North of the forest of Villers, the region which is a grim cemetery of men and of the homes of men, full of the smoke and dust of ruined houses and of the smoke and dust of burning piles of what were men, many soldiers were still lying on straw under shelter from the rain, waiting their turn to be fetched down by the ambulances. There are scores still waiting.
For one I took down a letter. This is its substance: "Jack and me were in that show at Shivers (Chivres-sur-Aisne?) It was not man-fighting that week; just banging with engines over our heads, and getting them too, often enough. When it got dark, 'they' always rang off. And we went out, not under orders, just for our turn; about six of us. Jack got a sentry—here—and we got to the pit; but they were on us before we could mess the gun; and it was pretty fair hell in the dark; just jabbing at anything you heard or touched. Three of us got back; and we left 'them' some burying to do on their own, too."
The valley of the Aisne has a deadly sameness. At Retheuil and Chelles, the silent apathetic peasants—all too few—were heaping remains of men and horses for burning, or dragging them into the long raw trenches that scar the fields with white issues of lime. Anything of value or metal is dragged off, the bodies thrust in, and, for all the pestilent air, the peasant stolidly munches at his bread between whiles.
It is astonishing how little it affects one after a day or two. I don't believe the sight or sound of always present death, or even, for that matter, the more intolerable affliction of sleepless nights, wet trenches, cold winds, and continuous strain, has taken five minutes of his quaint optimism from the British soldier. And yet this war is being fought without the exciting accompaniment of bands or drums. There are no parade sights; no colour.
It is almost impossible to get the names of their places of past adventure from the soldiers. The French names, if ever heard, are soon forgotten. It is exciting to them even to hear that they are near Paris. They date from "where So-and-so got hit," or "where we got those fags from a hofficer," or where "the women ran out to give us drinks as we rode by." Very often the name survives as a mysterious village called "Ralentir." (Visitors to France may remember that this is the big notice put up outside villages, the "Drive slowly" warning to motorists.)
It was curious to recall, as I looked north later in the day towards Vic-sur-Aisne, that I got almost as far as this a fortnight ago, after the German retreat from Meaux, thinking I was well behind our armies, and found and smoked in, their line of abandoned trenches, in the company of two incursious peasants. The Germans were even then making their huge entrenchments on the hills ahead, and it was to cost a fortnight's fearful fighting before our men made good their position on my seemingly lonely slope of fields.
We were "requisitioned" again, to run to Mont St. Marc. As I looked across at the Forest of Laigue, I knew now that the check that turned me back in those woods last week, after swimming the Oise, was one of the violent counter-attacks by the Germans; when they ventured, as they rarely have done, to charge with the bayonet.
On that same day, the bombardment which I heard from the direction of Lassigny, proves now to have been the beginning of the French resistance to the German advance in that quarter against General Castelnau.
At Crepy, on the return, a Turco, whom I must have met at the fierce skirmish south-east of Peronne, recognised me as he lay, a strange figure white with loss of blood under his African tan, his turban and brilliant uniform bloodstained, waiting to be moved into an ambulance car.
"Ah, they got me for a time, not long"—it was odd French—"but I assisted two with that, first (the bayonet), and then there remained to me these" (a significant gesture of the hands).