Tales of War

by Lord Dunsany

“They started smoothing the chalk. They had nothing more to do but just to think what to write. It was a great big bowlder with plenty of room on it. The Boche seemed not to know that they hadn’t killed the Daleswood men, just as the sea mightn’t know that one stone stayed dry at the coming in of the tide. A gap between two divisions probably.

“Harry wanted to tell of the woods more than anything. He was afraid they might cut them down because of the war, and no one would know of the larks they had had there as boys. Wonderful old woods they were, with a lot of Spanish chestnut growing low, and tall old oaks over it. Harry wanted them to write down what the foxgloves were like in the wood at the end of summer, standing there in the evening, ‘Great solemn rows,’ he said, ‘all odd in the dusk. All odd in the evening, going there after work; and makes you think of fairies.’ There was lots of things about those woods, he said, that ought to be put down if people were to remember Daleswood as it used to be when they knew it. What were the good old days without those woods? he said.

“But another wanted to tell of the time when they cut the hay with scythes, working all those long days at the end of June; there would be no more of that, he said, with machines come in and all.

“There was room to tell of all that and the woods too, said the others, so long as they put it short like.

“And another wanted to tell of the valleys beyond the wood, far afield where the men went working; the women would remember the hay. The great valleys he’d tell of. It was they that made Daleswood. The valleys beyond the wood and the twilight on them in summer. Slopes covered with mint and thyme, all solemn at evening. A hare on them perhaps, sitting as though they were his, then lolloping slowly away. It didn’t seem from the way he told of those old valleys that he thought they could ever be to other folk what they were to the Daleswood men in the days he remembered. He spoke of them as though there were something in them, besides the mint and the thyme and the twilight and hares, that would not stay after these men were gone, though he did not say what it was. Scarcely hinted it even.

“And still the Boche did nothing to the Daleswood men. The bullets had ceased altogether. That made it much quieter. The shells still snarled over, bursting far, far away.

“And Bob said tell of Daleswood itself, the old village, with queer chimneys, of red brick, in the wood. There weren’t houses like that nowadays. They’d be building new ones and spoiling it, likely, after the war. And that was all he had to say.

“And nobody was for not putting down anything any one said. It was all to go in on the chalk, as much as would go in the time. For they all sort of understood that the Daleswood of what they called the good old time was just the memories that those few men had of the days they had spent there together. And that was the Daleswood they loved, and wanted folks to remember. They were all agreed as to that. And then they said how was they to write it down. And when it came to writing there was so much to be said, not spread over a lot of paper I don’t mean, but going down so deep like, that it seemed to them how their own talk wouldn’t be good enough to say it. And they knew no other, and didn’t know what to do. I reckon they’d been reading magazines and thought that writing had to be like that muck. Anyway, they didn’t know what to do. I reckon their talk would be good enough for Daleswood when they loved Daleswood like that. But they didn’t, and they were puzzled.

“The Boche was miles away behind them now, and his barrage with him. Still in front he did nothing.

“They talked it all over and over, did the Daleswood men. They tried everything. But somehow or other they couldn’t get near what they wanted to say about old summer evenings. Time wore on. The bowlder was smooth and ready, and that whole generation of Daleswood men could find no words to say what was in their hearts about Daleswood. There wasn’t time to waste. And the only thing they thought of in the end was ‘Please, God, remember Daleswood just like it used to be.’ And Bill and Harry carved that on the chalk between them.