As a rule there was not much choice. It
lay somewhere between the roads to Nieuport on the coast, and
inland, to Pervyse, Dixmude, St. Georges, or Ramscapelle where the
Belgian and German lines formed a crescent down to Ypres.
The centre of that half-circle girdled by the guns was an astounding
and terrible panorama, traced in its outline by the black fumes of
shell-fire above the stabbing flashes of the batteries. Over Nieuport
there was a canopy of smoke, intensely black, but broken every
moment by blue glares of light as a shell burst and rent the
blackness. Villages were burning on many points of the crescent,
some of them smouldering drowsily, others blazing fiercely like
beacon fires.
Dixmude was still alight at either end, but the fires seemed to have
burnt down at its centre. Beyond, on the other horn of the crescent,
were five flaming torches, which marked what were once the neat
little villages of a happy Belgium. It was in the centre of this
battleground, and the roads about me had been churned up by shells
and strewn with shrapnel bullets. Close to me in a field, under the
cover of a little wood, were some Belgian batteries. They were firing
with a machine-like regularity, and every minute came the heavy bark
of the gun, followed by the swish of the shell, as it flew in a high arc
and then smashed over the German lines.
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