And I Had Been
Especially Fortunate Since I Had Been With The Gunners (Notoriously
The Best Kind Of Men) And
Not in a big place but in a little town,
very old and silent, with more soldiers in its surrounding
Circle than
there were men, women, and children within its useless ramparts. It is
known to be very beautiful, and though I had not heard of this
reputation, I saw it to be so at once when I was first marched in, on
a November dawn, up to the height of the artillery barracks. I
remembered seeing then the great hills surrounding it on every side,
hiding their menace and protection of guns, and in the south and east
the silent valley where the high forests dominate the Moselle, and the
town below the road standing in an island or ring of tall trees. All
this, I say, I had permanently remembered, and I had determined,
whenever I could go on pilgrimage to Rome, to make this place my
starting-point, and as I stopped here and looked back, a little way
outside the gates, I took in again the scene that recalled so much
laughter and heavy work and servitude and pride of arms.
I was looking straight at the great fort of St Michel, which is the
strongest thing on the frontier, and which is the key to the circle of
forts that make up this entrenched camp. One could see little or
nothing of its batteries, only its hundreds of feet of steep brushwood
above the vineyards, and at the summit a stunted wood purposely
planted.
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