The young recruit is apt to think
Of war as a romance;
But he'll find its boots and bayonets
When he's somewhere out in France.
When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from —— his heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew, hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring, murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool, mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into the land of mystery, the Unknown.
In front is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-shells and lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of death.
Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.
Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead, and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery, the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to the heart of the young soldier.
I have looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed with the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-shells burst into fire and drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses, gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.
Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame. Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.
Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty passion and deadly hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of God, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.
He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsy ringing of church bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to evensong; the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the harness of war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the darkness; the stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky; the trees by the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as if listening and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm night, half moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages with their chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling engines and dusty trucks.
There is a quicker throbbing of the heart when the men arrive at the crest of the hill, well known to all, but presenting fresh aspects every time the soldier reaches its summit, that overlooks the firing line.