lted on, drawing out for transports, for ambulances and ammunition
wagons, the two French officers spoke of the heroism of their men.
They told me, one after the other, of brave deeds that had come under
their own observation.

"The French common soldier is exceedingly brave--quite reckless," one
of them said. "Take, for instance, the case, a day or so ago, of
Philibert Musillat, of the 168th Infantry. We had captured a
communication trench from the Germans and he was at the end of it,
alone. There was a renewal of the German attack, and they came at him
along the trench. He refused to retreat. His comrades behind handed
him loaded rifles, and he killed every German that appeared until they
lay in a heap. The Germans threw bombs at him, but he would not move.
He stood there for more than twelve hours!"

There were many such stories, such as that of the boys of the senior
class of the military school of St. Cyr, who took, the day of the
beginning of the war, an oath to put on gala dress, white gloves and a
red, white and blue plume, when they had the honour to receive the
first order to charge.

They did it, too. Theatrical? Isn't it just splendidly boyish? They
did it, you see. The first of them to die, a young sub-lieutenant, was
found afterward, his red, white and blue plume trampled in the mud,
his brave white gloves stained with his own hot young blood. Another
of these St. Cyr boys, shot in the face hideously and unable to speak,
stood still under fire and wrote his orders to his men. It was his
first day under fire.

A boy fell injured between the barbed wire in front of his trench and
the enemy, in that No Man's Land of so many tragedies. His comrades,
afraid of hitting him, stopped firing.

"Go on!" he called to them. "No matter about me. Shoot at them!"

So they fired, and he writhed for a moment.

"I got one of yours that time!" he said.

The Germans retired, but the boy still lay on the ground, beyond
reach. He ceased moving, and they thought he was dead. One may believe
that they hoped he was dead. It was more merciful than the slow dying
of No Man's Land. But after a time he raised his head.

"Look out," he called. "They are coming again. They are almost up to
me!"

That is all of that story.

CHAPTER XVIII

FRENCH GUNS IN ACTION

The car stopped. We were at the wireless and telephone headquarters
for the French Army of the North. It was a low brick building, and
outside, just off