8th._

For a mile the country had been flayed. The red ribs of it lay open to
the sky. The whole flank of the ridge had been torn open--it lies there
bleeding, gaping open to the callous skies with scarcely so much as a
blade of grass or a thistle to clothe its nakedness--covered with the
wreckage of men and of their works as the relics of a shipwreck cover
the uneasy sea.

As we dodged over the last undulations of an unused trench, the crest of
each crater brought us for an instant into view of something
beyond--something green and fresh and brilliant, like new land after a
long sea journey. Then we were out of view of it again, for a time;
until we came to a point where it seemed good to climb and peep over the
low parapet.

It was a peep into paradise. Before us lay a green country. There was a
rich verdure on the opposite hills. Beyond them ran a valley filled with
the warm haze of summer, out of which the round tree-tops stood dark
against the still higher hills beyond. The wheat was ripe upon the far
hill slopes. The sun bathed the lap of the land with his midday summer
warmth. Along the crest of the distant hills ran the line of tall,
regular trees which in this country invariably means a road. A church
spire rose from a tree clump on a nearer crest. Some of the foreground
was pitted with the ugly red splashes which have become for us, in this
horrible area, the normal feature of the countryside. But, beyond it,
was the green country spread out like a picture, sleeping under the heat
of a summer's sun.

It was the promised land--the country behind the German lines--the
valley about Bapaume where the Germans have been for two years
undisturbed in French territory, until our troops for the first time
peeped over the ridge the other day at the flashes of the very German
guns which were firing at them.

Quite close at hand was a wood. The trees were not more than half a mile
away, if that. It was a growing wood--with the green still on the
branches, very different from the charred posts and tree stumps which
are all that now remain of the gardens and orchards of Pozieres. I
remember a little over a month ago, when some of us first went up near
to Pozieres village--on the day when the bombardment before our first
attack was tearing branches from off the trees a hundred yards
away--Pozieres had a fairly decent covering then. There was enough dead
brushwood and twigs, at any rate, to hide the buildings of the pl