Some stretchers were being carried to the lift which goes down to the
deck of the hospital-ship, on which an officer was ticking off each
wounded body after a glance at the label tied to the man's tunic.
Several young officers lay under the blankets on those stretchers and
one of them caught my eye and smiled as I looked down upon him. The
same old business and the same old pluck.
I motored down the long, straight roads of France eastward, toward
that network of lines which are the end of all journeys after a few
days' leave, home and back again. The same old sights and sounds and
smells which, as long as memory lasts, to men who had the luck to live
through the war, will haunt them for the rest of life, and speak of
Flanders.
The harvest was nearly gathered in, and where, a week or two before,
there had been fields of high, bronzed corn there were now long
stretches of stubbled ground waiting for the plow. The wheat-sheaves
had been piled into stacks or, from many great fields, carted away to
the red-roofed barns below the black old windmills whose sails were
motionless because no breath of air stirred on this September
afternoon.
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