If only the end would come!  And, until it does come, give me hard work so that my own thoughts cannot oppress me and I may forget all except sore shoulders and aching limbs!

III

ON DETACHMENT

The light-railway engine pulled the trucks slowly along by winding circuitous routes.  It was a warm, sunny evening.  Everything was green and peaceful.  The farms and cottages bore no signs of war.  But soon we saw a number of shell-holes grouped round cross-roads, and gradually, as we proceeded, the fields came to be pitted more and more thickly.  We skirted a large village.  It was deserted.  The roof of the church had three black holes.  All the houses were damaged and we could see the splintered rafters standing out darkly against the sky.

We passed by camouflaged shell dumps and guns of big calibre, camouflaged and concealed amongst trees and bushes, so that often the muzzle alone was visible.  Shell-holes were dotted everywhere.  Many of the trees were scarred and their branches wrenched away.

We steamed into the terminal siding.  Some distance in front of us was a row of poplars, regular except for the gaps where branch or trunk had been shattered.  To the right was a patched-up road with several ruined cottages on either side.  To the left of the poplars was a wood in which a large white chateau was half concealed.  It looked very dreary with its black, gaping windows.  To our right was a big farmhouse.  Most of the tiles had been blown from the roof, showing the bare rafters.  The door was in splinters, and the walls were riddled.  A little lane wound round the farm in a loop and then lost itself in the wood.

Behind us was a hedge and a group of trees amongst which a gun was hidden.

There was no sound of firing.  No birds were singing, although it was spring.  All was quiet except for the frogs that uttered raucous musical croaks in a pond near by and puffed out the bladders at the corners of their mouths, so as to produce long-drawn shrill vibrations.

We shovelled the stones out of the trucks.  Several of the men expressed disappointment at the fact that there was no “excitement.”

Soon after nightfall desultory firing broke out some distance off.  Then a gun began to fire a long way behind us.  The shells passing high overhead made a faint rustling noise, as though they were travelling along in leisurely fashion.

Suddenly all the batteries in the entire neighbourhood joined in.  The uproar was like that of innumerable thunderstorms crashing together.  The guns bellowed and roared and pounded and deep reverberations filled the night.  From behind us there came flashes so dazzling that we could not bear to look at them, and great blasts of air and thunder-claps that seemed to strike our ears with colossal hammers and make them drone intolerably.  Thunder-clap followed thunder-clap, long jets of white flame pierced the darkness, and now and again the very air seemed to kindle, and brilliant sheets and shreds of flame blazed and crackled round us.  Above there was a noise as though thousands of devilish creatures were rushing along, helter-skelter, with inconceivable rapidity, howling, shrieking, screaming, wailing, laughing, exulting, whistling and gibbering.