3

The Return





RELUCTANTLY the ashen dawn is bleaching the still dark and formless
landscape. Between the declining road on the right that falls into
the gloom, and the black cloud of the Alleux Wood--where we hear the
convoy teams assembling and getting under way--a field extends. We
have reached it, we of the 6th Battalion, at the end of the night.
We have piled arms, and now, in the center of this circle of
uncertain light, our feet in the mist and mud, we stand in dark
clusters (that yet are hardly blue), or as solitary phantoms; and
the heads of all are turned towards the road that comes from "down
there." We are waiting for the rest of the regiment, the 5th
Battalion, who were in the first line and left the trenches after
us.

Noises; "There they are!" A long and shapeless mass appears in the
west and comes down out of the night upon the dawning road.

At last! It is ended, the accursed shift that began at six o'clock
yesterday evening and has lasted all night, and now the last man has
stepped from the last communication trench.

This time it has been an awful sojourn in the trenches. The 18th
company was foremost and has been cut up, eighteen killed and fifty