spirit of valiant
comradeship.

CHAPTER XVIII. (p. 179)

A WELL-EARNED REST.

_May and June, 1917._

Three days after we had settled at Bruay I was invited by one of our
staff officers and the Colonel of one of our battalions to accompany
them on a visit to our old trenches on the Somme. We left in the
morning and went south, over the roads and past the little villages
which we knew so well, till we came to Albert. We went up the Bapaume
road, now deserted and lonely. Our front line was some miles to the
east, and so all that waste of country over which we had fought was
now without inhabitants. We left the motor near Courcellette and
walked over the fields to the old trenches where the First Brigade had
made their attack. It was a dreary day. Low clouds hung over the sky
and a cold wind blew from the east. Spring had made very little
advance in those wide fields of death, and the grass was hardly green,
where there was any grass. We walked over the well-known tracks
reviewing incidents of the great battle. We crossed Death Valley and
saw our old lines. The place was so solemn that by mutual agreement we
did not talk, but each went off by himself. I found a number of
Canadian and German bodies still unburied, and all over the fields
were rifles and mess tins, spades and bits of accoutrement. One could
hardly imagine a scene more desolate and forlorn. Every inch of that
ground had been fought over and bought with the price of human blood.
The moan of the wind over the fields seemed like the great lament of
Nature for her sons who had gone. It was impossible to identify the
bodies we found, but we knew that burial parties would soon set to
work to collect them. Over each poor brown and muddy form I held a
short service and used the form of committal from the burial office in
our prayer-book.

It was with a sense of relief that we walked back up the road, past
the ruins of Courcelette, and rejoined the motor. The scene was too
painful, and made too great a pull upon the heart-strings. In the
great army of the slain that lay beneath that waste of mud were many
whom we had known and loved with that peculiar love which binds
comrades in the fighting line to one another--

"God rest you valiant Gentlemen (p. 180)
Who sleep beneath that ground."

Once more, at the end of the month, I paid another visit to Regina
Trench, w