In October, 1914, the line was far in advance of what became such a carnage-strewn battlefield. Here is the railway cutting, then in supreme peace, and beyond it is a pale British monument inscribed with many names, though already defaced--to the memory of a lost mining and tunnelling company that took a sudden way to heaven before the war was won. Beyond it is a first German grave, where lie Fleully, Beck, Dechert, Mehlhorn, and an unknown, and helmets and old bombs strew the place where they lie. Klein Zillebeke is now marked by a huge concrete fort. Zandwoorde and Kruisseecke, which were scenes of hand-to-hand fighting in 1914, soon fell into German hands and remained within the enemy's lines throughout the war. The old church at Zandwoorde cannot now be identified by any ruins--one has to ask where it was. Even the bricks and the stones seem to have been swept away, but there are three graves there, Captain Rose and Lieutenant Turnor, of the Tenth Hussars, and a private soldier nameless and unknown, a sort of batman in death. An estaminet has jumped up like a weed beside the ruins but it has little trade. Zandwoorde was once a substantial little place but now perhaps it will not grow again so readily--it is off the main road and not served by rail. Kruisseecke will be bigger. On October 21st the Gordons drove the Germans back from Zandwoorde at the point of the bayonet. On that day the church tower was twice struck by shells. That was about the beginning of the history. The old trenches 'twixt Zandwoorde and Gheluvelt are worn down and perhaps were never very deep. The shell-holes are much deeper. The land is desolate and all o'ergrown but it affords a scene of lesser desolation. The exhumers are patiently seeking for the dead who were left behind--the old dead of that first battle. It is ghoulish work, but they have become as matter of fact as can be. "No, we don't find many Gordons. But we're picking up a lot o' Borders just now. Yes, and some Grenadiers. Brought in about thirty Borders yesterday. It isn't a bad job if they'd pay us more. We gets used to it. They say as how the Americans won't have the British touch their dead and have given the job over to the French. Fifteen thousand of them to be boxed and stuffed--there's a lot of work in that." "You must dig up a fair number of Germans. What do you do with them?" "Leave them where they are. We notifies the authorities, that's all. Of course Jerry buried most of his own, and I'll give him credit for that, he gave every man his eight feet. You don't so easy come across a man the Germans buried, but some of ours----" The weather-beaten Tommy, in old flannel shirt and sagging breeches, waved his hand and grinned with mirth at our British ways. "'S a funny thing though--the British dead keep much longer than the Germans. If I put a spade through something and it's soft, I know it's a Jerry." "They say the body of a drunkard keeps fresh longest of all because of the spirit in it."