LITTLE STORIES OF THE WAR

Taranaki Daily News, 2 October 1915, Page 10 (Supplement)

LITTLE STORIES OF THE WAR

THE SPLENDID HEROISM OF "MARIE LOUISE." (By John X. Raphael). A Zouave told me the gtorv. 1 saw him, looking wistful, outside a tobacco shop iu r. British base in France. One often does see French soldiers looking wistful outside a tobacco shop. "A match?" I asked. He grinned and winced, and the bandage round his head explained why his capacious smile had hurt him. "No," he said, "I have a match, and a pipe, but " And I went into the shop again and brought him a flvepenny brown-paper package of happiness. We spent most of the day together. He was not in the least like- your idea of a Zouave. Theje was no braid or red and white smartness about him. The war is growing middle-aged. His baggy trousers were of brown corduroy. His jacket looked as though it had been cut out of a piece of sacking. But he wore his red Chechia, with an air, on the back of his head, and his grin was the friendliest imaginable. "They were about three hundred yards from our trench," he said—"they" always means the Germans—"and the gTound between was in an awful mess. There were dead cattle there, a pig or two, some of our men, and a lot of Germans. We had attacked them the day before, we Zonaves, and-three of our chaps were lying there dead among the pigs, the Bodies, and the cattle, THE TIMID YOUNGSTER. , 'lt worried us. We didn't like the idea of leaving them unburied, and the boys lay there as though they were asleep—it got on our nerves a little. "Marie Louise—we called him that because he was a youngster, and so pink and so white, and usually so timid of speech—was swearing quietly to himself. It is disgusting,' he growled. 'We cannot leave them there. Has anybody got a brick or two?' It mada ns laugh, that. He was always asking for something or other, was Marie Louise. He wanted to borrow a hairbrush the first day he slept in a trench! A hair-brush! But he found his bricks. "It had been wet for three days, and we had taken a few bricks from the village behind us (there was little, else but bricks in the village) to keep our feet dry. Before we knew what Marie Louise was doing, he had crawled with his bricks from the trench and wriggled out through the broken wire, pushing the bricks in front of him as a protection. It was a miracle that he was not hit, and we yelled to him to come back, but he had bis idea. "He worked slowly, of course, but he was a bad target, and the Boches didn't get him. Thev were a little puzzled, too, because he was all alone. I think they were watching to see wliat. he would do, and that disturbed their aim. Ho wriggled on, pushing his bricks in front of him. till he reached the first of our dead boys, and lie managed to bury him. Oh, it was not a deep grave, bill the ground was fairly soft, a.nd he had taken a spade with him. He got liim covered over. SECOND BODY BURIED. "The other two bodies were much nearer the Herman trench-less than a lnmdrd yards from it. I think but Marie Louise's pluck was his own reward. The Germans , almost stopped firing, We could see them with their heads together, talking about, it, and while they talked Marie Louise was .working. He buried the- second body, and as lie patted the earth down the Boches stopped firing altogether. •'We had stopped shouting to him to eume back. We were as frightened info silence as they were. There was something impressive in this boy who was risking bis life to bury three dead comrades. Nobody moved. There was a silence which hurt. And then, quietly, as if he were all alone, Marie Louis" stood straight up and stretched himself. ' ' "'Nobody moved in our trench or in theirs. But afterwards 1 found blood on my lip, where I bail bitten it. 'Marie Louise stood straight- up and stretched—a living target. Then'be shouldered his spade and walked quietly to the third body. There was not a sol,lid. He spat 011 bis hands, and quietly, steadily, as though lie were digging in his garden, be made a grave for our comrade—a deep one this time, i 'There was no movement from the j Herman trench. 1 don't be|ieve the !»•(:- j gars could have moved, f know that 1 had tired eyes from staring afterwards. THE NICK oi~ TIME. | "Marie Louise buried the man. picked i up a bit of wood, broke it in two. found | » nail, and made n cross and .-luck it | at the bead of the grave lie bad made, j Then he fumbled in bis pockets, and ! looked about the ground, turning this i way and that, as though he had lost j something. I saw the light catch something which moved ill the German trench, ■anil I "bouted to Marie Louise. It was ; »n!y just in time that 1 shouted. he (brew himself on his face, the bullets whistled again, anil one of hi- feet kicked up. "Itut he wasn't (lend. We -.<i w him wriggling and crawling quickly towards us. and then he stood up again, under n rain of the twittering bullets, laughed. saluted the Boche trench, and tumbled headlong on t.he top of jne. We pulled him about and pawed him over, but Ij e was not dead-he was 'Don't do that.' he said as we hug»ed Itiiu and kissed him, 'I am not a little! girl, though you do call mc Marie Louise. I And I believe I have caught something I in my heel.' Hut it was only a bit of | tb- boot which had been torn awuv. i "'Why did you turn round and look about yon like that'.'' I asked him, when he was smoking half the lieutenant's last cigarette, and the lieutenant had threatened him with prison and the military medal for leaving the trench without orders, and everything was quiet again. 'Tt was vonr turning round like that which made them fire.' "Marie Louise chuckled, 'I bad some red cloth from my trouser strap,' be said, 'and I wanted a bit of white and a bit of bine to put on the cross to make the tricolor, and show the blighters what I thought of them!"