rt, but (p. 020)
Peronne must have been lovely, looking up from the water; and the
main _Place_ must have been most imposing, but then it was very sad.
The Boche had only left it about three weeks, and it had not been
"cleaned up." But the real terribleness of the Somme was not in the
towns or on the roads. One felt it as one wandered over the old
battlefields of La Boisselle, Courcelette, Thiepval, Grandcourt,
Miraumont, Beaumont-Hamel, Bazentin-le-Grand and Bazentin-le-Petit--the
whole country practically untouched since the great day when the Boche
was pushed back and it was left in peace once more.

A hand lying on the duckboards; a Boche and a Highlander locked in a
deadly embrace at the edge of Highwood; the "Cough-drop" with the
stench coming from its watery bottom; the shell-holes with the shapes
of bodies faintly showing through the putrid water--all these things
made one think terribly of what human beings had been through, and
were going through a bit further on, and would be going through for
perhaps years more--who knew how many?

I remember an officer saying to me, "Paint the Somme? I could do it
from memory--just a flat horizon-line and mud-holes and water, with
the stumps of a few battered trees," but one could not paint the
smell.

Early one morning in Amiens I got a message from Colonel John Buchan
asking me to breakfast at the "Hotel du Rhin." While we were having
breakfast, there was a great noise outside--an English voice was
cursing someone else hard and telling him to get on and not make an
ass of himself. Then a Flying Pilot was pushed in by an Observer. The
Pilot's hand and arm were temporarily bound up, but blood was (p. 021)
dropping through. The Observer had his face badly scratched and one of
his legs was not quite right. They sat at a table, and the waiter
brought them eggs and coffee, which they took with relish, but the
Pilot was constantly drooping towards his left, and the drooping
always continued, till he went crack on the floor. Then the Observer
would curse him soundly and put him back in his chair, where he would
eat again till the next fall. When they had finished, the waiter put a
cigarette in each of their mouths and lit them. After a few minutes
four men walked in with two stretchers, put the two breakfasters on
the stretchers, and walked out with them--not a word was spoken.

[Illustration: VI. _No Man's Land._]

I found out afterwards that the Pilot had b