The older
troops, who go laggard to the spading, have beards that extend down the
collar; but a boy has a smooth, clean neck, and these sailors have the
throat of youth. We must once have had such a race in our cow-boys and
Texas rangers--level-eyed, careless men who know no masters, only
equals. The force of gravity is heavy on an old man. But _marins_ are
not weighted down by equipment nor muffled with clothing. They go
bobbing like corks, as though they would always stay on the crest of
things. And riding on top of their lightness is that absurd bright-red
button in their cap. The armies for five hundred miles are sober,
grown-up people, but here are the play-boys of the western front.
From Ghent they trooped south to Dixmude, and were shot to pieces in
that "Thermopylae of the North."
"Hold for four days," was their order.
They held for three weeks, till the sea came down and took charge.
During those three weeks we motored in and out to get their wounded.
Nothing of orderly impression of those days remains to me. I have only
flashes of the sailor-soldiers curved over and snaking along the
battered streets behind slivers of wall, handfuls of them in the Hotel
de Ville standing around waiting in a roar of noise and a bright blaze
of burning houses--waiting till the shelling fades away.[C]
Then for over twelve months they held wrecked Nieuport, and I have
watched them there week after week.
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