A Village in Picardy

In Canizy, after the Germans were through with it, not one of its forty-seven houses stood intact. Most were roofless shells, or fallen heaps of brick. An occasional ell, a barn...

Since the commencement of this short volume, the German flood has rolled again across the Somme. Péronne, Nesle, Ham, Noyon, those towns mentioned so often and so gloriously in...

At length, the survey of Canizy was completed: its crooked streets traced on a map, its houses numbered, and the pre-war and the post-war status of each of its families noted th...

At noon time, on dispensary days, I sometimes lunched with the doctors in Mme. Lefèvre’s kitchen. It was a heterogeneous spot, with two beds (one being stored for a niece), two...

Directly opposite Mme. Gabrielle lives Mme. Odille Delorme. One lifts the latch of a heavy wooden gate to enter her courtyard. On left and right are the remains of barn and stab...

It was at Christmas time that we came most to realise the broken family circles in all our villages. There was not one household which did not have some hostage _avec les Boches...

Every village, everywhere, has its stronger characters, to whom the community looks up, perhaps unconsciously. Canizy, having been deprived of its normal leaders in the Curé, a...

By rights, Canizy belongs with three other hamlets, to the commune of Hombleux. The mayor of Hombleux is therefore in reality also the mayor of Canizy. But each of the hamlets h...

As a relief visitor, in a Unit authorized by the French Government _au secours dans la région dévastée_, I have lived recently in the Department of the Somme. There I had in my...

Christmas weather, sunlight, moonlight and snow; our grove a white stencil; our _baraques_ with their red shutters by day and their lighted windows by night, like painted Christ...

As the aeroplanes fly, Canizy is perhaps three miles from the Château, or reckoned in time, half an hour by motor and an hour on foot. But by either route, one turns into the vi...

Ou t’en vas-tu, soldat de France, Tout equipé, prêt au combat, Ou t’en vas-tu, petit soldat? _C’est comme il plaît à la Patrie,_ _Je n’ai qu’ à suivre les tambours._ _Gloire au...

In Canizy, one found always something new. It might be an _obus_, or a soldier _en permission_, or a family _réfugiée_, or a _baraque_. I learned to expect the unexpected. Havin...

Midway between Hombleux and Canizy, at the crossing of the highway, stood on one side a Calvary, and on the other a demolished farm house. The lane here emerged from a hollow, s...