cleaning-up party) changed the whole face
of Thiepval and that part of the Ancre Valley was incredible.

[Illustration: XIV. _View from the Old English Trenches. Looking
towards La Boisselle._]

When working in the Valley of the Ancre region, coming home in the
evening, we would bring the car down to the water near Aveluy. It is a
long stretch of water, and the Tommies had put up a springboard. It
was a joy to take off one's clothes in the car and jump into the cool
water and watch all these wonderful young men stripping, diving,
swimming, drying and dressing in the evening sun, all full of life and
health. At one period, Joffroy, a very good French artist, who had
lost a leg, right up to his trunk, early in the War, used to swim
there with me. He had been a great athlete, and had a very strong
arm-stroke, and possessed one of the most beautifully-developed bodies
I have ever seen. One evening, after bathing, as we were driving back
to Amiens in the car, he stretched out his arms and said, "Orpen, I
feel like a young Greek god!" And, after a pause, added: "But only a
fragment, you know, only a fragment." He was a great man, and could
clamber over trenches with his wooden stump in a marvellous way.

I remember that summer a strange thing happened. One day I found, and
started painting, the remains of a Britisher and a Boche--just skulls,
bones, garments--up by the trenches at Thiepval. I was all alone. My
faithful Howlett was about half a mile away with the car. When I had
been working about a couple of hours I felt strange. I cannot say (p. 040)
even now what I felt. Afraid? Of what? The sun shone fiercely. There
was not a breath of air. Perhaps it was that--a touch of the sun. So I
stopped painting and went and sat on the trunk of a blown-up tree
close by, when suddenly I was thrown on the back of my head on the
ground. My heavy easel was upset, and one of the skulls went through
the canvas. I got up and thought a lot, but came to the conclusion I
had better just go on working, which I did, and nothing further
strange happened. That night I happened to meet Joffroy, and told him
about these skulls, and how peculiar one was, as it had a division in
the frontal bone (the Britisher's). He said he would like to go and
make a study of it; so I brought him out the next morning to the
place, I myself working that day in Thiepval Wood, about half a mile
further up the hill. I left him, saying I would come back and bring