Back into the fields of Flanders

The first night we came to the Douve was a pretty calm one, comparatively speaking; yet one poor chap in the leading platoon, going through the farm courtyard I mentioned, got shot right through the forehead. No doubt whatever it was an accidental bullet, and not an aimed shot, as the Germans could not have possibly seen the farm owing to the darkness of the night.

Secondly – improvised graveyards Bairnsfather came across by a Flanders farm where he was billeted for a while.

The only difference about our farm was, we had a moat. Very superior to all the cluster in consequence. Sometime or other the moat must have been very effective; but when I was there, only about a quarter of it contained water. The other three-quarters was a sort of bog, or marsh, it surface broken up by and large shell holes.

Going out into the fields behind the farm, I found more French graves, enclosed in the rectangular graveyard that had been roughly made with barbed wire and posts, each grave surmounted with a dead soldier’s hat. Months of rough wintry weather had beaten down the faded cloth cap into the clay mound, and had started the obliteration of the lettering on the cross. A few more months; and cross, mound and hat will all have merged back into the fields of Flanders.