Le Camarade Roland was about twenty-one or two years old, but his eyes were old and wise, and he had evidently seen life.  He was dark-haired and a little below medium height.  The red scar of a wound appeared just below his left ear.  After marking time with his feet, he began a kind of patter song about having a telephone, every verse of which ended, “Oh, la la, j’ai le telephone chez moi” (I’ve a telephone in my house).  “I know who is unfaithful now—­who have horns upon their brow,” the singer told of surprising secrets and unsuspected affaires de coeur.  The silly, music-hall song may seem banal now, but it amused us hugely then.  “Le Camarade Duclos.”

“Oh, if you could have seen your son, My mother, my mother, Oh, if you could have seen your son, With the regiment”—­sang Camarade Duclos, another old-eyed youngster.  There was amiable adventure with an amiable “blonde” (oh, if you could have seen your son); another with a “jolie brune” (oh, ma mere, ma mere); and still another lecon d’amour.  The refrain had a catchy lilt to it, and the poilus began humming it.

“Le Camarade Salvatore.”

The newcomer was a big, obese Corsican mountaineer, with a pleasant, round face and brown eyes.  He advanced quietly to the side of the stage holding a ten-sou tin flute in his hand, and when he began to play, for an instant I forgot all about the Bois-le-Pretre, the trenches, and everything else.  The man was a born musician.  I never heard anything more tender and sweet than the little melody he played.  The poilus listened in profound silence, and when he had finished, a kind of sigh exhaled from the hearts of the audience.

There followed another singer, a violinist, and a clown whose song of a soldier on furlough finished with these appreciated couplets:—­

“The Government says it is the thing To have a baby every spring; So when your son Is twenty-one, He’ll come to the trenches and take papa’s place.  So do your duty by the race.”

In the uproar of cheers of “That’s right,” and so on, the concert ended.

The day after the concert was Sunday, and at about ten o’clock that morning a young soldier with a fluffy, yellow chin beard came down the muddy street shouting, “le Mouchoir, le Mouchoir.”  About two or three hundred paper sheets were clutched tightly in his left hand, and he was selling them for a sou apiece.  Little groups of poilus gathered round the soldier newsboy; I saw some of them laughing as they went away.  The paper was the trench paper of the Bois-le-Pretre, named the “Mouchoir” (the handkerchief) from a famous position thus called in the Bois.  The jokes in it were like the jokes in a local minstrel show, puns on local names, jests about the Boches, and good-humored satire.  The spirit of the “Mouchoir” was whole-heartedly amateur.  Thus the issue which followed a heavy snowfall contained this genuine wish:—­

“Oh, snow, Please go, Leave the trench Of the French; Cross the band Of No Man’s Land To where the Boche lies.  Freeze him, Squeeze him, Soak him, Choke him, Cover him, Smother him, Till the beggar dies.”