What a change from some
weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080)
lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught
in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze blows
across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of death and
perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of desolation and
decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out all traces of
the tragedy between the trenches.
There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none
being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this
ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would
dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get
through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck
there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion
shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our
lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays
over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right
there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is
considered unhealthy. A church almost razed to the ground, with the
spire blown off and buried point down in the earth, moulders in (p. 081)
ruins at the back. It is said that the ghosts of dead monks pray
nightly at the shattered altar, and some of our men state that they
often hear the organ playing when they stand as sentries on the
banquette.
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