regularly you are sure to get the blast of one of them as you go by,
and it can be a very strong wind indeed. One's horse, if one is
riding, does not very much like it, but I have seen horses far more
frightened by a puddle on the road when coming home from hunting in
the evening: one 12-inch howitzer more or less in France calls for no
great attention from man or beast.

And so we come in sight of the support trenches where we are to dwell
for a week before we go on for another mile over the hills, where the
black fountains are rising.

A Walk in Picardy

Picture any village you know. In such a village as that the trench
begins. That is to say, there are duck-boards along a ditch, and the
ditch runs into a trench. Only the village is no longer there. It was
like some village you know, though perhaps a little merrier, because
it was further south and nearer the sun; but it is all gone now. And
the trench runs out of the ruins, and is called Windmill Avenue. There
must have been a windmill standing there once.

When you come from the ditch to the trench you leave the weeds and
soil and trunks of willows and see the bare chalk. At the top of those
two white walls is a foot or so of brown clay. The brown clay grows
deeper as you come to the hills, until the chalk has disappeared
altogether. Our alliance with France is new in the history of man, but
it is an old, old union in the history of the hills. White chalk with
brown clay on top has dipped and gone under the sea; and the hills of
Sussex and Kent are one with the hills of Picardy.