We
got out our field-glasses and, in the cool of a summer's evening, when
any ordinary individual in "Blighty" would be relaxing from the labours
of the day in cricket or in tennis, we surveyed with interest the
contests between the chivalrous heroes of the air far above. It was then
that I first saw a "blazing trail across the evening sky of Flanders."
There were many such in the summer of 1917, though the brilliant young
airman of whose death that glowing eulogy had been written now lay
sleeping beneath a little wooden cross in the grave in which the
Germans, paying homage to true chivalry, had laid him at Annoeullin. Who
could watch those little specks rising and falling, and falling to rise
no more, up there in the bright blue sky without a thrill of admiration
for these "New Elizabethans" of England and Germany?
It was during tea that I realized that I was really at the war. The guns
began to boom and the hut shook with the continual vibration. And then
the band of the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers struck up some jolly tunes in
the field. War and music going hand in hand, it was difficult to know
whether one ought to feel jolly or sad. I think I may safely say that we
felt as jolly and gay as could be; I know that the romantic aspect was
the one which appealed to me most.
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