With one pair of eyes one can only see a fraction of what is in truth
going on. But the whole effect is one of vast and increasing industry,
of an intensity of determined effort, which thrills the mind hardly less
than the thought of the battle-line itself. "Yes, war _is_ work," writes
an officer who went through the Somme fighting, "much more than it is
fighting. This is one of the surprises that the New Army soldiers find
out here." Yet for the hope of the fighting moment men will go
cheerfully through any drudgery, in the long days before and after; and
when the fighting comes, will bear themselves to the wonder of
the world.
On we move, slowly, towards Fricourt, the shattered remnants of the
Mametz wood upon our left. More graveyards, carefully tended; spaces of
peace amid the universal movement. And always, on the southern horizon,
those clear lines of British trenches, whence sprang on July 1st, 1916,
the irresistible attack on Montauban and Mametz. Suddenly, over the
desolate ground to the west, we see a man hovering in mid-air,
descending on a parachute from a captive balloon that seems to have
suffered mishap.
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