rom Italy or were going to Jericho. The men
did not know where their headquarters were, and I was particularly
anxious not to find mine. I went over to the Officer's Club and
secured a shake-down in the garret, but, as I heard that our Division
had made an attack that day, I determined to go up to the line. I
started off after dinner in an ambulance to the old mill at
Vlamertinghe, where there was a repetition of the sights and sounds
which I had experienced there on two previous occasions. Later on, I
went forward in another ambulance through Ypres to an advanced
dressing station. Then I started to walk up the terrible, muddy roads
till I came to the different German pill-boxes which had been
converted into headquarters for the battalions. Finally, after wading
through water and mud nearly up to my knees, I found myself the next
afternoon wandering through the mud and by the shell holes and
miserable trenches near Goudberg Copse, with a clear view of the ruins
of Paschendaele, which was held by another division on our right. The
whole region was unspeakably horrible. Rain was falling, the dreary
waste of shell-ploughed mud, yellow and clinging, stretched off into
the distance as far as the eye could see. Bearer parties, tired (p. 228)
and pale, were carrying out the wounded on stretchers, making a
journey of several miles in doing so. The bodies of dead men lay here
and there where they had fallen in the advance. I came across one poor
boy who had been killed that morning. His body was covered with a
shiny coating of yellow mud, and looked like a statue made of bronze.
He had a beautiful face, with finely shaped head covered with close
curling hair, and looked more like some work of art than a human
being. The huge shell holes were half full of water often reddened
with human blood and many of the wounded had rolled down into the
pools and been drowned. As I went on, some one I met told me that
there was a wounded man in the trenches ahead of me. I made my way in
the direction indicated and shouted out asking if anybody was there.
Suddenly I heard a faint voice replying, and I hurried to the place
from which the sound came. There I found sitting up in the mud of the
trench, his legs almost covered with water, a lad who told me that he
had been there for many hours. I never saw anything like the wonderful
expression on his face. He was smiling most cheerfully, and made no
complaint about what he had suffered. I told h