As we climbed the hill-side the devastation increased. The trees and bushes were torn, splintered and uprooted. Only a few grey trunks remained standing like scarred, bare poles. We approached the summit and crossed shell-hole next to shell-hole, for not a square yard of ground had remained untouched. Some of the holes were wide and deeply funnel-shaped, others were shallow, and others were hardly distinguishable, the earth having been churned and tossed up time after time. On the very top of the hill, there was nothing left of the trees that had densely clothed it a few months before, except fragments of wood and stringy lengths of root. Even the grass and weeds had been destroyed and blasted by the bursting of innumerable shells.
We walked along the crest between upright bundles of splinters that projected from the ground in two parallel rows—all that remained of an avenue of pines and larches.
We descended the further slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp—a chaos of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed to clutch frantically at some invisible object.
A little further on two soldiers were scraping the soil with sticks.
"Gorblimy—'e ain't 'alf rotten—puh—don't 'e stink! I 'ope 'e's got summat in 'is pockets arter we've bin takin' all this trouble."
Money, pay.
"Yer never find much on these 'ere Froggies, the rotten bastards. They don't 'ardly get no dibs.* Canadians and Aussies—them's the blokes yer want ter look for. Fritz ain't so bad neither. I got a bloody fine watch orf a Fritz last year down on the Somme—sold it to an orficer for thirty bleed'n' francs!"
"Put yer stick under 'im an' 'eave 'im out!"
One of the men pushed his stick obliquely into the ground and levered up the putrefying corpse. The other turned the pockets inside out. A few soiled and mouldy bits of paper came to light, but nothing of any value.
"Just our bastard bleed'n' luck! Let's see if we can't find a Fritz or a Tommy!"