It was curious to think
that, just a little way over there, across a field or two, the German
operator was doing the same thing, and that in an hour he would be
receiving the French message.
All the batteries of the army corps are--or were--controlled from that
little station. The colonel in charge came out to greet us, and to him
Captain Boisseau gave General Foch's request to show me batteries in
action.
The colonel was very willing. He would go with us himself. I conquered
a strong desire to stand with the telephone building between me and
the German lines, now so near, and looked about. A French aeroplane
was overhead, but there was little bustle and activity along the road.
It is a curious fact in this war that the nearer one is to the front
the quieter things become. Three or four miles behind there is bustle
and movement. A mile behind, and only an occasional dispatch rider, a
few men mending roads, an officer's car, a few horses tethered in a
wood, a broken gun carriage, a horse being shod behind a wall, a
soldier on a lookout platform in a tree, thickets and hedges that on
occasion spout fire and death--that is the country round Ypres and
just behind the line, in daylight.
We were between Ypres and the Allied line, in that arc which the
Germans are, as I write, trying so hard to break through.
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