Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 47

We route-marched today as a company. The whole of B let loose on a freezing, windy morning when the sun shone and the blood pulsed and one’s legs flung out untiringly. It was a most enjoyable little tour through Bonneville and Fieffes. The latter village with its twin, Montrelet, is more charmingly situated than any we have yet met in France. It flaunts red and purple roofs among the brown tree trunks in a most jumbled, picturesque mosaic and its old white church with the square tower and slate roof is quite Scotch in its simple, quaint design. Altogether a charming, little spot and one which in summer must be quite entrancing – viewed always with a respectful aloofness.

Prince very pertinently remarked, as we scrambled down the hill-side and feasted our eyes on the ripping little pictures in the valley below, ‘What a pity it stinks! And why is it that Art and a drainage scheme never will go together?’ I did not answer him, because I could not. Such things are beyond the mental capacity of a plain soldier such as I am.