Messieurs Les Poilus De La Grande Guerre
The word "poilu," now applied to a French soldier, means literally "a
hairy one," but the term is understood metaphorically. Since time
immemorial the possession of plenty of bodily hair has served to
indicate a certain sturdy, male bearishness, and thus the French, long
before the war, called any good, powerful fellow--"un véritable poilu."
The term has been found applied to soldiers of the Napoleonic wars. The
French soldier of to-day, coming from the trenches looking like a
well-digger, but contented, hearty, and strong, is the poilu par
excellence.
The origin of the term "Boche," meaning a German, has been treated in a
thousand articles, and controversy has raged over it. The probable
origin of the term, however, lies in the Parisian slang word "caboche,"
meaning an ugly head. This became shortened to "Boche," and was applied
to foreigners of Germanic origin, in exactly the way that the
American-born laborer applies the contemptuous term "square-head" to his
competitors from northern Europe. The word "Boche" cannot be translated
by anything except "Boche," any more than our word "Wop," meaning an
Italian, can be turned into French. The same attitude, half banter, half
race contempt, lies at the heart of both terms.
When the poilus have faced the Boches for two weeks in the trenches,
they march down late at night to a village behind the lines, far enough
away from the batteries to be out of danger of everything except
occasional big shells, and near enough to be rushed up to the front in
case of an attack. There they are quartered in houses, barns, sheds, and
cellars, in everything that can decently house and shelter a man. These
two weeks of repos are the poilus' elysium, for they mean rest from
strain, safety, and comparative comfort. The English have behind their
lines model villages with macadam roads, concrete sidewalks, a water
system, a sewer system, and all kinds of schemes to make the soldiers
happy; the French have to be contented with an ordinary Lorraine
village, kept in good order by the Medical Corps, but quite destitute of
anything as chic as the British possess.
The village of cantonnement is pretty sure to be the usual brown-walled,
red-roofed village of Lorraine clumped round its parish church or
mouldering castle. In such a French village there is always a hall,
usually over the largest wineshop, called the "Salle de Fêtes," and this
hall serves for the concert each regiment gives while en repos. The
Government provides for, indeed insists upon, a weekly bath, and the
bathhouse, usually some converted factory or large shed, receives its
daily consignments of companies, marching up to the douches as solemnly
as if they were going to church. Round the army continues the often busy
life of the village, for to many such a hamlet the presence of a
multitude of soldiers is a great economic boon. Grocery-shops, in
particular, do a rushing business, for any soldier who has a sou is glad
to vary the government menu with such delicacies as pâtés de foie gras,
little sugar biscuits, and the well- beloved tablet of chocolate.
While the grocery-man (l'épicier) is fighting somewhere in the north or
in the Argonne, madame l'épicière stays at home and serves the
customers. At her side is her own father, an old fellow wearing big
yellow sabots, and perhaps the grocer's son and heir, a boy about twelve
years old. Madame is dressed entirely in black, not because she is in
mourning, but because it is the rural fashion; she wears a knitted
shoulder cape, a high black collar, and moves in a brisk, businesslike
way; the two men wear the blue-check overalls persons of their calling
affect, in company with very clean white collars and rather dirty,
frayed bow ties of unlovely patterns. Along the counter stand the
poilus, young, old, small, and large, all wearing various fadings of the
horizon blue, and helmets often dented. "Some pâté de foie gras, madame,
s'il vous plaît." "Oui, monsieur." "How much is this cheese, maman?"
cries the boy in a shrill treble. In the barrel-haunted darkness at the
rear of the shop, the old man fumbles round for some tins of jelly. The
poilu is very fond of sweets. Sometimes swish bang! a big shell comes in
unexpectedly, and shopkeepers and clients hurry, at a decent tempo, to
the cellar. There, in the earthy obscurity, one sits down on empty
herring-boxes and vegetable cases to wait calmly for the exasperating
Boches to finish their nonsense. There is a smell of kerosene oil and
onions in the air. A lantern, always on hand for just such an emergency,
burns in a corner. "Have you had a bad time in the trenches this week,
Monsieur Levrault?" says the épicière to a big, stolid soldier who is a
regular customer.
"No, quite passable, Madame Champaubert."
"And Monsieur Petticollot, how is he?"
"Very well, thank you, madame. His captain was killed by a rifle grenade
last week."
"Oh, the poor man."
Crash goes a shell. Everybody wonders where it has fallen. In a few
seconds the éclats rain down into the street.
