arapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the
rain-wet chalk melted to milk and whitened the barrels and actions (p. 245)
of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets up to the sky.

Looking northward when one dared to raise his head over the parapet
for a moment, could be seen white lines of chalk winding across a sea
of green meadows splashed with daisies and scarlet poppies.
Butterflies flitted from flower to flower and sometimes found their
way into our trench where they rested for a moment on the chalk bags,
only to rise again and vanish over the fringes of green that verged
the limits of our world. Three miles away rising lonely over the
beaten zone of emerald stood a red brick village, conspicuous by the
spire of its church and an impudent chimney, with part of its side
blown away, that stood stiff in the air. A miracle that it had not
fallen to pieces. Over the latrine at the back the flies were busy,
their buzzing reminded me of the sound made by shell splinters
whizzing through the air.

The space between the trenches looked like a beautiful garden, green
leaves hid all shrapnel scars on the shivered trees, thistles with
magnificent blooms rose in line along the parapet, grasses hung over
the sandbags of the parapet and seemed to be peering in at us asking
if we would allow them to enter. The garden of death was a riot (p. 246)
of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst
the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face;
and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature
was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the
face of the country.

At noon I sat in the dug-out where Bill was busy repairing a defect in
his mouth organ. The sun blazed overhead, and it was almost impossible
to write, eat or even to sleep.

The dug-out was close and suffocating; the air stank of something
putrid, of decaying flesh, of wasting bodies of French soldiers who
had fallen in a charge and were now rotting in the midst of the fair
poppy flowers. They lay as they fell, stricken headlong in the great
frenzy of battle, their fingers wasted to the bone, still clasping
their rifles or clenching the earth which they pulled from the ground
in the mad agony of violent death. Now and again, mingled with the
stench of death and decay, the breeze wafted into our dug-out an odour
of flowers.

The order came like a bomb f