That day when I saw it first, after the gas-attack, was strangely quiet, I remember. There was "nothing doing," as our men used to say. The German gunners seemed asleep in the noonday sun, and it was a charming day for a stroll and a talk about the raving madness of war under every old hedge.
"What about lunch in Dickebusch on the way up?" asked one of my companions. There were three of us.
It seemed a good idea, and we walked toward the village which then--they were early days!--looked a peaceful spot, with a shimmer of sunshine above its gray thatch and red-tiled roofs.
An iron door had slammed down the corridors of the sky and the hamlet into which we were just going was blotted out by black smoke, which came up from its center as though its market-place had opened up and vomited out infernal vapors.
"A big shell that!" said one man, a tall, lean-limbed officer, who later in the war was sniper-in-chief of the British army. Something enraged him at the sight of that shelled village.
"Damn them!" he said. "Damn the war! Damn all dirty dogs who smash up life!"
Four times the thing happened, and we were glad there had been a minute or so between us and Dickebusch. (In Dickebusch my young cobbler friend from Fleet Street was crouching low, expecting death.) The peace of the day was spoiled. There was seldom a real peace on the way to Ypres. The German gunners had wakened up again. They always did. They were getting busy, those house-wreckers. The long rush of shells tore great holes through the air. Under a hedge, with our feet in the ditch, we ate the luncheon we had carried in our pockets.
"A silly idea!" said the lanky man, with a fierce, sad look in his eyes. He was Norman-Irish, and a man of letters, and a crack shot, and all the boys he knew were being killed.
"What's silly?" I asked, wondering what particular foolishness he was thinking of, in a world of folly.
"Silly to die with a broken bit of sandwich in one's mouth, just because some German fellow, some fat, stupid man a few miles away, looses off a bit of steel in search of the bodies of men with whom he has no personal acquaintance."
"That's all there is to it in modern warfare," said the lanky man. "It's not like the old way of fighting, body to body. Your strength against your enemy's, your cunning against his. Now it is mechanics and chemistry. What is the splendor of courage, the glory of youth, when guns kill at fifteen miles?"