In this country, the trees always seem to be walking towards the adventure that’s in the air. They’re constantly producing sap, their branches and foliage pushing ahead and grabbing each other so they can rise up, intertwined. Trees, in America, seem to breathe a more native air, finding their nourishment in a more original soil. They know all there is to know, they say all there is to say. Among this green and this red, standing on this underground violence, I discover that I am white and that my colour is offensive. I discover that being white is only one way of being a man, but that we don’t have the instruction manuals for others. What the trees know is what allows them to resist our way of conquering and possessing. They take us under their watch and their windy and savage movement and the stirring of the whole structure resembling them leave their mark on us. Trees have depth, we only concern ourselves with surfaces, we slide along, we dream — surface dreams — but we don’t embrace them. One day, perhaps, or perhaps never.
Henry Bauchau
The Black Regiment
I am a soldier, infantryman in the New York foreign regiment. It was pointless to explain that, thanks to François, I knew how to handle cannons, pointless, no more room in the artillery. I could have, with Wolf, the guy from Anvers who shared my cabin on the Flandria, gone to another State. But everyone said that the war would be brief and that you had to get right to it. We did as we were told. We were given a shiny uniform, too shiny for me, and we were sent, along with a reinforcement company, to join the regiment that was taking shape near Washington. I had to leave Carabine on a farm and the journey was long and burdensome. Washington, its sweltering heat, the white mass of buildings in the middle of empty avenues. The camp, the log cabins, suffocating and full of smoke, idleness. There are exercises, of course, but not enough. It’s obvious that the elected officers and junior officers know hardly any more than we do. The training marches and night exercises are carried out carelessly. I’m disappointed. I hate vagueness, the indecisive outlines of action in this regiment that was pulled together too quickly and poorly thoughtout. With Wolf, I go to see the regular army companies train. We admire the precision and the mobility of their movements, but they’re composed of no more than a few thousand men. They’re volunteers that need to be made war-worthy.
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