Yvette Toneller knew how to handle herself. You don't work in a rural bar in France and manage to keep your virginity at the age of twenty without being able to deliver a swift<em>coup aux billes</em>to any patrons who got overly adventurous.<br/><br/>With the outbreak of the war, most of the young men had, to Yvette's relief, marched away to war. But When they straggled back through the village, exhausted, wounded, weapon-less, she feared the worst. To her surprise, the Bosch, when they arrived, were<em> très gentille</em>, most polite, and the one time she had been grabbed and molested by a drunken Prussian soldier, she had screamed, he had been dragged off her and dragged out of the bar. A few moments later she heard a single shot, and the officer who had rescued her came back in, holstering his revolver, and apologised to her in faltering French.<br/><br/>That had been weeks ago though. Yvette had gotten used to the Prussian soldiers occupying her village. Once the main army had moved away to surround Metz and then attack the Emperor Napoleon III at Sedan, things had settled down. She made her way, this morning, from the little hamlet of Adelange, riding her bicycle North, through Falquemont, and then heading east along a narrow track that ran along side the Chemin de fer, that ran from Saarbrucken to Metz.  There was a bridge where the tracks ran over a shallow stream, the track simply dipped down into it. Yvette looked around and grinned. This was the perfect place...<br/><br/>Half an hour later she was cycling to the La Roux farm to visit with her friend marie Claire. She had literally just arrived and was flirting her way through the Prussian hussars and Horse Artillerymen billeted there, when the explosion echoed from the North East. She stopped and turned, looking towards the sound, as everyone else did. They were used to the pounding of the heavy siege guns from the West, when the wind was in that direction, but this explosion was from the wrong direction.<br/><br/>"Mon dieux, qu' est-ce que c'est ça?" She exclaimed, even though she knew exactly what it was. The first blast was followed closely by others, some softer, some louder. Even as she feigned horror, inwardly, Yvette rejoiced that anothe train of munitions would fail to reach the besieging Prussian forces surrounding the fortress at Metz.