That night the sun went down in a blood-red glory. All the houses of Loos were bathed in blood-red. “Bad sign,” muttered an old woman purchasing chocolate at the store. And it was. Soon the refugees from surrounding burning villages came flocking by in streams, telling of the terrible Germans from whom they had escaped. Most of the inhabitants of Loos joined the fleeing throngs. Of five thousand people, ultimately only two hundred remained in the village. Among these were the Moreau family, who, possessing in marked degree that national trait of love for their home and their belongings, refused to leave. “But,” said her father to Emilienne, “little daughter, it will, I fear, be a long time before you will gather flowers again.” And it was. The Germans were in possession of Loos by October. They poured petrol on the houses and burned many of them. At the store in the Place de la Republique, Emilienne, with quick wit, set a bottle of wine out on the counter and they drank and went away without burning, although they looted the store of everything of value. During the year that followed, Loos remained in the hands of the enemy. In the effort of the French to retake it, it was often fired upon from the surrounding hills. From the windows in the sloping garret roof, Emilienne and her father watched many a battle until the bombs began falling on the garret itself. They were exposed to constant danger. They had to live on the vegetables they could gather from the deserted neighbouring gardens. By December her father was ill from privation and hunger and anxiety, and one night he died. Emilienne, girl as she was, seems to have been the main reliance of the family, her mother, her little sister Marguerite, and her little brother Leonard, aged nine. The morning after her father’s death, Emilienne went to the German commandant to ask for assistance. How should she get a coffin? How should it be possible to bury her father? And the German laughed: “One can get along very well without a coffin!” He finally permitted her four French prisoners to dig the grave and the curé of Loos, he said, could say a prayer. But Emilienne was heart-broken at the thought of putting her father into the ground without a coffin. She and her little brother made one with their own hands from boards she found at the deserted carpenter-shop down the street.