crippled ones are not permitted to reconstruct their working life, the French nation will be dragged down by the multitude of maimed unemployable men, who are being turned loose from the hospitals--unfit to fight, untrained to work: a new and ever-increasing Army of The Miserable. The stout backbone and stanch spirit of even France will be snapped by this dead-weight of suffering.

In our field hospital at Fumes, we had one ward where a wave of gaiety swept the twenty beds each morning. It came when the leg of the bearded man was dressed by the nurse. He thrust it out from under the covering: a raw stump, off above the ankle. It was an old wound, gone sallow with the skin lapped over. The men in the cots close by shouted with laughter at the look of it, and the man himself laughed till he brought pain to the wound. Then he would lay hold of the sides of the bed to control his merriment. The dressing proceeded, with brisk comment from the wardful of men, and swift answers from the patient under treatment. The grim wound had so obviously made an end of the activity of that particular member and, as is war's way, had done it so evilly, with such absence of beauty, that only the human spirit could cover that hurt. So he and his comrades had made it the object of gaiety.

For legless men, there are a dozen trades open, if they are trained. They can be made into tailors, typists, mechanicians. The soldiers' schools, already established, report success in shoemaking, for instance. The director sends us this word:--

"From the first we had foreseen for this the greatest success--the results have surpassed our hopes. We are obliged to double the size of the building, and increase the number of professors.

"Why?

"Because, more than any other profession, that of shoemaking is the most feasible in the country, in the village, in the small hamlet. This is the one desire of most of these wounded soldiers: before everything, they wish to be able to return to their homes. And all the more if a wife and children wait them there, in a little house with a patch of garden. Out of our fifty men now learning shoemaking, twenty-nine were once sturdy farm laborers. The profession is not fatiguing and, in spite of our fears, not one of our leg-amputated men has given up his apprenticeship on account of fatigue or physical inability."