- from ‘Harper’s Weekly’ January 8, 1916
- 'Just for a Riband'
- by Henry Groff Dodge
An Award for Bravery
“In name of the President of the Republic, and I by virtue of the powers conferred upon me, I name -*- you Chevalier of the Legion of Honor." There is magic in these words. They sound cold enough in print, it is true, but if you have heard them ring out before the waiting line of heroes stiffened to attention, while the stone-arched arcade of the Invalides still echo with the roll of the announcing drums, and have seen the proud smile -and misty eyes of the little private as his general fastens the cross to his tunic, and have felt the religious hush of the spectators massed about you, you will realize their magic. Every man and woman who hears them goes away a greater patriot than before. The little private, as he feels the sword touch his shoulders and returns the clasp of his general's hand, almost forgets the empty sleeve at his side, or the crippled leg, and is happy. He forgets the mud and monotony of the trenches, the inferno of the artillery duel and the agony of the jolting ambulance, and only remembers that he has honored his country, as his country is honoring him, and that he is wearing the Cross of the Legion. The French soldier really feels this. To him, the ribbon and the gratitude of his country go a long way towards compensating him for the price he has paid.
The ceremony of conferring the decoration, in the courtyard of the Hotel des Invalides, is worth going all the way to Paris to see. Its pathos, its superb picture of loyalty and pride, will be kept alive in the memory, long after one has forgotten greater events.
The huge stone-paved court was flooded with autumn sunshine and on all four sides the arcades and the galleries overlooking the court were packed with people, a crowd thrilled into silence by the scene. There were old men, many soldiers, and many, many women. Around the edge of the court stretched a hollow square of troops, three deep, motionless in their blue-gray uniforms, presenting arms. At one end, the drums corps and the buglers, and, a little apart, the flag with its guard. "Honneur et Patrie" was emblazoned on its folds and on the heart of every one who bared his head as the colors were raised.
Within the hollow square, at one end of the court, were two captured German Taubes, their wings riddled with bullet-holes, and in front of them a group of famous "75's". These guns, after having gone through all that heartbreaking retreat from Belgium, had turned at the Marne, and thundered forth their message which told the invaders that they could come no farther. They will never be fired again. Their carriages are wrecked and their barrels spattered with bullet marks, and the sheathing of one of them is almost ripped away. They find their last resting place here on the spot where so much of France's glory is celebrated, and which still houses the living veterans of other wars. And on the most mutilated of them hangs a sign which says, "Un de nos glorieuses mutilés"—"One of our glorious cripples." Paris loves that gun as she loves her soldiers.
But the troops, the crowds, and these heroic relics were only a background. In the centre of the court was the picture we had come to see. Some on crutches, some with empty sleeves, many in wheel chairs, some even lying on stretchers, and but a pitiful few erect and unwounded, a hundred soldiers were drawn up before General Galopin and his staff. There were Parisians, Bretons, and men of the Midi. There were baggy-trousered Zouaves, Hussars in their pale blue, artillerymen and infantrymen of the line. There were privates and officers up to the rank of colonel. There were two who wore the arm band of the Red Cross, and one of these was a priest in his cassock.
I had seen soldiers enough in the last year—smiling soldiers marching away, in clean uniforms, with flowers in the barrels of their rifles, and wounded soldiers suffering the agonies of gas gangrene in the hospitals. I had seen dead soldiers huddled behind haystacks and sprawling in ditches on the sodden, rain-soaked fields of the Ourcq and the Marne, and boyish, laughing soldiers, home on a fourlough, kissing their sweethearts openly, before an indulgent and understanding public, in the Tuilleries Gardens. But this was something new. These were more than soldiers. I found myself saying, "Why, these are all heroes, and have suffered for it." Of course, thousands had suffered just as cruelly, but that did not detract from the fact that almost every man in this particularly glorious hundred was suffering for his exceptional heroism. Have you ever seen a hundred men together each of whom had done something especially heroic? Not simply the risking of their lives for their country, but something, signally and unbelievably brave? Have you ever felt what I felt as I watched them? If you have not, be assured that it was something to see and something to feel.
