Energy books

VI

There was more than half a gale blowing on the eve of the new year,
and the wind came howling with a savage violence across the rain-swept
fields, so that the first day of a fateful year had a stormy birth,
and there was no peace on earth.
Louder than the wind was the greeting of the guns to another year of
war. I heard the New-Year's chorus when I went to see the last of the
year across the battlefields. Our guns did not let it die in silence.
It went into the tomb of the past, with all its tragic memories, to
thunderous salvos, carrying death with them. The "heavies" were
indulging in a special strafe this New--Year's eve. As I went down a
road near the lines by Loos I saw, from concealed positions, the flash
of gun upon gun. The air was swept by an incessant rush of shells, and
the roar of all this artillery stupefied one's sense of sound. All
about me in the village of Annequin, through which I walked, there was
no other sound, no noise of human life.


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