9's, and debouched a little to
see one of our ammunition-dumps exploding like a Brock's Benefit, and
chattered brightly under "woolly bears" which made a rending tumult
above our heads. I think he enjoyed his afternoon out from staff-work
in the headquarters huts. Afterward I was told that he was mad, but I
think he was only brave. I hated those hours, but put on the mask that
royalty wears when it takes an intelligent interest in factory-work.
The streams of wounded poured down into the casualty clearing stations
day by day, week by week, and I saw the crowded Butchers' Shops of
war, where busy surgeons lopped at limbs and plugged men's wounds.
Yet in those days, as before and afterward, as at the beginning and as
at the end, the spirits of British soldiers kept high unless their
bodies were laid low. Between battles they enjoyed their spells of
rest behind the lines. In that early summer of '17 there was laughter
in Arras, lots of fun in spite of high velocities, the music of massed
pipers and brass bands, jolly comradeship in billets with paneled
walls upon which perhaps Robespierre's shadow had fallen in the
candle-light before the Revolution, when he was the good young man of
Arras.
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