"Dirty animals," says the voice of the old man in the darkest of all the
corners.
Madame Champaubert begins the story of how a cousin of hers who keeps a
grocery-shop at Mailly, near the frontier, was cheated by a Boche
tinware salesman. The cellar listens sympathetically. The boy says
nothing, but keeps his eyes fixed on the soldiers. In about twenty
minutes the bombardment ends, and the bolder ones go out to ascertain
the damage. The soldier's purchases are lying on the counter. These he
stuffs into his musette, the cloth wallet beloved of the poilu, and
departs. The colonel's cook comes in; he has got hold of a good ham and
wants to deck it out with herbs and capers. Has madame any capers? While
she is getting them, the colonel's cook retails the cream of all the
regimental gossip.
These people of Lorraine who have stayed behind, "Lorrains," the French
term them, are thoroughly French, though there is some German blood in
their veins. This Teuton addition is of very ancient date, being due to
the constant invasions which have swept up the valley of the Moselle.
This intermingling of the races, however, continued right up to 1870,
but since then the union of French and German stock has been rare. It
was most frequent, perhaps, during the years between 1804 and 1850, when
Napoleon's domination of the principalities and states along the Rhine
led to a French social and commercial invasion of Rhenish Germany, an
invasion which ended only with the growth of German nationalism. The
middle classes in particular intermarried because they were more apt to
be engaged in commerce. But since 1870, two barriers, one geographic
--annexed Lorraine, and one intellectual--hatred, have kept the
neighbors apart. The Lorrain of to-day, no matter what his ancestors
were, is a thorough Frenchman. These Lorrains are between medium height
and tall, strongly built, with light, tawny hair, good color, and a
brownish complexion.
The poilus who come to the village en repos are from every part of
France, and are of all ages between nineteen and forty-five. I remember
seeing a boy aged only fourteen who had enlisted, and was a regular
member of an artillery regiment. The average regiment includes men of
every class and caste, for every Frenchman who can shoulder a gun is in
the war. Thus the dusty little soldier who is standing by Poste A, may
be So-and-So the sculptor, the next man to him is simple Jacques who has
a little farm near Bourges, and the man beyond, Emile, the notary's
clerk. It is this amazing fraternity that makes the French army the
greatest army in the world. The officers of a regiment of the active
forces (by l'armée active you are to understand the army actually in the
garrisons and under arms from year to year) are army officers by
profession; the officers of the reserve regiments are either retired
officers of the regular army or men who have voluntarily followed the
severe courses in the officers' training-school. Thus the colonel and
three of the commandants of a certain regiment were ex-officers of the
regular army, while all the other officers, captains, lieutenants, and
so forth, were citizens who followed civilian pursuits. Captain X was a
famous lawyer, Captain B a small merchant in a little known provincial
town, Captain C a photographer. Any Frenchman who has the requisite
education can become an officer if he is willing to devote more of his
time, than is by law required, to military service. Thus the French army
is the soul of democracy, and the officer understands, and is understood
by, his men. The spirit of the French army is remarkably fraternal, and
this fraternity is at once social and mystical. It has a social origin,
for the poilus realize that the army rests on class justice and equal
opportunity; it has a mystical strength, because war has taught the men
that it is only the human being that counts, and that comradeship is
better than insistence on the rights and virtues of pomps and prides.
After having been face to face with death for two years, a man learns
something about the true values of human life.
The men who tramp into the village at one and two o'clock in the morning
are men who have for two weeks been under a strain that two years of
experience has robbed of its tensity. But strain it is, nevertheless, as
the occasional carrying of a maniac reveals. They know very well why
they are fighting; even the most ignorant French laborer has some idea
as to what the affair is all about. The Boches attacked France who was
peacefully minding her own business; it was the duty of all Frenchmen to
defend France, so everybody went to the war. And since the war has gone
on for so long, it must be seen through to the very end. Not a single
poilu wants peace or is ready for peace. And the French, unlike the
English, have continually under their eyes the spectacle of their
devastated land. Yet I heard no ferocious talk about the Germans, no
tales of French cruelty toward German prisoners.
Nevertheless, a German prisoner who had been taken in the Bois-le-Prêtre
confessed to me a horror of the French breaking through into Germany.
