_With the Twenty-second Regiment of Dragoons_
_Told by Lieut. Christian Mallet, of the Dragoons_
This famous 22nd regiment of Dragoons was raised in 1635 and
took part in all the great wars in which the French were engaged
before the Revolution. It fought under the Republic and then
with Napoleon's armies--at Austerlitz (1805); Jena (1806); Eylau
(1807); Oporto (1809). It saw service with the Army of the Sambre
and Meuse, the Army of the Rhine, the Grande-Armee, in the War in
Spain, the Campaign in Saxony, the Campaign in France (1814). The
regiment was disbanded in 1815 at the close of the Napoleonic Wars
and was not raised again until 1873. The first great charge of the
22nd Dragoons in the Great War occurred on the night of September
10-11, 1914. It has since been fighting heroically "For France and
Civilization." Lieut. Mallet has fought his way up in the ranks
with the Dragoons. He presents the unconquerable spirit of France
in his book: "Impressions and Experiences of a French Trooper."
It is dedicated: "To my Captain, Count J. de Tarragon, and to my
two comrades, 2nd Lieut. Magrin and 2nd Lieut. Clère--who fell all
three on the field of honour in defense of their country." One of
his stories is recorded herewith by permission of his publishers,
_E. P. Dutton and Company_: Copyright 1916.
[1] I--STORY OF PEASANT GIRL ON THE YSER
The battle finished (September 10, 1914) the pursuit of the conquered
army commenced and kept the whole world in suspense, with eyes fixed on
this headlong flight towards the north, which lasted till the end of
the month, and which was to be the prelude of the great battles of the
Yser.
The region round Verberie was definitely cleared of Germans and was
become once more French. The little town for some days presented an
extraordinary spectacle.
We entered the town after having received the formal assurance of the
5th Chasseurs, who went farther on, that all the country was in our
hands. Some divisional cyclists were seated at the roadside. We asked
them for news of the 22nd, and their reply wrung our hearts. They knew
nothing definite, but they had met a country cart full of our wounded
comrades, who had told them that the regiment had been cut up.
No one could tell us where the divisional area was to be found. The
division itself appeared to have been dismembered, lost and in part
destroyed. We thought that we were the only survivors of a disaster,
and, once the horses were in shelter in an empty abandoned farm
stuffing themselves with hay, we wandered sadly through the streets
destroyed by bombardment and by fire in search of such civilians as
might have remained behind during the invasion.
A little outside the town we at last found a farm where two of the
inhabitants had stayed on. The contrast between them was touching.
One was a paralysed old man unable to leave his fields, the other was
a young girl of fifteen, a frail little peasant, and rather ugly.
Her strange green eyes contrasted with an admirable head of auburn
hair, and she had heroically insisted on looking after her infirm
grandfather, though all the rest of the family had emigrated towards
the west. She had remained faithful to her duty in spite of the
bombardment, the battle at their very door and the ill-treatment of
the Bavarian soldiers who were billeted in the farm. Distressed, yet
joyous, she prepared a hasty meal and busied herself in quest of food,
for it was anything but easy to satiate eleven men dying of hunger when
the Germans, who lay hands on everything, had only just left.
She wrung the neck of an emaciated fowl which had escaped massacre,
and, by adding thereto some potatoes from the garden, she served us
a breakfast, washed down with white wine, which made us stammer with
joy, like children. One needs to have fasted for five days to have
felt the cutting pains of hunger and of thirst in all their horror, to
appreciate the happiness that one can experience in eating the wing
of a scraggy fowl and in drinking a glass of execrable wine tasting
like vinegar. She bustled about, and her pitying and motherly gestures
touched our hearts. While we ate she told us the most astonishing story
that ever was, a story acted, illustrated by gestures, which made the
scenes live with remarkable vividness.
She told us how, faithful to her oath, she was alone when the Bavarians
came knocking at her door, how she lived three days with them, a butt
for their innumerable coarsenesses, sometimes brutally treated when the
soldiers were sober, sometimes pursued by their gross assiduities when
they were drunk; how one night she had to fly half naked through the
rain, slipping out through the venthole of the cellar, to escape being
violated by a group of madmen, not daring to go to bed again, sleeping
fully dressed behind a small copse; how at last French chasseurs had
put the Bavarians to flight and had in their turn installed themselves
in the farm, and how among them she felt herself protected and
respected.
She attached herself to her new companions, whom she looked after like
a mother for three days. Then they went away, promising to return, and
she was left alone.
But the next day at dawn, uneasy at the row that came from the town,
she decided to go in search of news. She put on a shawl and slipped
through the brushwood and thickets as far as the first houses. She was
afraid of being seen, and made herself as small as possible, keeping
close to the walls, crossing gardens and ruined houses. The terrible
noise increased, and she went towards it. She wanted to see what was
going on, and a fine virile courage sustained her. The shells fell near
her; no matter, she had only a few more steps to go to turn the corner
of a street. She arrived on the _place_ as the battle was finishing.
Her fifteen chasseurs were there, fifteen corpses at the foot of the
barricade. One of them, who still lived, raised himself on seeing her,
and held out his arms towards her. Then, forgetting all danger, in a
magnificent outburst of feminine pity, she braved the rain of fire and
dashed to the centre of the _place_. She knelt by the young fellow,
enveloped him in her shawl to warm him and rocked him in her arms till
he closed his young eyes for ever, thankful for this feminine presence
which had made his last sufferings less bitter.
While she remained kneeling on the pavement wet with blood, a last big
calibre shell knocked over, almost at her feet, a big corner house,
which in its fall buried the German and French corpses in one horrible
heap. She fell in a faint on the stones, knocked over by the windage of
the shell, which had so nearly done for her.
During the latter part of her discourse she straightened her thin
figure to the full, her strange eyes sparkled, and she appeared to be
possessed by some strong and mysterious spirit which made us tremble.
She became big in her rustic simplicity--big, as the incarnation of
grief and of pity, and of the peasant in her gave place to a living
image of the war--an image singularly moving and singularly beautiful.