TEN THOUSAND SHALL FALL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 965, 7 May 1930, Page 5

TEN THOUSAND SHALL FALL

By DAVID W. KING (Copyright 1929, by Dufficid and Co. Distributed by the King Features Syndicate Inc.)

SYNOPSIS Long before the United States enters ‘he World War, David King, Harvard student, answers the call. He joins the tameua French Foreign Legion. His buddies in the Legion are “Phil,” ex " e^e Phant hunter, and Alan Seeger, die American poet, later killed in action. .411 nationalities are represented in the roieign Legion. Most of them are in it of unrequited love or manslaughter In a few days they are inarched to 4 helled town behind the front. Dressed in red trousers, they soon oc:U_P,y front-line trenches. The first night, “Phil” goes out to capture a German sentry. CHAPTER Vl. (Continued.) Then came my chance. Drawing Btyself up with dignity, I quoted, “A soldier should never contradict a noncommissioned officer.” He got me ■ater on another count, but it was ?>orth it. * * * The whole front became more active. The battalions were shifted without rest from one point to 'another, probably to familiarise us with the various trenches. Battalion C toit occupied les Tranehees des Poulins on the left of Berry an Bac. ''e were allowed to build fires in the ougouts provided we used dry wood, "dt one night. Flannigan, returning cold from guard duty, stoked his fire too impetuously and set the roof ablaze. When the excitement and shells had ceased I overheard two sergeants talking. “Tu sais, moil vieux. je ne suis pas J!j r doe co n'etait pas fait expres. Ce fiannigan—Je ne dis pas que e’est “it nom boche, mais je n’en suis pas "Ur. ’ (“You know, old man, I am tot at all sure that, wasn’t done on Purpose. That fellow Flannigan—-I otu s a y j t - s a G erman name, but it , looks pretty phouy.”) 1 laughed, but not for long—fire? ere forbidden. The sector had been quiet for a day I*' 0 ; so a shot from an outpost hhtsed our curiosity. Sergeant herisien called me und we went to *westigate. We found the lone sen- *?*'• Plugged through the left arm, „'Plying a first aid bandage. Therisien ®estioned him:

“They got you, did they?” “Yes.” “Did you see him?” “No.” “What did you fire at?” “[ didn't fire.” “That’s funny. I could have sworn It was a Lebel and not a Mauser.” The man denied it vehemently. I, too, was puzzled. I had been so sure I could tell the roar of a Lebel from the crack of a German Mauser. Still musing, I picked up his rifle.and half mechanically threw open the Vreech. I could have cut my hand off, but the thing was done. An empty cartridge case tinkled on the ground. Therisien's sharp eyes spotted it. A brief search over the rampart disclosed the tell-tale bandage—wet, burned and blood-stained.

“I could not look on death; this being known. Men led me to him blindfold, and alone. ’•

Sergeant Major Leqomte bustled into the farmyard of our billets, and blew his whistle:

“ Rapport! Tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock there will be a dentist at the Regimental Infirmary. Any man who needs to see him must apply now. All those doing so will l>e excused from morning drill. There was an ugly rush, and some two huuderd men scrambled to put their names on the list. Something told me that this dentist was no Rainless Barker, so the next morning I hung around the Infirmary door to see the fun. There they were—two hundred of them in a queue smoking and laughing, without a care in the world; all but the few who were reailv suffering. Suddenly the dooropened, and the first man disappeared inside. There was an interested silence broken by groans and muffled curses from within. Finally- the victim emerged, holding his jaw and moaning. He passed down the line spitting blood and spreading terror. The line went forward, but minus some ten or fifteen men. Again the blood-curdling sounds from Mithm. and again the line was decimated Coue wasn’t in it! The nearer they got to the door, the surer they were their toothaches were imaginary. Six saw the dentist. The rest took two da> s prison lor malingering. Cheap at the * r ?<ext day- another treat. The first company marched off to Maizy- s°™ e five miles away, for their first ant - typhoid inoculation. The maich back was hellish. 1 wasn’t the only onto crash into a dead faint as we staggered into quarters. Few of us slept

