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Updated: May 19, 2025
And this understanding is a lonely, sorrowful gift. I looked out from an observation-post on the Somme over a landscape like the blasted heath in Macbeth. No living thing moved, but the earth was pregnant with agony and the roar of the guns from hidden pits was like that of the grindstones of hell.
In this case, the use, and therefore the destruction, of the observation-post was looked upon by the Belgians as a natural and necessary instance of the work of war. As evidence, it is rather valuable because given unconsciously and without motive. Likewise at Antwerp.
On arriving at my observation-post, a rocky eminence on open ground, where, with Tommy at my side, I took my seat with a telescope, I was astonished to see or rather to hear a great number of the natives walking past the base of the mound towards the bush. Then I remembered that some one, Marama, I think, had informed me that there was to be a great sacrifice to Oro at dawn on that day.
The Czechs have a fatal preference for woods as a site for defensive works, and they selected a wood on the left flank of the road for my position. I rejected their plan, and chose a position about two hundred yards in front of the wood at a point where the roads cross, and a fold in the ground, aided by the tall marsh grass, almost entirely hid us from the observation-post of the enemy.
I always suspected the existence of a Turkish observation-post, but no signs of occupation had been seen for a long time till H.M.S. "Fox" went up one dark night without a light showing. All dead-lights were shipped, and dark blue electric bulbs replaced the usual ones where a light of some sort was essential and visible from out-board.
"Well, sir," I said, "I want to obtain films of all the operations in connection with the taking of St. Quentin; if you have an observation-post from which I can obtain a good view it will suit me admirably." "I am sure we can fix you up all right. But we are just going to have a meal; sit down and join us. We can then go into details."
Then we had another look at the animal in its trench a little nearer this time than before, and quieter on account of the mist. Pick up the chain anywhere you please, you shall find the same observation-post, table, map, observer, and telephonist; the same always-hidden, always-ready guns; and same vexed foreshore of trenches, smoking and shaking from Switzerland to the sea.
But every morning as the mist lifted the church-tower would reappear through the trees, and now and again the flash of a glass would show that it was an observation-post of the enemy, and frequently well-placed shells on our trenches and dumps would show to what devilish uses our enemies were putting the house of God as they directed their shell-fire from a seat just under the cross on the tower.
A long, low profile, with a lump to one side, means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or watching and running among all these terrific symbols.
He returned into his garden, and, climbing up the wall by means of the mantling ivy, reached his chosen observation-post. Through curtains of greenery he watched the arrival of a pair of lovers, and held his breath, as they seated themselves beneath him. They were an even more ridiculous couple than their kind usually are.
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