Here and there our amateur gunners--quick to learn their job--found a
good place, and were able to camouflage their position for a time, and
give praise to the little god of Luck, until one day sooner or later
they were discovered and a quick move was necessary if they were not
caught too soon.
So it was with a battery in the open fields beyond Kemmel village,
where I went to see a boy who had once been a rising hope of Fleet
Street.
He was new to his work and liked the adventure of it--that was before
his men were blown to bits around him and he was sent down as a tragic
case of shell-shock--and as we walked through the village of Kemmel he
chatted cheerfully about his work and life and found it topping. His
bright, luminous eyes were undimmed by the scene around him. He walked
in a jaunty, boyish way through that ruined place. It was not a
pleasant place. Kemmel village, even in those days, had been blown to
bits, except where, on the outskirts, the chateau with its racing-
stables remained untouched--"German spies!" said the boy--and where a
little grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes was also unscathed.
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