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And occasionally between these fighting hosts there are acts of magnanimity which stand out illumined against the dark background of death and suffering. One of the stories told me by my son illustrates this. During one fierce engagement a British officer saw a German officer impaled on the barbed wire, writhing in anguish. The fire was dreadful, yet he still hung there unscathed.
One of the most obvious peculiarities of his style is his habit of 'going off at a word. Each thought is, as it were, barbed all round, and catches and draws into sight a multitude of others, but slightly related to the main purpose in hand. And this characteristic gives at first sight an appearance of confusion to his writings. But it is not confusion, it is richness.
During her period of martyrdom, the duchess had pressed her cross to her bosom with the religious enthusiasm of a devotee hugging his barbed instrument of torture. The consciousness that she was suffering for her family's sake as became a daughter of the Caesars was the only thing which enabled her to endure her shame and degradation.
These all partake of the one characteristic, that they help nothing to the fulfilment of their own behests, and that they are barbed with threatenings of retribution.
They were all very cheerful when I saw them; but how alert, how apprehensive, how watchful! I felt that I was in a place where anything might happen at any moment. The village and the factory were a maze of trenches, redoubts, caves, stairs up and stairs down, machine-guns, barbed wire, enfilading devices were all ready.
Within ten minutes our gunners had snipt the barbed wire fences along the railway, had dashed their guns across, and were dragging them up that low rocky ridge say, 300ft. to 400ft. high which had now so suddenly become our front and fighting position.
From top to bottom it is pockmarked by shells and scarred by trenches trenches every few feet, and between them tangled masses of barbed wire still clinging to the "knife rests" and corkscrew stanchions to which it had been strung. The huge shell-holes, revealing the chalk subsoil, were half-filled with water.
He could forgive the woman her song if she would supply some of the comforts of those who luxuriated in houses for just this one night. He went on, coming soon to barbed wire along the way, and presently to a gap in it that let him in among the trees which concealed the house.
So he pricked the horse with his rowals, and shot away; but his heart, all the remainder of his day's journey, was as if it had been pierced with many barbed arrows, and the sad voice of the poor anxious widow rung in his ears like the sound of some doleful knell.
He salvaged the barbed head and broke it free of the shred of haft the snake-devil had left. Knotting it at his belt he turned to Dalgard. "Shall we see what lies beyond?" Dalgard crossed the hall to test the door. It did not yield to an inward push, but rolled far enough into the wall to allow them through. On the other side was a room which amazed the scout.
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