Chapter I: Preface: To Carol

Dear, you asked me to write for you the story of my work and adventures in France, and through all the agonising hours of incubation and parturition you have given me your unfailing sympathy, encouragement and help. You have even chastened me (it was a devastating hour!) for my--and, I believe, for the book's--good, and when we discovered that the original form--that of intimate personal letters written directly to you--did not suit the subject matter, you acquiesced generously in a change, the need for which I, at least, shall ever deplore.

And now that the last words have been written and Finis lies upon the page, I know how short it all falls of my ideal and how unworthy it is of your high hope of me. And yet I dare to offer it to you, knowing that what is good in it is yours, deep delver that you are for the gold that lies--somewhere--in every human heart.

Twenty months in the war zone ought, one would imagine, to have provided me with countless hair-breadth escapes, thrills, and perhaps even shockers with which to regale you, but the adventures are all those of other people, an occasional flight to a cellar in a raid being all we could claim of danger. And so, instead of being a book about English women in France, it is mainly a book about French women in their own country, and therein lies its chief, if not its only claim to merit.

Humanness was the quality which above all others you asked for, and if it possesses that I shall know it has not been written in vain.

SUSANNE R. DAY.

_London,
January 1918._

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. MAINLY INTRODUCTORY 11

II. EN ROUTE--SERMAIZE-LES-BAINS 16

III. FIRST IMPRESSIONS 29

IV. À TRAVERS BAR-LE-DUC 47

V. SETTLING IN 61

VI. THE BASKET-MAKERS OF VAUX-LES-PALAMIES 73

VII. IN WHICH WE PLAY TRUANT 87

VIII. THE MODERN CALVARY 107

IX. IN WHICH WE BECOME EMISSARIES OF LE
BON DIEU 125

X. PRIESTS AND PEOPLE 136

XI. REPATRIÉES 160

XII. STORM-WRACK FROM VERDUN 179

XIII. MORE STORM-WRACK 198

XIV. AIR RAIDS 207

XV. M. LE POILU 223

ENVOI 255

ROUND ABOUT BAR-LE-DUC