But that mother's eyes penetrated my soul for days and weeks, and my thoughts, try as I might, could not get away from her lot. In about three weeks I felt a strong pull and I made my way back to her little humble home to see if I could in any way lighten her burden a bit, or perhaps say some word to bring just a little comfort or assuage her heart's grief. When I rapped on the door and she answered and saw who I was, she fairly beamed with pleasure and threw her arms about my neck exclaiming, "Mr. Benson, I am so glad you have come," and then rushing over to the dresser drawer she brought out that worn and faded photograph with her son's message on the back, and as she showed it to me she exclaimed: "I am going to keep it till I die! It's not for the value of the picture, but that message interprets the heart of my boy to me. It tells me that he loves me, and, Mr. Benson, do you know, I wish I might have another husband and three more boys to go and fight for _La Belle France_!" That's an example of heroism and patriotism for America! And after that, for several weeks, that little loyal French mother, now alone in the world, sent me regularly some cakes and delicacies, with the message that as she did not have any of her own now to care for, she must try to do her best to help those who were helping France to win the battle for liberty. Poor Jacques had "gone West." And she need not send him any more clothes or food, but Jacques and his two brothers and his father too, have thrown their lives into the scale, and have added just so many more names to that honor roll, which already is large, of patriots of France. They loved their country. Every man, woman, and child over there does likewise, and France will honor them all eternally. I pray God's blessing on Jacques' mother now. CHAPTER X "TRENCH NIGHTMARE" Often in the long, long hours of the midnight during that period I brooded over the situation. Frequently the wheels of my thought would turn swiftly, and cause me to reflect upon that life in the terrible trenches; in those uncanny and frightful sewers, dug in the ground, cut there in No Man's Land, and, it sometimes seemed, in no God's land, where the guns bark, and the red fire leaps, and the shrapnel hisses, and the howitzers rip and snort in the daytime, and where glassy-eyed rats and vermin sneak and glide, spying upon the fatigued soldier in the night time, ready to finish up the work which the explosive may not quite have ended. Out there, in those animal burrows, surrounded by mud and blood and bacterial mold, where, week after week, the poor, plucky poilus existed, it could not be called living, and month after month remained in the weird, grim business of killing their unseen opponents by machinery.