We got out and gazed down, down over the River Meuse, from a
high vantage-point where a few months ago, we should have been blown to
bits, in five minutes. Our two officers pointed out in the misty autumn
landscape spots where some of the fiercest and most famous fights had
been. How the names they rattled off brought back anxious nights and
mornings when our first and only thoughts had been the _communiques_!
"Desperate battle on the Meuse." "Splendid stand at Douaumont." "New
attack on Morthomme." But nothing we saw helped out our imaginings.
There was just a vast stretch of desolation where vinelands once had
poured their perfume to the sun. The forts protecting Verdun were as
invisible as fairyland, I said. "As invisible as hell!" one of our
guides amended. And then to me, in a low voice unheard by pale and
trembling Mother Beckett, he added, "If Nature did not work to make ugly
things invisible, we could not let you come here, Mademoiselle. See how
high the grass has grown in the plain down there! In summer it is full
of poppies, red as the blood that feeds their roots. And it is only the
grasses and the poppies that hide the bones of men we've never yet put
underground. Nature has been one of our chief sextons, here at Verdun. I
wish you could have seen the poppies a few months ago, mixed with blue
marguerites and cornflowers--that we call 'bluets.' We used to say that
our dead were lying in state under the tricolour flag of France.
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