-Laurent, beyond Hill 70, on the outskirts of Lens. All those places were abandoned now by black-grimed men who had fled down mineshafts and galleries with their women and children, and had come up on our side of the lines at Nœux-les-Mines or Bruay or Bully-Grenay, where they still lived close to the war. Shells pierced the roof of the church in that squalid village of Nœux-les-Mines and smashed some of the cottages and killed some of the people now and then. Later in the war, when aircraft dropped bombs at night, a new peril overshadowed them with terror, and they lived in their cellars after dusk, and sometimes were buried there. But they would not retreat farther back⁠—not many of them⁠—and on days of battle I saw groups of French miners and dirty-bloused girls excited by the passage of our troops and by the walking wounded who came stumbling back, and by stretcher cases unloaded from ambulances to the floors of their dirty cottages. High velocities fell in some of the streets, shrapnel-shells whined overhead and burst like thunderclaps. Young hooligans of France slouched around with their hands in their pockets, talking to our men in a queer lingua franca, grimacing at those noises if they did not come too near.