In Picardy,
January 1915.
The road lies amid a malevolent heath. It seems to lead us right into
the clutch of the enemy; for the star-shells, that at first were
bursting overhead, gradually encircle us. The fields are strangely
sinister; the splintered trees are like giant toothpicks. There is a
lisping and a twanging overhead.
As we wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing
station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical
vibrations. Then a small shadow detaches itself from the greater
shadow, and a gray-bearded sentry says to me: "You'd better come in out
of the bullets."
So I keep under cover, and presently they bring my load. Two men drip
with sweat as they carry their comrade. I can see that they all three
belong to the Foreign Legion. I think for a moment of Saxon Dane. How
strange if some day I should carry him! Half fearfully I look at my
passenger, but he is a black man. Such things only happen in fiction.
This is what I have written of the finest troops in the Army of France: