The wood itself is a _point d'appui_, or fortified post. One has to
take precautions, even two or three miles behind the main firing line.
A series of trenches zigzags in and out among the trees, and barbed
wire is interlaced with the undergrowth. In the farthermost corner
lies an improvised cemetery. Some of the inscriptions on the little
wooden crosses are only three days old. Merely to read a few of these
touches the imagination and stirs the blood. Here you may see the
names of English Tommies and Highland Jocks, side by side with their
Canadian kith and kin. A little apart lie more graves, surmounted by
epitaphs written in strange characters, such as few white men can
read. These are the Indian troops. There they lie, side by side--the
mute wastage of war, but a living testimony, even in their last
sleep, to the breadth and unity of the British Empire. The great,
machine-made Empire of Germany can show no such graves: when her
soldiers die, they sleep alone.
The Church of England service had come last of all. Late in the
afternoon a youthful and red-faced chaplain had arrived on a bicycle,
to find a party of officers and men lying in the shade of a broad
oak waiting for him. (They were a small party: naturally, the great
majority of the regiment are what the identity-discs call "Pres" or
"R.C.")
"Sorry to be late, sir," he said to the senior officer, saluting.
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