Taylor war diary, 16 January 1916-22 July 1919 / Tom Taylor - Page 112
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[Page 112]
never saw a bit of the civilized world, neither man, woman, nor child, not a whole house, only devastation, mud & places where once there had stood a little Village, & living more like savages than human beings.
All the way from Bapaume to Senlis the railway was built across the old battlefields following the big Somme push from Albert to Bullecourt and all this distance some 30 miles there was not a single house or civilian only the awful stillness and shellholes stumps of trees lines of broken barbed wire and fallen-in trenches and dugouts while scattered here and there all over the place as far as one could see were crosses, some cut out and painted others carpentered, while others were just an old rifle with a piece of board or stick for a cross arm that some soldier had put over his cobber in a spare moment, showing how he missed him.