Then to bed in
the village, and a good night's rest, as when English knights fought
the French, not far from these fields, as chronicled in the pages of
that early war correspondent, Sir John Froissart.
All was quiet when I went along the causeway and out into the wood,
where the outposts stood listening for any crack of a twig which might
betray a German footstep. I was startled when I came suddenly upon two
men, almost invisible, against the tree-trunks. There they stood,
motionless, with their rifles ready, peering through the brushwood. If
I had followed the path on which they stood for just a little way I
should have walked into the German village. But, on the other hand, I
should not have walked back again. . . .
When I left the village, and climbed up the hill to our own trenches
again, I laughed aloud at the fantastic visit to that grim little
outpost in the marsh. If all the war had been like this it would have
been more endurable for men who had no need to hide in holes in the
earth, nor crouch for three months below ground, until an hour or two
of massacre below a storm of high explosives.
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