THE GREEN COUNTRY
_France, August 28th._
For a mile the country had been flayed. The red ribs of it lay open to
the sky. The whole flank of the ridge had been torn open--it lies there
bleeding, gaping open to the callous skies with scarcely so much as a
blade of grass or a thistle to clothe its nakedness--covered with the
wreckage of men and of their works as the relics of a shipwreck cover
the uneasy sea.
As we dodged over the last undulations of an unused trench, the crest of
each crater brought us for an instant into view of something
beyond--something green and fresh and brilliant, like new land after a
long sea journey. Then we were out of view of it again, for a time;
until we came to a point where it seemed good to climb and peep over the
low parapet.
It was a peep into paradise. Before us lay a green country. There was a
rich verdure on the opposite hills. Beyond them ran a valley filled with
the warm haze of summer, out of which the round tree-tops stood dark
against the still higher hills beyond. The wheat was ripe upon the far
hill slopes. The sun bathed the lap of the land with his midday summer
warmth. Along the crest of the distant hills ran the line of tall,
regular trees which in this country invariably means a road. A church
spire rose from a tree clump on a nearer crest. Some of the foreground
was pitted with the ugly red splashes which have become for us, in this
horrible area, the normal feature of the countryside. But, beyond it,
was the green country spread out like a picture, sleeping under the heat
of a summer's sun.
It was the promised land--the country behind the German lines--the
valley about Bapaume where the Germans have been for two years
undisturbed in French territory, until our troops for the first time
peeped over the ridge the other day at the flashes of the very German
guns which were firing at them.
Quite close at hand was a wood. The trees were not more than half a mile
away, if that. It was a growing wood--with the green still on the
branches, very different from the charred posts and tree stumps which
are all that now remain of the gardens and orchards of Pozières. I
remember a little over a month ago, when some of us first went up near
to Pozières village--on the day when the bombardment before our first
attack was tearing branches from off the trees a hundred yards
away--Pozières had a fairly decent covering then. There was enough dead
brushwood and twigs, at any rate, to hide the buildings of the place. A
few pink walls could then be half seen behind the branches, or topping
the gaps in the scrub.
Within four days the screen in front of Pozières had been torn to
shreds--had utterly disappeared. The German bombardment ripped off all
that the British had left. The buildings now stood up quite naked, such
as they were. There was the church--still recognisable by one window;
and a scrap of red wall at the north-east end of the village, past which
you then had to crawl to reach an isolated run of trench facing the
windmill. Both trench and red wall have long since gone to glory. I
doubt if you could even trace either of them now. The solitary arched
window disappeared early, and a tumbled heap of bricks is all that now
marks Pozières church. One scrap of gridironed roof sticking out from
the powdered ground cross-hatches the horizon. There is not so much
foliage left as would shelter a cock sparrow.
But here were we, with this desolation behind us, looking out suddenly
and at no great distance on quite a respectable wood. It tempted you to
step out there and just walk over to it--I never see that country
without the feeling that one is quite free to step across there and
explore it.
There are men coming up the farther side of the slope--men going about
some normal business of the day as our men go about theirs in the places
behind their lines.
Those men are Germans; and the village in the trees, the collection of
buildings half guessed in the wood, is Courcelette. It has been hidden
ground to us for so long that you feel it is almost improper to be
overlooking them so constantly; like spending your day prying over into
your neighbour's yard. Away in the landscape behind, in some hollow,
there humps itself into the air a big geyser of chestnut dust. One has
seen German shell burst so often in that fashion, back in our
hinterland, that it takes a moment to realise that this shell is not
German but British. I cannot see what it is aimed at--some battery, I
suppose; or perhaps a much-used road; or some place they suspect to be a
headquarters. Clearly, it is not always so safe as it seems to be in the
green country behind the German lines.