SPIRIT OF FRANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16895, 6 July 1918, Page 7

SPIRIT OF FRANCE.

<»—,— FEAR.PROOF INHABITANTS. OLD WOMAN AND REP, DOG. (Commonwealth Official —CopyriphtV FRANCE March 3!. Some days ago—on the evening of reaching the area of this new battle—as we were walking home, I branched off about nightfall to visit a village in which some of us lived at an earlier stage of the war. It was behind the furthest shell in those days. The old lady of our billet, who was full of fear of Australians on our first arrival, and had sent ner daughter to Paris, and locked up her spoons, had finished by looking after us like a mother for three wintrj months, and 'laving sonio of the youngsters every night, to dinner with her. She had a blackboard there, and when they could not understand one another they would write the word upon it—in English or French, as the case might be—and then look it up in the dictionary. Her daughter writes to some of them still. That day the Germans were for the first time in that very valley. Since the day before their shells had been flying over that village. We had heard them exploding in tho hollow half a dozen times as we went up, and as one wandered down there in the dusk there must have been twenty new brown shel'holes in the young green wheat on the hill near the town. Of course the old lady will have moved out long since, I thought. I knocked at the well-remembered cottage, door and rang the tiny door-bell. Tnero was an answer from inside. No mistaking the voice—it was Madame. She kept the front door locked, and came by the side door to seo who it was. A minute later we were in the old pantry talking over " the little Arthur." a young Australian who is 6ft high, and broad in proportion, and " the young man Harold," and " this old driver of automobiles," and all the other company that she remembered so well. Not a word about fright or these shell? which ban been crashing through, tho rickety village roofs. An old man was in the next room helping an old woman to lift a feather mat tress. "My aged brother-in-law, Monsieur," she said as she saw mo look that way. _ " My sister and he are going k> sleep in the next house up the hill. The shells wero passing over last night—they have done little damage— thrown somo fragments on the roof. But we had very little sleep till three o'clock. This morning they were passing constantly, every five or six minutes. Wo thought that the little house next door would be safer than this one— you think so, Monsieur? Thero is not much protection here, do you think?" Screaming Shells Disregarded.

I looked round at the gimcrack wallsthere was scarcely enough shelter to keep out a pebble from a catapult. While she was talking two shells from a highvelocity six-inch shells at leastscreamed at a minute interval overhead and crashed about 200 yds away. She did not even halt in her speech or notice them in any way. Tho old couple in the next room were chattering in oven voices over their business, and never so much as looked up. And yet I suppose they never heard that sound in their lives until tho day before. I thought of a stir that I had seen amongst tho city folk in London and in Paris when our own guns were pouring p. friendly protecting barrage into the air half a mile away at least—and tho old lady chattered on. "My daughter is in Paris—l sent the young ono away for safety," she said. " But, oh, monsieur, do you think she is safe ? That gun which is shelling Paris— I grow very anxious for her." I could not help laughing. " Madame, your daughter might live in Pari.s for a year and never sco a shell burst. But you here—"

" How far is this gun away," she asked. "This one. firing "now. Do yon think two kilometres or three. Since the newspapers have ceased arriving these three, days wo have no information of where the Germans arc." I assured her the gun was 10 kilometres away—which was true. I did not say that the next village up the valley was blown to ruins and an old man was lying in the road between, and the cows were grazing amongst their slaughtered companions in the green fields. Calmness in tho Face of Crisis. I wondered if they realised their dangei, but the next sentence settled the doubt. "Many villagers have gone, but some of us stayed," she said. " I have no vehicle. —I could not walk—l have so far kept this little home and all my little belongings, but I suppose there is nothing now except for us to Iks taken by the Germans cr bombarded— village ruined like those others of the Somme—ruin for my homo and death for me. All, what a fate."

There was nothing but a firm courage in her voice.

Nothing seemed more likely than that the village would be the centre of a very big battle to-morrow. That night the authorities decided to move from the village all the inhabitants who were left. A senior officer lent his car for some of the older women. The old man would have to walk or come next day. When his wife, who was standing beside the car with three bundles of some sort of clothing, and an old dog on a chain, had this explained to her she quietly shook her head. "If my husband stays' I stay. We shall die together—l shall not go without my husband—nor my dog," and she looked fondly down on the old mongrel on the chain.

She kissed the others good bye. And it. was only when, at the end, room was found both for the husband and the dog, that the old lady went off. leaving, without an l.our's notice, all that she possessed beMind her. She was so calm that one would have said she scarcely realised the critical position in which they were until the decision was arrived at to make room for them. Then the strain burst ;.nd she broke down. Old People Almost Always Stay. There are a few of I hem in those thelled villages still. They are almost always the old people who stay. .As we went through one shattered place, whore the cows wen: lying kil'ed by shrapnel in the paddocks, and two Australian horsemen were rounding the remainder up and driving them towards safely—a sight which sent my thcuelit* back twelve thou sand miles in one bound—we found an old fellow hobbling with a pail. "You are very intrepid. Monsieur." we said. The old chap laughed. "Mo) Why should 1 fly from the (-hell-?" he said. "I lost this arm in pighteen-seventy." Yesterday, when the German turned into a. village in the Somme Valley and chunks of houses and clouds of red brickdust were bursting from it, there came dow the main street out of the place an oh man and an old woman, each leading a cow. They crossed the meadows, and the bridge and the tdcep northern side of the valley hid them from view. The German shitted his bombardment a little later In the north side: and presently, not a mile behind the front line of this battle, there passed over the hill and down into safety the two old people and their cows. Oi euch stuff are the country people o( France.