The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1917-01-31
FRENCH Children
PLAY AS SHELLS
BURST NEAR Them
French Youngsters in Arras
Are Lying Under
ground.
with the British Armies in Frar

With the British Armies in France,
Jan. 81 - Correspondence - To
those who have lived among them
the children of the war zone in France
will ever remain a psychological rid
die. It is startling to the newcomer
at the war to find them here at all.
1t is positively uncanny to see them
at play where a shell might break
almost any moment. utterly oblivious
to the soldiers and scenes about them
and with senses so attuned to the or
binary nerve-racking noises that only
a prolonged lull in the ceaseless roar
Of guns would cause them the least
concern.
They cling with their elders to the
remnants of their shell-shattered
homes in the bombarded towns and
villages where even yet the German
guns send their shells. Some have
been born within sound Of the cannon
and others have come into their first
sense Of being in the midst of battle.
The strange phenomenon Of life to
them will be, the unwonted stiffness of
peace.
A striking picture it is to see little
French girl, or 6 years old, with a
plated pig tall down her back, trip
ping bareheaded along a road where
soldier men venture only under the
protection of their big steel hats.
School Among the Ruins
Such a. little girl sat and softly
sang and knitted in front of her home,
near an old Flemish mill, one bright
and warm December noon, while a.
score Of aeroplanes ! whirled and
hi orb HI
sky was filled with the fleecy cot
tom balls that come from bursting
shrapnel shells. She could see the
scared and SCARED lines on the dis
tant hills which were the enemy
trenches, and, still farther back, the
occasional white-hot flashes of enemy
guns.
No stranger school can be found in
all the world than at Arras. Arras
itself is strange and ghostly city.
Some of the houses are just as their
owners left them during the first
bombardment, in October, two years
ago. Others have been pulverized
along with the cathedral, the City
Hall and the railway station-three
favorite targets Of the German gun
ners. The enemy lines skirt the east
ern edge Of the city and daily from
these messengers Of death are sent
shrieking into Arras-bursting in fury
from the sky.
In the midst of all this malignity
of war some two score children or
more go to school. Their class room
is In the cellar Of a house so well de-
molished that a few additional shells
would scarcely change the character
of the mass of debris that serves as a
protective roof. It would take a ter
rific\ bombardment to interrupt them
at their lessons. The muffIed sound
OF shells crashing in the distance has
become far too commonplace to at
tract attention.
TOmmies Love the Children
All Arras lives underground. There
are quiet periods of the day when the
women, children and old men venture
abroad for friendly call at a neigh i
boring cellar or for the sake of a
stroll and a breath of fresh air. OPP
portunity after opportunity has been
given them to leave, but they prefer
to remain with what is, or was, their
very own.
Three persons were allied just out
side the school one day, but the chill
dren in the cellar knew nothing OF
lue tragedy. Wu0H SCHOOL Is out edCn
afternoon the children are told to
hurry home as fast as they can go
and there is q great pattering of little
wooden-soled shoes down the melan-
choly streets.
There are scores of other towns
within the fire zone, but not quite so
close to the war as Arras, where chill
dren live by hundreds. It is no in
frequent thing to hear mothers calling