The rest, perhaps, you saw.

The men seem to trust me." "They do," said John, with emphasis.
Bougainville, for the time at least, was certainly the leader of the regiment.

It was an incident that John believed possible only in his own country, or France, and he remembered once more the famous old saying of Napoleon that every French peasant carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack.
Now he recalled, too, that Napoleon had fought some of his greatest defensive battles in the region they faced.

Doubtless the mighty emperor and his marshals had trod the very soil on which Bougainville and he now stood.

Surely the French must know it, and surely it would give them superhuman courage for battle.
"I belong to the command of General Vaugirard," he said to Bougainville.
"I'm serving on his staff, but I was knocked off my motor cycle by the rush of air from a shell.