IT is told in the chronicles of “The White Company” how the veteran
English archer, Samkin Aylward, was discovered by his comrades one
foggy morning sharpening his sword and preparing his arrows and armor
for battle. He had dreamed of a red cow, he announced.
“You may laugh,” said he, “but I only know that on the night before
Crécy, before Poitiers, and before the great sea battle at Winchester,
I dreamed of a red cow. To-night the dream came to me again, and I am
putting a very keen edge on my sword.”
Soldiers do not seem to have changed in the last five hundred years,
for Tommy Atkins and his brother the _poilu_ have warnings and
superstitions fully as strange as Samkin’s. Some of these superstitions
are the little beliefs of peace given a new force by constant peril,
such as the notion common to the soldier and the American drummer that
it is unlucky to light three cigars with one match; other presentiments
appear to have grown up since the war began. In a recent magazine
two poems were published dealing with the most dramatic of these—the
Comrade in White who appears after every severe battle to succor the
wounded. Dozens have seen him, and would not take it kindly if you
suggested they thought they saw him. They are sure of it. The idea of
the “call”—the warning of impending death—is firmly believed along the
outskirts of No Man’s Land. Let us quote some illustrations from the
Cincinnati _Times_:
“I could give you the names of half a dozen men of my own company who
have had the call,” said Daniel W. King, the young Harvard man, who was
transferred from the Foreign Legion to a line regiment; just in time to
go through the entire battle of Verdun. “I have never known it to fail.
It always means death.”
Two men were quartered in an old stable in shell-range of the front.
As they went to their quarters one of them asked the other to select
another place in which to sleep that night. It was bitterly cold and
the stable had been riddled by previous fire, and the army blanket
under such conditions seems as light as it seems heavy when its owner
is on a route march.
“Why not roll up together?” said the other man. “That way we can both
keep warm.”
“No,” said the first man. “I shall be killed to-night.”
The man who had received the warning went into the upper part of the
stable, the other pointing out in utter unbelief of the validity of a
call that the lower part was the warmer, and that if his friend were
killed it would make no difference whether his death chamber were
warm or cold. A shell came through the roof at midnight. It was a
“dud”—which is to say that it did not explode. The man who had been
warned was killed by it. If it had exploded the other would probably
have been killed likewise. As it was he was not harmed.
A few days ago the chief of an aeroplane section at the front felt a
premonition of death. He was known to all the army for his utterly
reckless daring. He liked to boast of the number of men who had been
killed out of his section. He was always the first to get away on a
bombing expedition and the last to return. He had received at least one
decoration—accompanied by a reprimand—for flying over the German lines
in order to bring down a _Fokker_.
“I have written my letters,” he said to his lieutenant. “When you hear
of my death, send them on.”
The lieutenant laughed at him. That sector of the line was quiet, he
pointed out. No German machine had been in the air for days. He might
have been justified in his premonition, the lieutenant said, on any
day of three months past. But now he was in not so much danger as he
might be in Paris from the taxicabs. That day a general visited the
headquarters and the chief went up in a new machine to demonstrate it.
Something broke when he was three thousand feet high and the machine
fell sidewise like a stone.
It is possible, say the soldiers, to keep bad fortune from following an
omen by the use of the proper talisman. The rabbit’s foot is unknown,
but it is said that a gold coin has much the same effect—why, no one
seems to know. A rabbit’s foot, of course, must be from the left hind
leg, otherwise it is good for nothing, and according to a _poilu_ the
efficacy of the gold piece depends upon whether or no it puts the man
into touch with his “star.” It is said in the New York _Sun_:
Gold coins are a mascot in the front lines, a superstition not
difficult to explain. It was at first believed that wounded men on whom
some gold was found would be better looked after by those who found
them, and by degrees the belief grew up, especially among artillery,
that a gold coin was a talisman against being mutilated if they were
taken prisoners, whether wounded or not.
The Government’s appeals to have gold sent to the Bank of France and
not to let it fall into enemy hands in case of capture has since
reduced the amount of gold at the front, but many keep some coins as a
charm. Many men sew coins touching one another in such a way as to make
a shield over the heart.
“Every man has his own particular star,” a Lyons farm hand said to
Apollinaire, “but he must know it. A gold coin is the only means to put
you in communication with your star, so that its protecting virtue can
be exercised. I have a piece of gold and so am easy in my mind I shall
never be touched.” As a matter of fact he was seriously wounded later.
Perhaps he lost his gold-piece!
_The Sun_ relates another story which indicates the belief that if
the man does not himself believe that he had a true “call” he will be
saved. It is possible to fool the Unseen Powers, to pull wool over
their eyes. To dream of an auto-bus has become a token of death,
attested by the experience of at least four front-line regiments. And
yet a sergeant succeeded in saving the life of a man who had dreamed of
an auto-bus by the use of a clever ruse—or lie, if you prefer. As the
anecdote is told in _The Sun_:
A corporal said he had dreamed of an auto-bus. “How can that be,”
the sergeant asked, “when you have never been to Paris or seen an
auto-bus?” The corporal described the vision. “That an auto-bus!”
declared the sergeant, although the description was perfect. “Why,
that’s one of those new machines that the English are using. Don’t let
that worry you!” He didn’t, and lived!
A regiment from the south has the same belief about an automobile lorry.
But, unfortunately for the scientifically minded, a disbelief in omens
does not preserve the skeptic from their consequences. On the contrary,
he who flies in the face of Providence by being the third to get a
light from one match is certain of speedy death. _The Sun_ continues:
Apollinaire tells how he was invited to mess with a friend, Second
Lieutenant François V——, how this superstition was discussed and
laughed at by François V——, and how François V—— happened to be the
third to light his cigaret with the same match.
The morning after, François V—— was killed five or six miles from the
front lines by a German shell. It appears that the superstition is that
the death is always of this nature, as Apollinaire quotes a captain of
a mixed _tirailleur_ and _zouave_ regiment as saying:
“It is not so much the death that follows, as death no longer is a
dread to anyone, but it has been noticed that it is always a useless
form of death. A shell splinter in the trenches or, at best, in the
rear, which has nothing heroic about it, if there is anything in this
war which is not heroic.”