old
umbrellas, hats, account-books, and huge boxes holding the debris of
sets of checkers, dominoes, and ivory chessmen. An enlarged photograph
of the family hung on the walls of a bedroom; it had been taken at
somebody's marriage, and showed the group standing on the front steps,
the same steps that were later to be blown to pieces by a shell. One saw
the bride, the groom, and about twenty relatives, including a boy in
short trousers, a wide, white collar, and an old-fashioned, fluffy bow
tie. Anxious to be included in the picture, the driver of the bridal
barouche has craned his neck forward. On the evidence of the costumes,
the picture had been taken about 1902.

Our bureau in the cellar of Wisteria Villa was connected directly with
the trenches. When a man had been wounded, he was carried to the poste
de secours in the rear lines, and it was our duty to go to this trench
post and carry the patient to the hospital at the nearest rail-head. The
bureau of the Section was in charge of two Frenchmen who shared the
labor of attending to the telephone and keeping the books.

A hundred yards beyond Wisteria Villa, at a certain corner, the
principal road to the trenches divided into three branches, and in order
to interfere as much as possible with communications, the Germans daily
shelled this strategic point. A comrade and I had the curiosity to keep
an exact record of a week's shelling. It must be remembered that the
corner was screened from the Germans, who fired casually in the hope of
hitting something and annoying the French. The cannons shelling the
corner were usually "seventy-sevens," the German quick-firing pieces
that correspond to the French "seventy-fives."

Monday, ten shells at 6.30, two at 7.10, five at 11.28, twenty at
intervals between 2.15 and 2.45, a swift rafale of some sixteen at 4.12,
another rafale of twenty at 8, and occasional shells between 9 and
midnight.

Tuesday, two big shells at mid-day.

Wednesday, rafales at 9.14, 11, 2.18, 4.30, and 6.20.

Thursday--no shells.

Friday, twelve at intervals between 10.16 and 12.20. Solitary big shell
at 1.05. Another big shell at 3. Some fifteen stray shells between 5 and
midnight.

Saturday--no shells.

Sunday--About five shells an hour between 4 in the afternoon and
midnight.

I give the number of shells falling at this corner as a concrete
instance of what was happening at a dozen other points along the road.
The fire of the German batteries