To the one and only Blighty, our Blighty, 'cross the sea,'
Where the blooming Huns can never come, 'twixt her and home and me.”
“Blighty” is the wound which sends a man home to England; it's a war word which came originally from the Indians, but now universally adopted in the new trench language.
I was walking along a trench when a man, who was sitting on a firestep looking up into a little trench mirror (which is used by putting the end of the bayonet between the glass and the frame), just crumpled up, shot through the heart. He didn't say a word. The trench had thinned out and the bullet had come through, nearly four feet down from the top of the parapet.
Bad shell fire this afternoon. Saw shells churning things up seventy-five yards away; many passed overhead; had a ride on my motor cycle with the other officers to reconnoiter the roads leading down to the part of the trenches we have taken over; road was shelled as we came along. Two “coal boxes” hit the road and smashed up a cottage in front of us; we picked up pieces of the shell too hot to hold.
Our billet now is another large farm, with the pump in the center of the manure heap as usual; our machines are parked all round a field close to the hedges to make a smaller target and also to prevent aerial observation.
I went through a town this morning which has been on everybody's lips for months—I have never seen such devastation in my life; it baffles description. The San Francisco earthquake was a joke to this. Thousands and thousands of shells have pummeled and smashed until very little remains besides wreckage. Most of the shelling has been done to deliberately destroy the objects of architectural value.
My quarters are in a loft amongst rags, old agricultural implements, sacks, and the accumulation of years of dirt; flies wake me up at daylight.
This morning I went for a drink in the estaminet I have mentioned already. Two shells have been through the sides of the house since we were last there, but they both came through at the usual scheduled time.
This poor country is pockmarked with shell craters like a great country with a skin disease. Trees have been splintered worse than any storm could do. Nothing has been spared. The mineral rights of this territory should be very valuable some day. When we have all finished salting the earth with nickel, lead, steel, copper, and aluminum, old-metal dealers will probably set up offices in No Man's Land.