Looking round to see if any one was listening, he said in English, for
he was an educated man--"Just remember the French Revolution. Just
remember the French Revolution. God! what cruelties. You remember
Carrier at Nantes, don't you, my dear sir? All the things we are said to
have done in Belgium--" But here the troop of prisoners was hurried to
one side, and I never saw the man again. An army will always have all
kinds of people in it, the good, the bad, the degenerate, the depraved,
the brutal; and these types will act according to their natures. But I
can't imagine several regiments of French poilus doing in little German
towns what the Germans did at Nomeny. The backbone of the French army,
as he is the backbone of France, is the French peasant. In spite of De
Maupassant's ugly tales of the Norman country people, and Zola's studies
of the sordid, almost bestial, life of certain unhappy, peasant
families, the French peasant (cultivateur) is a very fine fellow. He has
three very good qualities, endurance, patience, and willingness to work.
Apart from these characteristics, he is an excellent fellow by himself;
not jovial, to be sure, but solid, self-respecting, and glad to make
friends when there is a chance that the friendship will be a real one.
He does not care very much for the working men of the towns, the
ouvriers, with their fantastic theories of universal brotherhood and
peace, and he hates the deputé whom the working man elects as he hates a
vine fungus. A needless timidity, some fear of showing himself off as a
simpleton, has kept him from having his just influence in French
politics; but the war is freeing him from these shackles, and when peace
comes, he will make himself known: that is, if there are any peasants
left to vote.
Another thing about the peasantry is that trench warfare does not weary
them, the constant contact with the earth having nothing unusual in it.
A friend of mine, the younger son of a great landed family of the
province of Anjou, was captain of a company almost exclusively composed
of peasants of his native region; he loved them as if they were his
children, and they would follow him anywhere. The little company, almost
to a man, was wiped out in the battles round Verdun. In a letter I
received from this officer, a few days before his death, he related this
anecdote. His company was waiting, in a new trench in a new region, for
the Germans to attack. Suddenly the tension was relieved by a fierce
little discussion carried on entirely in whispers. His soldiers appeared
to be studying the earth of the trench. "What's the trouble about?" he
asked. Came the answer, "They are quarreling as to whether the earth of
this trench would best support cabbages or turnips."
It is rare to find a French workman (ouvrier) in the trenches. They have
all been taken out and sent home to make shells.
The little group to which I was most attached, and for whose hospitality
and friendly greeting I shall always be a debtor, consisted of Belin, a
railroad clerk; Bonnefon, a student at the École des Beaux-Arts; Magne,
a village schoolmaster in the Dauphiné; and Grétry, proprietor of a
butcher's shop in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Belin and Magne had
violins which they left in the care of a café-keeper in the village, and
used to play on them just before dinner. The dinner was served in the
house of the village woman who prepared the food of these four, for
sous-officiers are entitled to eat by themselves if they can find any
one kind enough to look after the cooking. If they can't, then they have
to rely entirely on the substantial but hardly delicious cuisine of
their regimental cuistot. However, at this village, Madame Brun, the
widow of the local carpenter, had offered to take the popotte, as the
French term an officer's mess. We ate in a room half parlor, half
bedchamber, decorated exclusively with holy pictures. This was a good
specimen menu--bread, vermicelli soup, apple fritters, potato salad,
boiled beef, red wine, and coffee. Of this dinner, the Government
furnished the potatoes, the bread, the meat, the coffee, the wine, and
the condiments; private purses paid for the fritters, the vermicelli,
and the bits of onion in the salad. Standing round their barns the
private soldiers were having a tasty stew of meat and potatoes cooked by
the field kitchen, bread, and a cupful of boiled lentils (known in the
army as "edible bedbugs"), all washed down with the army pinard, or red
wine.
This village in which the troops were lodged revealed in an interesting
way the course of French history. Across the river on a rise was a cross
commemorating the victory of the Emperor Jo vin over the invading
Germans in 371, and sunken in the bed of the Moselle were still seen
lengths of Roman dikes. The heart of the village, however, was the
corpse of a fourteenth-century castle which Richelieu had dismantled in
1630. Its destiny had been a curious one. Dismantled by Richelieu,
sacked in the French Revolution, it had finally become a kind of
gigantic mediaeval apartment house for the peasants of the region. The
salle d'honneur was cut up into little rooms, the room of the seigneur
became a haymow, and the cellars of the towers were used to store
potatoes in. About twenty little chimneys rose over the old, dilapidated
battlements. A haymow in this castle was the most picturesque thing I
ever saw in a cantonment. It was the wreck of a lofty and noble
fifteenth-century room, the ceiling, still a rich red brown, was
supported on beautiful square beams, and a cross-barred window of the
Renaissance, of which only the stonework remained, commanded a fine view
over the river. The walls of the room were of stone, whitewashed years
before, and the floor was an ordinary barn floor made of common planks
and covered with a foot of new, clean hay. In the center of the southern
wall was a Gothic fireplace, still black and ashy within. On the corners
of this mantel hung clusters of canteens, guns were stacked by it, and a
blue overcoat was rolled up at its base. An old man, the proprietor of
the loft, followed us up, made signs that he was completely deaf, and
traced in the dust on the floor the date, 1470.
