The German armies, at this time, were throwing themselves against our
barricade of steel and fire along the Marne; and by every possible
avenue, they were hurrying forward munitions and guns and all supplies.
They gave little thought to the stragglers in the forests behind them.
They knew that stragglers are not dangerous to an organized force. It
is only when the stragglers organize that they become a peril.
Jacques Fontaine had organized these stragglers. At dawn, on the third
day after that first rendezvous, he flung his men upon a wagon train
that threaded one of the forest roads.
This train was escorted by a troop of some five score Uhlans; it was
upon a road which was guarded by patrols of three and four men stationed
at every farm. Yet in a dip between two hills, the single Uhlan in
advance found his way blocked by felled trees in the road, and at the
same time other trees, cut almost through and held erect by ropes until
the appointed time, crashed down upon his comrades behind.
With the crashing of these trees was mingled the crashing discharge of
two hundred rifles. And after the first discharge, out of a hundred
troopers scarce fifty remained upon their horses; and after the second
volley, not thirty men were still unharmed. And after the third, there
were only fugitive Uhlans galloping headlong back to give the alarm.
Before these fugitives were out of sight, Jacques Fontaine and his men
flung themselves upon the loaded wagons. The two foremost wagons bore
cartridges. They laid open the boxes with axe and bayonet; and they
plunged in their hands.
It was hopeless to attempt to make away with the wagons themselves.
Thick forest lay on every hand. Therefore, by Jacques’ order, each man
took all the cartridges he could bear, and raced back into the wood, and
hid the precious things between rocks, and beneath logs, and in every
cranny he could find; and when he had disposed of his burden he returned
and took as many more as he could carry. The men filled their pockets,
their belts, their pouches, their hats.... Some of them dropped the
cartridges inside the legs of their trousers, so that the things hung
heavy about their knees. And when this was done, of the two wagon loads,
no cartridges remained.
The men took also the rifles and revolvers of the fallen Germans; and
they stripped their own few dead of weapons. And then they slipped into
the forest, and scattered, and fled away.
The hunt began within the hour; and for a week, the men were chivvied
through the woods like hares. Dogs bayed upon their trails; they hid in
caves, in trees, in the thick-growing underbrush; they lay for hours in
the pools with only mouth and nose and eyes exposed above the water. And
some of them were shot, and some were taken alive.... And some took
Germans with them when they died.
Lupec was one of those who was captured. On the fourth day, weary and
utterly exhausted, he fell asleep in a crevice beneath two boulders; and
a German stumbled on him. His captor took him, at gun point, back
through the forest toward a cross-road where the Germans were encamped.
When they came in sight of this place, his captor halted to stare, and
Lupec also looked. The Germans were busy; they were engaged in hanging
three Frenchmen by the necks to a beech tree beside the farmhouse there.
Lupec had no desire to thrust his wry-neck into a noose. Therefore he
turned, and plunged into the man who had captured him, and knocked the
man down. Even then he found time to snatch up the German’s rifle and
turn and fire; and he saw the German officer who was watching the
hangings pitch drunkenly forward on his saddle. So that Lupec was
grinning as he plunged into the forest again.
He made good his escape; and thus he was able to bring to Jacques
Fontaine, when the pursuit relaxed, the word of the hangings.
The big farmer was displeased with this news; because you understand, my
friends, he had reconstituted the regiment, so that he considered that
he and his comrades were soldiers of France, and as such entitled to
better treatment than a noose. He frowned blackly at Lupec’s report; and
he sent out men to discover if there had been other hangings.
They found that eleven Frenchmen had been murdered in this fashion,
gentlemen; and Jacques Fontaine nodded at this, and made a calculation
upon his fingers. He was slow at figures, you understand; but he knew
what he wished to do. He made his calculation; and he sent out his men
to the farms and the cross-roads, and he gave them careful orders....
They obeyed him so well, my friends, that on the second day after he was
able to hang twenty-two Germans, two for each Frenchman, upon the same
tree where the men of his regiment had been hung.
When the Germans discovered these pendant figures, looking like sacks of
old clothes in their dirty, baggy uniforms, they were violently
wrathful; and for two weeks more the forests were scoured in an effort
to exterminate the remnants of the regiment.
But there were no more Frenchmen hanged.
V
To understand the history of the four years which followed, gentlemen,
it is necessary to understand the man Jacques Fontaine; it is necessary
to understand the spirit of Frenchmen. It is necessary, in short, to
comprehend France.
I believe I may be forgiven for holding that valor is a trait of most
Frenchmen. And by valor I do not mean the bravery which can be taught,
which is merely a form of habit. You may take the most craven material
and teach it the habit of obedience, and you have what passes for a
brave soldier; but the Frenchman is valorous before he is a soldier, and
he is valorous when he is no longer a soldier. The whining beggar has
valor; so has the peasant, and the comfortable bourgeois, and the man of
birth and breeding. You will find it universally, my friends.
