Evening star., 1939-10-27
BY SIR PHILLIP GIBBS,

sodden neldS IN France, sounding the
cease fire. to World War? After
three days out here with the British
Army, who are a generation Younger
than those with whom once walked
l feel that must have slipped back
again into 1918. It is the same old
scene. exactly as it has lived in my
memory as kind of dream. We'd
nesday. when I went through French
villages and towns whose names are
burned INTO the pages of our own
history because of great battles in
their neighborhood. heavy rain beat
down on the cobblestones and poured
down the capes of the British
soldiers huddled close in lorries TAX
ing up supplies. 1t was wet, dark,
and cold. as it used to be so often
when our men were marching up to
the old trenches I went into some
of their blllets. They were lying on
straw in old barns belonging to farm
houses. with manure heaps in the
front yard, and the same sour stencil
which we had in our nostrils in the
old days.
ANY rats?" I asked one of the
men, and he grinned and said They
frlSk around but We don't take much
notice of them. 1t is nice and snug
and We manage to keep warm
Old Scenes from Tank.
Within few hours of coming out
I was inSioe a tank with two Off
GERS, once used to horses. who took
me for ride across fields and
bitches. I had my right cheek
against the barrel of machine gun,
and my left eve looked through a
telescope sight at the landscape
ahead. Just "a hours before 1 had
been IN Surrey village where boys
were playing football on the green.
Now, here l was in a coming tower
OF a tank lurching across a field,
where 20-ood years ago there was
great gun-fre and ceaseless chatter
OF machine guns. In this very field
once lay the dead bodies of German
soldiers. A short distance away was
a small hill. where one morning I
had seen cavalry charge in snow
storm. Now it was occupied by some
of our mechanical troops who had
never heard of that fight and stared
at me when I told them about it, as
though incredulous.
This army of ours in France was
mostly born after those things hap
pened Is years ago. but they seem
keen to hear about them from any
man like myself who was a witness
of that history. 1t makes me feel
like Rip Van Wrinkle coming back
to the scenes OF his youth, and it is
comforting for me to meet here and
there, other men. now senior officers
who belonged to that former world
OF war
We talked of the old times like
ghosts remembering ghosts. the re-
treat from Mons, the trench war;
fare on the Somme, the great bat
lies in which the flower of British
youth was mown down like grass.
One of them took me aside last
night.
AStudhtH vi A<lS HlUldIV.
DO you know he said, II can
hardly bring myself to believe that
it may happen all over again. Yes
terday l went to one of our war
cemeteries, and when 1 stood there
I felt kind of rage. and a kind of
anguish. The damned folly of life
has caught us again and the sons
of those who died are going to be
the victims of another evil spell Can
it be possible. or is it just night
mare from which we shall all wake
up?'
1t was very emotional because. like
myself, he had seen for little while
in this corner of France all those
battalions of youth. whose immortal
spirit seems to haunt every field and
farmstead and village and who seem
to live again in these battalions of
younger men-their sons-noW hold
ing the line out here.
These younger men are good
crowd, I think, though have not
made much contact with them yet.
They are putting up with foul
weather and all discomforts quite
cheerily and with no more grumbling
than human nature demands. They
are not SO tough. perhaps, as the old
crowd I used to know. Probably they
are better educated and more in
telligent. Their faces aren't so
square, but more finely cut, like
townsbred men. They speak the
Kings English without the old coun-
try dialects of the boys who came
from fields and farms in 1914. But
1 think they have the same stuff in
them and they belong to a mech
anized age and mechanical army.
Officers Just the Same.
AS for their officers, find no diff
ference. They are exactly like those
who in the last war used to be
pleased to invite me down to their
dugouts or take me up to their OBJ
servation posts. That little crowd
of tank officers I met yesterday had
the same way with them, finding the
same excuse for ironical laughter,
chatting in the same amusing way,
with lurid language and sense of
humor. One of them assured me
several times that as a tank officer
- H,a IA uri>a klA Tia sa;ss e,~~