that night, and the billets were like a typhoid ward in a madhouse. Things were looking up in Cuiry les Chaudards. The social season opened with a gathering in the churchyard. For some time past, the General had noticed that this particular church had come in for a flattering amount of attention from the enemy. He organised a Field Day, to settle matters —the event of the afternoon being a tug of war. Battalion C versus Church Steeple. As the long rope tightened and the steeple teetered, the inhabitants, headed by the cure, pro-

tested vehemently, claiming sacrilege. The General, however, was adamant. It was too good a regulating point for German guns, and he reckoned the lives of a thousand men—ey-en godless Legionaires—more important than one church spire. Two days latter the battalion was marched off by- companies to a nearby sugar refinery. Here shower baths had been rigged up and I had my first hot bath since Toulouse.

Just before we went up into line again three entire families were shot for conveying information to the

enemy. One old man and his wife had used a pair of white oxen in their ploughing to indicate the position of the French batteries, but his erratic methods of agriculture finally gave him away. CHAPTER VII. It was Craonnelle again, this time the kittle Chateau and the cemetery trenches. Interesting, but a bit grisly. The family vaults were the parrados of our trenches. Gradually

the walls were broken down by shell fire, and now and then a wrecked coffin would slide into the trench, disgorging its occupant in various stages of decay. This was stopped byhoarding up the vaults, but the walls were pierced and the rats came in. It gave us the creeps to hear the greasy rustling of rats feeding inside the tombs. La* r, however, chloride of lime was used; and we got no little satisfaction hearing a fat one scuttling along inside the boards, cough, choke, and retire hastily’.

The Little Chateau had belonged to an old colonel. Some of it was smashed by shell fire, and ransacked for valuablec; but the library had been spared. Long rows of book cases, sun pouring in on piles of magazines, and big arm chairs —a room lived in and loved. Alan and I were enthralled. Look here, Dave, a first edition of Jean Jacques Rousseau.”

“Yes, but see this Descartes—My God, here’s Montaigne! I haven’t read him since I was a kid. I used to sneak him out of the library.” “Dave, what do you make of this?”

“This” was a carefully bound manuscript, evidently the journal of the owner's grandfather, an officer on Napoleon’s staff. Jena Austerlitz, Beresina, and Moscow —what a saga! But there were other magnets— Moliere, Anatole France, Farrere, Rabelais —I was miles away-

“Rassemblement! Couvrez sur deux.” I hurtled down through the centuries to fall in for the filthiest corvee of my whole experience. The captain had decided the cellar must be cleared, as a shelter in case, of bombardment. During the German retreat it had evidently been used as a dressing station, bomb-proof, and finally as an arena for hand-to-hand fighting in clearing the village. The whole place was fiooded_ two feet deep in water, for the drains had been clogged by rotting straw. As a result, the cellar, some fifteen yards square, was a huge cesspool of foul water, rotting straw and decomposed bodies. It took us a day to clean it out, but it took me a week to get the stench out of my nostrils. Craonnelle was full of charm for the anciens. I found Conti, one day’, coming out of the church with a secretive air, and a bulky bundle. For two weeks lie lugged it around on top of his sack. Then he got confidential. After swearing me to secrecy on the heads of three generations of grandmothers, he took me into the woods and showed me the Lwag: three enormous gold crowns, raped from the heads of defenceless saints. Conti was gibbering with a mixture of avaricious glee and superstitious forebodings. “II hello doro,” he repeated over and over, rubbing his hands.

