scended the hill-slope,
jumping and clambering across shell-holes and striding through long
grass and weeds. Now and again we would chance upon some narrow winding
track that soon lost itself again amid the tangled growth.

Low clouds burdened the sky and a fine rain began to fall. The top of
the hill was hidden in grey mist.

We passed a heap of broken concrete blocks from which the twisted ends
of iron rods projected. A little further on a concrete shelter stood
intact except for deep vertical fissures. I peered into the narrow
entrance that sloped steeply down. I slipped in the soft mud, but by
stretching out my arms and clasping the outer wall I just saved myself
from falling flat on to a rotting corpse that lay half-immersed in
greenish-black water. I drew slowly back, feeling sick with horror.

As we climbed the hill-side the devastation increased. The trees and
bushes were torn, splintered and uprooted. Only a few grey trunks
remained standing like scarred, bare poles. We approached the summit and
crossed shell-hole next to shell-hole, for not a square yard of ground
had remained untouched. Some of the holes were wide and deeply
funnel-shaped, others were shallow, and others were hardly
distinguishable, the earth having been churned and tossed up time after
time. On the very top of the hill, there was nothing left of the trees
that had densely clothed it a few months before, except fragments of
wood and stringy lengths of root. Even the grass and weeds had been
destroyed and blasted by the bursting of innumerable shells.

We walked along the crest between upright bundles of splinters that
projected from the ground in two parallel rows--all that remained of an
avenue of pines and larches.

We descended the further slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes
were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp--a chaos
of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead
Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a
human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The
blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed
to clutch frantically at some invisible object.

A little further on two soldiers were scraping the soil with sticks.

"Gorblimy--'e ain't 'alf rotten--puh--don't 'e stink! I 'ope 'e's got
summat in 'is pockets arter we've bin takin' all this trouble."

"Yer never find much on these 'ere Froggies, the rotte