Page:For remembrance, soldier poets who have fallen in the war, Adcock, 1920.djvu/321

Rh them happening again before you as you read. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, with palm, for distinguished bravery in the Somme fighting, and the Military Cross for his cool courage and resourcefulness in temporary command of his Battery during the terrific fight for Passchendaele Ridge. He brings the whole thing home to you not only by describing the big scenes, but by his skill in touching in little everyday details for a setting to his more momentous experiences, as thus:

'French peasants herded their cows in the field, or piled up their haystacks, old women for the most part, slaving like niggers, women with wrinkled eagle faces—a regular stage type. The peasants are dull machines, and seem to care little for the war. But one has only to speak to them about the Boches and their voices sharpen like a razor and one reads in their eyes something of the soul of France.' 'Last Friday the gramophone arrived. What excitement! How I roared at feeble jokes. It was strange to sit in