Energy books

Six
shillings and sixpence a day and remittances from home. So they pushed
open the doors of any restaurant in Amiens and sat down to table next
to English officers, not abashed, and ordered anything that pleased
their taste, and wine in plenty.
In that High Street of Amiens one day I saw a crowd gathered round an
Australian, so tall that he towered over all other heads. It was at
the corner of the rue de Corps Nu sans Teste, the Street of the Naked
Body without a Head, and I suspected trouble. As I pressed on the edge
of the crowd I heard the Australian ask, in a loud, slow drawl,
whether there was any officer about who could speak French. He asked
the question gravely, but without anxiety. I pushed through the crowd
and said:
"I speak French. What's the trouble?"
I saw then that, like the French poilu I have described, this tall
Australian was in the grasp of a French agent de police, a small man
of whom he took no more notice than if a fly had settled on his wrist.


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