y left.
The sun is baking hot.
Strange odours come from the door of a dug-out
With its endless steps running down into blackness.
The land is white--dazzling.
The distance is all shimmering in heat.
A few little spring flowers have forced their way
Through the chalk.

He lies a few yards in front of the trench.
We are quite alone.
He makes me feel very awed, very small, very ashamed.
He has been there a long, long time--
Hundreds of eyes have seen him,
Hundreds of bodies have felt faint and sick
Because of him.
Then this place was Hell,
But now all is Peace.
And the sun has made him Holy and Pure--
He and his garments are bleached white and clean.
A daffodil is by his head, and his curly, golden (p. 024)
Hair is moving in the slight breeze.
He, the man who died in "No Man's Land," doing
Some great act of bravery for his comrades and
Country--
Here he lies, Pure and Holy, his face upward turned;
No earth between him and his Maker.
I have no right to be so near.

[Illustration: VII. _Three Weeks in France. Shell shock._]

CHAPTER III (p. 025)

AT BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS AND ST. POL (MAY-JUNE 1917)

About this time Freddie Fane (Major Fane, A.P.M.) sent me up to his
old division, which was then fighting in front of Peronne. We arrived
on a lovely afternoon at Divisional H.Q., which were in a pretty
fir-wood, and consisted of beautifully camouflaged little huts. The
guns were booming a few miles off, but everything was very peaceful
there, and the dinner was excellent; but, just as we finished, the
first shell shrieked overhead, and this I was told afterwards went on
all night. Personally I had another large whisky-and-soda, and slept
like a log.

The next morning the General's A.D.C. motored me to a village about
four kilometres off and handed me over to a 2nd Lieutenant, who walked
me off to Brigade H.Q. These were behind an old railway embankment.
Everyone was most kind, but I saw no quiet place to work. Everyone was
rushing about, and the noise of the guns was terrific. The young 2nd
Lieutenant advised me to take the men I wanted to draw and to go to
the other side of the embankment. He said that there was no one there
and that I could work in peace, and he was right. The noise from our
batteries immediately gave me a bad headache, but apparently the Boche
did not respond