Epigraph
(“Ma Mitrailleuse”)
Dedication
To the Memory of
My Comrades of the second company of machine guns of the... first Colonials
who fell at the battle of the Somme in July, 1916, and of the Aisne in April, 1917;
To
Lieutenants Maisonnave and Dupouy
in remembrance of the hours of fine, sincere comradeship we lived together;
To
Denys Maurin
the quartermaster-sergeant, wounded heroically before Soissons, in testimony of a sincere friendship which was born under shell-fire, which grew amid the horrors of grim madness, and which was firmly fixed through sharing common hopes and common joys;
I dedicate these simple pages which are only a modest contribution to the monumental narrative which these anonymous epics of every day would make