The concerts were held in the "Salle de Fêtes," a hall in which, during
peace time, the village celebrates its little festivals. It was an ugly,
bare shed with a sloping roof resting on iron girders painted clay
white, but the poilus had beautified it with a home-made stage and
rustic greenery. The proscenium arch, painted by Bonnefon, was
pearl-gray in color and decorated with panels of gilt stripes; and a
shield showing the lictor's rods, a red liberty cap and the letters "R.
F." served as a headpiece. The scenery, also the work of Bonnefon,
represented a Versailles kind of garden full of statues and very watery
fountains. There was no curtain. Just below the stage a semicircle of
chairs had been arranged for the officers of the regiment, and behind
these were wooden benches and a large space for standing room. By the
time the concert was supposed to begin, every bench was filled, and
standing room was at a premium. Suddenly there were cries of "Le
Colonel," and everybody stood up as the fine-looking old colonel and his
staff took their places. The orchestra, composed of a pianist, a few
violinists, and a flute-player, began to play the "Marseillaise." When
the music was over, and everybody decently quiet, the concert began.
"Le Camarade Tollot, of the Théâtre des Variétés de Paris will recite
'Le Dernier Drapeau,'" shouted the announcer. Le Camarade Tollot walked
on the stage and bowed, a big, important young man with a lion's mane of
dark hair. Then, striking an attitude, he recited in the best French,
ranting style, a rhymed tale of a battle in which many regiments charged
together, flags flying. One by one the flags fell to the ground as the
bearers were cut down by the withering fire of the enemy; all save one
who struggled on. It was a fine, old-fashioned, dramatic
"will-he-get-there-yes-he-will-he-falls" sort of thing. "Il tombe," said
le Camarade Tollot, in what used to be called the "oratorical
orotund"--"il tombe." There was a full pause. He was wounded. He rose
staggering to his feet. All the other flags were down. He advanced--the
last flag (le dernier drapeau) reached the enemy--and died just as his
comrades, heartened by his courage, had rallied and were charging to
victory. A tremendous storm of applause greeted the speaker, who favored
us with the recital of a short, sentimental poem as an encore.
The next number was thus announced: "Le Camarade Millet will sound,
first, all the French bugle-calls and then the Boche ones." Le Camarade
Millet, a big man with a fine horseshoe beard, stood at the edge of the
stage, said, "la Charge français" and blew it on the bugle; then "la
Charge boche," and blew that. "La Retraite français--La Retraite boche,"
etc. Another salvo of applause was given to le Camarade Millet.
"Le Camarade Roland."
Le Camarade Roland was about twenty-one or two years old, but his eyes
were old and wise, and he had evidently seen life. He was dark-haired
and a little below medium height. The red scar of a wound appeared just
below his left ear. After marking time with his feet, he began a kind of
patter song about having a telephone, every verse of which ended, "Oh,
la la, j'ai le téléphone chez moi" (I've a telephone in my house). "I
know who is unfaithful now--who have horns upon their brow," the singer
told of surprising secrets and unsuspected affaires de cœur. The silly,
music-hall song may seem banal now, but it amused us hugely then. "Le
Camarade Duclos."
"Oh, if you could have seen your son, My mother, my mother, Oh, if you
could have seen your son, With the regiment"--sang Camarade Duclos,
another old-eyed youngster. There was amiable adventure with an amiable
"blonde" (oh, if you could have seen your son); another with a "jolie
brune" (oh, ma mère, ma mère); and still another leçon d'amour. The
refrain had a catchy lilt to it, and the poilus began humming it.
"Le Camarade Salvatore."
The newcomer was a big, obese Corsican mountaineer, with a pleasant,
round face and brown eyes. He advanced quietly to the side of the stage
holding a ten-sou tin flute in his hand, and when he began to play, for
an instant I forgot all about the Bois-le-Prêtre, the trenches, and
everything else. The man was a born musician. I never heard anything
more tender and sweet than the little melody he played. The poilus
listened in profound silence, and when he had finished, a kind of sigh
exhaled from the hearts of the audience.
