Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/82

62 been struck. All that had survived was a heap of rubbish in a yawning hole. More pitiful, more productive of anger, was the rubble and charred beams that marked the site of a children's school. If it has been the purpose of the Germans to make the innocent suffer in Nancy they have achieved an admirable success. We noticed particularly the wreck of a dwelling house.

"That," our captain explained," was struck by a great shell, and afterwards bombed by an aeroplane."

Strangely, when I was in Champagne sometime later I met an officer who, when he learned I had been in Nancy, asked me if I remembered this particular ruin.

"It was my home," he said simply.

"Fortunately my family was not there when the shell struck."

Close to this circle of devastation lay the hotel, so far practically untouched, in which we were to spend the night.

Perhaps," our officer grinned at me," a shell will fall through monsieur's bedroom, and furnish America with a casus belli."

I patiently explained to him that I entered the war zone at my own risk, but his wit intrigued him, and each time he repeated his joke we tried to laugh.