The horror of that salient in its old evil days lives in its sinister place-names: Dead Horse Corner and Dead Cow Farm, and the farm beyond Plug Street, Dead Dog Farm, and the Moated Grange on the way to St.-Eloi, Stinking Farm, and Suicide Corner, and Shell-Trap Barn. I passed by some of these places and felt cold in remembrance of all the evil of them. Boys of ours have been smashed in all these ill-famed spots. Every bit of ruin here is the scene of foul tragedy to young life. To these places women will come to weep when the war is done, and the stones will be memorials of brave hearts who came here in the darkness with just a glance at the lights in the sky and a word of "Carry on, men," before they fell.
The sun is fierce and hot over Flanders, giving great splendour to this June of war, but baking our troops brown and dry. Up in the battle-line thirst is a cruel demon in that shadowless land of craters, where the earth itself is parched and cracked, and where there is a white, blinding glare.
On the day of the Messines battle water went up quickly, with two lemons for each man, "to help them through the barrage," according to a young staff officer with a bright sense of humour at the mess-table. But there was never too much, and in some places not enough for the wounded men, whose thirst was like a fire, and yet not greedy, poor chaps, if there was only a little to go round.
"Can you spare a drop," said a group of them--all Australian lads--to a friend of mine who was going up one day with a kerosene-tin full of water to the front line. "The fellows up in front want it badly," said my friend, "and I promised to get it there, but if you'll just take a sip----"
Those Australians were all in a muck of wounds and sweat. But they just moistened their lips and passed the water on. One man shook his head and said, "Take it to the fellows in front." It was the old Philip Sidney touch by way of Australia, and it is not rare among all our fighting men--lawless chaps when they are on a loose end, but great-hearted children at times like this.
All this pageant of war in France and Flanders is on fire with sun, and it is wonderful to pass through the panorama of the war zone, as I do most days, and get a picture of it into one's eyes and soul--columns of men marching with wet, bronzed faces through clouds of white dust, or through fields where there is a patchwork tapestry of colour woven of great stretches of clover drenching the air with its scent, and of poppies which spill a scarlet flood down the slopes, and of green wheat and gold-brown earth. Gunners ride in their shirts with sleeves rolled up. About old barns men work in their billets stripped to the belt. Up in the "strafed" country of the old salient men sit about ruins between spells of work on roads and rails on the shady side of shell-broken walls, dreaming of bottled beer and rivers of cider, and the New-Zealanders are as brown as gipsies under their high felt hats.