_By_ FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD
From _The Bookman_
_Copyright, 1918, by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc._
_Copyright, 1919, by Frances Gilchrist Wood._
An orderly ushered two officers of the Foreign Legion, young men in
mud-stained khaki, through the door of a dugout back of the fighting
line in France. As they entered the hut a French officer in horizon
blue, equally muddy, rose and returned the American’s salute.
“You will be seated?” He pushed camp chairs toward them.
A guttering candle, stuck in a bottle neck, veiled rather than revealed
the sordid interior. The light flickered across the young Frenchman’s
face, threw gaunt shadows under his eyes emphasized the look of utter
weariness and—there was something more.
The senior officer of the Legion, Captain Hailes, looked at him keenly.
“Major Fouquet, we report at headquarters in an hour, sir. Lieutenant
Agor, commanding platoon at extreme right—contact platoon with your
battalion, sir, reports we lost touch with the French forces between the
advance and the first trench. Thought it might have been his watch, but
the timepiece checks up to a second.”
The captain hesitated uneasily, “We are not presuming to question, sir,
but Lieutenant Agor says he saw—we felt there might have been some
cause, some reason that did not appear, so we came—”
The Frenchman lifted his head in a stupid way altogether foreign to his
usual manner.
“Merci, Captain Hailes. We were—forty seconds slow in attacking the
first trench, sir.” He went on mechanically as if delivering a rehearsed
report. “Caught up and reached the second trench on time. Few prisoners
besides the children. Enemy practically wiped out.”
He concluded heavily, a dazed look blotting all expression.
“There was a cause for the forty seconds delay, Major?”
Fouquet struggled up out of the curious apathy. He cleared his throat,
made several attempts to speak and finally blurted out.
“You won’t believe it—I saw it and I cannot! But there are the
children—and a first-line trench full of dead Huns—without a mark on
them! Barres was flying over us—he saw the Battalion—knew them for old
comrades. The women—all of them saw the faces of their dead! I don’t
believe it, sir,—but how did we do it? The women never thrust once in
the first trench—the children haven’t a wound—that’s got to prove it!”
He stopped abruptly—looking from one to the other with a gesture of
hopeless protest. The Americans regarded him with puzzled eyes.
“Was it some new trick of the Huns? God knows they’ve given them to us
in plenty! Can you tell us—it might—?”
Fouquet pulled himself forward, his knuckles whitening with his grip of
the table edge.
“You know the history of the section of the Front the Avengers retook
to-day?”
“No, Major Fouquet. We came in later, with the Canadians.”
“It began with the great retreat of 1914, sir, when the Germans were
driving us back toward Paris. They had crowded our army against the
river. Between the slow crossing and their terrible artillery fire, new
to us then, we faced annihilation!”
There was a rustle at the door of the dugout and a whispered password.
Fouquet did not pause.
“To the —nth Battalion was given the honor of acting as rear guard. Ah,
sir,—” his voice steadied—guttural with pride and emotion, “our men
stood like a barricade of rock against which the waves of German
infantry dashed themselves, only to break and be withdrawn for
re-formation. Each receding wave showed where it had bit into the red
and blue barrier, for we were wearing the old uniform then, but the bits
slid together, closing up the gaps to stand against the next flood. When
the eroded wall went down, undermined and over-whelmed at last, the main
army of France was across the river and safe.
“Only two of us lived to rejoin our army, Lieutenant Barres and myself.
Barres’s leg was shattered, hopelessly crippling him for the infantry,
but when the wounds healed—France could not spare so brave a man, so
they strapped him to the seat of a plane in the winged section of the
army, where he is still fighting!”
The sharp click, click of crutches tapped across the floor as Barres of
the Aviation Squad came into the fringe of light. He saluted, then broke
in upon Fouquet’s story.
“But you do not tell them, mon camarade, but for you I would have died
with the rest! He does not tell you, sir, that he put his own chance of
escape into peril by dragging me—a helpless burden—with him!”
He looked at Fouquet with an anxious frown, “I thought there might be
enquiry about to-day. You are—?”
A look flashed between them, the love of men who have faced death
together.
“Yes, Barres, I shall need you. It is the history of the Avengers I am
telling—to explain—”
He turned to the Americans.
“In the years of struggle that came after the retreat, our women of
France have taken the places of men behind the lines, while our soldiers
held the Front. But when Russia freed herself the news filtered through
the provinces that the women of Russia when the revolution needed them
formed themselves into the Battalion of Death. We also heard that German
women were in the army.
