We stopped at a beautiful little farmhouse for lunch.  It attracted us because of its serene appearance and its cleanliness.  A gray-haired little old woman was in the yard when we stopped our machine.

The yard was literally sprinkled with blood-red poppies.  As we walked in and were making known our desire for lunch a beautiful girl of about twenty-five, dressed in mourning, stepped to the doorway, her black eyes flashing a welcome, and cried out:  “Welcome, comrade Americaine.”  Behind her was a little girl, her very image.

I guessed at once that in this quiet Brittany home the war had reached out its devastating hand.  I had remarked earlier in the day as we drove along:  “It is all so quiet and beautiful here, with the old-gold broom flowering everywhere on hedge and hill, and with the crimson poppies blowing in the wind, that it doesn’t seem as if war had touched Brittany.”

A friend who knew better said:  “But have you not noticed that women are pulling the carts, women are tilling the fields?  Look at that woman over there pulling a plough.  Have you not noticed that there are no men but old men everywhere?”

He was right.  I could not remember to have seen any young men, and everywhere women were working in the field, and in one place a woman was yoked up with an ox, ploughing, while a young girl drove the odd pair.

“And if that isn’t enough, wait until we come to the next cathedral and I’ll show you what corresponds to our ‘Honor Rolls’ in the churches back home.  Then you’ll know whether war has touched Brittany or not.”

We entered with reverent hearts the next ancient cathedral of Brittany, in a little town with a population of only about two thousand, we were told, and yet out of this town close to five hundred boys had been killed in the Great War.  Their names were posted, written with many a flourish by some village penman.  In the list I saw the names of four brothers who had been killed, and their father.  The entire family had been wiped out, all but the women.

So I was mistaken.  As quiet and peaceful as Brittany was during May and June, as beautiful with broom and poppies as were its fields, it had not gone untouched by the cruel hand of war.  It, too, had suffered, as has every hamlet, village, and corner of fair France; suffered grievously.

Thus I was not surprised to hear that this beautiful young woman was wearing black because her husband had been killed, and that the little girl behind her in the doorway had no longer any hope that her soldier daddy would some day come home and romp with her as of old.  At the lunch we were told all about it.  True, there were tears shed in the telling, and these not alone by these brave Frenchwomen and the little girl, but it was a sweet, simple story of courage.  Several times during its telling the little girl ran over to kiss the tears out of her mother’s eyes, and to say, with such faith that it thrilled us:  “Never mind, mother, the Americains are here now; they will kill the cruel Boches.”