Part 28 (2/2)

THE WOMEN OF FRANCE

Lonely and still the village lies, The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn

The road is straight as the bullet flies, And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn

Shadowy forht, Where the coal-stacks looht, A screa air

We had been working allin a cornfield near an _esta was very hot, and Pryor and I felt very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by drinking white wine in an _estaminet_ by the La Bassee Road

”This is not the place to dig trenches,” said the sergeant e entered

”We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse,” Pryor explained ”It is to be o can sleep there and get wind of the approach of a (p 280) sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the trench”

”Every eant looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses ”I can't allow it and the back room empty”

Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear, where we found two persons, a wo cutlets and the e bucket He was a thickset lu, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set fir scar stretching from the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone He wore a nondescript pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shi+rt and a pair of bedroo rapier-like instruing trenches?” he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket

I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, as educated in Paris, speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work since five o'clock that ain unless as prisoners” (p 281)

”They ht thrust us back; one never knows,” said Pryor

”Thrust us back! Never!” The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz like a spent bullet ”Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten, our 75 has beaten them That's it: the 75, the little love Pip! pip!

pip! pip! Four little i can stand them Bomb! one lands in the Gero right, soht, the third on the left, the fourth finishes the job The dead are ood as the 75”

”What about the gun that sent this over?”

Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic shells hich the Geres of the hat time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not the nice discriht shrapnel shell is est ”Jack Johnson”

The shell relic before us, the ren, (p 282) was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye, opposite the doorway When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene of the great war beco to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder There arethe tourists who couerre” At present a needy urchin will sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed oing hoely with needy French urchins who live near the firing line

”A great gun, the one that sent that,” said the French at the percussion-cap which lay on the in and Child ”But co shell comes boo-out before it arrives It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in shelter when the rain co It comes silently, it's quicker than its own sound”

”Do you work here?” asked Pryor (p 283)

”I work here,” said the potato-peeler

”In a coal-mine?”

”Not in a coal-mine,” was the answer ”I peel potatoes”

”Always?”

”Sometimes,” said the man ”I'm out from the trenches on leave for seven days First tiust Got back from Souchez to-day”