It was a shame to undeceive him, but I could not let him carry the crown -jewels of Craonnelle any longer. I picked one up. and scraping the gilt away showed him the plaster of paris below. The chuckling ceased and superstition turned" to wrath. Deepseated, sincere rage shook him; Italian, Arabic and Lingua-Franca curses rolled out of his mouth, as he pulverised the crowns beneath his feet. God had cheated him! Conti as a devout Catholic had reason to feel abused. But to get back to Craonnelle. Bibouker, the Arab bugler, used to disappear for hours at a time. Curiosity’ got the better of me. and I followed him. He ducked into a house and presently a strange mechanical humming came from the top storey. I crept upstairs, and for a moment had

grave doubts of his sanity. There sat this great gorilla man, grinning like a death’s head, and pedalling furiously on a Singer sewing machine. A few questions, however, made everything quite clear. Bibouker had discovered a safe and easy way to learn to ride a bicycle! It was Bibouker who produced a delicacy most of us had met before, but incog.—that is to say, cat, cooked as rabbit. It wasn’t bad, there was really very- little difference, but somehow I lost my appetite for this dish when I discovered another cat gorging itself on a fresh corpse. \* * * Christmas came and went, not very different from any other day-. We worked hard, building trenches and repairing roads, which called forth no little grousing from the English. That night we got extra wine, a few oranges, and rice prepared with chocolate with our supper. The sous-officiers congregated in a big room; but the soldiers and corporals, having no place to go, retired to their quarters where they sat in semi-darkness —quietly drinking. The y-olunteers added a new verse to their marching song:

As we go working, Picks and siiovels, on our way.—Gov* blimee ! Tou can hear the people shouting The bloody Legion works on Christmas Day.

By this time the battalion had lost a good many, besides casualties. Some who had enlisted, just before the war, as Belgians, turned out to be German spies.

Stuart, Paul, a long lanky Souti. erner, and two or three other Amer cans had been reformes (dischargei physically unfit) mostly on account o. inflammatory rheumatism. The Eug lish had been transferred en masse to the British Army-, and I found tyul later that most of them had applied for the Army Service Corps (Strawberry Jam Stealers) and wondered how they fared in that Paradise of military brigands, after four months' training in the Legion—or rather, how their new comrades fared, after their arrival.

Bill and Bert had gone to the aviation. Bill with his previous experience qualified at once as pilot. Bert’s debut was typical. He climbed into the machine, had the controls -x----plained to him. and started off just as Bill had done. Full speed ahead, up, and then down with a crash. After they had extracted him from the debris the officer in charge questioned him’” “What went wrong?” “I don’t kyow.” “You don’t know! Haveh’t you ever been in a plane before?"

“No.” “What in God’s holy name do you mean—starting off like that?” “Well, I thought I might be able to fly.”

They decided he had enough nerve to be worth training. Then we lost Phil. It all started over a cup of coffee. Bibouker was ladling it out, and Bronstein, an English-American-Russian, was trying

or a second cup, insisting he had had none. Bibouker waxed wroth and jwore all Americans were cheats and liars. Given one other Arab, he said he could make the whole American section eat the dungheap in the yard. He called to a passing friend, an Arad from the machine gun section, to bear witness. Phil, who had been listening, stepped forward laughing and suggested that he and Bronstein take them on. Bibouker backed down, hut the other Arab seemed eager, so the fight was on.

Phil generally packed a gun but he gave it to me at. the start. The Arab pretended not to know this and to be nervous, and Phil held out his arms to show it wasn't on his hip. When - upon, the Arab gripped him by the arms and butted hirri in the face. They both went down and came to grips, and Phil was gradually getting the best of it. They were fighting in a field covered with little piles of manure. and by this time a crowd had gathered. An Alsacian. a friend of the Arab, broke through the ring and cracked Phil over the head with a biuon <water bottle) full of wine. Figured out in physics, this meant a five-pound weight at the end of a four-foot lever, taking into consideration the length of the man’s arm and the strap. Phil went down, and a general riot broke loose —our section against, the machine gun outfit. (To be Continued Tommorow.)