IV


Just at first--though not for long--there was a touch of hostility
against us among divisional and brigade staffs, of the Regulars, but
not of the New Army. They, too, suspected our motive in going to their
quarters, wondered why we should come "spying around," trying to "see
things." I was faintly conscious of this one day in those very early
times, when with the officer who had been a ruler in India I went to a
brigade headquarters of the 1st Division near Vermelles. It was not
easy nor pleasant to get there, though it was a summer day with fleecy
clouds in a blue sky. There was a long straight road leading to the
village of Vermelles, with a crisscross of communication trenches on
one side, and, on the other, fields where corn and grass grew rankly
in abandoned fields. Some lean sheep were browsing there as though
this were Arcady in days of peace. It was not. The red ruins of
Vermelles, a mile or so away, were sharply defined, as through
stereoscopic lenses, in the quiver of sunlight, and had the sinister
look of a death-haunted place. It was where the French had fought
their way through gardens, walls, and houses in murderous battle,
before leaving it for British troops to hold. Across it now came the
whine of shells, and I saw that shrapnel bullets were kicking up the
dust of a thousand yards down the straight road, following a small
body of brown men whose tramp of feet raised another cloud of dust,
like smoke. They were the only representatives of human life--besides
ourselves--in this loneliness, though many men must have been in
hiding somewhere. Then heavy "crumps" burst in the fields where the
sheep were browsing, across the way we had to go to the brigade
headquarters.