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After the foul conditions of
the salient it seemed unreal and fantastic, with a touch of romance
not found in other places. Strange as it seemed, the village
garrisoned by our men was in advance of our trench lines, with nothing
dividing them from the enemy but a little undergrowth--and the
queerest part of it all was the sense of safety, the ridiculously
false security with which one could wander about the village and up
the footpath beyond, with the knowledge that one's movements were
being watched by German eyes and that the whole place could be blown
off the face of the earth . . . but for the convenient fact that the
Germans, who were living in the village of Curlu, beyond the footpath,
were under our own observation and at the mercy of our own guns.
That sounded like a fairy-tale to men who, in other places, could not
go over the parapet of the first-line trenches, or even put their
heads up for a single second, without risking instant death.
I stood on a hill here, with a French interpreter and one of his men.


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