Before the days of the Great War, there lived in Breton, France, an artist whose beautiful pictures had caused people to think of him as one of the greatest of French painters. His name was Jean Lemoidant, and he loved to paint pictures of the quaint villages of Brittany where lived the simpleminded fisher-folk who braved the dangers of the deep. Jean Lemoidant’s first pictures were of fishermen mending their nets; of little children romping in the sand; of peasants wending their way to the churches they so loved; of anxious women waiting for the return of the fishing boats, and sometimes of angry seas that in their fury hurled themselves against the rocks. Jean Lemoidant loved the simple people among whom he lived, and they in turn gazed in wonder at his paintings and told each other that some day there would be a great artist in France and his name would be Jean Lemoidant. Then the artist was given a task which occupied him every day for two whole years. In an old village hotel there were fine large panels on the wall, and he was asked to paint a suitable design for the entire wall, which was sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, and fifteen feet high. So exquisite was the design that Jean Lemoidant conceived that when it was completed admiring crowds came great distances to see it and the fame of the artist spread to Paris. He was given the contract to paint the interior of the magnificent municipal theatre at Rennes. He had almost completed this important task when the Great War broke out, and although he was thirty-seven years of age and could have remained in the Home Defence Corps, he enlisted in one of the regiments soon to go to the front, and before the war was many weeks old he was in the trenches facing the Germans. Jean Lemoidant proved himself as capable a soldier as he had been a painter, and led his men in many daring engagements, where his courage was put to the test. He was badly wounded at Charleroi, and in spite of advice he refused to go to the hospital at the base. Later he was wounded at the Marne, and a third time at Artois. At Artois his right arm was rendered useless; he was wounded in the leg, and his knee was smashed, and the joint was made stiff so that he walked in a halting fashion. In spite of these gruelling experiences he still refused to leave the firing line and insisted on staying with his men and joining them in the attack before Arras. In that attack he was struck by a bullet. Afterwards he said that it seemed at the time as if his head had been completely smashed. For forty-eight hours he lay unconscious, and when he came to himself he lay among the dead and the dying, scarcely able to move. He heard around him the groans of dying men. Even then his great courage showed itself, for when he saw a Breton lad dying he crawled to him and comforted him in his last moments.