Street after street I passed through and filmed. Many of the buildings were still burning and at one corner of the Grande Place flames were shooting out of the windows of the three remaining houses in Peronne. I hastily fitted up my camera and filmed the scene. When I had finished it was necessary to run the gauntlet, and pass directly under the burning buildings to get into the square. Showers of sparks were flying about, pieces of the burning building were being blown in all directions by the strong wind. But I had to get by, so, buttoning up my collar tightly, fastening my steel shrapnel helmet on my head, and tucking the camera under my arm, I made a rush, yelling out to my man to follow with the tripod. As I passed I felt several heavy pieces of something hit my helmet and another blazing piece hit my shoulder and stuck there, making me set up an unearthly yell as the flames caught my ear and singed my hair. But, quickly shooting past, I reached a place of safety, and setting up the camera I obtained some excellent views of the burning buildings. Standing upon a heap of rubble, which once formed a branch of one of the largest banking concerns in France, I took a panoramic scene of the great square. The smoke clouds curling in and around the skeleton walls appeared for all the world like some loathsome reptile seeming to gloat upon its prey, loath to leave it, until it had made absolutely certain that not a single thing was left to be devoured. With the exception of the crackling flames and the distant boom of the guns, it was like a city of the dead. The once beautiful church was totally destroyed. In the square was the base of a monument upon which, before the war, stood a memorial to France's glorious dead in the war of 1870. The "kultured" Germans had destroyed the figure and, in its place, had stuck up a dummy stuffed with straw in the uniform of a French Zouave. Could ever a greater insult be shown to France! Not content with burning the whole town, the Huns had gone to the trouble of displaying a huge signboard on the side of a building in the square on which were these words: "Don't be vexed--just admire!" Think of it! The devils! CHAPTER XXVI AN UNCANNY ADVENTURE Exploring the Unknown--A Silence That Could be Felt--In the Village of Villers-Carbonel--A Cat and Its Kittens in an Odd Retreat--Brooks' Penchant for "Souvenirs"--The First Troops to Cross the Somme.