War Classics (17 page)

12  RAMC ambulances collect the wounded from a battlefield.

13  War graves by a railway line. ‘May the earth lie light – be light – under the wooden crosses.’

14  The ‘grim, grey, ghastly trees’ of a deserted battlefield.

15  The remains of a front-line village. ‘I could see nothing but ruins, shattered more terribly than any I had yet seen.’

16  The graves of two members of the Chinese Labour Corps. ‘A Chinese Labour Corps had just passed over this part and tidied it up.’

17  The statue of the Virgin balanced on top of Albert Cathedral, before it was finally brought down by British shelling. ‘The Virgin has fallen, you see,’ said the officer soflty beside me.’

18  British troops march into the remains of Cambrai. ‘I felt as if there were ghosts beside us, ghosts looking down on us from the gaps in the walls.’

19  Staff of St Hilda’s College, Oxford, October 1919, by Bassano. Christina is standing in the back row on the right. This photo was taken just months after her return from France. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

20  Two sketches from the
Book of the 12th Battalion Scottish Rifles
by David Barrogill Keith. (By permission of Caithness Archives)

21  Postcard commemorating the Battle of Loos, sent from Barrogill to Christina, 26 December 1915. (By permission of Caithness Archives)

22  Oil painting of Stromness, Orkney by David Barrogill Keith.

I
t was the ambition of each one of us to get up the line if we could. We all had red passes, which meant that our movement was restricted and we might not leave the Area in which we were stationed. But if there had been a reason for keeping us there before, there surely was none now. I asked the Chief one day if I could not go. He looked grave. ‘You will have to get permission from the APM [Assistant Provost Marshal],' he told me, ‘and in any case you cannot go alone. Besides, there's no food up the line. I think you had better wait.'

In sum, that was what all the officers told me. ‘You can't possibly do it by rail,' they said. ‘Wait a little longer and I'll take you up in my car.' But the longer we waited, the less interesting it would be. I wanted to go at once. Some of our men workers had been up – into the Zone des Armées – for just a day. They had run all sorts of risks to do it. I wanted to go. But I did not know the APM. A good friend of mine, however, did. He was the man who was responsible to the APM for our good conduct.