First Offensive- The Marine Campaign for Guadalcanal
Oct 17, 2026 · 1 hr 33 min · 13 segments
"War the Creator" by Frank Gelett Burgess delves into the profound relationship between war and creativity, exploring how conflict shapes human expression and innovation. This thought-provoking work…
Part two.
Georges, having commenced his regular three years military service in October 1913, got leave to visit his aunt who was keeping a pension in Paris.
How shy and confused he was when I came down to the dining room that day and surprised him while he was examining his too faint mustache with great seriousness before the mirror.
Charming, I thought him instantly.
A clean, jolly sort of boy, quite too young for that ridiculous soldier's uniform.
His aunt introduced him, with her arm about his shoulder and a tweak of his ear, by his nickname, Coco.
And after he got used to my being a foreigner, he began to talk, using his big brown eyes and his free, expressive hands quite as much as his tongue.
Knowing a little of the Midi, I attempted an imitation of the patois.
Coco threw back his head and laughed with abandon.
That broke the ice, and we became great friends.
He was so curious about everything American that I took him up to my salon to see my typewriter, also my neckties and fancy socks.
It was a novelty, a perpetual pencil of the self-sharpening sort, with a magazine filled with little points like cartridges.
When I gave it to him, it pleased Coco immensely.
Just like a rifle! he exclaimed, as he amused himself by pressing the end and ejecting the bits of lead.
He went through the manual of arms with it, laughing.
He did a mock bayonet thrust or two, and then aimed it at me in fun, like a child.
Pan! he cried.
The contrast of his red pantaloons and blue coat with the round, innocent face and lips parted like a girl's was absurd.
Why, he was more like those doll soldiers you see at toy shops with curly hair.
With his fresh pink cheeks and big brown eyes, he seemed no more than sixteen years old.
In the evening we all went out on the crowded boulevard, where, it being a fête day, they were dancing in front of the open-air bandstands.
It was a long time before I ceased to think of Coco as jolly, flushed, exuberant, dancing the tango on the corner by the Sorbonne with his pretty young aunt, as excited and happy as only a lad can be who has come up from a provincial town to see the metropolis for the first time on a holiday.
That was on the fourteenth of July, 1914.
Part two.
Georges, having commenced his regular three years military service in October 1913, got leave to visit his aunt who was keeping a pension in Paris.
How shy and confused he was when I came down to the dining room that day and surprised him while he was examining his too faint mustache with great seriousness before the mirror.
Charming, I thought him instantly.
A clean, jolly sort of boy, quite too young for that ridiculous soldier's uniform.
His aunt introduced him, with her arm about his shoulder and a tweak of his ear, by his nickname, Coco.
And after he got used to my being a foreigner, he began to talk, using his big brown eyes and his free, expressive hands quite as much as his tongue.
Knowing a little of the Midi, I attempted an imitation of the patois.
Coco threw back his head and laughed with abandon.
That broke the ice, and we became great friends.
He was so curious about everything American that I took him up to my salon to see my typewriter, also my neckties and fancy socks.
It was a novelty, a perpetual pencil of the self-sharpening sort, with a magazine filled with little points like cartridges.
When I gave it to him, it pleased Coco immensely.
Just like a rifle! he exclaimed, as he amused himself by pressing the end and ejecting the bits of lead.
He went through the manual of arms with it, laughing.
He did a mock bayonet thrust or two, and then aimed it at me in fun, like a child.
Pan! he cried.
The contrast of his red pantaloons and blue coat with the round, innocent face and lips parted like a girl's was absurd.
Why, he was more like those doll soldiers you see at toy shops with curly hair.
With his fresh pink cheeks and big brown eyes, he seemed no more than sixteen years old.
In the evening we all went out on the crowded boulevard, where, it being a fête day, they were dancing in front of the open-air bandstands.
It was a long time before I ceased to think of Coco as jolly, flushed, exuberant, dancing the tango on the corner by the Sorbonne with his pretty young aunt, as excited and happy as only a lad can be who has come up from a provincial town to see the metropolis for the first time on a holiday.
That was on the fourteenth of July, 1914.
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