ng but mud, water, crosses
and broken Tanks; miles and miles of it, horrible and terrible, but
with a noble dignity of its own, and, running through it, the great
artery, the Albert-Bapaume Road, with its endless stream of men, guns,
food lorries, mules and cars, all pressing along with apparently
unceasing energy towards the front. Past all the little crosses where
their comrades had fallen, nothing daunted, they pressed on towards
the Hell that awaited them on the far side of Bapaume. The mud, the
cold, the noise, the misery, and perhaps death;--on they went,
plodding through the mud, those wonderful men, perhaps singing one of
their cheer-making songs, such as:--

"I want to go home. (p. 019)
I want to go home.
I don't want to go to the trenches no more,
Where the Whizz-bangs and Johnsons do rattle and roar.
Take me right over the sea,
Where the Allemande can't bayonet me.
Oh, my!
I don't want to die,
I want to go home."

[Illustration: V. _Warwickshires entering Peronne._]

How did they do it? "I want to go home."--Does anyone realise what
those words must have meant to them then? I believe I do now--a little
bit. Even I, from my back, looking-on position, sometimes felt the
terrible fear, the longing to get away. What must they have felt?
"From battle, murder and sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us."

On up the hill past the mines to Pozieres. An Army railway was then
running through Pozieres, and the station was marked by a big wooden
sign painted black and white, like you see at any country station in
England, with POZIERES in large Roman letters, but that's all there
was of Pozieres except a little red in the mud. I remember later, at
the R.F.C. H.Q., Maurice Baring showed me a series of air-photographs
of Pozieres as it was in 1914, with its peaceful little streets and
rows of trees. What a contrast to the Pozieres as it was in 1917--MUD.
Further on, the Butte stood out on the right, a heap of chalky mud,
not a blade of grass round it then--nothing but mud, with a white
cross on the top. On the left, the Crown Prince's dug-out and
Gibraltar--I suppose these have gone now--and Le Sars and Grevillers,
at that time General Birdwood's H.Q., where the church had been
knocked into a fine shape. I tried to draw it, but was much put off by
air fighting. It seemed a favourite spot for this.

Bapaume must always have been a dismal place, like Albe