Beyond the mud, in the far cool distance is a green untroubled
country. The Huns live there. That's the worst of doing all the
attacking; we live on the recent battlefields we have won, whereas the
enemy retreats into untouched cleanness. One can see church steeples
peeping above woods, chateaus gleaming, and stretches of shining
river. It looks innocent and kindly, but from the depth of its
greenness invisible eyes peer out. Do you make one unwary movement,
and over comes a flock of shells.
At night from out this swamp of vileness a phantom city floats up; it
is composed of the white Very lights and multi-coloured flares which
the Hun employs to protect his front-line from our patrols. For brief
spells No Man's Land becomes brilliant as day. Many of his flares are
prearranged signals, meaning that his artillery is shooting short or
calling for an S.O.S. The combination of lights which mean these
things are changed with great frequency, lest we should guess. The
on-looker, with a long night of observing before him, becomes
imaginative and weaves out for the dancing lights a kind of Shell-Hole
Nights' Entertainment. The phantom city over there is London, New
York, Paris, according to his fancy. He's going out to dinner with his
girl. All those flares are arc-lamps along boulevards; that last white
rocket that went flaming across the sky, was the faery taxi which is
to speed him on his happy errand. It isn't so, one has only to
remember.
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