Energy books

Shells pierced the roof of the church in
that squalid village of Noeux--les-Mines and smashed some of the
cottages and killed some of the people now and then. Later in the war,
when aircraft dropped bombs at night, a new peril over--shadowed them
with terror, and they lived in their cellars after dusk, and sometimes
were buried there. But they would not retreat farther back--not many
of them--and on days of battle I saw groups of French miners and
dirty-bloused girls excited by the passage of our troops and by the
walking wounded who came stumbling back, and by stretcher cases
unloaded from ambulances to the floors of their dirty cottages. High
velocities fell in some of the streets, shrapnel-shells whined
overhead and burst like thunderclaps. Young hooligans of France
slouched around with their hands in their pockets, talking to our men
in a queer lingua franca, grimacing at those noises if they did not
come too near. I saw lightly wounded girls among them, with bandaged
heads and hands, but they did not think that a reason for escape.


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