I have been for many strange walks in my life with strange
companions, up and down the world, but never have I gone for such
a tramp with such a guide as on this Sunday within sound of the
guns. My comrade of this day was a grave-digger.
His ordinary profession is that of a garde champetre, or village
policeman, but during the past three weeks he had been busy with
the spade, which he carried across his shoulder by my side. With
other peasants enrolled for the same tragic task he had followed the
line of battle for twenty kilometres from his own village, Rouville, near
Levignen, helping to bury the French and British dead, and helping to
burn the German corpses.
His work was not nearly done when I met him, for during the fighting
in the region round the forest of Villers-Cotterets, twice a battlefield,
as the Germans advanced and then retreated, first pursuing and then
pursued by the French and British, 3000 German dead had been left
upon the way, and 1000 of our Allied troops. Dig as hard as he could
my friendly gravedigger had been unable to cover up all those
brothers-in-arms who lay out in the wind and the rain.
I walked among the fields where they lay, and among their roughly
piled graves, and not far from the heaps of the enemy's dead who
were awaiting their funeral pyres.
Pages:
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200