FRANCOIS DELANOE

New Zealand Tablet, 23 August 1917, Page 10

FRANCOIS DELANOE

(From Le Sens [Jc La Mart, by Paul Boukget.) He died like a hero. He was the friend of my youth, my brother, and for eight days my sergeant. Poor lad ! Ah ! that wonderful attack ! Everything was most minutely prepared. The watches of the chiefs of each section were timed to the second, one with another. At five in the morning we were to leave the trench without any rocket signal. For the men, no knapsack. Two hundred cartridges, each. In the side-bag a tin of “monkey” and a crust, of bread. Bottles of water and coffee. Tied on their backs, five empty sandbags to barricade the captured trenches. Before starting each one had to cut a step in the parapet to make it easy for him to jump out quickly. Then, no firing: everything to be left to the bayonet. Once arrived, the grenade and the dagger. At ten to five I said: “Pass the word. Is all ready ? Attention Then, once more, I felt that sinking of the stomach, that clammy heat in all my members which is not an indication of fear, but which no human force can prevent. Human, no: but divine, yes. Delanoe and myself had been to Holy Communion the day before. He was near me, and he whispered to me : “I shall be killed to-day. I am sure of it.” “Are you afraid?” 1 asked laughing. “No. I have never known so well the value of life. It. is beautiful when one can give it in a good cause ! And it has never been so easy for me to die, because I have never felt God so near me.” While he was speaking the slow pale dawn gave him a ghostly appearance, the beautv of an apparition. The light was driving away before it a soft, damp fog which ran like sweat on the blocks and piquets of our • network of wires, in which during the night the sappers had opened passages that I saw clearly. Suddenly Delanoe said to me: “ Listen, there is a bird near us.” And I heard a sky-lark saluting the dawn of this cold morning of early Autumn. Everything looked gray and distant. I could not see our objective. T imagined their trench three hundred metres off, with its black eyes yawning almost level with the soil. Loop holes close together pierced

the marly embankments. The' evening” before I had marked it all down with my field glasses. -- I knew the exact spot of the four machine guns which flanked their defences and made it almost impossible to approach the curtains and lines of retreat. - If; by any misfortune our artillery had not done its work at the hour of attack, if their barbed wire still held, it was mathematically certain: we should be all slaughtered. : Delanoe knew this as well as I did. He. again said to me: “Three hundred metres with the bayonet, it is ridiculous. But look!” He showed me, about two hundred metres off* an irregularity in the ground, hardly accentuated, but giving enough of dead angle to shelter men lying down. There was a chance of safety and of time to allow our second wave of reinforcements to come up with us before going on. He added: “We have a chance.” Five minutes to five: “Fix bayonets!” • A long shudder of steel, whipped with quick flashes. Hands tighten on the rifles. Delanoe and I look at our men. Ah ! our brothers of two months of suffering and hope, our humble brothers whom we are going to cast with one throw into the x furnace, how willingly would we kiss your poor lined, bronzed faces ! Which of them, so full of youth and courage now, will fall in a little while? Just then, and as if a current had united our thoughts, I felt his hand clasp mine ‘ “Good-bye, Ernest.” “Au revoir, Francis,” I replied. But he, once more, and so gravely; “Goodbye.” Five o’clock! Five o'clock! “It is for France, my poor lads: Forward!” Caps, bayonets, breasts, leap at one bound together above the sombre trench. The serried line is under way, hugging the tall grass. Then have seen us! Tac! tac! tac!... The machine-guns bark incessantly. The bullets smack us in the face. “Quicker!” Ah! the dull, sound of the pierced flesh, of broken bones, the stifled cry. the last oath of the man beside one as he tumbles cursing the Boche ! “Quicker!” There is their irregular, frantic barrage fire, the lash of the shrapnel bursting three metres from our heads. “Quicker, my lads, we have them.” “Lie down!” It is the blessed bank, and shelter for two minutes. Flat to the earth, silent, panting, we regain our breath. “Delanoe ?” “Ah ! Delanoe is bleeding. He is pale. The blood runs down his cheek on to his bright coat. “Hit?” “Through the jaw: it is nothing.” “You will go to the rear to have it dressed.” “To the rear? You are joking. I will do nothing of the kind.” “You must go. 1 order you as your lieutenant.” “And as your friend I will remain and I will not leave you.” “Already the line of reinforcements we have been waiting for rolls up. Again I stand up and call out to my men : “Up, boys! Courage! Forward!” Then the rush, the howling whirlwind. Full speed for a hundred metres. Then a few seconds. “Forward! Forward!” Heads down, hearts beating, teeth clenched, stumbling, whirled towards the white line which I can see now and which spits forth death without a pause. “Forward'....Forward !...Forward!”...lt is the moment of leaping, falling, yielding bodies, bayonetting others, beseeching, fleeting, fleeing into their trenches, a horrible hand-to-hand fight, stabbing blades, 'and strangled wounded. ‘.‘The barrage on the left, quickly quickly!”... “Kamerad ! Kamerad!”... “Assassins! Cowards! Bandits! Louvain! Termonde!...The sandbags! The loop-holes!... Vive la France !”...

; ’ ‘ - ■ ■ - ... The rising sun, the sun of God, the sun of the great days of peace, of labor of Christianity was climbing the heavens. One would have said it was illuminating our victory. ’ Silence everywhere, the awful silence of the afterwards, which should never again be broken by the ringing “Present !'.’ of so many of our boys who fell on the plain! In this silence I called out in anguish, my throat choking; “Delanoe! Delanoe! Delanoe!...” I found him prone on the ground. Death was set upon his poor, proud soldier’s face. There a grenade had tom him and finished him, but without touching his scapular. And he lay with the Sacred Heart of Jesus on his heart. Cor Jesu, spes m orient him, miserere nobis.” J.K.