Cave letters, 1915-1919 / Harrie Joseph Cave - Page 779

<p>a4701780.html</p><p>3/&nbsp; but what desolation!&nbsp; No words of mine here could enlighten you as to what the dreadful scene is like, neither can any photos that are taken, one wants to be able to stand on the heights that are now on our side of the Line to obtain the best sight of the awful environs.&nbsp; The once busy &amp; important traffic-canal whence much of the inland produce, etc., was brought to the big cities &amp; the coast, is now a fearful sight.&nbsp; Its high banks are battered &amp; torn into a terrible mess &amp; only a trickle of water runs thro., as several dams have been thrown across by the combatants &amp; used as crossings.&nbsp; During the recent bad years of continual strife hereabouts, terrible deeds were done, as you have undoubtedly read in your papers @ Home, as I did B4 I became a soldier.&nbsp; The now historic Hill, for which the Huns sacrificed so much, was passed as we wended our weary way towards the new Front line &amp; we saw @ close quarters the results of man&#39;s madness &amp; his crime against Nature.&nbsp; The enormous crater, of which Bert told you about in his letter, is only one of many which pock mark the heap of stuff known as Hill - &amp; across which previously extended the front line Trenches of Fritz &amp; us.&nbsp; The surrounding scene is past description for desolation, which seems to look more pitiful when a little bit of sunshine lights it up.&nbsp; As far as you can see towards Fritz - only a few Ridges away - all signs of civilisation has disappeared, &amp; now, even the eye-aching monotonous &quot;Gippo&quot; Desert<s>s</s> is as a Botanical Gardens in comparison.&nbsp; Several &quot;petits bois&quot; (little woods) once graced the little valleys &amp; slopes of some of the hills, but nothing but foot high stumps remain amidst an endless &amp; pitiful scene of shell holes &amp; heaped up earth - little hillocks without end.&nbsp; Amidst it all stand, mostly intact, dotted here &amp; there the things you know as &quot;Pill Boxes&quot;, but which I would call &quot;block-houses&quot; or redoubts.&nbsp; Many are knocked to smithereens, but there are others with tops just showing above the ground which have defied the big shells.&nbsp; Others in the lower parts are full of water but as all are</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>PTO &rarr; [in bottom left hand margin]</p>