They had marched out from the south of Paris
since the day before,--thirty-six miles,--without an idea that the
battle was going on the Marne until they crossed the hill at Montry and
came in sight of its smoke. I tell you their faces were wreathed with
smiles when they discovered that we knew the Germans were retreating.
Such talks as I listened to that afternoon--only yesterday--at my gate,
from such a fluent, amusing, clever French chap,--a bicyclist in the
ambulance corps,--of the crossing the Meuse and the taking, losing,
re-taking, and re-losing of Charleroi. Oddly enough these were the
first real battle tales I had heard.
It suddenly occurred to me, as we chatted and laughed, that all the time
the English were here they had never once talked battles. Not one of
the Tommies had mentioned the fighting. We had talked of "home," of the
girls they had left behind them, of the French children whom the English
loved, of the country, its customs, its people, their courage and
kindness, but not one had told me a battle story of any kind, and I had
not once thought of opening the subject. But this French lad of the
ambulance corps, with his Latin eloquence and his national gift of humor
and graphic description, with a smile in his eyes, and a laugh on his
lips, told me stories that made me see how war affects men, and how
often the horrible passes across the line into the grotesque.
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