but for the wind and the things that creak as it blows, the only
message of this deserted house, is this mighty record, this rare line
of history, ill-written: "Lost by the 156th Wurtemburgers, retaken by
the Bermondsey Butterflies."

Two men wrote that sentence between them. And, as with Homer, no one
knows who they were. And; like Homer, their words were epic.





On An Old Battle-Field

I entered an old battle-field through a garden gate, a pale green
gate by the. Bapaume-Arras road. The cheerful green attracted me in
the deeps of the desolation as an emerald might in a dust-bin. I
entered through that homely garden gate, it had no hinges, no
pillars, it lolled on a heap of stone: I came to it from the road;
this alone was not battle-field; the road alone was made and tended
and kept; all the rest was battle-field, as far as the eye could see.
Over a large whitish heap lay a Virginia creeper, turning a dull
crimson. And the presence of this creeper mourning there in the waste
showed unmistakably that the heap had been a house. All the living
things were gone that had called this white heap Home: the father
would be fighting, somewhere; the children would have fled, if there
had been time; the dog would have gone with them, or perhaps, if
there was not time, he served other masters; the cat would have made
a lair for herself and stalked mice at night through the trenches.
All the live things that we ever consider were gone; the creeper