Pore Ginger! Not many get better from a wound like
his one."

Their wounds dressed, the men went away; others came by carrying (p. 299)
out the stricken; many had fractured limbs, one was struck on the
shoulder, another in the leg and one I noticed had several teeth
knocked away.

The working-party had one killed and fifty-nine wounded in the
morning's work; some of the wounded, amongst them, Ginger Weeson, died
in hospital.

The ration-party came back at two o'clock jubilant. The post arrived
when the men were in the village and many bulky parcels came in for
us. Meals are a treat when parcels are bulky. We would have a fine
breakfast.

CHAPTER XXII (p. 300)

ROMANCE

The young recruit is apt to think
Of war as a romance;
But he'll find its boots and bayonets
When he's somewhere out in France.

When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from ---- his
heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he
is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the
branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew,
hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are
thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring,
murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool,
mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the
roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and
on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into
the land of mystery, the Unknown.

In front is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward (p. 301)
as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can
mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of
smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-shells and
lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of
death.

Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is
a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken
homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of
yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last
autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.

Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead,
and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the
skylarks si