"We're from Neuilly—St. Front, on our way home, but there doesn't seem much chance of our getting any further. The place is in the hands of the military authorities—with orders to let no one pass."
We halted, and George went on ahead and interviewed a sentry, returning with a negative reply, and the information that Coulommiers was in a pretty mess after the looting.
"It can't be worse than La Ferte Gauche." And above the almost deafening roar of the cannon an elderly man told us bow his caravan had been caught by the Germans, stripped of everything they possessed, separated from their women folk, and with armed sentries back of them had been forced to work at the building of a temporary bridge to replace the one the French had blown up.
"I got off easy—with only a few welts from a raw-hide," he murmured, "but my brother (and he pointed to a very stout masculine figure rolled in a blanket and sitting motionless on the steps of an abandoned road house)—"my brother's nearly done for! You see he's near-sighted and not used to manual labor, and every time he missed his nail with the hammer, the German coward would jab him in the ribs with the point of his bayonet. Seventy-two wounds!"
"And your women?"
"God knows what they did to them! My wife hasn't stopped sobbing since we met. She's dazed—I can't make her talk."
As he rambled on with his haphazard story, glad of fellow sympathy, I spied a line of British Army Supply carts advancing up the road. The leader came to a halt and getting down, the driver entered the first of the abandoned dwellings before which we were standing. Presently he reappeared.
"Just my luck! I say"—(and this addressed to our group with a sort of blank, hopeless expression) "I don't suppose any of you Frenchies know where I could get a cup of tea!"
I laughed outright, much to his astonishment.
"Not anywhere around here, unless you're willing to wait until I can build fire enough to make you one!"