away, if that. It was a growing wood--with the green still on the
branches, very different from the charred posts and tree stumps which
are all that now remain of the gardens and orchards of Pozières. I
remember a little over a month ago, when some of us first went up near
to Pozières village--on the day when the bombardment before our first
attack was tearing branches from off the trees a hundred yards
away--Pozières had a fairly decent covering then. There was enough dead
brushwood and twigs, at any rate, to hide the buildings of the place. A
few pink walls could then be half seen behind the branches, or topping
the gaps in the scrub.

Within four days the screen in front of Pozières had been torn to
shreds--had utterly disappeared. The German bombardment ripped off all
that the British had left. The buildings now stood up quite naked, such
as they were. There was the church--still recognisable by one window;
and a scrap of red wall at the north-east end of the village, past which
you then had to crawl to reach an isolated run of trench facing the
windmill. Both trench and red wall have long since gone to glory. I
doubt if you could even trace either of them now. The solitary arched
window disappeared early, and a tumbled heap of bricks is all that now
marks Pozières church. One scrap of gridironed roof sticking out from
the powdered ground cross-hatches the horizon. There is not so much
foliage left as would shelter a cock sparrow.

But here were we, with this desolation behind us, looking out suddenly
and at no great distance on quite a respectable wood. It tempted you to
step out there and just walk over to it--I never see that country
without the feeling that one is quite free to step across there and
explore it.