Now It Can Be Told

ing to their quarters, wondered why we should come "spying around," trying to "see things." I was faintly conscious of this one day in those very early times, when with the officer who had bee

h stereoscopic lenses, in the quiver of sunlight, and had the sinister look of a death-haunted place. It was where the French had fought their way through gardens, walls, and houses in murderous battle, before leaving it for British troops to hold. Across it now came the whine of shells, and I saw that shrapnel bullets were kicking up the dust of a thousand yards down the s

n't like crossing that field, in spite of the bu

e idea of

rer now, and I could see the face of the officer leading them-a boy subalte

shrapnel is following up pretty closely. Would you

side his sphere of influence. But the boyi

eep them there until the strafe is over." Some shra

good

t the bank, and wiped the sweat off their faces.

ere busy plugging holes in the grass and flowers, rather deep h

he captain. "There's a general waiting for us, and I have not

ly the larks were singing up in the blue. Several horses lay dead, newly killed, with blood oozing about them, and their entrails smoking. We made a half-loop around them and then struck straight for the chateau whi

l had pitched quite close to them. One man laughed as though at a grotesque joke, and fell as he reached the cour

, "as though the Germans knew there

d to go back before reaching one's objective. That was bad

into the chateau, and chose the easier; and it was then that I became dimly aware of hostility against me on the part of a number of officers in the front hall. The brigade staff was there, grouped under the ban

was a tall, handsome young man of something over t

pleasant place for sightseeing! Meanwhile the Hun is r

of mangled flesh beneath the ruins of a red-brick villa-the shells were crashing among the outhouses and in the courtyard, and the enemy was making good shooting-and the idea did not please me at all. At the back of my brain was Fear, and there was a cold sweat in the palms of my hands; but I was master of myself, and I remember having a sense of satisfaction because I had answered the brigade major in a level voice, with a touch of

bring them here-in the

eneral?" asked

other brigadier. They don't a

t excessively. But their laughter ended sharply, and th

the steps and made a r

nders," he said, with a queer catch in his breath. "In view

," said the brigade

certa

He was calm and stolid. I liked the look of him and found something co

s likely to last

o pass the time, so to speak, or they may go on till they get it

o be worrying abo

doorway, and all the little sounds of a summer day. The group of officers in the hall started chatting more

rward to Vermelles,

ed us on his horse. He leaned over his saddle toward me an

but there was an under

to do

ns of Vermelles with a young soldier-guide who on th

ad in daylight, as a rule. It's

id you come this way?

ight prefer the

mpled bushes and broken walls. Bits of red rag-the red pantaloons of the first French soldiers-were still fastened to brambles and barbed wire. Broken rifles, carto