Beyond the village the batteries are thick.  A great howitzer near the road lifts its huge muzzle slowly, fires and goes down again, and lifts again and fires.  It is as though Polyphemus had lifted his huge shape slowly, leisurely, from the hillside where he was sitting, and hurled the mountain top, and sat down again.  If he is firing pretty regularly you are sure to get the blast of one of them as you go by, and it can be a very strong wind indeed.  One’s horse, if one is riding, does not very much like it, but I have seen horses far more frightened by a puddle on the road when coming home from hunting in the evening:  one 12-inch howitzer more or less in France calls for no great attention from man or beast.

And so we come in sight of the support trenches where we are to dwell for a week before we go on for another mile over the hills, where the black fountains are rising.

A Walk in Picardy

Picture any village you know.  In such a village as that the trench begins.  That is to say, there are duck-boards along a ditch, and the ditch runs into a trench.  Only the village is no longer there.  It was like some village you know, though perhaps a little merrier, because it was further south and nearer the sun; but it is all gone now.  And the trench runs out of the ruins, and is called Windmill Avenue.  There must have been a windmill standing there once.

When you come from the ditch to the trench you leave the weeds and soil and trunks of willows and see the bare chalk.  At the top of those two white walls is a foot or so of brown clay.  The brown clay grows deeper as you come to the hills, until the chalk has disappeared altogether.  Our alliance with France is new in the history of man, but it is an old, old union in the history of the hills.  White chalk with brown clay on top has dipped and gone under the sea; and the hills of Sussex and Kent are one with the hills of Picardy.

And so you may pass through the chalk that lies in that desolate lane with memories of more silent and happier hills; it all depends on what the chalk means to you:  you may be unfamiliar with it and in that case you will not notice it; or you may have been born among those thyme-scented hills and yet have no errant fancies, so that you will not think of the hills that watched you as a child, but only keep your mind on the business in hand; that is probably best.

You come after a while to other trenches:  notice boards guide you, and you keep to Windmill Avenue.  You go by Pear Lane, Cherry Lane, and Plum Lane.  Pear trees, cherry trees and plum trees must have grown there.  You are passing through either wild lanes banked with briar, over which these various trees peered one by one and showered their blossoms down at the end of spring, and girls would have gathered the fruit when it ripened, with the help of tall young men; or else you are passing through an old walled garden, and the pear and the cherry and plum were