Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/120

94 “The units leave that way for an attack or a sortie," our officer explained casually.

We glanced at these stairways of death with a vague discomfort, an inability quite to comprehend, and hurried on. We paused before a narrower flight.

"We are just behind the first line," our guide explained. "Now I am going to show you something."

We followed him up the steps into the most amazing garden any of us, I think, had ever seen.

It was hidden on one side by a half-destroyed building, on two others by brick walls, pierced for defence, on the fourth by a low structure which, from a distance, looked as if it might have something to do with the scientific raising of chickens. We entered through the archway of the half-destroyed building. Every one spoke in whispers. Cabbages, artichokes, haricots—such vegetables as a Frenchman enjoys—stretched in neat rows.

"Sometimes they get a trifle too much ploughing," the officer laughed softly. "The Germans, I should think, are not neat farmers, but here they do their work unasked."

We had not, it developed, been brought to see the garden, but its owner and his home. We approached the building which was like a chicken house. It was less than one story high, and the