On October 23, he writes from "17 kil. south-east of Reims".
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Dear Mother. . . . I am sitting on the curbstone of a street at the edge of the town. The houses end abruptly and the yellow vineyards begin here. The view is broad and uninterrupted to the crest ten kilometers or so across the valley. Between this and ourselves are the lines of the two armies. A fierce cannonading is going on continually, and I lift my eyes from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now on the front, ready to be called on at any moment. I am feeling fine, in my element, for I have always thirsted for this kind of thing, to be present always where the pulsations are liveliest. Every minute here is worth weeks of ordinary experience. How beautiful the view is here, over the sunny vineyards! And what a curious anomaly. On this slope the grape pickers are singing merrily at their work, on the other the batteries are roaring. Boom! Boom!
This will spoil one for any other kind of life. The yellow afternoon sunlight
is sloping gloriously across this beautiful valley of Champagne.
Aeroplanes pass continually overhead on reconnaissance. I must mail this now.
There is too much to be said and too little time to say it.
So glad to get your letter. Love and lots of it to all.
Alan.
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Alas! the hopes of swift, decisive action with which the Legion advanced were destined to disappointment. They soon settled down for the winter into the monotonous hardships of trench warfare. Alan described this experience in admirably vivid letters published in the New York 'Sun', from which a few extracts must suffice. He writes on December 8, during his fourth period of service in the trenches:
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We left our camp in the woods before daybreak this morning, and marched up the hill in single file, under the winter stars. . . . Through openings in the woods we could see that we were marching along a high ridge, and on either hand vaporous depths and distances expanded, the darkness broken sometimes by a far light or the momentary glow of a magnesium rocket sent up from the German lines. There is something fascinating if one is stationed on sentry-duty immediately after arrival, in watching the dawn slowly illumine one of these new landscapes, from a position taken up under cover of darkness. The other section has been relieved and departs. We are given the 'consigne', by the preceding sentinel, and are left alone behind a mound of dirt, facing the north and the blank, perilous night. Slowly the mystery that it shrouds resolves as the grey light steals over the eastern hills. Like a photograph in the washing, its high lights and shadows come gradually forth. The light splash in the foreground becomes a ruined chateau, the grey street a demolished village.
The details come out on the hillside opposite, where the silent trenches of the enemy are hidden a few hundred metres away. We find ourselves in a woody, mountainous country, with broad horizons and streaks of mist in the valleys. Our position is excellent this time, a high crest, with open land sloping down from the trenches and plenty of barbed wire strung along immediately in front. It would be a hard task to carry such a line, and there is not much danger that the enemy will try.