enade
thrown by one of the French soldiers struck the parapet and
rebounded amongst the men. With that rapidity of thought which is
part of the French character, Jules sat on the grenade and
extinguished it. For this act of bravery he was decorated by the
French Government and wrote home to tell his wife. I found him
sitting up in bed, gloomily reading her reply, and I enquired why he
looked so glum. "Well, Mademoiselle," he replied, "I wrote to my
wife to tell her of my new honour and see what she says: 'My dear
Jules, We are not surprised you got a medal for sitting on a hand
grenade; we have never known you to do anything else but sit
down at home!!!'"

It was at Fere Champenoise that we passed through the first
village which had been entirely destroyed by the retreating
Germans. Only half the church was standing, but services are still
held there every Sunday. Very little attempt has been made to
rebuild the ruined houses. Were I one of the villagers I would
prefer to raze to the ground all that remained of the desecrated
homesteads and build afresh new dwellings; happy in the
knowledge that with the victory of the Allies would start a period of
absolute security, prosperity and peace.

Life Behind The Lines

Soon after leaving Mailly we had the privilege of beholding some of
the four hundred centimetre guns of France, all prepared and
ready to travel at a minute's notice along the railway lines to the
section where they might be needed. Some idea of their size may
be obtained from the fact that there were ten axles to the base on
which they travel. They were all disguised by the system of
camouflage employed by the French Army, and at a very short
distance they blend with the landscape and become almost
invisible. Each gun bears a different name, "Alsace," "Lorraine,"
etc., and with that strange irony and cynical wit of the French
trooper, at the request of the men of one battery, one huge gun
has been christened "Mosquito," "Because it stings."

The French often use a bitter and biting humour in speaking of the
enemy. For instance, amongst the many pets of the men, the
strangest I saw was a small hawk sitting on the wrist of a soldier
who had trained him. The bird was the personification of evil. If any
one approached he snapped at them and endeavoured to bite
them. I asked the man why he kept him, and he replied that they
had quite good sport in the trenches when they allowed the hawk
to hunt sm