Ballads of a Bohemian Part 23

The Blood-Red _Fourragere_

What was the blackest sight to me Of all that campaign?

_A naked woman tied to a tree With jagged holes where her b.r.e.a.s.t.s should be, Rotting there in the rain._

On we pressed to the battle fray, Dogged and dour and spent.

Sudden I heard my Captain say: "_Voila!_ Kultur has pa.s.sed this way, And left us a monument."

So I looked and I saw our Colonel there, And his grand head, snowed with the years, Unto the beat of the rain was bare; And, oh, there was grief in his frozen stare, And his cheeks were stung with tears!

Then at last he turned from the woeful tree, And his face like stone was set; "Go, march the Regiment past," said he, "That every father and son may see, And none may ever forget."

Oh, the crimson strands of her hair downpoured Over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s of woe; And our grim old Colonel leaned on his sword, And the men filed past with their rifles lowered, Solemn and sad and slow.

But I'll never forget till the day I die, As I stood in the driving rain, And the jaded columns of men slouched by, How amazement leapt into every eye, Then fury and grief and pain.

And some would like madmen stand aghast, With their hands upclenched to the sky; And some would cross themselves as they pa.s.sed, And some would curse in a scalding blast, And some like children cry.

Yea, some would be sobbing, and some would pray, And some hurl hateful names; But the best had never a word to say; They turned their twitching faces away, And their eyes were like hot flames.

They pa.s.sed; then down on his bended knee The Colonel dropped to the Dead: "Poor martyred daughter of France!" said he, "O dearly, dearly avenged you'll be Or ever a day be sped!"

Now they hold that we are the best of the best, And each of our men may wear, Like a gash of crimson across his chest, As one fierce-proved in the battle-test, The blood-red _Fourragere_.

For each as he leaps to the top can see, Like an etching of blood on his brain, A wife or a mother lashed to a tree, With two black holes where her b.r.e.a.s.t.s should be, Left to rot in the rain.

So we fight like fiends, and of us they say That we neither yield nor spare.

Oh, we have the bitterest debt to pay. . . .

Have we paid it?-- Look--how we wear to-day Like a trophy, gallant and proud and gay, Our blood-red _Fourragere_.

It is often weary waiting at the little _poste de secours_. Some of us play solitaire, some read a "sixpenny", some doze or try to talk in bad French to the _poilus_. Around us is discomfort, dirt and drama.

For my part, I pa.s.s the time only too quickly, trying to put into verse the incidents and ideas that come my way. In this way I hope to collect quite a lot of stuff which may some day see itself in print.

Here is one of my efforts:

Jim

Never knew Jim, did you? Our boy Jim?

Bless you, there was the likely lad; Supple and straight and long of limb, Clean as a whistle, and just as glad.

Always laughing, wasn't he, dad?

Joy, pure joy to the heart of him, And, oh, but the soothering ways he had, Jim, our Jim!

But I see him best as a tiny tot, A bonny babe, though it's me that speaks; Laughing there in his little cot, With his sunny hair and his apple cheeks.

And my! but the blue, blue eyes he'd got, And just where his wee mouth dimpled dim Such a fairy mark like a beauty spot-- That was Jim.

Oh, the war, the war! How my eyes were wet!

But he says: "Don't be sorrowing, mother dear; You never knew me to fail you yet, And I'll be back in a year, a year."

'Twas at Mons he fell, in the first attack; For so they said, and their eyes were dim; But I laughed in their faces: "He'll come back, Will my Jim."

Now, we'd been wedded for twenty year, And Jim was the only one we'd had; So when I whispered in father's ear, He wouldn't believe me--would you, dad?

There! I must hurry . . . hear him cry?

My new little baby. . . . See! that's him.

What are we going to call him? Why, Jim, just Jim.

Jim! For look at him laughing there In the same old way in his tiny cot, With his rosy cheeks and his sunny hair, And look, just look . . . his beauty spot In the selfsame place. . . . Oh, I can't explain, And of course you think it's a mother's whim, But I know, I know it's my boy again, Same wee Jim.

Just come back as he said he would; Come with his love and his heart of glee.

Oh, I cried and I cried, but the Lord was good; From the shadow of Death he set Jim free.

So I'll have him all over again, you see.

Can you wonder my mother-heart's a-brim?

Oh, how happy we're going to be!

Aren't we, Jim?

II

In Picardy,

January 1915.

The road lies amid a malevolent heath. It seems to lead us right into the clutch of the enemy; for the star-sh.e.l.ls, that at first were bursting overhead, gradually encircle us. The fields are strangely sinister; the splintered trees are like giant toothpicks. There is a lisping and a tw.a.n.ging overhead.

As we wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical vibrations. Then a small shadow detaches itself from the greater shadow, and a gray-bearded sentry says to me: "You'd better come in out of the bullets."

So I keep under cover, and presently they bring my load. Two men drip with sweat as they carry their comrade. I can see that they all three belong to the Foreign Legion. I think for a moment of Saxon Dane. How strange if some day I should carry him! Half fearfully I look at my pa.s.senger, but he is a black man. Such things only happen in fiction.

This is what I have written of the finest troops in the Army of France:

Kelly of the Legion