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Updated: June 19, 2025
Broken rifles, cartouches, water-bottles, torn letters, twisted bayonets, and German stick-bombs littered the ditches which had been dug as trenches across streets of burned-out houses. A young gunner officer whom we met was very civil, and stopped in front of the chateau of Vermelles, a big red villa with the outer walls still standing, and told us the story of its capture. "It was a wild scrap.
For the sickly the clouds are big black water-bottles, though time was when they were chariots for God's angels, curtains for hiding ministering spirits trooping homeward at night, leaving all the air sweetly perfumed. It is the body that grants the soul permission to be happy.
"Yes, senor." "Then we will all take a drink of it. I don't like the stuff, but just at present I feel that it won't come amiss at all." Some of the spirit was poured into a tin mug they had with them, and mixed with water, with which they had filled their water-bottles from the stream before starting. In a few minutes all were ready to go on again.
Really it was a bit thick, the creature saying "poor old George" quite as if he were something in an institution, having to be wheeled about in a bath-chair with rugs and water-bottles! Glad I was when the trio gave signs of departure. It was woman's craft dictating it, I dare say. She had made her effect and knew when to go.
They rose from a wreck of oddments that began with felt-covered water-bottles, belts, and regimental badges, and ended with a small bale of second-hand uniforms and a stand of mixed arms. The mark of muddy feet on the dais showed that a military model had just gone away. The watery autumn sunlight was falling, and shadows sat in the corners of the studio.
Very eagerly, then, for every one of the men in Henri's party was anxious to escape capture, and eager to rejoin the French forces and again fight the Germans, the poilus scrambled about in the battered trench, or closely adjacent to it, taking up cartridges, despoiling the dead of their haversacks, from which they ejected all but the food contents, while every man loaded himself with as many water-bottles as he could conveniently carry.
Without any order, and in spite of their weariness, whenever they were halted over an hour in the daylight which had very seldom happened they would immediately set about shaving, and cleaning themselves and their rifles. They shaved with the cold water, poured from their water-bottles into the lids of their canteens. There was a vast rubbing of bolts, and "pulling through" of barrels.
She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a collapsed fish in the sunshine. "It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to rehearse." "In the water?" asked her father uneasily. "Certainly." As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in the canoe.
We were told we should get it by 9 P.M., and then a later hour was mentioned; but the net result was that we got just enough to make our breakfast tea, but not enough to fill the water-bottles, so we started on our next stage in the very worst of tempers to find that we had hardly got out of camp before we were involved in a regular block at the railway crossing which, needless to say, was frightfully dusty.
The wreckage was scattered thick with a dreadful debris of dead bodies, of bloody clothing, of helmets and broken rifles, burst packs and haversacks, bayonets, water-bottles, and shattered equipments. The Ambulance men were busy, but there were still many dead and dying and wounded to be removed, wounded with torn flesh and mangled limbs, dead and dying with scorched and smouldering clothes.
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