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There might be some virtue in the fact that I am writing this on a pad which I purchased in the Somme area from an itinerant French Stationery & Fancy Goods seller, whose idea of "le Entente" was to charge his "bon freres" as much as it was possible to extort from him; so as a proof of camaraderie to his ally Anglais he sold me for 1/- what I took to be the common penny scribbling block of School days. "Vive Le Entente"! However, the task is a formidable one - to describe my feelings and experiences on the Somme.
Two days before leaving that Area we were resting in billets in a small French Village, not far from Amiens. The O/C of our Company was paying the men in alphabetical order which meant a long wait for me.
The night was cloudless almost, and the full moon had risen over the fir plantation on our right, so with one of those fits of retrospection, I decided to take a walk along the country road towards the next town. I longed for quiet, some place that I might sit down and think, think - with only myself to commune with. So many days had we marched shoulder to shoulder slept shoulder to shoulder, and worked shoulder to shoulder. The babel of voices, the thunder of the guns, the rattle of accoutrement and roll of transports, left no opportunity for undisturbed thought and there were none of those short minutes before falling to sleep, when one usually recounts the incidents of the day. Our sleep was the sleep of exhaustion, and the head no sooner touched its substitute for a pillow than sleep mercifully overcame.
Now my opportunity had come. The road straight and white, led into the fields now bare of their crops, but the impression of the beehive-looking haystacks, looming through the misty moonlight, looking like so many still sentries guarding the land dwells in my memory. I think I have previously commented upon that peculiarity of French Farms in this area. No fences, hedges or ditches divide them from one another, or from the road; and clumps of trees, Elms, firs & poplar now in their Autumn tints, dot the undulating
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