War the Creator — Parts 1 - 3

I

Because he was my friend, because he was so lovable, because he suffered much, I want to try to tell the story of a boy who, in two months, became a man.

My hero is Georges Cucurou, the son of a shoe-maker of Toulouse.

I happened to see him first just before the war began, and not again until after he had been wounded; and the change in him was then so great that I could not rest until I had learned how it had been brought about.

Georges is but one of the thousands who have gone into that furnace of patriotism; in France such experiences as his are commonplace now, but when I heard his story I got a glimpse of war in a new aspect.

Before, I had thought of it only as stupid, destructive, dire; now, in his illumined face, I saw the work of War the Creator.

His narrative is concerned with only the first six weeks of the fighting, and mostly with that terrible retreat from Belgium, so bitter in its disappointments, so trying to the flamboyant courage of the French.

Hardly had they rallied along the Marne and begun to pursue the enemy when Georges was wounded and invalided home.

It was there in the hospital that I got his history; and from those talks, and his notebook, and his letters to his aunt, I have reconstructed the trials and emotions of this lad of twenty.

II

Georges, having commenced his regular three years’ military service in October, 1913, got leave to visit his aunt who was keeping a _pension_ in Paris.

How shy and confused he was when I came down to the dining-room that day and surprised him while he was examining his too-faint mustache with great seriousness before the mirror!

Charming, I thought him, instantly; a clean, jolly sort of boy, quite too young for that ridiculous soldier’s uniform.

His aunt introduced him (with her arm about his shoulder and a tweak of his ear) by his nickname, “Coco”; and, after he got used to my being a foreigner, he began to talk, using his big brown eyes and his free, expressive hands quite as much as his tongue.

Knowing a little of the Midi, I attempted an imitation of the _patois_.

Coco threw back his head and laughed with abandon.

That broke the ice, and we became great friends.

He was so curious about everything American that I took him up to my salon to see my typewriter; also my neckties and fancy socks.

“But what’s this?

” asked Coco, reading with his funny French pronunciation, “A-mer-i-cain Pencil Compagnie.

” It was a novelty, a “perpetual” pencil of the self-sharpening sort, with a magazine filled with little points like cartridges.

When I gave it to him, it pleased Coco immensely.

“Just like a rifle!

” he exclaimed, as he amused himself by pressing the end and ejecting the bits of lead.

He went through the manual of arms with it, laughing; he did a mock bayonet thrust or two, and then aimed it at me in fun, like a child.

“_Pan!

_” he cried; “_that’s_ the way we shoot Germans!

” The contrast of his red pantaloons and blue coat with the round, innocent face and lips parted like a girl’s was absurd.

Why, he was more like those doll soldiers you see at toyshops with curly hair!

With his fresh pink cheeks and big brown eyes he seemed no more than sixteen years old.

In the evening we all went out on the crowded Boulevard, where, it being a fête day, they were dancing in front of the open-air band stands.

It was a long time before I ceased to think of Coco as jolly, flushed, exuberant, dancing the Tango on the corner by the Sorbonne with his pretty young aunt, as excited and happy as only a lad can be who has come up from a provincial town to see the metropolis for the first time on a holiday.

That was on the 14th of July of 1914. Next day he went back to his caserne at Montauban.

In two weeks war was declared!

Coco, our own blithe Coco, would have to go to the front—oh, his aunt’s white face that day!

—and Coco would be in the first line!

It seemed like some hideous mistake.

But already Coco, pink-cheeked, laughing, shy, his mother’s only boy, was well on his way toward the German shells and machine guns!

III

The French do nothing without a flavoring of sentiment.

Rhetoric flowers in the official proclamations; it makes one laugh even to read the textbooks for soldiers, they are so strewn with fine, resounding phrases; and so, of course, it was quite impossible for Coco’s regiment to get away without one of those stirring, gesticulative speeches by the colonel.

It was at the Toulouse railway station—parents in tears.

The girls gazed admiringly.

Gossipy veterans of ’70, seeing themselves reincarnated in these fresh young soldiers, patronized them egregiously with advice.

Coco and the other lads listened, but did not hear; they were smiling at the girls sticking bouquets in their rifle barrels.

“Look back for the last time at your homes and your loved ones,” cried the colonel, with all his badges on his breast, “and shed the tear without which our high sacrifice would not have its price.

Lift up your hearts, and so forth, and so forth, my children—_en avant!

_” Children indeed they were, overflowing with the emotion of the south, these soldiers, and our Coco, with a gulp in his throat, seemed even more young than most.

The war!

How often had he heard it predicted for that year, or the next, or the next—the inevitable war that was to give France her long-hoped-for revenge.

Now, it was actually here!

No more blank cartridges, no more sham battles—_War!

_ But Coco’s tears soon dried.

They were a merry lot, those twenty-year-old “_pioupious_,” even on that tiresome trip to the front.

The youngsters had the worst of it during the mobilization.

They sat all that journey on rough-board temporary benches in the luggage vans.

Starting and stopping, side-tracking and backing—munching the emergency rations (hard tack and canned beef), for mother’s cheese and chocolate didn’t last long—waving and yelling to the patriotic spectators along the line, it took them almost three days to reach Châlons.

At the military camp two more days were spent in concentration, exercises, and inspection.

The last orders were received.

Then, at five o’clock in the morning of the sixth of August, the column started for the frontier.

Coco was a private in the Tenth Company of the Twentieth Regiment of Infantry.

His army corps, the Seventeenth, formed the left wing of the Fourth Army.

On their left, paralleling their march, was, first, General Ruffey’s cavalry division, and beyond that the Fifth Army, under General Lanrezac.

On the extreme left wing of the advance were the British.

Meanwhile, marching on Lorraine and Alsace, were the Sixth and Seventh Armies.

With all these columns hurrying to the front, filling all the roads, railway transportation was impossible.

It was a march of some seventy miles to the frontier.

So, through the lovely forest of Argonne, the boys set out, singing and joking as they strode along.

It was pleasant enough at first, a romantic adventure; but with his heavy rifle, his heavy cartridge belt and bayonet, and his musette full of food slung over his shoulder, it was not long before poor Coco began to get weary.

On his back, with his knapsack, and his rolled overcoat and his tin _bidon_ and tin _gamelle_, with the intrenching tool and his share of the company’s baggage, he carried fully sixty pounds.

They marched on one side of the road.

Along the other side automobiles whirled incessantly back and forth, motor busses filled with provisions rumbled along, dispatch bearers on motorcycles, officers on horseback—raising dust a-plenty.

Coco’s chum—his “_copain_”—was François Foulot, the son of a cabinetmaker in Toulouse, a big, athletic, kind-hearted chap with a bushy black pompadour.

Coco had told me about him in Paris.

The two boys were members of a little musical and dramatic club in Toulouse, and had been friends from childhood.

You should hear Coco tell how, on that long march, François took care of him, carrying his rifle when Coco was tired, carrying even Coco’s knapsack for him, helping him grease his boots at night when Coco’s feet began to blister.

François was like a big brother.

At the nightly bivouacs along the road the two boys always slept side by side; that is, when they slept at all.

The excitement (and the hard ground) for the first few nights kept them wide awake, in spite of their fatigue.