CONVOY formation again, the cars freshly washed and glistening in the sunlight,—for a few minutes, before the grey cloud of dust pouring from the cars in front settles on us again. We come to a turn. A large sign greets us, _Souilly—vers Verdun_, emphasized by a giant arrow pointing in the direction we take. We are instantly sure that this is to be our headquarters. Verdun is a name we have long wished to visualize. At the first stop we tell each other the great news. While we are grouped in the road a big grey limousine carrying three generals dashes past. Every one salutes, and by a miracle we are noticed and the salute is returned. Cheerful Liar at once informs us that they were Joffre, Petain, and—he is at a loss for the third name. We help him out—Hindenburg perhaps. But we are doomed to bitter disappointment. Thirty kilometres from the famous city we are given orders to park our cars in a pile of ruins formerly known as Erize—Erize la petite, and well named. * * * * * ERIZE is, without exception, the dullest place beneath the sun—a small town, now a mass of crumbling ruins, holding not above two dozen civilians, who are, for the most part, still less interesting than the town. Of course, there are Grand’mère and Grand-père, no relation to each other, but so christened by us because they are the only two octogenarians here. Grand’mère is not properly from Erize. Her home is somewhere north of Verdun, in a town with an unpronounceable name and long since destroyed. She, herself, carries proudly on her wrinkled forehead a two-inch scar from shrapnel, and informs us tearfully that her two sons have died in action, “_pour la patrie_,” she concludes, with a faint smile. I met Grand’mère for the first time when I picked an unripe apple from an overburdened tree. The old woman appeared from the depths of a nearby building and advanced menacingly towards me, hobbling along on a cane, and pouring forth as she came an unintelligible tirade from which I gathered that the apple reposing guiltily in my hand was hers—not mine. A single _franc_ served to wreathe her face in smiles and to obtain undisputed claim to the apple and her good graces in the future. _Ira furor brevis est._ I afterwards learned that houses in Erize rent for fifty _francs_ a year, this including several acres of farm land. Grand-père, aged ninety-eight, I met near the temporary kitchen where the cook was giving him a cup of _Pinard_, which he drank eagerly, while Grand’mère gave him wise counsel, to which he replied as Omar Khayyam might have done. But they are the only characters of interest here. The fields surrounding the town have as their redeeming feature a system of old trenches, with much barbed wire and an occasional shell-fragment to reward the searcher. The German advance was stopped less than a mile from here, and the trenches have been used since for practice.