Nevertheless, this is war. And war seems
a very vague, casual, and negligible thing. We are led about fifty
feet to the left, where in a previous phase a shell has indented a
huge hole in the earth. The sight of this hole renders war rather less
vague and rather less negligible.
"There are eighty thousand men in front of us," says an officer,
indicating the benign shimmering, empty landscape.
"But where?"
"Interred--in the trenches."
It is incredible.
"And the other interred--the dead?"
I ask.
"We never speak of them. But we think of them a good deal."
Still a little closer to war. The parc du genie--engineers park. BEHIND
We inspected hills of coils, formidable barbed wire, far surpassing
that of farmers, well contrived to tear to pieces any human being
who, having got into its entanglement, should try to get out again.
One thought that nothing but steam-chisels would be capable of
cutting it. Also stacks of timber for shoring up mines which sappers
would dig beneath the enemy trenches. Also sacks to be filled with
earth for improvised entrenching. Also the four-pointed contraptions
called chevaux de frise, which--however you throw them--will always
stick a fatal point upwards, to impale the horse or man who cannot
or will not look where he is going. Even tarred paper, for keeping the
weather out of trenches or anything else. And all these things in
unimagined quantities.
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