“Then the flame of a common inspiration touched the widows of the —nth.
They sought and found each other and petitioned as their right that they
be entered and drilled as the —nth Battalion of Avengers.
“Military objections refused them again and again, but the women stood
as firm in their purpose as their men who had held the post of rear
guard. Always they asked, Why should France be left a nation of
sorrowful women only? Let the widowed women of the —nth take the place
of men in the chance of death—they would welcome it—and so save men to
France.
“At last they were accepted and trained. Each added to her equipment a
small packet of cyanide of potassium as her Russian sisters had taught
her. One further request they made, that the position assigned to them
might be in the course of the advance to retake the ground held to the
death by their men. To me was given the great honor to be their
commander.”
He drew himself up with pride. “They have justified their petition for
enlistment, sir, they wear the strap of a battalion commended for
bravery. We have been fully trusted to hold our share of the Front in
safety.”
As if at the significance of his own words his head dropped, then lifted
again grimly.
“It was for to-day’s work that this battalion was assembled and trained
to invincibility. We need no one to interpret the meaning of the Front
to us, but to the women—to retake this strip of ground sodden with the
blood of the rear guard barricade built of their men, meant being given
the denied rite of closing glazed eyes, the crossing of arms on rigid
breasts, the lighting of candles at head and feet and the last kiss on
frozen lips. They were mad for it—not in revenge but to right a wrong.”
Fouquet’s voice thrilled, “That is the history, sir, and the temper of
the Battalion of Avengers who held the trench at your right!
“When the order came for attack to-day, they waited, taut as arrows in
held bowstrings, at the foot of the ladders for the signal to go over
the top. Like shafts released they sprang up the sides of the ditch.
There was sure death to the Hun in every gripped bayonet as they bent to
follow the barrage of fire across the craters and snarled wire of No
Man’s Land.
“No human sound comes through the hell of battle artillery and yet we
knew the strangling gasp that ran the length of the line as the
protective barrage made its final jump, lifted and showed us the trench
we were to take. The women stood as motionless as the corpses of the old
—nth!
“Thrust shield-wise above the heads of the Huns, crowning the ditch as
with protective spikes, frightened and sobbing, cowering before us were
hundreds of little children!”
Fouquet’s chair went spinning back as he leaned across the table.
“God! men—they knew! The devil tells them! They knew this section was
held by women! For us to hold the Front—our share of the Front—these
mothers must bayonet their way through crying, helpless babies!”
His groan found gasping echo.
“They were children of the French villages held by the Germans—we could
tell! Some of them had been shot by the last of our barrage fire after
the Huns had shoved them over the top. It was hell to see the children’s
torn bodies writhing—we’re used to it with men! The smallest—babies—were
clinging to the older ones—children of five or six—trying to
hide—between the Huns and—us!
“If we went on—took the ditch—these mothers must cut through a barricade
of children! If we did not go on, we betrayed our trust, lost our share
of the Front—let the Huns behind the lines through a gap made by the
failure of the women of the —nth!
“We seemed to stand there for hours, but it was only a second. The Huns
had thrust their guns between the children, and were holding their
fire—the devilish cat and mouse game!
“Then one of the women captains stumbled forward and made the sign of
the cross. It is the voiceless battle cry of the Avengers and signs
supreme sacrifice for all the Front means. She lifted her right hand in
the sweep of victory—on her wrist was bound the packet of death they
carry in case of capture by the kultur beasts—and fell, for the Huns
opened fire the instant they saw her gesture.
“But the message had gotten over! They could charge—they must—and the
cyanide would erase the intolerable memory forever! I looked at those
nearest and saw they would go through with it, but men—their faces were
set with the look of the face of Christ on the cross!”
He stopped, breathing heavily, and looked from one American to the
other.
“You won’t believe it—I saw it and I cannot—but the proof is there! As
the women gripped to thrust, leaning forward as if to force rebellious
bodies toward that barricade, there swept down upon us from the rear or
above, a sudden striding mist—a battalion of marching shadows in a blur
of the old red and blue that outstripped the Avengers’ advance. There
was a flash of charging steel and the waving colors of the old —nth as
they swept over the untouched children into the trench.
“It’s all a blur, sir, I can’t tell you clearly, but they turned their
faces as they passed and—we knew our dead. You could see the women cry
out and lift their arms, each to her own man as he halted an instant
beside her.
