At Albert one first comes in contact with English efficiency and there is only one word to express it, and that is "Marvelous." The gaping windows and doorways of shattered houses are wired across to keep out marauders. The streets are fairly polished, signs posted in English—regarding roads, officers' quarters and different staff traffic guards, but above all, one is amazed at the wonderful neatness and order.
After wandering about for about an hour we finally found the S.F.C., Rest House and Mess-Room. The roof was gone and the whole top story, but that was boarded up and a little mess-room made, and around the garden, which had been cleaned up, were rooms for stray officers. We got the first good breakfast there I have had since leaving home. The touch of England was everywhere. A Sergeant received you and gave you a check in the hall. There is a parlor and reading-room, etc. Certainly they know how to do things. But writing this twenty-four hours later, what we admired then we marveled at now. For that same hand of quiet efficiency is everywhere. No wonder they are the most wonderful colonizers of the world. But more of this later.
There was no Liaison Officer, so we went to Medical Headquarters (D.D.M.S.), and speaking about D.D.M.S., one needs a dictionary to understand these initials. Everything is initialed. I am struggling to get on to them, but it is very confusing to a beginner.
From D.D.M.S. we were sent forward in two ambulances, one for baggage and one for ourselves. We left Albert on the Bapaume Road, and now all power of description fails. One looks with mixed awe, wonder and admiration.
The battlefield begins on all sides. As far as the eye can see are trenches, shell-holes and graves. The country is one vast barren stretch. Scarcely a tree remains. Not a habitation is left standing. Barbed-wire entanglements run across the country for miles.
On all sides English soldiers are working, cleaning and salvaging the French lumber and wrecked building material and remaking the roads. The sites of previous hamlets are marked by a sign in many places, and by signs and bricks and a few remnants of walls. In other places literally not a fragment remains of what once was a little French village.
Words can never paint a picture of what unfolds before the eye. You feel that at the top of the near crest this desolation must end and life begin again, but it goes on and on, mile after mile, a dreary waste of torn-up ground and blighted tree stumps.
And the English. No words can tell of their wonderful efficiency and sanitation. Water-tanks, horse troughs, latrines, water for washing, water-tanks where canteens may be filled, manure dumps where all manure is collected and covered with earth to keep flies away. It all speaks for wonderful order and efficiency.
At crossroads a traffic man stands to regulate vehicles.