One week of death is followed by another week of death.
The position changes a little, that is all, and the business goes on
again. It is appalling."
The same words were used to me on the same night by a surgeon
who had just come from the station of Dunkirk, where the latest batch
of wounded--a thousand of them--were lying on the straw. "It is
appalling," he said. "The destruction of this shell-fire is making a
shambles of human bodies. How can we cope with it? What can we
do with such a butchery?"
Round about Furnes there was a fog in the war zone. In the early
dawn until the morning had passed, and then again as the dusk fell
and the mists crept along the canals and floated over the flat fields,
men groped about it like ghosts, with ghostly guns.
Shells came hurtling out of the veil of the mist and burst in places
which seemed hidden behind cotton-wool. An unseen enemy was
killing unseen men, and other guns replied into this grim, grey
mystery, not knowing what destruction was being done.
It was like the war itself, which was utterly shrouded in these parts by
a fog of mystery. Watching it close at hand (when things are more
difficult to sort into any order of logic) my view was clouded and
perplexed by the general confusion.
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