We had set out on our pilgrimage from Albert.
"Albert! That's an old story—ancient history. Tell us about something else," say those who look for new sensations.
Not so. We may not yet forget Albert, that ruined outpost of Picardy, for her sufferings are not ended. Within the last few days the Boches bombarded her from an immense distance. They only succeeded in knocking over ruins, since all is ruin at Albert, but "if one can't get thrushes one eats blackbirds," eh, friend Fritz?
"Well, Mother So-and-So," said an old fellow to an old dame the other morning in a street in Amiens, "when do you think the folks will get back into Albert?"
"Indeed, Father Such-and-Such, you know that as well as I do. When the Golden Virgin falls."
For a superstition runs in this country that the war will be near its end when the Golden Virgin, who hangs suspended—by what miracle?—between Heaven and Earth, from the top of the belfry of Albert, shall fall to break in pieces upon the ground. But the trouble is that the Virgin "holds on."
From Albert to Fricourt, going via Bécordel-Bécourt, the road is hardly 1-1/2 miles long. By this way one skirts in an almost straight line the South-western slopes of the plateau. A few steps beyond the German line that was taken on the 1st July, and we are in Fricourt.
You will look a long time in the guide-books that were held in esteem before the war ere you will find the smallest mention of Fricourt. Fricourt, Mametz, Montauban, Contalmaison and a dozen other villages that now can never be forgotten, did not exist for the tourist. He got on most happily without them.
Well, to-day all these villages can be found on their own soil no more than in those guide-books. That, Fricourt! This grey blotch in front of the wood of the same name! That, the Public Square, that rectangle of tree-trunks!
That? Yes, that is very surely Fricourt. All the villages are like that.