more frightful than could be any indicative of suffering. Those
who have died slowly are usually propped up against something in a
sitting posture, and their faces express happiness or perfect peace.

* * * * *

We passed beyond the position which the Germans had recently held.
Here beside the road was a farmer's house with a great hole in its
roof. In the door stood a very old man gazing stupidly at the
landscape. In front of his house lay side by side three dead Germans.
They lay on their backs; the coat and shirt of each had been torn open
at the neck and their bare breasts were marred by a clotted mass of
closely grouped bullet marks. Further inspection showed that their
arms were tied behind them and we knew that we were witnessing the
results of a military execution. The old man against whose house they
had been shot explained that they had been among the prisoners taken
in the charge of the French infantry the day before and that their
fate had been the penalty for what was revealed when their pockets had
been searched.

* * * * *

We cross-questioned several inhabitants of the little village of
Boissy, who told us that the Germans had held the place for five days
and had left only two days ago, on Wednesday evening. Fleeing at the
approach of a heavy force of the British, they had retired in a
northeasterly direction. We judged from the description given by the
peasants that the force which had occupied the neighborhood consisted
of a division of cavalry with a strong force of artillery. In entering
Boissy the Germans had cornered a patrol of about twenty British
cavalrymen and had killed them all, the last three having defended
themselves in a little brick house where they had been shot down one
by one. The Germans had burned this house and the two adjoining ones
in order to make sure that no more troopers were in hiding. We saw
only one other building in the village which had been damaged. The
inhabitants explained that it was a jewelry shop and that the invaders
had wrecked it hoping to find hidden valuables. We did not have time
to investigate this statement. There had been no fighting in the
streets other than the battle with the British patrol and we
considered the condition of the place a credit to the force which had
occupied it. The inhabitants, indeed, protested that all food supplies
had been confiscated but agreed that no civilians had