ISBN: 9781458859044

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustra… More...

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER LXXII LOVE THAT HAS WINGS Under a blue sky--the forget-me-not blue of April--tiny blizzards--mere dust of snow--alternated with slashes of sleet. The road running east from Pophereele was villainous; bad pavi in the centre, and on either side morasses of mud from which rose at irregular intervals, scraggy poplars hacked by shell-fire and barked by the impact of innumerable iron-shod wheels An almost continuous line of transports bumped over the abominable pavi. Staff cars with British Brass Hats and red French kepis gold-braided, motor-guns and caissons, motor-lorries, motor-ambulances, motor-cyclists, pedestrians--chiefly Belgian peasants in tall peaked caps and long blue blouses, caked to the knees in sticky mire. Odd detachments of French Artillery, a squadron of Chasseurs in the new uniform of sallow blue--a half-battalion of magnificent, singing Canadians, loaded on the dark green motor-buses that used to run from Holloway to Westminster Bridge. Where French police were posted at cross-roads and a working-party of British Engineers were mending the highway--filling up shell-pits, and the cunningly-concealed emplacements where a battery of French 75''s had been in action a few months before, and the shrapnel-riddled houses of a small village yet harboured a few wizened Flemish peasants, was the point whence you first caught sight of the towers of the ancient capital of Western Flanders, rising above a bank of grey mist, sucked from the thawing earth by the warmth of the April sun. An historic city of gabled houses, a city on a river long lost and vaulted over--a city as famous through its industries of cloth-weaving, and the exquisite manufacture of cobwebby lace of Valenciennes, as precious to students of Art and Literature by reason of its st... Richard Dehan, Books, That Which Hath Wings; A Novel Of The Day Books, General Books LLC<