In the description of the first day of the Battle of the Somme, death comes so thick that the narrative cannot pause for individuals. Songs "die" and men will, almost as readily.īirdsong has to imagine mechanised slaughter. "The songs died on their lips and the air was reclaimed by the birds." Someone higher up knows what is coming. They were digging a mass grave." A moment later, his men see it too. What could be its agricultural purpose? "Then he realised what it was. M arching to the front on the day before the Somme offensive, Stephen Wraysford leads his company down a track across farmland and comes upon something odd: "two dozen men, naked to the waist, digging a hole thirty yards square at the side of the path".
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |