Yellow to the Core, But too Brave for the Firing Squad.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, 1 December 1919, Page 69

Yellow to the Core, But too Brave for the Firing Squad.

fHE place was the ballroom of the old chateau near Fere-en-Tardenois, in the valley of the Ourcq river. The time was half-past 4 upon a sticky August afternoon.

Outside a battery of 155’s, planted in the sycamore groove, was belching away, the vibrations of the heavy charges shaking plaster from the walls of the building. Inside a gray-haired American general was pacing the floor, wearing the livery of absolute nonchalance, yet he had landed in France but two months before. He came of the profession of war in a direct line back to Valley Forge. Now and then he would pause in his stride and pick up some trinket around the room —a lacquered snuffbox from the low Louis XIV. carved stand, a silver candlestick from the mantel over the fireplace, or a venerable print from a pile of odds and ends in the corner —tenderly replacing them with a gesture of compassion. He wondered to himself if the owner of the chateau had survived the southward Marne rush of the Germans in June. The locusts had left an ugly trail behind them. He invariably called them “locusts” fortheir destructiveness and green-gray uniforms. They were running now, he mused. He chuckled and brought his mind to the pressing affairs of his division of olive-drab wildcats. “There’s that case of Corporal Ford, eh?” he snapped at the judge advocate of the division up from the rear echelon to report upon the weekly grist from the court-martial mill. The military code ever follows the army into the very hall of death. “Get the papers,” quietly said the young judge advocate to his orderly. He was of the reserves and quite accustomed to being snapped at by the regular army. “Does the major know we sent them to corps headquarters?” replied the orderly in the third person vernacular of the army. Out in civil life back across the sea the . major had been managing clerk in his father’s law office. He ventured, “Ford was never found, sir.” “What, never found?” roared the general at the judge advocate. I tell you the army is fast going to the dogs.” “Yes; we mean that our M. P. s failed to land Corporal Ford,” explained the major. He was sure the army had not gone to the dogs. Smilingly he went on: “We put a special A. W. O. L. order out for him Paris, Nancy and even the seaports of St. Nazaire and Brest were searched in vain. Got away. Vanished.”

“Lucky for him,” reflected the division commander. “I had decided to make an example of that youngster. Yellow to the core.” The general glanced casually through the tall French windows into the Italian garden, just at that moment in a Vesuvius state of eruption. An enemy 220 pill burst with a deafening roar, shattering every pane of glass upon that side of the chateau. Pausing to lift a signal corps telephone to his ear, the general spoke to his artillery brigade commander: “Did you hear that one? Touch up their back areas with a little gas. They are getting our range.” As if there had been no interruption, the old fire-eater resumed to the major before him: “Actually, I would have paid a substantial reward out of my own pocket to put Ford before a firing squad—yellow to the core. Had his captain back to give me the exact facts. Why, he jeopardised the whole attack. Threw down his rifle, left the first wave and, calling upon his platoon to follow, ran toward the S. O. S. like a madman. Morale of his company bad ever since There have been several instances of self-inflicted woundings in the battalion. As for h.'s regiment, it has lost its pep. See what the example of one coward do!” The general halted in. He pulled aside a pair of verm, ion curtains opening into a faded goldpainted salon, where his chief staff with two aides bending over a map

spread across a badly scratched grand piano were arranging for the next morning’s attack. Calling: “I am told by our liaison officers we will have some French ‘les terribles tauriaux’ on our right. These territorials move in to-night. Better send word out to our men they are French, although they are in mustard uniforms. Like as not our friends will give us an exposed right flank to look after.” Another mournful sound in the air. Modern shells say a requiem mass for their victims. This incomer crashed directly outside the window and buried its ugly brown nose in the soft earth alongside a rose bush in bloom. It was a dud, one of those shells which fail to explode; “a song without words,” the division wag had said.

“Humph!” growled the general, squaring back into the large room and addressing his judge advocate. “If I stay around here there will be a new C.O. on the job. I am short of an aide. Come along and we will talk in the car. I want to look over our first-line positions before dark. Like to get the day’s map in my eye. We will crack our whip again before sun-up to-morrow. I want you to get that coward —I say, yellow to the core.”

Burr-r-r —and quick as a flash, the general in his glass case with olive drab mountings was a cloud of canary dust up the new road his engineers had built in the wake of his advancing infantry.

It was still night. Dawn was fast approaching. You who know wartime France —France, and this does not mean Paris —are probably familiar with the after-dark scenes along the great cross-country highways back of the front in the summer months of 1918, when the Germans had pierced the French railway lines at several points. Mars prepares in the pitchy blackness and either strikes or hides in the half-lights of early morning. Marshal Foch’s magic skill was as a master of secret movement, getting men and materials over no matter what obstacles into new position, ready for sudden and unexpected operations. Gaunt outlines were silhouetted in the tree-bordered road on the south bank of the Marne from Meux toward La Ferte-sous-Jouarce; twelve miles of infantry and artillery intertwined with queues of supply waggons. A muffled voice at the head of the eastbound column from a small motor car gave the command: “Halte! Arbitezvous.” It was passed back. Then ceased the shuffling of feet, indicating the resting of many marchers. There was the clicking of harness relaxing from the strain of pulling cannon and heavily-loaded vehicles. No lights, no talking; a deathly silence, for four years of war had made the veterans cautious. The hills of the Marne valley hereabouts

are covered with woods and vineyards. A French division was about to take cover off the road in the towns and under the trees away from the river for the next twelve hours of daylight. It had come from somewhere in the line -west of Paris and was going to —only the high command knew where, and his wishes had not arrived.

Near the hamlet of Trilport, half a mile from a large town of Meaux, the river takes a sharp curve, over which bend is a long stone bridge, whose grim, gloomy shadows were reflected in the historic waters of blood as a strange, unkempt figure crept out from the shelter of its south end, a human, bent and cring-

ing. Very prudently he crawled up the bank and a pale face peered into the road. The features were youthful and good, but the eyes contained a worn, frightened look. They seemed to burn through the slowlyrising mist with a terror of their own; and in their haunted, shifty stare was expressed hunger as -well as fear. “Qui vive?” (“Who goes there?”) came a sharp voice from the opposite side of the road. The person from under the bridge violently trembled, but seemed to take instant comfort from the fact that he was addressed in French. He staggered weakly across the highway, but shivered in a fresh fright when he saw the mustard uniforms of a group of soldiers. For days now he had been in hiding—since July IS, the day of the electric counter-attack of the allies north of the Marne — hiding away from everybody who wore any kind of a uniform. Mustard and olive drab are near colours. He saw the yellow, his legs gave out and he fell unconscious; exhausted from pusillanimity and lack of food. “Soldat Americaine,” commented a French caporal (corporal), after making it a certainty by flashing an electric light upon the stranger. He added, “Aidez-moi a le porter” (“Help me to carry him”). A dozen comrades rushed up, and the stranger was lifted. “Ou?” (“Where?”) asked one. “Le cafe! La!” (“The cafe! There!”) ordered the corporal, pointing to a little restaurant which overhung the edge of the river but a few hundred yards distant, now plain to be seen in the rapidly arriving daylight. Upon a shield fastened over its portal was painted, “Hotel de I’Epee.” They carried him into a small room, of which the furniture was a bar and long tables parelleled with wooden benches. A wine glass of cognac brandy was poured down his throat, and half an hour later he was seated upright against the wall, his back protected by a pillow with a blue plate holding a large yellow omelet before him. It is remarkable the explaining others can do for you if you only let them. Those who doubt this should get into trouble some time, keep a still tongue in their heads and listen to all the ingenious excuses their friends will advance for them. Far more plausible than your own brain could invent. Unable to speak or understand a word of French save “Ah! Oui,” the stranger soldierAmerican artlessly admitted he was in the last big battle north of Chateau Thierry, that he had been wounded and was on his way back from the hospital to rejoin his regiment when taken ill at the bridge. They said it, and he affirmed, not knowing it. This was at the time in France when every American soldier was popularly supposed to be a hero; just as before the war, and now, when every American is considered a millionaire. A chic mademoiselle with carmine lips and black sparkling eyes under two dense coils of blue-black hair, bombarded him with attention. As she moved gracefully around the tables serving “pinard” to the French soldiers, the glow of the morning spread like an aureole around her vibrant young beauty, the American seemed to feel a new thrill of life coursing his veins. When the last of her own countrymen had been served she came and sat with him, bringing a battered English-French dictionary to help their acquaintance. He quivered with a strange emotion at the French words she picked out for him to see their English equivalents; “vaillant,” “courageaux,” “heros,” “grand,” “brave” and a lot other of the like. She would select a word and then point her finger at him with an emphatic “vous.” Through it all, cold chills ran his spine at thought of the dreaded possibility of some American soldiers entering the room. “I wonder if she knows,” he muttered to himself from the well of guilty conscience. No, of course not. One glance into the frank depths of her eyes allayed his fears. He read absolute adoration there. He quickly and rightly surmised that he was the first American soldier she had seen. Her name she told him was Margot. He. said it after her, and like a lozenge it left in his mouth a delicious taste, one he had never known before. It proved to be the longest as well as the shortest day of his experience. Every hour or so the door would fly back and new comrades in amber

garb would enter to shake hands with the “brave Americaine.” Margot’s mother, rotund, with a shrewd head to the business of having such an attraction for her place, cooked him a dinner of “rognon” (kidneys), with three vegetables, and it was delicious. Dusk came all too soon. Pondering upon his predicament, the American concluded that his safest plan would be to stick with his newfound friends. They were marching that night. True, he might remain for a few days at the cafe. But he had no money and a welcome

