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Updated: July 25, 2025
Towards midnight we had a long check at Merville, a placid little town with tree-planted boulevards along the banks of the Lys, while Canadian guns and transport passed us going north from their second great fight at Festubert and Givenchy.
Whatever there had hitherto been in the circumstances connected with Morton, that had roused the interest and excited the romance of Eugenie de Merville, her fancy was yet more attracted by the tone of the letter she now read.
Members of the Battalion within a day or two were addressing their first field postcards to England. Active service, of which the prospect had swung, now close, now far, for 18 months, had begun. The 61st Division, to which the Battalion belonged, concentrated in the Merville area. The usual period of 'instruction' followed. The 2/4th Oxfords went to the Fauquissart sector, east of Laventie.
Those conferences took place in the Second Army headquarters on Cassel Hill, in a big building which was a casino before the war, with a far-reaching view across Flanders, so that one could see in the distance the whole sweep of the Ypres salient, and southward the country below Notre Dame de Lorette, with Merville and Hazebrouck in the foreground.
All day very severe fighting was in progress a mile to our left. Merville and Calonne were almost blotted out in smoke, and the air was thronged with aeroplanes. The heap of shells behind us still burned.
The German guns showed marked persistency, not actually against the holes which formed Headquarters, but all around. No area more dismal could be imagined than the flat, dyke-ridden country north of Merville. So thoroughly had our artillery during the last four months plastered the ground behind his former lines that little scope had been left for the retreating frenzy of the enemy.
Rumours began to circulate it was said that Armentières had fallen, that the Portuguese had been annihilated at Merville, that the British had counter-attacked and taken Lille. Rations, newspapers and letters were delayed. Large bodies of troops passed through the village. We got no definite or official news, and nobody had any clear notion of what was happening.
"Because," said the Frenchman who had first commenced the narrative, "because the young man refused to take the legal steps to proclaim his birth and naturalise himself a Frenchman; because, no sooner was Madame de Merville dead than he forsook the father he had so newly discovered forsook France, and entered with some other officers, under the brave, in the service of one of the native princes of India."
Ah, she is an angel of charity and kindness!" Morton scarcely heard this eulogium, for he observed, by something eager and inquisitive in the face of Madame de Merville, and by the sudden manner in which the mechanic's helpmate turned her head to the spot in which he stood, that he was the object of their conversation.
The new-born infant, to whose addition to the Christian community the fete of this night was dedicated, was the pledge of a union which Madame de Merville had managed to effect between two young persons, first cousins to each other, and related to herself. There had been scruples of parents to remove money matters to adjust Eugenie had smoothed all.
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