A succession of cloudbursts. Some of the “bivvies” were filled with water and slush and their cursing occupants are now digging new ones. The ground is churned into a frightful mash, something like one of our very worst stews.
My contribution to the day’s humour was to overbalance with a mess-tin full of soup in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. Sketched the famed “Rosignol Farm”, the first isolated farm I have seen in the district. Watched a shoot by some long-range heavies, flinging light amber smoke-rings up into the air. My ear caught by a soft but ubiquitous twittering from a vast cloud of swallows, moving round and round in the sky, ever reinforced by smaller clouds and bands of stragglers. Was I witnessing the gathering of the clans preparatory to migration? As they circled in interwoven flight, their wings caught the light with a curious flickering effect, somewhat like sunlight on a shallow stream, or (hideous simile) the jiggering of the kinematograph.
[Lincoln Lee, unidentified image of farm – potentially ‘Rosignol Farm’, c1918]
Walk March 