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From a ridge
above Fricourt, where once I had seen a tall crucifix between two
trees, which our men called the "Poodles," a body of men came down and
shrapnel burst among them and they fell and disappeared in tall grass.
Stretcher bearers came slowly through Fricourt village with living
burdens. Some of them were German soldiers carrying our wounded and
their own. Walking wounded hobbled slowly with their arms round each
other's shoulders, Germans and English together. A boy in a steel hat
stopped me and held up a bloody hand. "A bit of luck!" he said. "I'm
off, after eighteen months of it."
German prisoners came down with a few English soldiers as their
escort. I saw distant groups of them, and a shell smashed into one
group and scattered it. The living ran, leaving their dead. Ambulances
driven by daring fellows drove to the far edge of Fricourt, not a
healthy place, and loaded up with wounded from a dressing station in a
tunnel there.
It was a wonderful picture of war in all its filth and shambles.


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