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The thing happened some time ago, before the "liveliness" died down along this secteur. One spring day, in a rainy fog like a gray curtain, a strange pair of legs appeared, prowling alongside a French trench. They were not French legs; but instantly two pairs of French arms darted out under the stage-drop of fog to jerk them in. Down came a feldwebel on top of them, squealing desolately "Kamerad!"
Most of the newspapers make merry over the faults in grammar in a letter which has been discovered and published from the Empress to the Emperor, although I doubt if there is one Frenchman in the world who could write Spanish as well as the Empress does French. Evening. It appears that yesterday the cheques signed by M. Flourens were not recognised by the Etat Major of his "secteur."
The front is divided, according to military exigencies, into a number of roughly equal lengths called secteurs. Each secteur is an administrative unit with its own government and its own system adapted to the local situation.
"If there were any killing along this secteur you would hear the guns boom, n'est-ce-pas? You had not stopped to think of that. There was a little affair at dawn, I don't conceal it from you. A surprise a coup de main against the Americans the Boches intended. They thought, as all has been quiet on our Front for so long, we should expect nothing. But the surprise didn't work.
I am placed in a peculiar position in the escadrille. I have nothing to do here. Shall I take care of Jim's belongings? Best wishes, Sincerely, Escadrille N. 124, Secteur Postal 182, March 23, 1917. DEAR PAUL: In my letter I promised to send you word as soon as any definite news came in concerning poor Mac.
A regiment of travailleurs is attached to every secteur of trenches. These soldiers, depending, I believe, on the Engineer Corps, are quartered just behind the lines, and go to them every day to put them in order, repair the roads, and do all the manual labor. Humble folk these, peasants, ditch-diggers, road-menders, and village carpenters. Those at Pont-
Escadrille N. 124, Secteur Postal 182, March 21, 1917. MY DEAR PAUL: Had I been feeling less distressed and miserable on Monday morning, or during yesterday, I would have written you then, but I told Lovell to tell you how I felt when he wrote on Monday and that I would try and write in a day or so.
The heart of this unit is the railroad station at which the supplies arrive for the shell zone; in a normal secteur, one military train arrives every day bringing the needed supplies, and one hospital train departs, carrying the sick and wounded to the hospitals.
One phase of the business of violence is the work of the military undertaker attached to each secteur, who writes down in his little red book the names of the day's dead, and arranges for the wooden cross at the head of each fresh grave. Every day along the front is a battle in which thousands of men die.
Tambour au 151e Regiment d'Inf., 2e Cie 42e Division, Secteur postale 56. Crude and illiterate though it was, the letter had a certain noble simplicity. "Très gentil," I remarked as I returned it to Jeanne, and thought the matter at an end. But Jeanne had not done, and, with much circumlocution and many hesitations, she at last preferred a simple request.
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