Alphonse Aristide Jules

By Gregory Clark, February 18, 1933.

“Pets shall not be kept by units in the forward area.” So said G.R.O. No. 7648.

But of course, that had nothing to do with a dog making a pet of a platoon of thirty-five men.

You take a bunch of farmers and teamsters and village storekeeper’s sons from Grey and Frontenac counties and the Maritimes, and sit them down along a hedge in the sun and then have a small, waggly dog come twisting and shimmying with its front end and its back end, with a kind of shy look on its face; and right away, that bunch of men is adopted.

It was near Bouvigny Huts that Alphonse Aristide Jules, aged about eight months, and, so the boys said, a Bouvigny duck hound, elected Sixteen Platoon as its pet.

The lieutenant of Sixteen Platoon, whom I knew very well, used to wear spurs in the front line, with ten centime silver pieces in the rowels, which jingled and jangled as he walked on the duck-boards, so as to let the boys always know, around the bays, who was coming.

This lieutenant, whom we will call Mr. Shorty for short, was always sneaking around his platoon’s billets. He used, even, to stand afar off at the other end of the village, with his field glasses and watch his platoon in their private lives, and it was doubtless by this method that he learned about Alphonse Aristide Jules.

The day they were warned to go up the line, Mr. Shorty called a kit inspection, and he went through all the pack sacks, unrolled all the blankets, kept the platoon standing easy while he went back into the billet alone and hunted high and low for Alphonse Aristide Jules. But he didn’t find him.

So Mr. Shorty, a nasty look on his face, after damning the men for losing so many mess tin covers and breech protectors and so forth, announced:

“I trust,” he says, “that all ranks understand that no pets are allowed in the forward area.”

And Sixteen stood there, very surprised-like.

“Pets?” they said to one another, with their astonished eyes. “Pets? Who has any pets?”

So they went up the line that night, starting at dusk, and it was No. 681565, L. Cpl. Beefy, J.H., who carried Alphonse Aristide Jules in his pack sack.

Thus Alphonse Aristide Jules arrived effectively at the front line and made his first acquaintance with dugouts and saps and trenches.

It was about eleven p.m. before he thought of barking, previously being entirely absorbed in investigating this marvellous place

Anyway, Alphonse Aristide Jules saw a rat and, letting out a snarl, he went for it, and then barked excitedly at the hole the rat went into, before anybody could reach him and shut him up.

And down the trench, clink, clink, came Mr. Shorty stepping very firmly and dangerously on the bath mats.

“Did I hear a dog?” demanded Mr. Shorty haughtily, as he came into each bay.

“Dog?” said the boys on the fire step.

Clink, clink, he went up the trench to the end of his platoon front, which you would think was at least a divisional front the way he paced it. And receiving no reply to his question, he went down the dugout.

It was one of those two entrance dugouts, and nobody could tell which stairs Mr. Shorty would come down, so the boys off duty sat around the walls of the dugout and hid Alphonse Aristide Jules by wedging him in between the backs of No. 681126, Pte. Harrington, J., and No. 129423, Pte. Oswald, E.F.

Mr. Shorty came down into the candle light and stood looking into the gloom. The boys were all talking excitedly, like a girl’s schoolyard at recess.

“Silence, men!” commanded Mr. Shorty. Everybody was silent.

And then Alphonse Aristide Jules whined.

Mr. Shorty strode over and, looking down behind the backs of the two escort, beheld the shiny eyes of Alphonse Aristide Jules.

“Let him out,” commanded Mr. Shorty.

All in silence, the little dog leaped out and went waggling and shimmying joyously around the dugout, running up to this man and that, anxiously, pleadingly, but everybody just sat there with heads hung pretending they did not know him. Alphonse Aristide Jules was puzzled at this coldness and he ran over and jumped up on Mr. Shorty’s legs.

“Parlez-vous francais?” demanded Mr. Shorty.

The dog nearly wagged itself in two halves. Mr. Shorty squatted down and hugged Alphonse Aristide Jules.

“Comment-vous appelez-vous?” asked Mr. Shorty.

“Alphonse Aristide Jules,” said No. 129441, Pte. Leduc, F-X.

“That’s a hell of a name,” said Mr. Shorty.

“He’s a French dog,” said Pte. Leduc.

“Can he speak any English?” asked Mr. Shorty.

“No,” said Pte. Leduc.

“We ought to teach him,” said Mr. Shorty. So everybody gathered around, and Alphonse Aristide Jules sat in the middle, while he was taught to say “Allo” and “Comm eer” and “Lie down.”

“Du lait?” said Mr. Shorty, picking up a can of condensed milk. “See? Du lait? Milk. They showed him rifles, bombs, bandoliers, boots, bayonets.

Then the captain called down the dugout and Mr. Shorty had to scatter out of there and he went for a walk in the night with the captain while the boys made a collar out of a piece of a rifle strap for Alphonse Aristide Jules and the string of a pull-through for a leash.

Alphonse Aristide Jules spent six days in the front line, six days in support and then went back to Bouvigny in L. Cpl. Beefy’s packsack.

Sixteen Platoon gave Alphonse Aristide Jules to a little French boy in a black smock who nearly went crazy when he saw the dog and the dog nearly went crazy too.

So they had another ceremony in Sixteen Platoon billet, the glorious and heart-swelling ceremony of the return of the troops from the war, when they presented Alphonse Aristide Jules back to the bosom of his little master.

And as usual Mr. Shorty had to come sneaking into the billet just as the thing got started, so L. Cpl. Beefy, after he had finished, called on Mr. Shorty for a speech. He made rather a good speech, if he does say so himself. He had tears in nearly everybody’s eyes, including his own. He talked about the Return of the Warrior.

That’s all there is to the story. I don’t know why I tell it, except that perhaps there are some old people who might like to hear it, and some young men, maybe, out in the country, out around Grey county and Frontenac, who might like to know about the war their fathers were in.

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Editor’s Notes: Obviously, “Mr. Shorty” is Greg referring to himself.

Spurs are one of the instruments that riders use to direct horses. The spikes on the spur are set on a small wheel called a rowel.

A “bath mat” or “duck board” is a length of wood, pallet-like, used to line the floor of a trench in World War One to give the dirt/mud some stability, and something more or less more even to walk on.

A fire step is a step or platform dug into the front side of a military trench allowing soldiers to stand on it in order to fire over the parapet.