A sky that was hung with stars looked down upon the shimmering
roof-tops of Haileybury. The streets were deserted except in the main
thoroughfare, where a group of men were seated in an irregular line,
their pipes glowing in the darkness. They had been there since dusk.
Midnight passed, and the shadowy line was longer as each hour struck.
Men with heavy packs; men with the mud of the northern wilderness still
on their boots; men who had walked for sixty miles; men whose beardless
chins bespoke the schoolboys of a year before; men whose faces would
have looked coarse and cruel in any light but that of the stars; one by
one or in pairs they came. For each there was a yell of welcome, a
ribald jest or two--then silence once more, and the glowing pipes. The
first glimmering streaks of dawn showed the queue in all its
picturesque grotesqueness. The man in front was leaning against a frame
store that bore the placard "Recruiting Office."
Some three thousand miles away, a Hohenzollern Emperor had said that
the British Empire would crumble into disintegration at the first sound
of war. And through the forests of the north and over weary trails men
were staggering on, mile after mile, fearful of one thing only--that
they might be too late to answer the call which had come, from across
the Atlantic, speeding over forests, cities, prairies, lakes, and
mountains until echo answered from the shores of the Pacific Coast.
The early boat from Ville Marie discharged its half-dozen passengers. A
powerfully built French-Canadian strode up the hill and stopped at the
crowd of men. With a worried contraction of his heavy eyebrows he
surveyed the formidable length of the line.
"Godam!" said he.
Heedless of the jests and the comments of the mob, he went slowly down
the line, carefully scrutinizing each man, until he stopped at a
half-breed Indian. For a moment only they argued in French, then he
produced a roll of dollar notes in one hand, and brandished the other
hand threateningly in the half-breed's face. The combined arguments
proved too much; when the enrollment of recruits took place, number
eighteen was Jacque Des Rosiers, sworn to serve His Majesty the King
for the duration of the war and six months afterwards--in witness
whereof he had drawn an inky cross after his name.
It would be difficult to give the exact motive for his action. He
probably had never heard of Belgium, but--well, take horns and tail
from the devil, and what is left?
Three weeks later the company of amateur soldiers were warned to
proceed to the concentration camp. Willing, but puzzled by the
infliction of army discipline, they had struggled past the first
pitfalls of recruitship. For the sake of Captain Douglas Campbell,
their "boss," they had suppressed their grumbling and submitted to the
rites and ceremonies of military routine, arguing that, inexplicable as
it was, it had some connection, however remote, with the ultimate goal
of warfare. The afternoon before their departure Campbell spoke to them
for exactly five minutes. His hair looked redder and his eyes seemed
bluer than before. His powerfully built shoulders and the rhythm of his
muscles lent a grace to his entire body, despite its ruggedness.
"Look here, you fellows," he said, "you signed up to fight--so did I.
We will fight, too, but Kitchener can't use us until we're ready. You
wonder what all this drill is about. Well, here's my idea about it.
There isn't a coward in this crowd; there isn't a man who wouldn't go
down a shaft after a pal, even if the chances were a hundred to one
against his coming back. But you're not ready for the front. You've got
the heart, but your bodies must have training and discipline. Watch me
with this cigarette. In flicking the ash I burn my finger; the next
time I want to touch the ash, my finger avoids it by a quarter of an
inch. I laugh and try again. You all know what I mean. I am not afraid
of the cigarette, but my finger is. If you've ever been kicked in the
leg by a horse, the next time that horse kicks, which of your legs is
drawn back first? In some strange way your body has instincts of its
own, and though you might have a heart like a bull, your muscles and
nerves--your body--might fail you when you needed them most. As I
understand the army system, it is to train you to obey, not only
mentally but physically. Eight months from now we may be lying
half-dead with the enemy's guns playing hell all around us. We may want
to quit, we may be 'all in,' but, if the order comes to advance, we'll
go forward, because our bodies will be disciplined to obey.
"Be patient then, men, and just grin when things go wrong. I would
gladly have gone with you in the ranks, and there are lots of you chaps
better able to lead than I, but a commission was given to me, and I'm
out to do my best with the finest company of men in the Canadian
Expeditionary Force. I'm learning all the time--as you are. You will
have bad times, and so shall I; but let's help each other to laugh and
make the best of it, for, after all, we're just great big children
playing a mighty big game.... And when we reach France we'll show them
all that the old Cobalt gang is afraid of nothing in this world or the
next."
They cheered--and the man who shouted loudest was Jacque Des
Rosiers.... And somewhere in the speech _esprit de corps_ had been
born.