The Three Musketeers, thrilled to the core, broke into a trot, and panted:
“You don’t say? Where you been fighting?”
“Place called Belleau Wood. Good-night, boys!”
It was their first contact with actuality.
[2] “Conchies,” being interpreted, means “Conscientious Objectors.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PROMISED LAND
We have now discovered France. Our first impression of that fair but voluble land is one of amazement that the inhabitants should be able to speak such a difficult language so fluently. Even the children can do it.
Later, we modified that opinion—either because we found that the French tongue was not so difficult as we had imagined, or more probably because we had learned that in France a knowledge of French is not so indispensable—at any rate, in war-time—as we had imagined. Indeed, we found the French language quite as intelligible as some of the English rural dialects. Contrariwise, the French appeared to understand our mode of expression much more readily than some of our English hosts.