angling walnuts and bunches
of earthy and glistening grapes. The men humped themselves in soddened
khaki. The noise of the wheels bearing guns was like the sound of doom.
The rain it rained. O come, all ye faithful!

We got to a place where there was no more wheeled traffic. There was
nothing moving, nothing alive. That country was apparently abandoned.
To our front and left, for no apparent reason, three little dirty
yellow clouds burst simultaneously over a copse, with a smash which
made you feel you ought to be tolerant to men with shell-shock. On our
right was an empty field. Short momentary flames leaped constantly from
its farthermost hedge, with a noise like the rapid slamming of a row of
iron doors. Heavy eruptions, as though subterranean, were going on all
the time, the Lord knew where. But not a man was in sight till we got
to a village which looked like Gomorrah the day after it happened. Some
smoke and red dust were just settling by one of the ruins, and a man
lay there motionless with his face in the rubbish....

There was a habitation where sacking kept the wind and rain from
unlucky holes, with holly behind pictures tacked to its walls, and a
special piece of inviting mistletoe over a saucy lady from _La Vie
Parisienne_. There was an elderly and serious colonel, who had an
ancestor at Chevy Chase, but himself held independent views on war; and
a bunch of modest boys with sparkling eyes and blithe and ironic
comments. They also did not discuss the war in the way it is discussed
where war is but lowered street lights. We had bully beef, the right
sort of pudding,--those boys must have had very nice sisters,--and
frosted cake. There were noises without, as the book of the play has
it, and plenty of laughter within, and I enjoyed myself with a sort of
veiled, subconscious misery; for I liked those lads; and we are so
transitory today.

Then one of them took me for a Christmas walk in his country. "Have you
got your gas helmet?" he said. "That's right. It makes your eyes stream
with tears, and you look such a silly ass." On we went. I began
Christmas Day in the trenches by discovering the bottom of the mud too
late; though you never can tell, when a noise like the collapse of an
iron roof goes off behind you, where you are going to put your feet at
that moment. We went through a little wood, where the trees were like
broken poles with chewed ends. Over our heads were invisible things
which moaned, shrieked,