Flemish cart-
horses with huge fringes of knotted string wended their way between
motor-lorries and gun-limbers. Often the sky was blue above the hop-
gardens, with fleecy clouds over distant woodlands and the gray old
towers of Flemish churches and the windmills on Mont Rouge and Mont
Neir, whose sails have turned through centuries of peace and strife.
It all comes back to me as I write--that way to Ypres, and the sounds
and the smells of the roads and fields where the traffic of war went
up, month after month, year after year.
That day when I saw it first, after the gas-attack, was strangely
quiet, I remember. There was "nothing doing," as our men used to say.
The German gunners seemed asleep in the noonday sun, and it was a
charming day for a stroll and a talk about the raving madness of war
under every old hedge.
"What about lunch in Dickebusch on the way up?" asked one of my
companions. There were three of us.
It seemed a good idea, and we walked toward the village which then--
they were early days!--looked a peaceful spot, with a shimmer of
sunshine above its gray thatch and red-tiled roofs.
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