"Why do you go?" they were asked by one of the women who have been speaking to me.
"Because we hope to escape the new British attacks," they answered. "The English gun-fire smashed us to death on the Somme. The officers know we cannot stand that horror a second time."
"I was the bailiff of Mme. la Marquise de Caulaincourt," said an elderly man, taking off his peaked cap to show me a coronet on the badge. "When the Germans came first to our village they seized all the tools, and all the farm-carts, and all the harvesting, and then they forced us all to work for them, the men at three sous an hour, the women at two sous an hour, and prison for any who refused to work. From the château they sent back the tapestries, the pictures, and anything which pleased this Commandant or that, until there was nothing left. Then in the last days they burnt the château to the ground and all the village and all the orchards."
"It was the same always," said a woman. "There were processions of carts covered with linen, and underneath the linen was the furniture stolen from good houses."
"Fourteen days ago," said an old man who had tears in his eyes as he spoke, "I passed the night in the cemetery of Vraignes. There were one thousand and fifteen of us people from neighbouring villages, some in the church and some in the cemetery. They searched us there and took all our money. Some of the women were stripped and searched. In the cemetery it was a cold night and dark, but all around the sky was flaming with the fire of our villages--Poeuilly, Bouvincourt, Marteville, Trefçon, Monchy, Bernes, Hancourt, and many more. The people with me wept and cried out loud to see their dear places burning and all this hell. Terrible explosions came to our ears. There were mines everywhere under the roads. Then Vraignes was set on fire and burnt around us, and we were stricken with a great terror. Next day the English came when the last Uhlans had left. 'The English!' we shouted, and ran forward to meet them, stumbling, with outstretched hands. Soon shells began to fall in Vraignes. The enemy was firing upon us, and some of the shells fell very close to a barn quite full of women and children. 'Come away,' said your English soldiers, and we fled farther."
