Skip to main content

Full text of "TheCompleteMemoirsOfGeorgeSherston"

See other formats


ing that after all I am nothing but what the Brigadier
calls "a potential killer of Huns". . . .

Beyond the rumour even of Paradise come,
There) out of all remembrance > make our home.

June 5. (930p.m.) Yesterday was the first bad day
IVe had lor several weeks and I finished up feeling
terribly nervy. This morning I got up, with great
difficulty, at 6.30, and at 7.45 we started out for a
Brigade Field Day. Did an attack from 10.30 to 2.30,
but it wasn't a strenuous one for me as I was told to
e'become a casualty" soon after the sooo-yard assault
began, and I managed to make my way unobtrusively
to an old windmill on a.ridge near by. There I lay
low as long as I dared, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Below the hill I could see the troops advancing by
rushes over the rye-grass of some luckless farmer.
Larks were singing overhead and the sunlit country-
side was swept by the coursing shadows of great white
clouds. I'd escaped from soldiering for an hour, and
was utterly content to sit up there among the rafters,
watching the beams that filtered through chinks and
listening to the creaking silence—alone in that place
which smelt of old harvests, and where the rumour of
war was a low rumble of guns, very far away. So I
am in good spirits again this evening, and my nerve-
furies have sailed away into the blue air.

When I rode into the transport-lines this afternoon
I saw young Stonethwaite drudging at cleaning a
limber, supervised by a military policeman.

He has still got ten days to do, of his 28 days "Field
Punishment No. 2" for coming on parade drunk at

761