It clung to the undergrowth, which was torn
by shell-fire, and to every blade of grass growing rankly round the
lips of shell-craters in which were bits of red rag or old bones, the
red pantaloons of the first French armies who had fought through those
woods in the beginning of the war.
I roamed about a graveyard there, where shells had smashed down some
of the crosses, but had not damaged the memorial to the men who had
stormed up the slope of Notre Dame de Lorette and had fallen when
their comrades chased the Germans to the village below.
A few shells came over the hill as I pushed through the undergrowth
with a French captain, and they burst among the trees with shattering
boughs. I remember that little officer in a steel helmet, and I could
see a Norman knight as his ancestor with a falcon as his crest. He
stood so often on the sky-line, in full view of the enemy (I was
thankful for the mist), that I admired but deplored his audacity.
Without any screen to hide us we walked down the hillside, gathering
clots of greasy mud in our boots, stumbling, and once sprawling.
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