IX

I have told how, before “The Big Push,” as we called the beginning of these battles, little towns of tents were built under the sign of the Red Cross. For a time they were inhabited only by medical officers, nurses, and orderlies, busily getting ready for a sudden invasion, and spending their surplus energy, which seemed inexhaustible, on the decoration of their camps by chalk-lined paths, red crosses painted on canvas or built up in red and white chalk on leveled earth, and flowers planted outside the tents⁠—all very pretty and picturesque in the sunshine and the breezes over the valley of the Somme.