Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV FIDELISSIMA, PICARDIE SINCE the commencement of this short volume, the German flood has rolled again across the Somme. Peronne, Nesle, Ham, Noyon, those towns mentioned so often and so gloriously in the annals of France, have fallen once more into the hands of the enemy. With them go the villages where my Unit laboured. Canizy, it is no more. The greenbladed wheatfields have become fields of unspeakable carnage; the poor ruins again smoke to heaven, and down the shattered highways course endlessly the grey columns of that Emperor whose empire is pillage and death. What, then, remains to us of our labours? At least a memory in the lives of the peasants, and a present help in this their time of stress. Our villagers were rescued, and taken by spews cial trains to safety. The Unit accomplished this work of succour. Their trucks were driven under shell fire through the villages to collect the inhabitants; sometimes they were the last over the bridges; they left our headquarters only when the Uhlans were within charging distance; they have fed and clothed thousands of refugees and soldiers. Mentioned with them in the newspaper accounts of their service is our Red Cross truck driver, Dave. The fate that has overtaken our peasants, what is it but a repetition of the immemorial blows that have welded and tempered their ancestral spirit? As one of their historians has limned them: "Les Picards sont francs et unis. ... lls vivent de peu. ... II arrive rarement que l'activite et le desir de s'avancer les determinent a sortir de leur pays. . . . lls sont sinceres, fideles, libres, brusques, attaches a leurs opinions, fermes dans leurs resolutions." * It was to this spirit that 'Introduction a la histoire generate de la Province de...
