The observer watches anxiously the stretch of British trenches immediately facing the wood. There is a strange, unaccountable feeling in the air that, were it not for the never-ceasing roar of the aeroplane engine, would be hushed and silent as the moment prior to the start of a horse-race, when an element of overstrung expectancy pervades the human brain. Down below there, the lilliputian figures crouch like ants behind the mudbank, waiting for the dread signal when the race shall commence, the race of human life and death. The booming of the great guns in the rear has long since ceased, and the nebulous region of No-man’s-land, were it not for the battle-scarred earth, would resemble an ordinary peaceful countryside, so quiet and deserted has it become. The minutes tick slowly on and on. Now it must be getting very near the appointed hour. Will it never come? Restless movements are evidenced in the opposing trenches, where an occasional bayonet glitters in the sun, or strange figures wander to and fro. At last! With a shout and roar, they are over the top. The earth trembles. Then the barren shell-swept land between the opposing trenches springs into life. Men and more men come swarming across and make for the German lines. The scene now baffles all description, it is like a fleeting glimpse of Dante’s Inferno, as if all the hate and murder and courage and strength of human existence had met in one protracted struggle of life and death between savagery and civilization. The two opposing masses intermingle, so that now it is no longer possible to distinguish each from each.
At last there comes a lull in the battle, and the aeroplane pilot, his hazardous expedition concluded and at a sign from the observer, thankfully turns for home, leaving behind him a scorched and scarred earth from which the smoke rises continuously in curling white-gray clouds.
(BEING PART OF THE DIARY OF AN INHABITANT)
Sunday again, but hardly to be imagined in these troublous times and places, with adventure for one’s bedfellow, war for one’s profession, and bloodshed and horrors for one’s constant reflection. Despite all this there exists, and must always exist in every war that peculiar intermingling, that strange blend of horror and sentiment, hate and romance, that mixture of dross and gold. The feelings and actions that bring out all that is the most savage, the most primitive in man’s nature, at the same time endowing him with the tenderness and unselfishness of a woman, the courage of a hero, and the fortitude and forbearance of a saint. Romance! I have a most charming instance to give to you my dear M----.