The love of home or the love of money keeps the
population in many places where it would be better away. One beautiful
spring day I took shelter behind a farmhouse in the Hallebast-Vierstraat
area until some shelling on the path ahead had died down. The farmer's
wife came out and we got into conversation. A rise in the ground gave
some shelter from the German lines, but she told me that any movement on
horseback was immediately sniped with whizbangs. The day before all her
cows had been killed by shell-fire in the paddock behind the farmhouse,
but if she and her elderly husband let their land go out of cultivation,
how were they to live, and if they left, where could they go? When
high-explosives blew great holes in their sown land they just filled in
the holes and ploughed and sowed the place over again. The settled
sadness of her face and voice haunts me still. Others, however, stay in
danger because they are making so much money. Several shopkeepers in
this town admitted they had never known such prosperity. The estaminets
make enormous profits from the sale of very weak beer.
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