The challenge of the dead : $b A vision of the war and the life of the common soldier in France, seen two years afterwards between August and November, 1920Graham, Stephen
History
The challenge of the dead : $b A vision of the war and the life of the common soldier in France, seen two years afterwards between August and November, 1920
Graham, Stephen
World War, 1914-1918
"Mad everywhere," says the man. "What I'd like is a flat somewhere near
Lancaster Gate, so as I could go out into Kensington Gardens and sit
under the trees and smoke."
There was a pause.
Then the woman from Peebles ventured in a thin, small voice:
"I think that Peter Pan statue in Kensington is so sweet. It was put up
in the night, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was; and isn't Kensington a delightful place?" says the old
man.
They gloated in silence over Kensington. The bells of the Belfry began
selections from _Faust_. _Is there a war on?_ men used to ask
facetiously. "There never was any war," says Bruges. The sound of the
boots has long since died away, the _boots, boots, boots, boots,
marching up and down again_, away, away--this city was not delivered
unto the Angel of Death.
It's a shady highway that goes eastward to Ostende. At the village of
St. Andrews there is a first war memorial to Belgian soldiers who gave
their lives in the war; and then you come to the open ground at
Varssenaere where the 20th Brigade did outpost duty, the first
resting-ground for many a man, if rest he could, on his first night on
the terrain of war--Varssenaere, a mean red-brick village with
estaminets and small shops. Next day 'twas Steine and then Ostende.
October 9, 1914, they marched into Ostende station, crowded with wounded
men who had been rushed down from the stricken front. Antwerp had
fallen. The trains which brought the wounded down took the new army
back--back to Bruges, on to Ghent, and tumbled it out into that great
old city. The streets were full of refugees, but the khaki tide rolled
forward through the crowds, past the cathedral, out by the Lokeren road,
to meet the foe.
Ghent also is an undamaged city. Our airmen spared her; our cannon could
not reach her. She was not taken by assault, but fell into the enemy's
hands. It is prosperous, all its factory chimneys are a-smoke. Cheap
plenitude fills its shop windows. Its people are at work--or, rather,
they are at work when there is not a _groodefeest_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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