ound a corner on one wheel,
exclaim with horror, and throw on all the brakes with the nose of the
car projecting over a precipice a thousand yards deep. He knew perfectly
well the precipice was there, but he leaped at it exactly as though it
were the finish line of the Vanderbilt cup race. If his idea of amusing
himself was to make me sick with terror he must have spent a thoroughly
enjoyable afternoon.

The approaches to hill 516, the base of the hill on the side hidden from
the Bulgarians, and the trenches dug into it were crowded with the
French. At that point of the line they greatly outnumbered the English.
But it was not the elbow touch of numbers that explained their
cheerfulness; it was because they knew it was expected of them. The
famous scholar who wrote in our school geographies, "The French are a
gay people, fond of dancing and light wines," established a tradition.
And on hill 516, although it was to keep from freezing that they danced,
and though the light wines were melted snow, they still kept up that
tradition and were "gay."

They laughed at us in welcome, crawling out of their igloos on all fours
like bears out of a cave; they laughed when we photographed them
crowding to get in front of the camera, when we scattered among them
copies of _L'Opinion_, when up the snow-clad hillside we skidded and
slipped and fell. And if we peered into the gloom of the shelters, where
they crouched on the frozen ground with snow dripping from above, with
shoulders pressed against walls of icy mud, they waved spoons at us and
invited us to share their soup. Even the dark-skinned, sombre-eyed men
of the desert, the tall Moors and Algerians, showed their white teeth
and laughed when a "seventy-five" exploded from an unsuspicious bush,
and we jumped. It was like a camp of Boy Scouts, picnicking for one
day, and sure the same night of a warm supper and bed. But the best
these _poilus_ might hope for was months of ice, snow, and mud, of
discomfort, colds, long marches carrying heavy burdens, the pain of
frost-bite, and, worst of all, homesickness. They were sure of nothing:
not even of the next minute. For hill 516 was dotted with oblong rows of
stones with, at one end, a cross of green twigs and a soldier's cap.

The hill was the highest point of a ridge that looked down into the
valleys of the Vardar and of Bodjinia. Toward the Bulgarians we could
see the one village of Kosturino, almost indistinguishable against the
s