om the trenches as reserves to the Keep. Broken down
though the place was when we entered it there was something restful in
the brown bricks, hidden in ivy, in the well-paved yard, and the
glorious riot of flowers. Most of the original furniture remained--the
beds, the chairs, and the pictures. All were delighted with the place,
Mervin particularly. "I'll make my country residence here after the
war," he said.

On the left was a church. Contrary to orders I spent an hour in the
dusk of the first evening in the ruined pile. The place had been
shelled for seven months, not a day had passed when it was not (p. 150)
struck in some part. The sacristy was a jumble of prayer books,
vestments, broken rosaries, crucifixes, and pictures. An ink pot and
pen lay on a broken table beside a blotting pad. A lamp which once
hung from the roof was beside them, smashed to atoms. In the church
the altar railing was twisted into shapeless bars of iron, bricks
littered the altar steps, the altar itself even, and bricks, tiles,
and beams were piled high in the body of the church.

Outside in the graveyard the graves lay open and the bones of the dead
were scattered broadcast over the green grass. Crosses were smashed or
wrenched out of the ground and flung to earth; near the Keep was the
soldiers' cemetery, the resting place of French, English, Indian, and
German soldiers. Many of the French had bottles of holy water placed
on their graves under the crosses. The English epitaphs were short and
concise, always the same in manner: "Private 999 J. Smith, 26th London
Battalion, killed in action 1st March, 1915." And under it stamped on
a bronze plate was the information, "Erected by the Mobile Unit
(B.R.C.S.) to preserve the record found on the spot." Often the dead
man's regiment left a token of remembrance, a bunch of flowers, the
dead man's cap or bayonet and rifle (these two latter only if (p. 151)
they had been badly damaged when the man died). Many crosses had been
taken from the churchyard and placed over these men. One of them read,
"A notre devote fille," and another, "To my beloved mother."

Several Indians, men of the Bengal Mountain Battery, were buried here.
A woman it was stated, had disclosed their location to the enemy, and
the billet in which they were staying was struck fair by a high
explosive shell. Thirty-one were killed. They were now at
rest--Anaytullah, Lakhasingh, and other strange men with queer names
under