Shells had
already broken the roofs and turrets of the chateau and torn away
great chunks of wall. A colonel of artillery had his headquarters in
the petit salon. His hand trembled as he greeted me.
"I'm not fond of this place," he said. "The whole damn thing will come
down on my head at any time. I think I shall take to the cellars."
We walked out to the courtyard and he showed me the way down to the
vault. A shell came over the chateau and burst in the outhouses.
"They knocked out a 9.2 a little while ago," said the colonel. "Made a
mess of some heavy gunners."
There was a sense of imminent death about us, but it was not so
sinister a place as farther on, where a brother of mine sat in a hole
directing his battery. . . The Countess of Henencourt had gone. She
went away with her dairymaids, driving her cattle down the roads.
XII
One of the most curious little schools of courage inhabited by British
soldiers in early days was the village of Vaux-sur-Somme, which we
took over from the French, who were our next-door neighbors at the
village of Frise in the summer of '15.
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