"Oh, my dear, French women never do that!"
"Well, they do when they get free. They go beyond us in freedom when they get it The woman you saw (I have seen her, too) works with the men, shoulder to shoulder, eats with them, smokes with them, drinks with them, drives all night and all day, and they say she can change a tyre in two minutes.
"There was a woman, too, who drove a lorry between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc, not a tender, you know, but a big lorry. She wore a bit of old ermine round her neck, knickerbockers, and yellow check stockings. One could imagine she had painted her face by the light of a candle at four in the morning. She never wore a hat, and her short yellow hair stuck out over her face which was as bright as a pink lamp shade."
"Terrible."
"She may have been, but she worked hard! She was always on that road. Or she would disappear for days with her lorry and come back caked in rouge and mud. I wish I could have got to know her and heard where she went and the things that happened to her."
"But, my dear, I keep thinking what a strange life it is for you. Are you always alone on your car?"
"Always alone."
"You are with men alone then all the time?"
"All the time."
"Well, it's more than I can understand. It's part of the war."