E-text prepared by Irma Spehar, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 16945-h.htm or 16945-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/9/4/16945/16945-h/16945-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/9/4/16945/16945-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive: Canadian Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/whiteroadverdun00burkuoft THE WHITE ROAD TO VERDUN by KATHLEEN BURKE [Illustration: Frontispiece.] Hodder and Stoughton London New York Toronto Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury MCMXVI TO DR. C.O. MAILLOUX (NEW YORK) MR. AND MRS. L.B. FRANKLIN AND JEANNETTE FRANKLIN AND TO MY MOTHER WHO BY THEIR AFFECTION AND PRACTICAL SYMPATHY HELPED ME IN ALL THE WORK I HAVE UNDERTAKEN. 10th August, 1916. We left Paris determined to undertake the journey to the front in the true spirit of the French _poilu_, and, no matter what happened, "_de ne pas s'en faire_." This famous "motto" of the French Army is probably derived from one of two slang sentences: "De ne pas se faire des cheveux" ("To keep one's hair on"), or "De ne pas se faire de la bile" (or, in other words, not to upset one's digestion by unnecessary worrying). The phrase is typical of the mentality of the _poilu_, who accepts anything and everything that may happen, whether it be merely slight physical discomfort or intense suffering, as part of the willing sacrifice which he made on the day that, leaving his homestead and his daily occupation, he took up arms "offering his body as a shield to defend the Heart of France." Everything might be worse than it is, says the _poilu_, and so he has composed a litany. Every regiment has a different version, but always with the same fundamental basis: