so if they suspect a move, it is the natural thing to loose off a few rounds.
However, our anxiety was not borne out, and we got out of the danger zone
by 8.30 -- a not too long march in the dark, and then for
the last of the march a glorious full moon. The houses everywhere
are as dark as possible, and on the roads noises but no lights.
One goes on by the long rows of trees that are so numerous in this country,
on cobblestones and country roads, watching one's horses' ears wagging,
and seeing not much else. Our maps are well studied before we start,
and this time we are not far out of familiar territory.
We got to our new billet about 10 -- quite a good farmhouse;
and almost at once one feels the relief of the strain of being
in the shell zone. I cannot say I had noticed it when there;
but one is distinctly relieved when out of it.
==


Such, then, was the life in Flanders fields in which the verse was born.
This is no mere surmise. There is a letter from Major-General
E. W. B. Morrison, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., who commanded the Brigade
at the time, which is quite explicit. "This poem," General Morrison writes,
"was literally born of fire and blood during the hottest phase
of the second battle of Ypres. My headquarters were in a trench
on the top of the bank of the Ypres Canal, and John had his dressing station
in a hole dug in the foot of the bank. During periods in the battle
men who were shot actually rolled down the bank into his dressing station.
Along from us a few hundred yards was the headquarters of a regiment,
and many times during the sixteen days of battle, he and I watched them
burying their dead whenever there was a lull. Thus the crosses, row on row,
grew into a good-sized cemetery. Just as he describes, we often heard
in the mornings the larks singing high in the air, between the crash