But there was something
in the night, in the ghostly moonshine, in the bushes out in the (p. 215)
fields nodding together as if in consultation, in the tall poplars, in
the straight road, in the sound of rifle firing to rear and in the song
sung by the tired boys coming back from battle, that filled me with
infinite pathos and a feeling of being alone in a shelterless world.
"Here we are; here we are again." I thought of Mervin, and six others
dead, of their white crosses, and I found myself weeping silently like
a child....
CHAPTER XVI (p. 216)
PEACE AND WAR
You'll see from the La Bassee Road, on any summer day,
The children herding nanny goats, the women making hay.
You'll see the soldiers, khaki clad, in column and platoon,
Come swinging up La Bassee Road from billets in Bethune.
There's hay to save and corn to cut, but harder work by far
Awaits the soldier boys who reap the harvest fields of war.
You'll see them swinging up the road where women work at hay,
The long, straight road, La Bassee Road, on any summer day.
The farmhouse stood in the centre of the village; the village rested
on the banks of a sleepy canal on which the barges carried the wounded
down from the slaughter line to the hospital at Bethune. The village
was shelled daily. When shelling began a whistle was blown warning all
soldiers to seek cover immediately in the dug-outs roofed with sandbags,
which were constructed by the military authorities in nearly every garden
in the place.
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