A grim scene, under the January sky! But in the very middle of the little cemetery some tender hand had just recently fastened a large bunch of white narcissus to one of the crosses.

We had passed no one that I could remember on the long ascent; yet the flowers were quite fresh and the thought of them--the only living and beautiful thing for miles in that scarred wilderness, over which a creeping fog was beginning to gather--stayed with me for days.
The Champagne-battle-field is indeed deeply interwoven with the whole history of the war.

The flower of the French Army and almost all the leading French Generals--Castelnau, Petain, Nivelle, Gouraud, have passed through its furnace.

But famous as it is, and for ever associated with the remarkable and fascinating personality of General Gouraud, which gives to it a _panache_ of its own, it has not the sacredness of Verdun.
We had spent the day before the expedition to Champagne at St.Mihiel and Verdun.

To St.Mihiel I will return in my next chapter.