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Updated: May 2, 2025
I now started my fresco act on the walls of the Douve farm. I spent most of the day on the job, and discovered how some startling effects could be produced. Materials were: A bottle of Indian ink, a couple of brushes, about a hundredweight of useless charcoal, and a G.S. blue and red pencil.
What that reason is, has to be found out; for, even if they are not accomplices, it may be of importance. Everything that took place on such a night is important." We had crossed an old bridge thrown over the Douve and were entering the part of the park called the Oak Grove, The oaks here were centuries old.
At other times I felt thoroughly depressed and weary. As time wore on at the Douve, I felt myself getting into a state when it took more and more out of me to keep up my vigour, and suppress my imagination. There were times when I experienced an almost irresistible desire to lie down and sleep during some of my night walks.
We only did two "tours" in this particular piece of trench, as the next time we came in that company frontage had been allotted to the battalion on our left and we moved just around the corner, the Petite Douve Farm being almost hidden from our view by trees but continuing to annoy us with its machine-guns.
The first night we came to the Douve was a pretty calm one, comparatively speaking; yet one poor chap in the leading platoon, going through the farm courtyard I mentioned, got shot right through the forehead. No doubt whatever it was an accidental bullet, and not an aimed shot, as the Germans could not have possibly seen the farm owing to the darkness of the night.
Hearing that the Canadian guns were going to bombard Petite Douve, a large farmstead which the Germans had fortified with machine-guns and snipers, I started off from headquarters in the company of a lieutenant-colonel and a captain. A few passing remarks on the conditions of the road as we went along to Hill 63 will be interesting. No matter where one looked there was mud and water.
On June 15th the whole Battalion returned to the trenches, and held a total length of 1,450 yards, stretching from our old right, Trench 37, across the Messines road to a ruined cottage, close by which our trenches were carried over the Douve by a wooden bridge.
Across the flat, sombre country I could see the tall, swaying poplar trees standing near the farm. Beyond lay the rough and rugged road which led to the Douve trenches. How nice that leave had been! To-morrow night I should be going along back to the trenches before Wulverghem.
Dense columns of smoke were coming out of the straw roof, and soon the whole place was a blazing ruin. Nobody in the least perturbed; we all turned away from the window and wondered how soon they'd "have our farm." They seemed to me long, dark, dismal days, those days spent in the Douve trenches; longer, darker and more dismal than the Plugstreet ones.
He was the most shell, bullet, and bomb defying person I have ever seen. When I got back for the second time that night I was quite ready to roll up in the straw, and be lulled off to sleep by the cracking rifle fire outside. Our first time in the Douve trenches was mainly uneventful, but we all decided it was not as pleasant as St. Yvon. For my part, it was fifty per cent. worse than St.
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