Northern France Revisited
BOULOGNE, Samer, Montreull—our car, of English make, but battered by war service, driven by a British soldier, who had married a French wife, and settled in France, entered. Haig's headquarters, the pic- turesque little town which seemed to me faintly reminis- cent for a moment of Carcassonne. In the war years, for a time at least, Montreuil was a Mecca, a Mongolian Urga for mystery and secrecy. " Montreuil-sur-Mer " they still call it, in memory of days when " sur-Mer 't was more than name. Near the now peaceful. château, women bend over their labour in the fields, behind hedges bright with wild flowers and buzzing with autumn insects. At Hesdin we see the billet-boards still on gates. and walls, and here and there " Cellar for 6," " Cellar for 8 " painted up. But the troops have marched away; many beyond trumpet-call. Beyond Doullens is a wood, and beside. a clearing there we halt for luncheon. We_ are not in the fighting-line yet, though drawing near it. Just by the front wheels of the car something is lying in the road—the tin-hat of some British soldier, battered, With rain in it ; lying all these years upon the high road. In the clearing are felled trees to serve as tables and seats on some are carved the names of our men. And in the woods are pitiful relics, here and there among the under- growth. -, There was a sign-post on our way near Hesdin pointing to Crecy.. Perhaps, once, English and French arrows lay rotting on this, highway.
Soon, for mile after mile, are trees splintered and shattered by shell-fire ; mere stumps many of them, and often we pass gaps where noble trees once stood. i3ut Young trees are springing up between the old ; *Emmen: able, fresh and vigorous ;. -reinforcements joining battle with destruction and time ; so that in the wind they seem to whisper, ." See ; there is_ no loss, but gain?' Beaumont-Hamel. There is the NeWtoundland Memorial, the colossal caribou, that " Grand Cerf" which has given names to inns for miles around. The trenches lie undisturbed ; we zigzag along the 'duck- lioards, and here are grim, reminders' on every side of fierce fighting, nothing altered from the time when War ended ; .helmets ',where they fell; many pierced with shrapnel ; rifles rusty and with Mouldering stocks ; a rusty machine.gua ; rusty bayonets, mouldering packs, water430ttles, iness-tinjust where they fell. Igarbed
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wire, tangled and twisted, makes us pick our way with care. From the higher ground we see the fields like a sea, crested and troughed as the shells left them. Where St. Helen's Tower stands were the Ulsters. Over yonder were the Scottish troops. And there—and there—the Germans.
On the way to Arras a dead tree stands, with the irons still in it which led to the observation post among the foliage. In the fields peasants are at work ; corn hides man's deadlier handiwork, though in one place they are still bringing out bodies, and along the edge of the road shell-cases are piled up which have just been dug out of the earth; Here and there vast craters tell their tale. But near Arms there has been much rebuilding. The station, shattered in the War (when every train was a target), has risen in duplicate of its old self. Busy shops, hotels, cafes are everywhere, so that only now and then one passes 'a huddle of stones, bricks, exposed dwelling- rooms, reminding one of a hell that. seemed eternal; The cathedral is in partial ruin, and grass grows on its stones.
-At La Targette we see the long line of Vimy Ridge on the horizon, with its terrible memories ; peaceful now in summer sunshine. In the foreground is a German cemetery with its forest of small black crosses ; innumer- able crosses, covering an army. In these quiet fields, friends and foes are comrades in the equal peace of death.
We go through a dairy, through a farmstead, into a garden ; here is the 'entrance to the great Canadian dug- out, to be explored by candle-light. This maze of passages and caverns cut deep in the soft stone took two strenuous Years to make. Our British dug-outs were less luxurious than the German; with their concrete, electric light, and alarums for surprise, and supplies of good books from army librarieS--An one German dug-out, to 'my knowledge, a handsome edition of Chinese fairy-tales was found where it had been flung down when a grimmer tale was in the telling. But here a thousand. men could shelter and recuperate in comparative comfort. Arrows mark direc- tions ; this passage to Arras, three hours away under the stricken earth ; that tunnel to Virriy Ridge: We see the graffiti on 1 the walls, a name, a regimental badge beautifully carved, a humorous sketch of a soldier seated' on a shell and having breakfast, labelled " Ham and eggs " ! There is a blackened fireplace round which men eluStered ; 'a dark little prison for the refractory in the bowels of the earth. Then up the worn steps again into the Sunlit garden. On to Bethune—ind on our right the colossal slag- heaps of Lens,. where French peasants under the threat of fixed bayonets toiled like Pharaoh's Israelites. A train-load of ,coal-miners passes us at a level crossing, and the grimed 1 faces are smiling and joyous because work is done. But peasants are still. in the cornfields, and girls look up from milking their cattle, and there is work still afoot in holdings ' where Nissen huts have been turned' to other rises. In one field a tall tower, slated at the top,- bit seemingly of Tudorbrickwork, stands like a lighthouse in a green sea. The Field of the Cloth of Gold ! I am told that the solitary tower is a survival of that Pageant where 'the Salamander and oiir own Standaila hew a-treacheroriS cousinship. It may be tliougli henry was careful to carry bitek in his ships the painted^ and gilded Which made the glory of the Field: Pageants, einpireS, pUss, and here are the good leropi"growing; and the new trees springing to attention where theold once stood, and new hoines being and the implements of war being turned to farm and domestic uses, and eternal hope 4n human faces and
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