Energy books

There was the devil to pay, and I heard it being played to the tune of
the French soixante-quinzes, slashing over the trees.
Vaux and Curlu went the way of all French villages in the zone of war,
when the battles of the Somme began, and were blown off the map.


XIII

At a place called the Pont de Nieppe, beyond Armentieres--a most
"unhealthy" place in later years of war--a bathing establishment was
organized by officers who were as proud of their work as though they
had brought a piece of paradise to Flanders. To be fair to them, they
had done that. To any interested visitor, understanding the nobility
of their work, they exhibited a curious relic. It was the Holy Shirt
of Nieppe, which should be treasured as a memorial in our War Museum--
an object-lesson of what the great war meant to clean-living men. It
was not a saint's shirt, but had been worn by a British officer in the
trenches, and was like tens of thousands of other shirts worn by our
officers and men in the first winters of the war, neither better nor
worse, but a fair average specimen.


Pages:
209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233