Six weeks later. A cold and gloomy morning. After having been at
Tien-Tsin, Pekin, and other places, where so many strange and gloomy
things have come to our notice, here we are back again at Ning-Hia,
which we have had time to forget; our boat has gone back to its old
moorings, and we return to the French fort.
It is cold and dull; autumn, which is so severe in these parts, has
brought with it sudden frosts; the birches and willows have lost all
their leaves, and the sky is cold and lowering.
The Zouaves who are living in the fort, and who came so light-heartedly
only a month ago to take the place of our sailors, have already buried
some of their number, who died of typhus or were shot. This very
morning we have paid the last honors to two of them, killed by Russian
balls in a particularly tragic manner, all the result of a mistake.
The sandy roads strewn with yellow leaves are solitary. The Cossacks
have evacuated their camps and disappeared to the other side of the
Great Wall, in the direction of Manchuria. The agitation of the earlier
days is over, as well as the confusion and the joyous crowds; all
have gone into winter quarters in the places assigned to them, and as
the peasants of the vicinity have not returned, their villages are
abandoned and empty.
The fort, though still ornamented with Chinese emblems, now bears
a French name; it is called "Fort Admiral-Pottier." As we entered
trumpets resounded for the admiral, and the Zouaves, ranged under
the guns, looked with respectful sorrow at their chief, who had just
honored with his presence the funeral services of two soldiers.
As soon as we cross the threshold we feel quite unexpectedly as though
we were on French soil; it would be hard to say by what spell these
Zouaves have made of this place and its surroundings in one short
month, something which is like a bit of home.
There have been no great changes; they have been content with
removing Chinese filth, with putting the war supplies in order, with
whitewashing their quarters, and with organizing a bakery where the
bread has a good smell, and a hospital where the many wounded, alas,
and the sick, sleep on very clean little camp beds. All this at once
and quite inexplicably creates a feeling that one is in France again.
In the court of honor in the centre of the fort, in front of the door
leading to the room where the mandarin is enthroned, two gun-carriages
stand, unharnessed. Their wheels are decorated with leaves and they
are covered over with white sheets, upon which are scattered poor
little bouquets fastened on with pins. They are the last flowers from
the neighboring Chinese gardens,--poor chrysanthemums and stunted
roses touched by the frost, all arranged with touching care and kindly
soldierly awkwardness, for the dead comrades who lie there on these
carriages in coffins covered with the French flag.
It is a surprise to find this vast mandarin's room transformed by the
Zouaves into a chapel. A strange chapel truly! On the whitewashed
walls the vests of Chinese soldiers are fastened up and arranged like
trophies with sabres and poniards, while the candlesticks that stand on
the white altar-cloth are made of shell and bayonets,--thus naïvely and
charmingly does the soldier know how to manage when he is in exile.
A military mass begins with trumpet blasts that make the Zouaves fall
upon their knees; mass is said by the chaplain of the squadron, in
mourning dress,--a mass for the dead, for the two who are asleep on
the wagons near the door decorated with late flowers. From the court
Bach's Prelude, played on muffled brass, rises like a prayer, the
dominant note in this mingling of home and foreign land, of funeral
service and gray morning.
Then they depart for a near-by enclosure which we have turned into a
cemetery. Mules are harnessed to the heavy gun-carriages, the admiral
himself leading the procession along the sandy paths where the Zouaves
form a double row, presenting arms.
The sun does not pierce the autumn clouds that lower this morning over
the burial of these children of France. It is cold and gloomy, and the
birches and willows of the desolate country continue to drop their
leaves upon us.
This improvised cemetery, surrounded by so much that is exotic, has
also taken on a French air,--no doubt because of the brave home names
inscribed on wooden crosses that mark the new-made graves; because
of pots of chrysanthemums brought by comrades to these sad mounds of
earth. And yet just beyond the wall which protects our dead, that
other wall which rises and is indefinitely prolonged into the gray
November country, is the Great Wall of China; and we are in exile far,
frightfully far from home.
Now the coffins have been lowered, each one to its hole, adding to
the already long row of new-made graves; all the Zouaves approach in
serried rank while their commandant recalls in a few words how these
two fell.
"It was not far from here. The company was marching without suspicion
in the direction of a fort from which the Russian flag had just been
hoisted, when suddenly balls began to rain like hail. The Russians
behind their ramparts were new-comers who had not seen the Zouaves,
and who mistook their red hats for the caps of the Boxers. Before they
recognized their mistake several of our men lay on the ground; seven,
one of them a captain, were wounded, and these two were dead. One of
them was the sergeant who waved our flag in an effort to stop the
firing."
Then the admiral addresses the Zouaves, whose eyes, all in a row, are
filled with tears; and as he steps forward upon the pile of loose earth
so that he may reach the graves with his sword, and says to those who
lie there, "I salute you as soldiers for the last time," a real sob is
audible, heartfelt, and unrestrained, from the breast of a big hearty
fellow who looks to be not the least brave among those in the ranks.
* * * * *
Beside all this, how pitifully, how ironically empty are many of the
pompous ceremonies at official burials with their fine discourses!
In these times of weakness and mediocrity, when nothing is sacred and
the future is full of fear, happy are they who are cut down where
they stand; happy are they who, young and pure, fall for the sake of
adorable dreams of country and of honor, who are borne away wrapped in
the modest flag of their country and greeted as soldiers with simple
words that bring tears to the eyes.