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Updated: May 13, 2025
As it grew darker the enemy sent up star-shells, and by their light we could sometimes see as plainly as by daylight. British infantry were holding the forest in front of us and a road that ran to right of it. Their rifle-fire was steady as the roll of drums. These were not the regiments that preceded us from India; they had been sent to another section of the battle.
"By that time there was no doubt but that we were at the war passing between two lines of our heavy artillery on the snow covered ground. The splashes of fire red on the glistening white formed a memorable picture. "Every now and again, the snow was lighted up by the star-shells, which hung in the air and then dropped like a rain of gold on the silver ground.
We perform our nocturnal tasks, in front of and behind the firing trench, amid a perfect hail of star-shells and magnesium lights, topped up at times by a searchlight all supplied by our obliging friend the Hun. We, on our part, do our best to return these graceful compliments. The curious and uncanny part of it all is that there is no firing.
He was passing in a winged tank along those scenes of desolation of which he had so often read in his daily papers, and which his swollen fancy now coloured even more vividly than had those striking phrases of the past, when presently the tank turned a somersault, and shot him out into a morass lighted up by countless star-shells whizzing round and above.
He welcomed enemy flares and star-shells and excursions and alarms. They kept him from thinking, enabled him to pass the time. But in the dead, lonely, silent dark, the hours were like centuries. He dreaded them. To-night they fled like minutes. It was a pitch-black night, spitting fine rain. It was one of Doggie's private grievances that it invariably rained when he was on sentry duty.
Meeting a small transport car going in the desired direction after some stores, I begged a ride, and getting up beside the driver, we started off. Owing to the enormous shell-holes it was impossible to proceed along the road without a light. What a magnificent sight it was. Magnesium star-shells were continually being sent up by the Germans.
But perhaps the most thrilling sight of all is that dark night when one sees for the first time the star-shells along the horizon. At first you may see them ten miles away making luminous the earth.
We dismounted to rest the horses, and waited behind the forest until it grew so dark that between the bursting of the star-shells a man could not see his hand held out in front of him. Now and then a stray shell chanced among us, but our casualties were very few. I wondered greatly at the waste of ammunition. My ears ached with the din, but there seemed more noise wrought than destruction.
And it was pitch-darkness, with flashing lights everywhere! From Navy and Army both, searchlights swept the sea and sky, shut themselves off, and opened anew. Signals in Morse sparkled with their dots and dashes. From the distant trenches star-shells rose in the air, and seemed to hang suspended for a space, while we caught the rapid tick-tick of far-away rifle fire.
As the dim lights on the mole disappeared and the ceaseless fountain of star-shells, mingling with the flashing of guns, rose inland on our port beam my mind travelled overland to the flat at Bruges, and I wondered whether Zoe was lying awake listening to the ceaseless rumble of the Flanders cannon. We went on at full speed, as it was our intention to pass the Dover Straits before dawn.
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