10


Fate had come with that little card summoning each man to join his
depot, and tapped him on the shoulder with just a finger touch. It was
no more than that--a touch on the shoulder. Yet I know that for many
of those young men it seemed a blow between the eyes, and, to
some of them, a strangle-grip as icy cold as though Death's fingers
were already closing round their throats.

I seem to hear the silence in those rooms when for a moment or two
young men stared at the cards and the formal words on them, and
when, for just that time, all that life and death, means, came before
their souls. Was this the summons, Death itself? Somewhere on the
German side was a little steel bullet or a bit of shell waiting for the
Frenchman to whom it was destined. How long would it have to wait
to find its billet? Perhaps only a day or two--a question of hours,
slipping away now towards eternity as the clock ticked on. From the
old mother, or the young wife, from the little woman whose emotions
and quarrels, greediness or self-denial, had seemed all that mattered
in life, all that life meant to a young man of twenty-five or so, there
came perhaps a cry, a name spoken with grief, or no word at all but
the inarticulate expression of foreboding, terror, and a woman's
anguish.

"Jean! Mon petit! O, mon pauvre petit!" "C'est pour la patrie... mon
devoir... je reviendrai bientôt... Courage, ma femme!"