wears out. Then there was the constant apprehension of other American soldiers finding him there. He could not risk such a discovery. So assuming a bravado foreign to his usual nature and which thrilled him with pleasant surprise, he clapped the French corporal on the back and tried out four French words he had laboriously pieced together from the borrowed dictionary: “J’allez vous” (“I go with you.”) “Bravo!” responded the French soldier, and communicating it on there were cheers from the others. They carried him on their shoulders from the cafe as they had elected to hide him in their unit as a sort of mascot. As he took a place in the column with a French soldier comrade upon either side he had not the faintest idea of where he was going. Nobody knew. That is how it always is in the army—destination undisclosed almost until arrival. Before the start was made Margot came rushing from the cafe. She came straight for him. Throwing her arms around him she gave him a resounding kiss. Had he not understood the French character he might have surmised it was for France and not for him. In his hand she quickly pressed something and then ran back to her mother. It was her photograph. He tucked it in his blouse pocket and stepped boldly out with the rest into the mysterious night. Until that mustard-coloured division took the north fork of the highway at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre in the direction of Montreuil-aux-Lions the movement could have meant most anything. Several of the soldiers began to hum the “Madelon.” They were stopped by their officers. However, the turn settled the question of immediate events among the (French poilus. “Les terribles tauriax” were going into battle somewhere near the Americans, and they were glad. To the American volunteer in their midst came this certain knowledge shortly after midnight when the French division swept around the ruins of Chateau Thierry and took the direction of Fere-en-Tardenois. He wondered why his heart did not beat faster. Under another similar circumstance it had, and from timidity. Now he felt like an Atlas supporting an entire world. He could not fathom the change. Perhaps it was because he had suffered so much

from remorse. He was a corporal himself on that other occasion, with the welfare of only a score of men depending upon him. At present he was the guest of a French shock unit with the job of upholding their continued respect for all America. Nothing easier for him to do than shirk again. Simply drop off. He put aside the unworthy temptation. He felt no inclination to desert again. He reasoned it out. He was sure it wasn’t the girl in the cafe. Maybe she helped give him strength. He recalled how differently he felt the

last time he was going in. It was not the brandy, the effects of which had worn off hours before. The dull muffled roar up the road, with its spectacle of successive sunsets upon the horizon, now seemed a great voice calling to him. At this point the cycle of his reflections was interrupted by the sense of another column moving along the same direction, an American division. Should he speak? No! They would seize him and send him to the rear. He would be shot. Then it would be too late for self-rehabilitation. He hoped the Americans would get on and leave him with his new friends, comrades who believed in him. Now he had it. He was buoyed up by the faith of the men around him. Both columns stumbled into a thick forest. The Americans turned to the

left, and the French to the right. After two hours’ rest the territorials moved quietly and swiftly into the first-line positions, relieving a badlyshattered French division of horizon blues. It was unusual to march men all night and then fight them, but the certainty of the surprise to the enemy was the gain.

One of the French soldiers gave a rifle to the American, another handed him a gas mask. He was in a sort of ecstatic daze. The artillery preparation was on and the noise was ear-racking. It ceased and the bar-

rage curtain of 'fire for the attack began, accompanied by the fretful ripple of the machine guns. He felt like a man born again. Only those who have been in it know the thrills of a great attack—the nearest thing to Judgment Day speculation man has produced. All that he had learned at the training camps instantly came back to him. He was the he-man that he always wanted to be. Out surged the first French wave yelling like demons, with the lone American volunteer, erect and heroic, on the extreme left of the line, striding in their advance, a pace-maker, and of all things he was singing, “Hail! Hail! the Gang’s All Here!” at the top of his lungs.

“Held us up forty-five minutes, you say?” questioned the division com-

mander savagely. His new P.O. was in a railroad culvert under an embankment and the cobwebs had got in his gray eyebrows. “Yes,” replied his chief of staff, who had time to talk, as each of the day’s objectives had been won. “The trouble was at the end of the woods on our extreme right—enemy had a machine-gun nest in a natural crater of rocks. We simply could not dislodge them.” “Then we exposed the left flank of the French division?” said the American general regretfully. “Not for long,” said the other. “Would have but for an American lad with blue eyes and wavy hair, who, strangely enough, was toting along with their first wave. He saw our fix, and after the French had passed us hanged if he didn’t cross over and double-back on the rear of the enemy group that was blocking us. He picked off the Germans one by one. Then our boys rushed the position,. Their rescuer was bumped off before they got to him, shot through the forehead.” The usually phlegmatic chief of staff quavered in his voice slightly as he added: “Here’s all they found on him.” The general examined the photograph of a very pretty girl, upon the back of which was written: “Bon chance! Mon brave Americaine.” “Who was he?” he asked. Probably some A.W.O.L. who lost his way into the fight, as he had no identification tag,” said the chief of staff. “These runaways often throw away their tags to prevent the M.P.’s making a case against them if caught. I have asked brigade headquarters to telephone the instant his body is identified. That is the brigade ringing now.” “Let me take the message,” said the general, reaching for the transmitter, continuing into the telephone: “Yes —this is division headquarters. What! Say that name again. You are sure of it? Well, I am damned! Telephone the name to the rear echelon and say that there will be no necessity for a court-martial, also for the judge advocate to get back the records from corps headquarters, and tear them up. Have the statistical bureau furnish me—yes, it is the division commander speaking—with his next of kin and address.” As the general went forward to examine another chateau suggested for his next P.C. he was heard to mutter: “And I thought him a coward yellow to the core.”