Back to Blighty : battle stories Illustrations by Bruce Bairnsfather

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Back to Blighty : battle stories by Captain A J Dawson Illustrations by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

" To walk about in these hells. Not one of those broken walls we knew so well through our glasses is standing now, and only a few jagged spikes where the trees were. I went along the ' sunken road ' all the way to Contalmaison. " Talk about sacred ground ! When I think what that No-Man's-Land was to us for nearly a year ! The new troops coming up now go barging across it in the most light-hearted way. They know nothing

about it. It means no more to them than the roads behind used to mean to us. It's all behind to them and never was the front. But when I think how we watered every yard of it with blood and sweat those devilish Narrows, you know. Children might play there now if it didn't look so much like the aftermath of an earthquake. But, you know, there's a kind of a wrench about seeing the new chaps swagger over it so carelessly, and seeing it gradually merged into the Behind the Line country. I have a sort of feeling it ought to be marked off somehow ; a permanent memorial. "

Mike