This is perhaps because the French are the great phrase-makers of the
world. The turn of a phrase comes easily to them; and the turn of a
phrase captivates and conquers them, so that they will die for it.
Danton made a phrase that saved France. Verdun made another. Combine the
two, my friends, and you have the spirit of France. Dare--and yield not.
The valor of France is the valor that will die rather than violate those
mighty phrases....
Thus I say Jacques Fontaine was valorous. Bravery is a tangible thing;
valor defends the intangible. Bravery is steadfast, and it is sensible.
Valor may be foolhardy. Valor is a form of pride. And Jacques Fontaine
was proud. Thus, when the Germans hanged men of the regiment, he hanged
Germans. He would have done the same, knowing that he himself must be
hanged forthwith thereafter. For valor does not consider consequences.
But Jacques Fontaine was not only valorous; he was thrifty. And it was
the combination of these two characteristics that enabled him to
survive. It is this same combination which has enabled France to
survive, my friends. She is valorous; but she is thrifty. She is
audacious; but she is pre-eminently logical. Thus Jacques Fontaine;
valorous and thrifty, audacious and logical.
Thrift was bred in him. It was thrift which enabled him to survive and
keep his regiment alive. He saved supplies, munitions, guns, men.... He
had no other belongings save the things of war; therefore he hoarded
these things, and when his stores ran short, he secured fresh supplies.
When his stores ran short, he foraged through the land, and he raided
the German trains. When munitions threatened to fail, he watched his
opportunity to replenish them. When guns wore out, he got new ones. And
when the wastage of these operations, the unceasing perils of this life
reduced the numbers in his command, he attacked and liberated a convoy
of prisoners and recruited his regiment once more.
Through it all, he kept careful records of his regimental life. These
records show that at one time, this man and his tattered remnant of a
regiment possessed three German machine guns, four hundred rifles, and
almost fifty thousand cartridges. Besides clothing, and stores of food,
all hidden in caches in the forest depths.
It was inevitable that he should be hunted. There were at least four
determined attempts by the Germans to exterminate the regiment. One of
these occupied six weeks; it cut the roll from a hundred and eighty men
down to less than sixty; it reduced weapons and supplies to a minimum;
and for the full six weeks, the men saw each other only now and then, in
groups of two or three. For this was the secret of their survival; they
scattered before the hunt, they became units, as difficult to find as
the beasts of the forest in which they dwelt.
Yet always they survived. That is to say, a nucleus of men always
survived; and the regiment could never die. The regimental colors were
never captured; the regimental records were never found. And Jacques
Fontaine, and Lupec, and a handful of others of the original regiment,
preserved themselves and held the rest together.
Picture it to yourselves, my friends, if you can; this handful of men,
cohering, enduring; and all around them by the hundred thousand, the
enemy. Behind every tree, a possible rifle; in every wood, a potential
ambush; in every comrade, the danger of a spy....
There were three spies in the regiment during those four years. The
first was suspected and killed before he had reached the rendezvous.
The second was detected on the third day when he stiffened at a barked
command in German. The third, alone, was clever; he deceived them, he
lived among them, he learned their plans, and when the chance came, he
brought down a German force upon the rendezvous when almost the full
command was there.
But Jaques Fontaine had never grown careless; he had made it a rule from
the beginning to post twenty guards in a wide circle about the Ravine of
the Cold Tooth when the regiment was assembled. And one of these guards
escaped the attempt to overcome him, and gave warning just in time. The
regiment flung out of the ravine, broke boldly through the jaws of the
German trap, left half its strength in German hands ...
But the remnant escaped, and lived.
In the winter of 1915, this regiment was reduced to twenty-seven men.
The next winter, at the time of the great hunt, when the men were
tracked through the snow, they were cut down to fifty-four. The fall of
1917 was the time of the spy; and some seventy men went through that
winter like the beasts, some of them nursing wounds for months on end.
They stirred from their hiding places only once, and that was when they
cut off a German patrol in which the spy rode, and took him from his
comrades and hanged him to the beams of a barn.
They had been forced to leave the Ravine of the Cold Tooth, since the
Germans knew that spot; they hid now under the shoulder of one of the
little mountains. And there, that winter and the next spring, their
numbers grew again....
They had ninety men in March; and the friendly peasants brought to them
by devious ways soldiers of England and of France who were cut off in
the great offensive of that year, so that in May they numbered a hundred
and fifty men; and in June, close to two hundred.... And the Germans
were too much concerned with other matters to divert so much as a
regiment to run them down....
When in due time the hour came for them to fulfil their destiny, my
friends, this regiment which Jacques Fontaine had kept alive numbered
three hundred and ninety men, with rifles for all, and two machine guns,
and cartridges to feed those clamoring things.... And Jacques prepared
to strike his blow for France.