Pitted by high explosive,
burned yellow by fumes of gas and shells, and stripped of every living
thing, with blackened stumps of trees sparsely scattered on its summit,
this muddy hillock dominated the flat lands, and, on the sunny morning
when I first saw it, seemed indescribably sinister and menacing. It said
to me, 'I am war, the antagonist of everything clean and comely, of
everything fresh and young: misery of mind and body, torment of kindly
earth and all its little growing things, lover of all that is foul and
dead.'
III
_'We've keepit up the reputation o' the auld mob, onyway'_
That night the weather suddenly changed. There had been a hint of spring
in the air, but in an hour that was wiped out by a bitter north wind
sweeping the bare fields with icy rain and snow. The transport, pitched
in the filthy morass known as 'Scottish Lines,' saw its labour of three
weeks thrown away in a couple of nights. For the human beings there were
a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed
quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings
to the bitter air.
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