It's Tuesday, Where Are You?

Another edition of the recently resurrected It's Tuesday, Where Are You meme sponsored by raidergirl3.  She hasn't posted this week's yet, but I want to tell you where I am anyway.  So, here we go:

This week, I'm back in France.  It's the beginning of World War I--before America has joined in the fray.  I've traveled with Henry "Hoop" Braddock, a fellow Indiana native, who has joined the American Field Service as a volunteer ambulance driver.  Here are some of our first views of the French countryside:

The morning mist cleared a bit, revealing a snow-covered, rolling terrain that reminded him of Indiana.  Yet the steep roofs, beige- and buff-colored stucco houses, as well as the Fiats at the crossroads, told him he was in a foreign land.

***

With their descent into the valley, he saw the river actually split into three canals, a major one, along with two minor branches. Beautiful arched bridges spanned the ribbons of water. Quais ran alongside the canals, something he had become familiar with in Paris. Large, stately homes, some with red tile roofs, shadowed the canals or appeared amongst the hills. Plebeian cottages and modest homes were clustered along the tracks and in the town's midsection. Yet, throughout the town, gaps appeared where ghostly, charred remnants of buildings poked up into the misty air. Casualties of the Battle of the Marne, Hank reasoned.

{from The Lieutenant's Whistle by Fred Stemme}