There they waited to be received into the Legion of Honor, almost within the shadow of the dome under which the ashes of the first Napoleon rest,—their Little Corporal, who himself founded the Legion, and made the Tricolor which they were serving a flag to follow and to love; and over beyond the roofs towards the west reaching up into the blue Parisian sky, was the lacy spire of the Eiffel Tower, with the Tricolor whipping in the breeze from its summit, as if put there for this particular observance, in honor of these hundred men. My neighbor in the crowd, an old man, saw me looking at it, and pointed out over the roofs. "It will always be that high, monsieur," he said, "as long as we breed men like these."
"In the name of the President of the Republic, and by virtue of the powers vested in me, I name you Chevalier of the Legion of Honor."
The general had advanced, and was pinning the cross to the tunic of the first man in line, a colonel of dragoons. The drums rolled and the bugles spoke with the stirring notes of the call that marks the creation of a new Legionnaire. The candidate's shoulders were lightly touched with the sword and the general grasped his hand as he gave the accolade, the kiss on both cheeks which is so integral a part of the ceremony to the Frenchman, and so scoffed at by us. Then he passed on to the next in line while the colonel's shoulders went back and his head went up, as he tried to look straight ahead as the manual required, instead of down at his breast where the cross glittered.
Before each decoration was given, a staff officer read aloud the particulars of the act that had earned it. This one had been cited in the order of the day of his regiment for bringing in a wounded comrade under fire. That one had held a position with a machine gun after all the others of his squad had been killed. Another had been cited in the order of the day by the division commander for conspicuous bravery, a coveted honor; and so on down the list. The names, the individual acts of bravery, seemed not to matter—to be lost in the whole. What we were looking at, and what was impressing us, was heroism in the mass, and the realization that men without an arm or without a leg were being compensated by a bit of ribbon and enamel.
The throng around me under the arcades did not cheer, but a wave of hand-clapping would greet each man as he received his cross. It was not an enthusiastic crowd, but one of whose intensity of feeling you were very conscious. Every one of them was feeling a distinct thrill Every one was a little uplifted by patriotism, even though most of them had soldiers of their own, fighting in the trenches, or perhaps buried in other trenches in the rear.
Finally, as the general passed down the line, he came to a little fantassin, a mere boy, surely not over twenty years old. He had lost both legs at the knee, and was in a wheel chair. There was not a sound from the thousands who watched, but as the ribbon was pinned to the poor grimy tunic, every civilian in that crowd lifted his hat and every soldier stood at salute. And then there happened a thing which made the pathos of all that had gone before seem stale and unmeaning. Not far from me, at the balustrade of the balcony, stood a soldier, a middle-aged reservist, beside a woman. As the hats were lifted and the hands raised to the salute, the woman stepped closer to her soldier's side, took off his ragged cap and raised it over his head. His shoulders squared and his head went up, but he did not salute. And then I saw that both sleeves were empty. And he had no decoration. He was just a casualty.
“I name you Chevalier of the Legion of Honor." It is not always before a thrilled public, with a background of troops and glittering bayonets, and with an accompaniment of drum and bugle, that you hear the magic of these words. You hear them spoken in the hospitals with no martial music and no guard of honor, as the commanding officer with his staff, passes down the row of white beds, and, pausing before one, whispers the healing formula to a poor torn body, swathed in bandages. The dim, suffering eyes light up and fix themselves upon the face that is bending over, and I do not doubt but that pain is eased and even death made more bearable. There are few in the escort of officers and doctors and nurses who do not feel the solemnity and beauty of the ceremony, and not all of them are dry-eyed. And as the staff move slowly and reverently out of the ward in silence, the face on the pillow looks less anguished and more resigned to enter, if need be, the ranks of that greater Legion of the God of Battles. The tired eyes close again and the soldier smiles as a thin hand reaches for the place where the cross is pinned to the coverlet, and you see that another debt has been paid and another loss compensated.
