Before I visited the recaptured villages in the zone of the actual
fighting, I had an idea that their evacuation was only temporary,
that as soon as the war line moved towards Germany the people of the
devastated villages would return to build their houses and till their
fields again. But I see now that not only are homes and villages
destroyed almost beyond recognition, but the very fields are destroyed.
They are wildernesses of shell craters; the old worked soil is buried
and great slabs of crude earth have been flung up over it. No ordinary
plough will travel over this frozen sea, let along that everywhere
chunks of timber, horrible tangles of rusting wire, jagged fragments of
big shells, and a great number of unexploded shells are entangled in the
mess. Often this chaos is stained bright yellow by high explosives, and
across it run the twisting trenches and communication trenches eight,
ten, or twelve feet deep. These will become water pits and mud pits into
which beasts will fall. It is incredible that there should be crops from
any of this region of the push for many years to come. There is no shade
left; the roadside trees are splintered stumps with scarcely the spirit
to put forth a leaf; a few stunted thistles and weeds are the sole
proofs that life may still go on.
The villages of this wide battle region are not ruined; they are
obliterated.
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