It sounds so easy, laying a wire.  But I swear it is the most wearying business in the world—­punching holes in the ground with a 16-lb. hammer, running up poles that won’t go straight, unhooking wire that has caught in a branch or in the eaves of a house, taking the strain of a cable to prevent man and ladder and wire coming on top of you, when the man who pays out has forgotten to pay.  Have a thought for the wretched fellows who are getting out a wire on a dark and snowy night, troubled perhaps by persistent snipers and frequent shells!  Shed a tear for the miserable linesman sent out to find where the line is broken or defective....

When there was no chance of “a run” we would go for walks towards Kemmel.  At the time the Germans were shelling the hill, but occasionally they would break off, and then we would unofficially go up and see what had happened.

Now Mont Kemmel is nearly covered with trees.  I have never been in a wood under shell fire, and I do not wish to be.  Where the Germans had heavily shelled Kemmel there were great holes, trees thrown about and riven and scarred and crushed—­a terrific immensity of blasphemous effort.  It was as if some great beast, wounded mortally, had plunged into a forest, lashing and biting and tearing in his agony until he died.

On one side of the hill was a little crazy cottage which had marvellously escaped.  Three shells had fallen within ten yards of it.  Two had not burst, and the other, shrapnel, had exploded in the earth.  The owner came out, a trifling, wizened old man in the usual Belgian cap and blue overalls.  We had a talk, using the lingua franca of French, English with a Scottish accent, German, and the few words of Dutch I could remember.

We dug up for him a large bit of the casing of the shrapnel.  He examined it fearfully.  It was an 11-inch shell, I think, nearly as big as his wee grotesque self.  Then he made a noise, which we took to be a laugh, and told us that he had been very frightened in his little house (haeusling), and his cat, an immense white Tom, had been more frightened still.  But he knew the Germans could not hit him.  Thousands and thousands of Germans had gone by, and a little after the last German came the English.  “Les Anglais sont bons.”

This he said with an air of finality.  It is a full-blooded judgment which, though it sounds a trifle exiguous to describe our manifold heroic efforts, is a sort of perpetual epithet.  The children use it confidingly when they run to our men in the cafes.  The peasants use it as a parenthetical verdict whenever they mention our name.  The French fellows use it, and I have heard a German prisoner say the same.

A few days later those who lived on Kemmel were “evacuated.”  They were rounded up into the Convent yard, men and women and children, with their hens and pigs.  At first they were angry and sorrowful; but nobody, not even the most indignant refugee, could resist our military policemen, and in three-quarters of an hour they all trudged off, cheerfully enough, along the road to Bailleul.