``And another wanted to tell of the valleys beyond the wood, far afield where the men went working; the women would remember the hay.  The great valleys he’d tell of.  It was they that made Daleswood.  The valleys beyond the wood and the twilight on them in summer.  Slopes covered with mint and thyme, all solemn at evening.  A hare on them perhaps, sitting as though they were his, then lolloping slowly away.  It didn’t seem from the way he told of those old valleys that he thought they could ever be to other folk what they were to the Daleswood men in the days he remembered.  He spoke of them as though there were something in them, besides the mint and the thyme and the twilight and hares, that would not stay after these men were gone, though he did not say what it was.  Scarcely hinted it even.

``And still the Boche did nothing to the Daleswood men.  The bullets had ceased altogether.  That made it much quieter.  The shells still snarled over, bursting far, far away.

``And Bob said tell of Daleswood itself, the old village, with queer chimneys, of red brick, in the wood.  There weren’t houses like that nowadays.  They’d be building new ones and spoiling it, likely, after the war.  And that was all he had to say.

``And nobody was for not putting down anything any one said.  It was all to go in on the chalk, as much as would go in the time.  For they all sort of understood that the Daleswood of what they called the good old time was just the memories that those few men had of the days they had spent there together.  And that was the Daleswood they loved, and wanted folks to remember.  They were all agreed as to that.  And then they said how was they to write it down.  And when it came to writing there was so much to be said, not spread over a lot of paper I don’t mean, but going down so deep like, that it seemed to them how their own talk wouldn’t be good enough to say it.  And they knew no other, and didn’t know what to do.  I reckon they’d been reading magazines and thought that writing had to be like that muck.  Anyway, they didn’t know what to do.  I reckon their talk would be good enough for Daleswood when they loved Daleswood like that.  But they didn’t, and they were puzzled.

``The Boche was miles away behind them now, and his barrage with him.  Still in front he did nothing.

``They talked it all over and over, did the Daleswood men.  They tried everything.  But somehow or other they couldn’t get near what they wanted to say about old summer evenings.  Time wore on.  The bowlder was smooth and ready, and that whole generation of Daleswood men could find no words to say what was in their hearts about Daleswood.  There wasn’t time to waste.  And the only thing they thought of in the end was `Please, God, remember Daleswood just like it used to be.’  And Bill and Harry carved that on the chalk between them.

``What happened to the Daleswood men?  Why, nothing.  There come one of them counter-attacks, a regular bastard for Jerry.  The French made it and did the Boche in proper.  I got the story from a man with a hell of a great big hammer, long afterwards when that trench was well behind our line.  He was smashing up a huge great chunk of chalk because he said they all felt it was so damn silly.’’