That night the roof of the house was blown in by a shell. In the same
place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young
Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a
shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with
us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of
comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door
and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in
the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy
connected with it.
In some places the enemy's bullets search the main street by night (p. 261)
and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across the
open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for our
boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged safety
in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you merely
trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your
keeping.
No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman
there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the
colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the
pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church
was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The
woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None
of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy.
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