Page:Wounded Souls.djvu/13



BOOK ONE: THE END OF THE ADVENTURE

I

It is hard to recapture the spirit of that day we entered Lille. Other things, since, have blurred its fine images. At the time, I tried to put down in words the picture of that scene when, after four years' slaughter of men, the city, which had seemed a world away, was open to us a few miles beyond the trenchlines, the riven trees, the shell-holes, and the stench of death, and we walked across the canal, over a broken bridge, into that large town where—how wonderful it seemed!—there were roofs on the houses, and glass in the windows and crowds of civilian people waiting for the first glimpse of British khaki.

Even now remembrance brings back to me figures that I saw only for a moment or two but remain sharply etched in my mind, and people I met in the streets who told me the story of four years in less than four minutes and enough to let me know their bitterness, hatred, humiliations, terrors, in the time of the German occupation I have re-read the words I wrote, hastily, on a truculent typewriter which I cursed for its twisted ribbon, while the vision of the day was in my eyes. They