Wandering about alone, as I have been doing a great deal lately, I have
gone into many of the churches and prayed at the different shrines, and
it is impressive to see the character of those who come in to pray. Men
who can never kneel again; men who sit with bandaged eyes before the
lighted altars, for whom all the visions of the world have been blotted
out for ever; the poor women in their little shawls; women in their
crape veils; the man going to the Front; the man who has come back from
it, never to take an active part in life again; and the women who ask
the Mother of Sorrows to remember theirs....
A very agreeable Abbé dined with me last night. He told me that he was
giving absolution to one dying German boy--only sixteen--on the field,
and he put his hand under the boy's head and lifted it, and the boy,
who was delirious, simply said: "Mama, mama, mama!" And the Abbé said
to me: "It is a very curious thing, but in all the dying appeals I have
ever heard, it is always for the _mother_." That return, perhaps, to
the lost childhood--the call just before going to sleep....
One day when I was giving electricity lately at the Ambulance, a poor
little Zouave hobbled in--he had only one leg left--and held up a
maimed hand for me to treat. He was not a very interesting-looking
specimen--rather sullen and discouraged, I thought--but as I looked at
his frail little body and his disfigured hand, I looked at his breast
too. Three medals were on it--the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre,
and the Médaille Militaire--all a man can get! And he was just a little
soldier of Africa--a nondescript man whose name would only be heard at
other times to be forgotten.
Jacquemin.
"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela, mon ami?_"
_Pour mériter tout cela, parbleu!_ He has one leg only, one hand only,
and he has back of him eight months of hospital and eight months of
horror, for his sufferings have been beyond words.
Jacquemin!
Oh, his name is pretty well known now in a certain Sector!
"_Qu'est-ce que vous aves fait pour mériter tout cela?_"
Three medals across that narrow chest!
Well, alone, on a bad night, in storm and rain, he was a volunteer
patrol. Alone, he brought in four German prisoners. He was a volunteer
for six _patrouilles_ of the gravest danger--not always alone, but
always fetching in prisoners and more prisoners. Bad for the Germans.
He carried his superior officer, wounded, out under fire and saved his
life. Then there was a line of trenches where a hundred and fifty-six
men--they know his name: Jacquemin! Jacquemin with the little mongrel
dog always at his heels--a hundred and fifty-six men had eaten nothing
for four days but the sodden bread left in their haversacks. Jacquemin
filled several wagons full of bread and seating himself on the driver's
seat of the first, he drove in that life-giving line under the fire
of shot and shell, right into the very jaws of death. He brought
sufficient supplies to save the line of trenches, for otherwise they
would have had to evacuate them through starvation, as indeed was the
case with others where this gay little Zouave could not reach. Just
the giving of food to the faint and hungry men whose stern faces were
set against death. That act brought him one of those medals across his
breast--I forget which. Finally, the shot and shell which he had braved
so many times was bound to get him, and with his leg and arm almost
shot away he lay for dead amongst the other slain, and they buried him.
They buried Jacquemin. Fortunately or unfortunately--it depends upon
how he regards a life which he will live through henceforth with only
one leg and only one arm--a little bit of his soldier's coat sprouted
out of the ground. (They don't always bury deep on those fields.) And
his dog saw it and smelled and dug and dug, and whined and cried, until
they came and unburied Jacquemin and brought him back.
He is sitting up there at the Ambulance now, and his little dog is
sometimes in the kitchen and sometimes comes up to the wards.
Jacquemin!
"_Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait pour mériter tout cela, mon ami?_"
What countless thousands of them have done, all along those
lines--Englishmen and Frenchmen, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Indians,
Australians, Canadians--hearts and souls and bodies offered up
magnificently and valiantly sacrificed for the greatest Cause for which
humanity has ever fought! Jacquemin brought them bread to the fighting
line; and that great fighting line, by its efforts, is giving bread for
ever to the world....
(Hundreds of these wonderful letters, revealing the great soul of this
American woman, have been gathered into her book which forms one of the
most beautiful insights into the "soul of the war."--EDITOR.)