ers
dead, of their white crosses, and I found myself weeping silently like
a child....

CHAPTER XVI (p. 216)

PEACE AND WAR

You'll see from the La Bassee Road, on any summer day,
The children herding nanny goats, the women making hay.
You'll see the soldiers, khaki clad, in column and platoon,
Come swinging up La Bassee Road from billets in Bethune.
There's hay to save and corn to cut, but harder work by far
Awaits the soldier boys who reap the harvest fields of war.
You'll see them swinging up the road where women work at hay,
The long, straight road, La Bassee Road, on any summer day.

The farmhouse stood in the centre of the village; the village rested
on the banks of a sleepy canal on which the barges carried the wounded
down from the slaughter line to the hospital at Bethune. The village
was shelled daily. When shelling began a whistle was blown warning all
soldiers to seek cover immediately in the dug-outs roofed with sandbags,
which were constructed by the military authorities in nearly every garden
in the place. When the housewifes heard the shells bursting they ran
out and brought in their washing from the lines where it was hung out
to dry; then they sat down and knitted stockings or sewed garments (p. 217)
to send to their menfolk at the war. In the village they said: "When
the shells come the men run in for their lives, and the women run out
for their washing."

The village was not badly battered by shell fire. Our barn got touched
once and a large splinter of a concussion shell which fell there was
used as a weight for a wag-of-the-wall clock in the farmhouse. The
village was crowded with troops, new men, who wore clean shirts, neat
puttees and creased trousers. They had not been in the trenches yet,
but were going up presently.

Bill and I were sitting in an _estaminet_ when two of these youngsters
came in and sat opposite.

"New 'ere?" asked Bill.

"Came to Boulogne six days ago and marched all the way here," said one
of them, a red-haired youth with bushy eyebrows. "Long over?" he
asked.

"Just about nine months," said Bill.

"You've been through it then."

"Through it," said Bill, lying splendidly, "I think we 'ave. At Mons
we went in eight 'undred strong. We're the only two as is left."

"Gracious! And you never got a scratch?"

"Never a pin prick," said Bill, "And I saw the shells so thick (p. 218)
c