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They were crossing these flagged stones on the way to the shambles, or coming back from the shell-stricken towns, la bas, as the place of blood is called, or taking out new loads of food for guns and men, or bringing in reports to admirals and the staff, or going to churches to pray for men who have done these jobs before, and now, perhaps, lie still, out of it.
It is like looking into hell and watching the fury of supernatural forces at play with human bodies, tearing them to pieces with great splinters of steel and burning them in the furnace-fires of shell-stricken towns, and in a devilish way obliterating the image of humanity in a welter of blood. There is a beauty in it too, for the aestheticism of a Nero.
Well fed and well clothed, hard as nails, in spite of all their hardships, they gave me a sense of pride as I watched them, for the spirit of the old race was in them, and they would stick it through thick and thin. I passed that day through the shell-stricken town of. Ypres and wandered through the great tragedy of the Cloth Hall that old splendour in stone which was now a gaunt and ghastly ruin.
We found ourselves close to the shell-stricken hut where I had met Beale of A Battery earlier in the evening. "I know where we are now," I shouted hilariously. "Who's that?" called some one sharply. I turned my torch on to the owner of the voice. It was Kelly of D Battery, yet another lost soul. "I'm hanged if I know where I am," he explained angrily. "I can't find the battery.
The Germans would find that a tough crop had grown up during the night in the shell-stricken field of the Ypres salient. Every minute or so there would be a burst of rifle fire along the German lines. They were beginning to show "nerves" and signs of exhaustion. They had paid a terrific price so far for the few blood-soaked acres they had won.
There comes a time after his first baptism of fire, after his first view of the shattered mutilated remnants of a shell-stricken body, that the infantryman turns towards where invisible German guns from comparative safety belch forth death, and shakes his impotent fist at this enemy.