It was harvest-time in the summer of ’15, and Death was not the only reaper who went about the fields, although he was busy and did not rest even when the sun had flamed down below the belt of trees on the far ridge, and left the world in darkness.
On a night in August two of us stood in a cornfield, silent, under the great dome, staring up at the startling splendor of it. The red ball just showed above the far line of single trees which were black as charcoal on the edge of a long, straight road two miles away, and from its furnace there were flung a million feathers of flame against the silk-blue canopy of the evening sky. The burning colors died out in a few minutes, and the fields darkened, and all the corn-shocks paled until they became quite white, like rows of tents, under the harvest moon. Another night had come in this year of war.
Up Ypres way the guns were busy, and at regular intervals the earth trembled, and the air vibrated with dull, thunderous shocks.