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[Page 12]
yesterday in a flimsy notebook a sketch of the area commandant whom I met on leave in London and who has been very considerate to me. I have just finished it and he and all to whom he has shown it are pleased, which is something, though I didn't come here to do that sort of thing. I sleep in the same place as the pay sergeants, a loft in the building which once was "l'ecole des jeunes filles". The Town Major's office and bedroom and Divisonal paymaster's office are on the ground floor, and the staffs of both sleep on the garret floor. On the pay office walls still hang the educational maps, charts and time-tables. In a niche above the mantel-piece stands a plaster cast of the Virgin and Child with the paint flaking off it. A mossy wall surrounds the small grounds. In the front yard are a few sheds and an apology for a well, and in the back yard long grass surrounds some old fruit trees, some of which are laden with cherries. I heard Frank, the Town Major's batman, roaring at some mounted men who in passing had wrenched off some branches. Frank has a young lady who lives opposite, by name Mireille. She is the fruit of a Poilu's promise and lives with her mother and grand mother in the opposite cottage. They, poor souls, wash and have some A.I.F. men billeted on them. The boys help them with the washing and are generally helpful and decent. Little Mireille, aged 2 1/2, comes over every day and calls "F'ank, F'ank" just like any little Briton might. Her father probably doesn't know of her existence - if he himself still exists. A few old French women still live in the village and a very few decrepit looking, more than middle-aged men. These and a crippled idiot make up the complement of the misfortune-stricken hamlet which, with its frail cottages tumbling to pieces and weed overgrown yards, matches the inhabitants. Round about is lovely country, well-cropped and sleek, with tree clumps, indicating the once neat and cheerful villages. We are on high ground and many of them can be taken in in one sweep of the eye. From the distance they might cheat one into thinking they were still living, but one knows they are only the semblances and husks of what they once were. We rise at 8 and then make for what used to be an estaminet and is still occupied; but no longer is bock, the