My little room was on the floor below the garret, and here
at night, after a long day in the fields up by Pozieres or Martinpuich
or beyond, by Ligny-Tilloy, on the way to Bapaume, in the long
struggle and slaughter over every inch of ground, I used to write my
day's despatch, to be taken next day (it was before we were allowed to
use the military wires) by King's Messenger to England.
Those articles, written at high speed, with an impressionism born out
of many new memories of tragic and heroic scenes, were interrupted
sometimes by air-bombardments. Hostile airmen came often to Amiens
during the Somme fighting, to unload their bombs as near to the
station as they could guess, which was not often very near. Generally
they killed a few women and children and knocked a few poor houses and
a shop or two into a wild rubbish heap of bricks and timber. While I
wrote, listening to the crashing of glass and the anti-aircraft fire
of French guns from the citadel, I used to wonder subconsciously
whether I should suddenly be hurled into chaos at the end of an
unfinished sentence, and now and again in spite of my desperate
conflict with time to get my message done (the censors were waiting
for it downstairs) I had to get up and walk into the passage to listen
to the infernal noise in the dark city of Amiens.
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