To stand beside an English battery of thirty guns laying a barrage as they fired their shells to a point ten miles distant, made one feel as if one were an actual part of real warfare, and yet far removed from it, until the battery was located from the enemy's "sausage observation"; then the shells from the enemy fired a return salvo, and the better part of valor was discretion a few miles farther back.
Bok was standing talking to the commandant of one of the great French army supply depots one morning.

He was a man of forty; a colonel in the regular French army.

An erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and mustache, and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve, came up, saluted, delivered a message, and then asked: "Are there any more orders, sir ?" "No," was the reply.
He brought his heels together with a click, saluted again, and went away.
The commandant turned to Bok with a peculiar smile on his face and asked: "Do you know who that man is ?" "No," was the reply.
"That is my father," was the answer.
The father was then exactly seventy-two years old.

He was a retired business man when the war broke out.

After two years of the heroic struggle he decided that he couldn't keep out of it.