I hastened
indoors; the enemy were shelling the village again.
Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets,
and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing
and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony.
This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French
by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets
saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the
village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the
cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking
up over the bricks; the grass has been busy in its endeavour to cloak
up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages
of war.
In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have
seen the street so thick with flies that it was impossible to see (p. 260)
the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning
after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for
halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a
dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette,
salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of _cafe au lait_ for fifteen
sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum
of ten francs on pay day.
In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a
cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe.
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