“Madame Arouet was sobbing as if caught by a bullet, ‘Jean—Jean!—to have
seen you again! Ah, my God!’ The tall corporal, just beyond, threw
herself with high piercing scream—arms outstretched—toward the smiling
shadow that was passing.
“The bravest man in the old —nth, where all were brave, dropped behind
as he bent over the fallen captain. There was a quivering smile of
recognition just as the jerking heap settled into quiet; then, as if he
waited for it, a slender blur in horizon blue sprang to his side and
swept forward with the Battalion—though the captain still lay where she
had fallen!”
Fouquet gripped his comrade, arm and crutch together, with a cry.
“Did you see our brave captain salute as he passed? Joyously I shouted
as I fell into step beside him, but—I dropped back—I could not keep that
pace! Barres—Barres—you saw them? You must have seen them? It was the
old —nth come back to save their women from the last hellish trap set by
fiends! We know they had the right. This was their battleground where
once before they had saved an army of France!”
Lieutenant Agor was leaning across the table with staring eyes:
“Then—that was what I—saw, sir?” He turned to his commander, “I told you
it was like the fog blowing in off Frisco bay, and—”
Captain Hailes half rose, “My lieutenant said he lost you when a mist
obscured the contact platoon. He said he saw—I—thought it was shell
shock—I meant to send him behind the lines—”
Barres shook his head slowly as he caught Fouquet about the shoulder.
“_Mon ami_—I saw—I know! Very low I flew over the gap to-day when it
broke and widened. I felt the White Battalion first, rushing through the
planes—then I saw them—a mist of the old red and blue with wondrous
swords!” His voice sank low, “From above I saw one who led them—a
shining one who, even as we have read, smote the camp of the Assyrians”.
“It was the old —nth that followed. I knew them!” His voice caught. “Did
you see the rascals in the third squad goose-stepping as they closed in
on the Hun?” With a break of unsteady laughter, “It was always their
final joke with the German, sir, before they got him. No one could break
them of it! Fouquet—we know! It was the old —nth, our White Battalion!”
“A White Battalion!” Agor repeated the words slowly, still staring.
The aviator shifted his crutch and drew himself erect. “_Mes amis_, the
Huns fling the taunt that France has been bled white! To us it means a
White Army—a crowding host killed in battle—the red life of gallant
youth given so gloriously that it cannot die!
“And France bled white!... We know,” the words halted, “the country for
which we went to war is maimed—scarred—she can never again be the same
France, but—” his lifted face gleamed through the dim light, “our battle
cry has changed! We no longer fight ‘_Pour la Patrie!_’ but ‘_Pour le
Droit!_’—the right that is greater than country!”
With a sharp intake of breath he turned to his comrade. Fouquet’s
protesting look was gone. With the sure touch of reality he picked up
the story.
“It was all over in a breath, sir—like a mist swirling along the
trenches shot through with phantom steel, and we knew our work was being
done. When it lifted—the ditch lay motionless!
“The women had dropped on their knees with their arms about the
children. We passed the poor little ones through to the rear in charge
of the wounded.
“The first trench was piled with dead—unmarked dead! The communicating
tunnels were cleared or quiet; that was how we made up the forty seconds
and followed the barrage on time to the second ditch.
“I looked down the line as we made ready for the second charge. Not a
Hun cried ‘Kamarad!’ or tried to surrender when they saw the faces of
the Avengers. The second ditch was piled with nearly as many dead as the
first—marked dead! The Avengers and the White Battalion had retaken the
ground for which the —nth had given their lives.
“That is all, sir,” the gaunt figure in mud-stained blue straightened,
“excepting that the fouling Beast is going in the end—we know! He cannot
stand against the unconquerable dead. And when we march through Berlin,
the White Armies will march at the head of the column—” he lifted his
hand in salute, “_Pour le Droit!_”
The crippled aviator balanced on crutches as he brought up his hand.
“_Pour le Droit!_”
Noiselessly the men of the Foreign Legion pushed back their chairs and
stood at salute. Silently they faced each other in a long moment of
understanding. The major in blue dropped his arm and with smiling eyes
gripped the hand of the man in khaki.
He flung open the door of the dugout, humming the Song of France in
marching time. The young officers, French and American, fell into step
together.
“Gentlemen—to Headquarters!”
The lilting voices filled the low room to the accent of marching feet.
“_Allons, enfants de la patrie,_
_Le jour de gloire est arrivé!_”