There followed another singer, a violinist, and a clown whose song of a
soldier on furlough finished with these appreciated couplets:--
"The Government says it is the thing To have a baby every spring; So
when your son Is twenty-one, He'll come to the trenches and take papa's
place. So do your duty by the race."
In the uproar of cheers of "That's right," and so on, the concert ended.
The day after the concert was Sunday, and at about ten o'clock that
morning a young soldier with a fluffy, yellow chin beard came down the
muddy street shouting, "le Mouchoir, le Mouchoir." About two or three
hundred paper sheets were clutched tightly in his left hand, and he was
selling them for a sou apiece. Little groups of poilus gathered round
the soldier newsboy; I saw some of them laughing as they went away. The
paper was the trench paper of the Bois-le-Prêtre, named the "Mouchoir"
(the handkerchief) from a famous position thus called in the Bois. The
jokes in it were like the jokes in a local minstrel show, puns on local
names, jests about the Boches, and good-humored satire. The spirit of
the "Mouchoir" was whole-heartedly amateur. Thus the issue which
followed a heavy snowfall contained this genuine wish:--
"Oh, snow, Please go, Leave the trench Of the French; Cross the band Of
No Man's Land To where the Boche lies. Freeze him, Squeeze him, Soak
him, Choke him, Cover him, Smother him, Till the beggar dies."
This is far from an exact translation, but the idea and the spirit have
been faithfully preserved. The "Mouchoir" was always a bit more
squeamish than the average, rollicking trench journal, for it was issued
by a group of medical service men who were almost all priests. Indeed,
there were some issues that combined satire, puns, and piety in a
terrifying manner. Its editors printed it in the cellar of the church,
using a simple sheet of gelatine for their press.
I wandered in to see the church. The usual number of civilians were to
be seen, and a generous sprinkling of soldiers. Through the open door of
the edifice the sounds of a mine-throwing competition at the Bois
occasionally drifted. The abbé, a big, dark man of thirty-four or five,
with a deep, resonant voice and positive gestures, had come to the
sermon.
"Brethren," said he, "in place of a sermon this morning, I shall read
the annual exposition of our Christian faith" (exposition de la foi
chrétienne). He began reading from a little book a historical account of
the creation and the temptation, and so concise was the language and so
certain his voice that I had the sensation of listening to a series of
events that had actually taken place. He might have been reading the
communiqué. "Le premier homme was called Adam, and la première femme,
Eve. Certain angels began a revolt against God; they are called the bad
angels or the demons." (Certains anges se sont mis en revolte contre
Dieu; il sont appelles les mauvais anges ou les démons.) "And from this
original sin arrives all the troubles, Death to which the human race is
subjected." Such was the discourse I heard in the church by the trenches
to the accompaniment of the distant chanting of The Wood.
Going by again late in the afternoon, I saw the end of an officer's
funeral. The body, in a wooden box covered with the tricolor, was being
carried out between two files of muddy soldiers, who stood at attention,
bayonets fixed. A peasant's cart, a tumbril, was waiting to take the
body to the cemetery; the driver was having a hard time con-trolling a
foolish and restive horse. The colonel, a fine-looking man in the
sixties, came last from the church, and stood on the steps surrounded by
his officers. The dusk was falling.
"Officiers, sous-officiers, soldats.
"Lieutenant de Blanchet, whose death we deplore, was a gallant officer,
a true comrade, and a loyal Frenchman. In order that France might live,
he was willing to close his eyes on her forever."
The officer advanced to the tumbril and holding his hand high said:--
"Farewell--de Blanchet, we say unto thee the eternal adieu."
The door of the church was wide open. The sacristan put out the candles,
and the smoke from them rose like incense into the air. The tumbril
rattled away in the dusk. My mind returned again to the phrases of the
sermon,--original sin, death, life, of a sudden, seemed strangely
grotesque.
It would be hard to find any one more courteous and kind than the French
officer. A good deal of the success of the American Ambulance Field
Sections in France is due to the hospitality and bon acceuil of the
French, and to the work of the French officers attached to the Sections.
In Lieutenant Kuhlman, who commanded at Pont-à-Mousson, every American
had a good friend and tactful, hard-working officer; in Lieutenant Maas,
who commanded at Verdun, the qualities of administrative ability and
perfect courtesy were most happily joined.
The principal characteristic of the French soldier is his
reasonableness.