s,
superb vegetation, and ruined villages--tragic villages illustrating the
glories and the transcendent common-sense of war and invasion.
That place over there is Souchez--familiar in all mouths from
Arkansas to Moscow for six months past. What an object! Look at
St. Eloi! Look at Angres! Look at Neuville St. Vaast! And look at
Ablain St. Nazaire, the nearest of all! The village of Ablain St.
Nazaire seems to consist now chiefly of exposed and blackened
rafters; what is left of the church sticks up precisely like a little
bleached bone. A vision horrible and incredible in the immense
luxuriance of the plain! The French have got Ablain St. Nazaire. We
may go to Ablain St. Nazaire ourselves if we will accept the risks of
shelling. Soldiers were seriously wounded there on that very day, for
we saw them being carried therefrom on stretchers towards the
motor-ambulance and the hospital.

After more walking of a very circuitous nature, I noticed a few bricks
in the monotonous expanse of dwarf earth-mounds made by shells.

"Hello!" I said. "Was there a cottage here?"

No! What I had discovered was the illustrious chapel of Notre Dame
de Lorette.

Then we were in a German trench which the French had taken and
transformed into one of their own trenches by turning its face. It had
a more massive air than the average French trench, and its
cellarage, if I may use this civilian word, was deeper than that of any
French trench. The officers said that often a German trench was
taken before the men resting in those profound sleeping-holes could
get to the surface, and that therefore they only emerged in order to
be killed or captured.

After more heavy trudging we came to trenches abandoned by the
Germans and not employed by the French, as the front had moved
far beyond them. The sides were dilapidated. Old shirts, bits of
uniform, ends of straps, damaged field-glass cases, broken rifles,
useless grenades lay all about. Here and there was a puddle of
greenish water. Millions of flies, many of a sinister bright burnished
green, were busily swarming. The forlornness of these trenches was
heartrending. It was the most dreadful thing that I saw at the front,
surpassing the forlornness of any destroyed village whatsoever.
And at intervals in the ghastly residue of war arose a smell unlike
any other smell. ... A leg could be seen sticking out of the side of the
trench. We smelt a number of these smells, and saw a number of
these leg