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io6 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
of France that the churches, even of quite insignificant places,
are veritable pearls from an architectural and artistic point
of view.
The porch is decorated with a little silvered statuette of
Joan of Arc. On entering the nave we find on the left, behind
an iron railing, a group of painted figures, three feet high,
representing John the Baptist baptising Christ. Immediately
opposite is a Pieta, on the altar of which helmets, knapsacks
and bayonets form a sharp contrast with the ecclesiastical
objects. But the floor between the railing and the altar is
strewn with straw, and there soldiers have their simple beds.
Notre Dame de Bonne Garde ! Under her protection German
sentries are now finding safe quarters.
Inside the rail under the chancel arch which separates the
choir from the nave, the high altar is surrounded by camp
mattresses of straw. Some wooden chairs stand about a
table and on the floor arms and equipment are heaped pell-
mell. Where French priests formerly said mass, foreign
soldiers now sit writing field postcards to their homes. On
the arms of a silver candelabra stockings are hung to dry, and
from niches and altarpieces saints and apostles look dowTi
with disconsolate eyes upon rifles and carbines, bayonets, belts
and ammunition pouches, which lie scattered over the seats
in the nave. Even the sacristy has been transformed into a
bedroom. The priestly vestments of red velvet and gold
brocade hang untouched in their cupboard, and on the arms
of the chairs outside it hangs the soldier’s modest equipment
of small and well-worn objects, together with a cloak or two,
tattered and worn from the life of the trenches and sooty
from the flames of camp-fires. The sacred vessels are touched
by nobody. In the German Army it is strictly forbidden to
commit depredations on the property of the Church, the
State or private persons ; and so it was here at Dun.
The havoc of shells, on the other hand, is one of the privileges
of war. Into the lower part of a buttress facing west a shell
has penetrated the brickwork to about a third of its length.
It is a Blindgänger, that is, one which has failed to burst on
contact. It seems inadvisable to move a thing of this kind,
and it will probably be allowed to stay where it is as a souvenir
of the war. The shell is a French one, and its object, like that
of the others that destroyed Dun, was to drive the Germans
out of the place again or at least to make the first hours of
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