The renewed attack was to call off some of the allied troops from the lines round Ypres, and was a part of the general shock of the offensive all along the German line in order to test once more the weakest point of the Allies’ strength through which to force a way.

25

The character of the fighting in this part of Flanders entered into the monotone of the winter campaign and, though the censorship was blamed for scarcity of news, there was really nothing to conceal in the way of heroic charges by cavalry, dashing bayonet attacks, or rapid counter-movements by infantry in mass.  Such things for which public imagination craved were not happening.

What did happen was a howling gale shrieking across the dunes, and swirling up the sands into blinding clouds, and tearing across the flat marshlands as though all the invisible gods of the old ghost world were racing in their chariots.

In the trenches along the Yser men crouched down close to the moist mud to shelter themselves from a wind which was harder to dodge than shrapnel shells.  It lashed them with a fierce cruelty.  In spite of all the woollen comforters and knitted vests made by women’s hands at home, the wind found its way through to the bones and marrow of the soldiers so that they were numbed.  At night it was an agony of cold, preventing sleep, even if men could sleep while shells were searching for them with a cry of death.

The gunners dug pits for themselves, and when they ceased fire for a time crawled to shelter, smoking through little outlets in the damp blankets in which they had wrapped their heads and shoulders.  They tied bundles of straw round their legs to keep out the cold and packed old newspapers inside their chests as breast-plates, and tried to keep themselves warm, at least in imagination.

There was no battlefield in the old idea of the world.  How often must one say this to people at home who think that a modern army is encamped in the fields with bivouac fires and bell tents?  The battle was spread over a wide area of villages and broken towns and shattered farmhouses, and neat little homesteads yet untouched by fire or shell.  The open roads were merely highways between these points of shelter, in which great bodies of troops were huddled—­the internal lines of communication connecting various parts of the fighting machine.

It was rather hot, as well as cold, at Oudecapelle and Nieucapelle, and along the line to Styvekenskerke and Lom-bardtzyde.  The enemy’s batteries were hard at work again belching out an inexhaustible supply of shells.  Over there, the darkness was stabbed by red flashes, and the sky was zigzagged by waves of vivid splendour, which shone for a moment upon the blanched faces of men who waited for death.

Through the darkness, along the roads, infantry tramped towards the lines of trenches, to relieve other regiments who had endured a spell in them.  They bent their heads low, thrusting forward into the heart of the gale, which tore at the blue coats of these Frenchmen and plucked at their red trousers, and slashed in their faces with cruel whips.  Their side-arms jingled against the teeth of the wind, which tried to snatch at their bayonets and to drag the rifles out of their grip.  They never raised their heads to glance at the Red Cross carts coming back.