In their terror there was nothing ludicrous; they were in as great physical pain as were some of the hundreds in Rheims who had been hit.

And yet others of their fellow townsmen living in the same street, and with the same allotment of brains and nerves, were treating the bombardment with the indifference they would show to a summer shower.
We had not expected to spend the night in Rheims, so, with Ashmead Bartlett, the military expert of the London Daily Telegraph, I went into a chemist's shop to buy some soap.

The chemist, seeing I was an American, became very much excited.

He was overstocked with an American shaving-soap, and he begged me to take it off his hands.

He would let me have it at what it cost him.