We lunched in the hotel before the cathedral, where each shell hole has an ordinary white label stuck beside it with the date.  The landlord remarked:  “If you sit here long enough, and have the good luck to be in some safe part of the building, you may be able to go and stick a label on a hole yourself.”

After lunch we went out to the Chateau Polignac.  To a stranger it would appear to be almost entirely destroyed, but when M. de Polignac visited it recently he simply remarked that it was “less spoilt than he had imagined.”  This was just one other example of the thousands one meets daily of the spirit of noble and peasant, “de ne pas s’en faire” but to keep only before them the one idea, Victory for France, no matter what may be the cost.

We went later to call on the “75,” chez elle.  Madame was in a particularly comfortable home which had been prepared for her and where she was safe from the inquisitive eyes of the Taubes.  The men of the battery were sitting round their guns, singing a somewhat lengthy ditty, each verse ending with a declamation and a description of the beauty of “la belle Suzanne.”  I asked them to whom Suzanne belonged and where the fair damsel resided.  “Oh,” they replied, “we have no time to think of damsels called ‘Suzanne’ now.  This is our Suzanne,” and the speaker affectionately gave an extra rub with his coat sleeve to the barrel of the “75.”  By a wonderful system of trench work it is possible for the gunners, in case of necessity, to take refuge in the champagne vaults in the surrounding district, and it is in the champagne vaults that the children go daily to school, with their little gas masks hanging in bags on their arms.  It appears that at first the tiny ones were frightened of the masks, but they soon asked, like their elders, to be also given a sack, and now one and all have learnt at the least alarm to put on their masks.  There is no need to tell the children to hurry home.  They realise that it is not wise to loiter in the streets for fear of the whistling shells.  They are remarkably plucky, these small men and women of France.

During one furious bombardment the children were safe in the vaults, but one small citizen began to cry bitterly.  He was reproached by his comrades for cowardice, but he replied indignantly:  “I fear nothing for myself.  I am safe here, but there is no cellar to our house, and oh, what will happen to the little mother?” The teacher reassured him by telling him that his mother would certainly take refuge in somebody’s else cellar.

On leaving Rheims we passed through various small hamlets where the houses had been entirely destroyed, and which now had the appearance of native villages, as the soldiers had managed to place thatched roofs on any place which had any semblance of walls standing.

At Villars Coterets the Guard Champetre sounded the “Gare a Vous!” Four Taubes were passing overhead, so we took refuge in the hotel for tea.  The enemy did no damage in that particular village, but in the next village of Crepy-en-Valois a bomb killed one child and injured five women.