A pup, evidently unused to motor traffic on this bad bit of road, took
a chance and tried to dash across in front of the car but
miscalculated his distance and was bowled into the ditch.
It was curious to see one field ploughed with shells and full of
holes, and the next field with prominently placed new signs bearing
the inscription, "It is forbidden to walk over the growing grain." As
we passed through the rolling land of Belgium under the brow of "The
Scherpenberg," with Mount Kemmel over to the right honeycombed with
dugouts, it was difficult to believe that, locked in a death grapple,
not three miles away, were thousands of soldiers living underground
like moles, and that at any moment the air might be filled with shells
carrying death and destruction.
At the end of a peaceful day we reached our little French home town,
glad to have seen our friends in their new area by the famous old city
of the Flemish weavers.
Springtime had come in truth; the hedges of Northern France were
beginning to bloom white, and the wild flowers were quite thick in the
forest of Nieppe near Merville. It was the time in Canada when the
spring feeling suddenly got into the blood, when one threw work to the
winds and took to the woods in search of the first violets.
On the twenty-second day of April the very essence of spring was in
the air; I felt as if I had to go out into the open and watch the
birds and bees, loll in the sun, and do nothing.
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