a heap of stones.
Where there were English or Americans in these bombarded towns, or
where the Cures or the Mayors of those invaded had not been shot or
imprisoned, the children were sent as quickly as possible to Paris,
the mothers, when there were any, only too content to let them go and
to remain behind and take their chances with the shells.

One little Belgian named Bonduelle, who, with two brothers, reached
Paris in safety, is very graphic: "We are three orphans," he replied
in answer to the usual questions. "Our uncle and aunt took the place
of our dear parents, so soon taken from us.... It was towards the
evening of Wednesday, 6th September, 1914, that I was coming back to
my uncle's house from Ypres, when all at once I heard shrieks and
yells in the distance. I stopped, for I was like one stunned. On
hearing behind me, on the highway, German cavalry, I ran into a house
where I spent the night. I could not close my eyes when I thought of
the anxiety of my uncle and aunt and of the fate of my two small
brothers, Michael and Roger. Early the following day I rushed to our
house. Everybody was in the cellar. We shed tears on meeting again. I
found two of my cousins wounded by a shell which had exploded outside
our door. Soon another shell comes and smashes our house. I was
wounded. Dazed with fear, my cousin and myself got out through a
window from the cellar, we ran across fields and meadows to another
uncle, where the rest of the family followed us soon. We remained
there the whole winter, but what a sad winter! We have not taken off
our clothes, for at every moment we feared to have to run away again.

"The big guns rumbled very much and the shells whistled over our
heads. Every one heard: 'So-and-so is killed' or 'wounded, by a
shell.' 'Such-and-such-a-house is ruined by a shell.'

"After having spent more than seven months in incredible fear, my
brothers and myself have left the village, at the order of the
gendarmes, and the English took us to Hazebrouck, from where we went
to Paris."

In some cases the parents, or, as was most generally the case, the
mother, after many terrifying experiences in her village, passed and
repassed by the Germans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris,
sent their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a place of
comparative safety until the end of the war. Young Bruno Van
Wonterghem told his experience in characteristically simple words:

"Towards the evening