morning that they saw
civilians in one or two villages a few miles out--so I'm off to
investigate. Would you care to come? We shall be the first there."

"Yes, rather," I replied. "It will be a fine scoop for me to film the
first meeting of British troops in the liberated villages. I will follow
in my car."

[Illustration: FILMING OUR GUNS IN ACTION DURING THE GREAT GERMAN
RETREAT TO ST. QUENTIN. MARCH, 1917]

The bridge was again complete, so, dumping my camera aboard, I followed
in the wake of the captain. Up the hill we dashed and spun along the
road at the top, passing beyond the outskirts of Brie. We were now
beyond the extreme limit of the shelling which we had subjected the
Germans to during their months of occupation.

I was now beginning to see the sights and view the atrocious system and
regularity of wilful destruction which had obviously been planned months
before by the Huns to carry out Hindenburg's orders and make the whole
land a desert. Not a tree was standing; whole orchards were hewn down;
every fruit tree and bush was destroyed; hedges were cut at the base as
if with a razor; even those surrounding cemeteries were treated in the
same way. Agricultural implements were smashed. Mons en Chaussee was the
first village we entered; every house was a blackened smoking ruin, and
where the fiends had not done their work with fire they had brought
dynamite to their aid; whole blocks of buildings had been blown into the
air; there was not sufficient cover for a dog.

The car suddenly came to a standstill; my driver jammed on his brake and
I hurried forward. There, at the middle of the village cross-roads was
another enormous mine-crater--one hundred feet across by about sixty
feet deep. It was quite impassable, but the sight which astounded me was
to see about twenty old women and children running up the road the other
side of the crater shouting and waving their arms with joy. "Les
Anglais! Les Anglais!" they yelled. I got my camera into position and
filmed the captain and his companions as they clambered round the jagged
lip of the crater and were embraced by the excited people. For the first
time since their captivity by the Germans they had seen "les Anglais."
Liberators and captives met!

Several scenes I filmed of the enormous crater and of the cut-down fruit
trees. Not a single tree, old or young, was left standing. To blow up
roads, and hew down telegraph poles was war, and such measures are
just