den times was of a special type,
who put on a fine pose and played up to the gallery because he
fought before admiring spectators. Now, apart from our night attacks,
always murderous, in which courage is not to be seen, because one
can hardly discern one's neighbour in the darkness, our valour
consists in a perfect stoicism. Just now I had a fellow killed before a
loophole. His comrades dragged him away, and with perfect quietude
replaced the man who is eternally out of action. Isn't that courage?
Isn't it courage to get the brains of one's comrade full in the face, and
then to stand on guard in the same place while suffering the extremes
of cold and dampness? ... On the night of the 13th I commanded a
section of corpses which a mitrailleuse had raked. I had the luck to
escape, and I shouted to these poor devils to make a last assault.
Then I saw what had happened and found myself with a broken rifle
and a uniform in rags and tatters. My commandant spoke to me that
night, and said: 'You had better change those clothes. You can put on
an adjutant's stripes.'"

One passage in this young Zouave's letter reveals the full misery of
the war to a Frenchman's spirit: "Our courage consists in a perfect
stoicism." It is not the kind of courage which suits his temperament,
and to sit in a trench for months, inactive, waiting for death under the
rain of shells, is the worst ordeal to which the soul of the French
soldier is asked to submit. Yet he has submitted, and held firm, along
lines of trenches, 500 miles from end to end, with a patience in
endurance which no critics of France would have believed possible
until the proof was given. Above the parapet lie the corpses of
comrades and of men who were his enemies until they became poor
clay.

"The greater number of the bodies," writes a soldier, "still lie between
the trenches, and we have been unable to withdraw them. We can
see them always, in frightful quantity, some of them intact, others torn
to bits by the shells which continue to fall upon them. The stench of
this corruption floats down upon us with foul odours. Bits of their
rotting carcases are flung into our faces and over our heads as new
shells burst and scatter them. It is like living in a charnel house where
devils are at play flinging dead men's flesh at living men, with fiendish
mockery. The smell of this corruption taints our food, and taints our
very souls, so that we are spiritually and physically sick. That is