"What about the gun that sent this over?"
Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic shells with which the Germans raked La Bassée Road in the early stages of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A light shrapnel shell is more deadly to a marching platoon than the biggest "Jack Johnson." The shell relic before us, the remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye, opposite the doorway. When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene of the great war become fashionable, the woman of the estaminet is going to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many mementos of the great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way with a long purse, "après la guerre." At present a needy urchin will sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and horses, for a few sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely with needy French urchins who live near the firing line.
"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes silently, it's quicker than its own sound."
"Do you work here?" asked Pryor.
"I work here," said the potato-peeler.
"In a coal-mine?"
"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."
"Always?"
"Sometimes," said the man. "I'm out from the trenches on leave for seven days. First time since last August. Got back from Souchez to-day."
"Oh!" I ejaculated.