XXXIV
WATCHING OUR ARTILLERY FIRE ON TRONES WOOD FROM MONTAUBAN
The drawing expresses well the singular aspect of the parts of the battlefield where artillery fire was heavy and where the conical holes made in the ground by high explosive shells were consequently close together. At a later stage these separate pock-marks overlap, like the pits in confluent small-pox, and the whole of the shelled ground becomes soft and loose, as though raked deeply but unevenly. In the distance the detached higher puffs of smoke from bursting shrapnel are distinguishable from the rising clouds of smoke from high-explosive shells.
XXXV (a and b)
IN THE REGAINED TERRITORY
Both the places drawn were in German hands until July. The first drawing is of a cemetery found behind the old German front line near Fricourt. There were many imperfectly marked German graves near these. They have since been marked, as many thousands of hurriedly made British graves have been, with wooden crosses and metal inscriptions by our Graves’ Registration and Inquiries Units.
The second drawing, with a helmeted sentry at the sand-bagged entrance to a dug-out, conveys the sinister air of a village destroyed, but not quite effaced, by shell-fire.
