68
The Ypres Times.
My dwelling was in a cellar then, I not knowing the length of my sojourn, and to my
living room (formerly an R.E. mess) I used to return at breakfast-time and dusk, bearing
masses of bloom to make a gay show for the wonder of visitors. Afterwards, when I had
moved into an Armstrong hut, my servant and I manoeuvred it dexterously against a
forlorn espalier-a pear treewhose stone support having been carried off bodily by a
shell, was left with its boughs flung out purposelessly and grotesquely on either side. In
front I disposed some scarlet and rose geraniums which I had found in a luxurious dug-out,
and so the precincts became even startlingly bright even before the roses and red poppies
came. I wonder how many thousand 18-pounder shell cases have been filled with poppies
this summer
More than once I have come across flowers in precincts which have for me bloody
associations. It was in the icy spring of 1916God, how cold it was and how wet
--that I had a narrow escape from a shell which exploded with terrific force in the Rue
des Chiens, near the Convent. My first impulse was to dart down the nearest cellar,
but in the cloud of smoke and dirt I collided with a white-faced soldier, with his tunic
spattered with blood. For several seconds he stood there facing me, his jaw working
convulsively but unable to speak, while deep poignant groans issued from some cavern
hard by. Then his arm shot up in a kind of salute and he gasped Four of 'em done
in, Sirin therethey was avin their tea."
As he uttered the words he burst into laughter, the most gruesome laughter I ever
heard, and then, falling over against the sandbags and corrugated iron, collapsed. What
I saw of that cellar in the next quarter of an hour before the stretcher-bearers came has
often haunted me, case-hardened though I am, or ought to be. I recognised the spot at
once. After three years and more, masses of white convolvulus wind and twist about
the entrance to that cellar. There is the very corrugated iron and sandbags where the
poor young Royal Fusilier crumpled up. In the open space beyond, the tall grasses
billow peacefully, the plantains stand up like so many golden-studded spears, the duds
and splinters are hidden, and there is only the prevailing untidiness to tell you of the hell
this place was for four long years.
MY MILITARY CAREER.
By A. A. MILNE.
(Mr. Milne, the well-known Playwright and "Punch" contributor, here gives us a highly amusing
account of how,'as a Second-Lieutenant, he hob-nobbed with the Elect of the Staff.Ed. Y. T.)
Dear Sir, I am instructed by Lord French to ask if you will be so kindin short,
the Editor wants a contribution. When a Major is instructed by a Field-Marshal to
plead with one, how can he, how can they, be refused It was not always thus. I tell
you frankly that four years ago they did not plead. I might have said then, standing
rigidly to attention the while, One day a time will come perhaps I did think it, but
decided it was better not to say itand now, you see, the time has come. Well, well
I am afraid I was a bad soldier I hadn't got the military spirit. It was only after
some weeks in France that I discovered the name of our Divisional General. What was
that village at the back of Loos, near Philosophe I have forgotten I have forgotten
so much of itbut I can see myself undressing in that billetwe were moving south next
morning for a restand I can hear my fellow-subaltern (but more military than myself)
telling me the name of the General. It was, to my surprise, a familiar name not for
its military prowess, though this, no doubt, was excessive, but for the reputation it bore
as in some sort a patron of the arts. Naturally I expressed my interest and gratification
at learning that the Division was in the hands of anybody so distinguished. I was at
that time Assistant-Editor of a certain paper (on Continental leave at the moment, of
course) and this General knew my Editor well. It seemed, then, just possible that
he had even heard of me.
And what do you think you are going to get out of it asked my companion
