We seemed to be going into the unknown; the air was full of mystery; it was uncanny, unnatural. We were moving over battle-fields. The ground was a mass of shell-holes; progress could only be made by walking in single file along a narrow footpath, which twisted in tortuous persistency between the shell-holes, causing innumerable halts and starts, until the column tailed off into an endless line of shadowy figures.
Here and there the men became lost to view in some gun-ridden cavity; whilst there again they appeared silhouetted against the moonlit sky, as man by man they appeared and disappeared from view over a rise in the ground.
Those who had fallen in the desperate struggle of the previous week lay yet unburied. Friend and foe alike shared the shelter of the heavens, clutching at the soil of France in the agonies of death. There are times when the sight of death excuses the quivering step and the irrepressible sob from the hearts of those who pass onward to brave a similar fate.
The Valley of Death was a silent tomb of the wrath of nations, that long, winding Valley of Death, where the bodies of friend and foe lay side by side, or clutched in a desperate embrace, marked the line where the fury of nations found its expression, like the scar of a devil's vengeance.
As I looked on the bodies of the dead, twisted and mutilated, limbless and torn, some half buried in débris—here and there lying doubled in unnatural positions, while others yet, seemed to be clutching at some mortal wound—I felt like one who fearfully treads into the vortex of Dante's inferno. Yes, this was the devil's own hell, but a hell far more dreadful than I had ever imagined it to be.
After a tiring, disheartening trudge, we found the spot we were to occupy, and, to our intense relief, the —— Battalion, London Regiment, were in possession.
After the usual formalities of the relieving and taking over of the line of shell-holes which marked the position, I stopped for a final word with one of the —— officers:
"How many casualties?" I asked.
"About fifty in two days—bit tough, eh?"
"Been attacked, then?"