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[Page 113]
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numerous that there remains no space for another to be formed in isolation and where trenches and battered parapets slash and rib their way in serpentine confusion.
Parts of broken rifles and tattered portions of equipment lie half embedded in parapets and in the trenches. Sharp and jagged shards of iron shells, some covered in rust, are scattered everywhere. Unexploded eighty-pound shells rest serenely in shell hole and on parapet, as also do many hand-grenades and bombs that have failed to detonate. Clips of unused rifle ammunition lie trodden in the clay. Broken ammunition limbers and Field Cookers half buried in shell holes are to be seen here and there.
Corkscrew standards for wire entanglements, barbed wire, telephone wire and the debris of many things wrecked by
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bombardment litter the shell-pocked desolation and tangle thickly in various places.
Wooden crosses, many of them crudly and hastily made, mark where soldiers lie buried in the forlorn field. The booted feet of a dead man protruding from a heap of earth accidentally mark a grave that has no cross. Gilded flies in a jewel-like cluster lead the sight to where the shoulder bones of a hastily buried soldier are exposed. Not far away where droops the single bloom of a blood-red poppy there stands a cross whereon is written with the purple of an indelible pencil "Here lies a soldier unknown."
A white butterfly flitting near like the ghost of a holy thought rests on the poppy for a moment and then, in the fickle way of beautiful things, departs to poise a while on the stinging nettle growing rank and tall through