The Ypres Times.
133
THE TRIPOD.
By DEREK GILPIN BARNES.
September 3rd, 1922.
Odd how the old habit sticks Here I am in war-scarred Belgium again, amongst
the piteous relics of battle and sudden death, and I find that without thinking I've left
a blank to denote my present resting place.
I'll leave it as it is, for this is an unhappy place, shattered and broken, although
fresh green things are frantically growing to hide these lonely horrors, these most dèsolate
scars.
It's a queer jobthis raking and prying into regions sacred to the dead and to gallant
memories. Hewitt and I are not sure that we like it, for after ten days in this deserted
country we begin to feel that the world's end has come, that we alone of all the millions
are left alive amongst poignant relics of an old activity.
We are helping to rebuild the war-shattered roads of the countryor rather, preparing
the way for others to do so, and we have been hard at work, surveying and what-not all
day long, and the place is astir with memory We wish we were at home.
A strange thing occurred last night, and Hewitt has been chaffing me about it all day
to-day, thus adding to the tension that has grown up, willy-nilly, about us.
About seven o'clock we decided to knock off work, for the light goes early now. We
were close to an immense barn that stood grimly in the waste, the only unshattered thing
for miles, marvellously escaped from the melée of 1917.
Hewitt saw this barn and suggested that we should seek its shelter for the night
rather than trouble to pitch our tent or drive in the ancient Ford to the nearest inhabited
villagea long way away.
I agreed to this suggestion, and we accordingly dumped our kit and left the car
outside. We found that the roof of our temporary home had an enormous rent in it at
one enda shell had obviously crashed through the flimsy tiling—and there was a deep
pit in the earth floor that had gradually become filled with rubbish in the course of time.
We prepared a meal of a sort and ate it in silence, for we were both dog-tired.
After a while Hewitt looked across at me.
Getting jumpy he asked, and I nodded, for I didn't like the place, somehow.
It's damned funny," Hewitt continued slowly as he filled his pipe, I'm getting all
wound up too. There's nothing to cause it no danger, no privation now yet
I'm jumpynerves on edge. In the old days I never minded it much—I don't say I
didn't get 'wind up,' mind you. I did. Anyone who says he didn't is a liar. But I never
felt like this never." He lit his foul old briarnothing can separate Hewitt from
that insanitary pipe.
It was somewhere around here that I got knocked out," he said presentlyuncon
scious for three blessed weeks. It's funny, I can't remember a thing about the action
never could."
We cleared up the remains of our supper, spread our blankets and turned in. I blew
out the candle and at once I wished I hadn't. I began to talk again, it was pleasant to
hear old Hewitt's voice in reply.
It's a queer life," I said, "living in a graveyard for days on end. The ground about
here must be packed full of dead. After all, in the old days there was noise, danger,
companionshipthe general hullaballoo kept one up to the mark in a way. The dead
were forgotten in the amazing realisation that one's own self was still alive. It's this
damned silence, this peacefulness that makes it so bad."
I heard Hewitt turn over, and his voice came to me out of the blackness.
All the suffering, all the death, all the puny, mighty efforts seem so futile now.
It's pitiable."
