on the grasses, and they became emerald waves, a
green spray of blades tossing and flashing in the full sunlight. As we
passed, the same wind bowed them before it, and they were a shining,
silken cloth. The poppies were a larger sort than those in the
wheatfields, and of a very glorious crimson. In among the grasses was
yellow coltsfoot; among the pebbles were sowthistle, mignonette, pink
bindweed, and great patches of storksbill. Many noted the beauty of
these flowers, a scene so un-Mesopotamian in its brightness. We were
tasting of the joy and life of springtide in happier latitudes, a wine
long praetermitted to our lips; and among us were those who would not
drink of this wine again till they drank it new in their Father's
Kingdom. After Beled we saw no more flowers.

With the first line was my friend Private W----. As we pushed forward
he looked up, as his custom was, for a 'message.' Perchance, with so
many fears and hopes stirring, there was some buzzing along the
heavenly wires; but the only word he could get was this one, 'Because.'
He puzzled upon it, till the whole flashed on his brain--'Because Thy
lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise Thee.'
Thenceforward he went his ways content; neither can any man have
gathered greater pleasure from the beauty of the morning and those
unwonted flowers than this Plymouth Brother, a gardener by profession,
and, as I found in later days, amid the rich deep meadows of the Holy
Land, a passionate lover of all wild plants.

The left flank was guarded by one section of machine-gunners and one
section of the 32nd Lancers. Next to them moved the Leicestershires.
Some time after 8 a.m. rifle-fire on our left told us that the Cherub's
scouts were in touch with enemy patrols. About 9.30 the first shell
came, our advanced guard being some five thousand yards from Beled
Station.

There were frequent halts, while our few cavalry reconnoitred. Then we
passed into a deep broad nulla between two ancient earth-walls. All
this terrain had been a network of canals and cultivation. Shrapnel was
bursting in our front. We filed out, at the left, on to a plain. Half a
mile ahead was the nearer curve of a hilly ground. The main range ran
in a Carpathian-like sweep across our front, from west to east; turned,
and went across our front again. Beyond this was Beled Station, lying
at the point of a wide fork of hills, the left prong a good mile away,
but the right bending almost