An Onlooker in France 1917-1919

believe I do now-a little bit. Even I, from my back, looking-on position, sometimes felt the terrible fear, th

later, at the R.F.C. H.Q., Maurice Baring showed me a series of air-photographs of Pozières as it was in 1914, with its peaceful little streets and rows of trees. What a contrast to the Pozières as it was in 1917-MUD. Further on, the Butte stood out on the right, a heap of chalky mud, not a blade of grass round it then-nothing but

ft it about three weeks, and it had not been "cleaned up." But the real terribleness of the Somme was not in the towns or on the roads. One felt it as one wandered over the old battlefields of La Boisselle, Courcelett

from its watery bottom; the shell-holes with the shapes of bodies faintly showing through the putrid water-all these things made one think terribly

from memory-just a flat horizon-line and mud-holes and water, with t

were temporarily bound up, but blood was dropping through. The Observer had his face badly scratched and one of his legs was not quite right. They sat at a table, and the waiter brought them eggs and coffee, which they took with relish, but the Pilot was constantly drooping towards his left, and the drooping always continued, till he went crack on the floo