I talked with a young woman shop-keeper at Verpeliers. The Germans had been in her house—slept on the floor, thick as sardines in a box. They ate up her stock and did not pay. Was she not afraid? She laughed a happy laugh. “What me, Monsieur, afraid? I am Francaise. What do I care for those swine? The sous-officers tried to make me give in. They pointed guns at me, and tried to pull me along with them when the French returned. I screamed and fought. Four of my lodgers are where those crosses are at the bend of the road. The others are prisoners. I am paid, all right, and am satisfied.” “Yes,” she continued, “they charged our old men with being in telephonic communication with the French Army. Twelve were arrested, marked with a blue cross on the right cheek, and have not been heard from since. Two, M. Poizeaux, aged 47, and M. Vassel, 78 years old, were brought back and shot the same evening.” At Rodern, in reconquered Alsace, where the natives spoke German, the streets were marked in German letters, German proclamations were on the walls, and German money was current, I sat with Tex Bondt, in a low Alsatian room, by candle light. The heavy family bed was let into a wall and screened off by a curtain, the floor was of stone, the furniture primitive. A short, squat woman was bewailing her misfortunes. This mother had six sons and three daughters. Three boys mobilized with the German Army. Two were killed. The other is on the Russian front. Of the three, who ran away, and joined the French army, one was killed and two wounded. Two of her girls, nurses in the German Army, were killed during a bombardment. As she listened, I watched emotion come and go in the eyes of the remaining daughter. In the hospital at Montreuil-Ballay, I met an old man, wounded in the arm. The wound would not knit. Unable to sleep, weeping relieved him. He said, “My wife and I were at home near Lille, in bed one night. The Germans broke in the door, came upstairs, jabbed me with a bayonet and made me get out. I kept going and joined the French Army.” “And your wife, what of her?” “I don’t know, I have neither seen nor heard from her from that day to this.”