Three hours’ rest, and then again forward! At noon, a farm. Halt! Georges85 was one of the three who went forward, dodging from wall to wall, to reconnoiter. There seemed to be some secret hidden there—the roof was blown off, the windows smashed, devastation everywhere about—but it might still conceal some desperate foe. As he approached the closed door, he saw a stain on the stone step, where a little dark stream of something had dried. He pushed open the door—butchery! More than two hundred Germans who had taken refuge there had found appalling death when two howitzer shells had converted them into an incredible mass of mere bleeding flesh. No fear now need any Frenchman have of those grim Germans—save only the fear of infection. Georges flung back the door and fled.
Could he find worse horrors? Let him tell.
“On Friday, after we had been relieved, we were held in reserve in the rear, and de86tailed to pick up the German deserters and waifs that were hiding in the woods all over the country. They were a sorry enough lot, frightened to death at first, when they threw up their hands at sight of us, but glad enough to be made prisoners and not have to work, when they found they were not going to be killed. After the wanton destruction of innocent villages we had seen—they had even destroyed the fire engines—it was pretty hard to refrain from knocking these brutes down wi............