The trousers of
his comrades were as red as the poppies that grew on the edge of the
wheat, and three of these poilus had ceased their work to drink out of
a leather wine-bottle which had been replenished from a hand-cart. It
was a pretty scene if one could forget the grim purpose which had put
those harvesters in uniform.
The same thought was in the mind of a British officer.
"A beautiful country, this," he said. "It's a pity to cut it up with
trenches and barbed wire."
Battalions of New Army men were being reviewed but a furlong or two
away from that Invisible Man who was wielding a scythe which had no
mercy for unripe wheat. Out of those lines of eyes stared the courage
of men's souls, not shirking the next ordeal.
It was through red ears of corn, in that summer of '15, that one found
one's way to many of the trenches that marked the boundary-lines of
the year's harvesting, and in Belgium (by Kemmel Hill) the shells of
our batteries, answered by German guns, came with their long-drawn
howls of murder across the heads of peasant women who were gleaning,
with bent backs.
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