One of a much later generation of orderly officers, who had scraped part
of the inscription clean with his penknife, went back and told the mess
at dinner that he had come across the grave of an officer of their own
unit, who had died thereabouts in some camp a hundred and fifty years
before. He did not mention that, on his stroll, he had scrambled down a
steep grass bank which ran curiously across the hill-side. There was
green grass above it, and green grass below it; and green grass and
patches of ploughland all over the downs. The white frost still hung to
the blades, though it was midday. The remnant of a small wood stood from
the hill-side. "I must get a fatigue party on to that timber to-morrow,"
had said the orderly officer to himself.

And so it was that the forest passed away--the general service wagons
from the neighbouring Roman camp called there daily for sixty years for
fuel cut by generations of fatigue parties. The only trees left, over
miles of sloping downs, were the thickets around the villages and one
row of walnut trees growing along the top of that steep grass
embankment--the one remnant of Hammerhead's old orchard. Years later the
tow-haired Franks swept through the country. The walnut trees were cut
by a farmer for the uprights in his long barn. His children rolled down
the old bank in their games, and in bad baby Latin invited the
youngsters of the farm next door to charge up "the Grass Bank" while
they defended it. The generations, whose bad Latin gradually became
French, still spoke of Hammerhead's old landmark--now situated in a
large grass field--as "The Grass Bank."

On the military maps some way behind the arterial system of red lines
which stood for the German trenches--exactly as on a German map it
stands for ours--was a shaded mark shaped like an elongated pea pod.
There was no name to it--but a note in some pigeonhole of the local