place, and the fire of our flying-men had been deadly accurate. I walked through the ruin out into the station square. It was empty of all life, but one human figure was there all alone. It was the dead body of a young German soldier, lying with outstretched arms, on his back, in a pool of blood. His figure formed a cross there on the cobblestones, and seemed to me a symbol of all that youth which had been sacrificed by powers of monstrous evil. His face was still handsome in death, the square, rough-hewn face of a young peasant.
There was the tap-tap-tap of a German machine-gun, somewhere on the right of the square. As I walked forward, all my senses were alert to the menace of death. It would be foolish, I thought, to be killed at the end of the war—for surely the end was very near? And then I had a sudden sharp thought that perhaps it would be well if this happened. Why should I live when so many had died? The awful job was done, and my small part in it. I had seen it through from start to finish, for it was finished but for a few days of waiting. It might be better to end with it, for all that came afterwards would be anti-climax. I remember raising my head and looking squarely round at that staccato hammering of the German machine-gun, with an intense desire that a bullet might come my way. But I went on untouched into the town. . . .
As in Courtrai, a fury of gun-fire overhead kept the people in their houses. Our field batteries were firing over the city and the enemy was answering. Here and there I saw a face peering out of a broken window, and then a door opened, and a man and woman appeared behind it, with two thin children. The woman thrust out a skinny hand and grasped mine, and began to weep. She talked passionately, with a strange mingling of rage and grief.
