The Orchestra in the Field

Odd, too, was the queer little plaintive noise made by the bullets, rather like a sobbing whine. They went sighing beside one, and the sound of their going was as clear as though some one had given a little moan or a bee had gone twanging past, and yet one could not see the thing,, themselves. It was only as though the air were stinging with invisible insects. This probably accounts for the unalarming nature of rifle tire as compared with shells or shrapnel. You simply, in the former case, do not feel under fire at all. I was put into a doorway, others took cover behind trees or in the ditch; then the order to retreat was given and I was hustled into the car and told to lie as flat as possible.

After a while we all retreated once more to the stretch of road the other side of Erpe, and there, over to the right, as one looked back toward the village, the artillery got into action, keeping it up steadily, so that it soon became monotonous, like an orchestra at dinner.

To the left, from the village of Lede, whose roofs showed red beside some dark patches of woods, all the peasants streamed toward us over the bright fields. One is used nowadays in Belgium to this perpetual procession, always going past in profile, bundle on back, children on arm, and helpless old folk in wheelbarrows, an endless frieze of bowed figures, dark against the clear autumn horizon. Yet every time the misery and futility and unnecessary cruelty of it all strike at the mind more deeply.