I saw men blown to bits there
the clay after the battles of the Somme began. It was in the road that
turned to the right, past the square to go to Meaulte and on to
Fricourt. There was a tide of gun transport swirling down the road,
bringing up new ammunition for the guns that were firing without a
pause over Fricourt and Mametz. The high scream of a shell came
through a blue sky and ended on its downward note with a sharp crash.
For a few minutes the transport column was held up while a mass of raw
flesh which a second before had been two living men and their horses
was cleared out of the way. Then the gun wagons went at a harder pace
down the road, raising a cloud of white dust out of which I heard the
curses of the drivers, swearing in a foul way to disguise their fear.
I went through Albert many scores of times to the battlefields beyond,
and watched its process of disintegration through those years, until
it was nothing but a wild scrap heap of read brick and twisted iron,
and, in the last phase, even the Golden Virgin and her Babe, which had
seemed to escape all shell-fire by miraculous powers, lay buried
beneath a mass of masonry.
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