REAPING THE SOMME CORN

Hokitika Guardian, 29 December 1920, Page 1

REAPING THE SOMME CORN

(By Newman Flower). BAPAUME. It sounded like a distant aerox>lane. And it seemed the sort of noise one associated with the Somme. But it was a threshing-machine up between La Boiselle and Pozieres, perched like some new-fangled thing of civilisation on the fringe of a waste of- weedscrambled trenches and shell holes Its appearance was as, surprising as was that of the first tank in the High-street at Flers. As far as I could discover, there are two threshing-machines on the Somme just now working from one harvest patch.to another. Sonic agricultural experts who went out tp the Somme during the war gave their opinion that corn would not grow there again, that the ground was poisoned.

But just now they are reaping first post-war .harvest pf Somme corn. It stands in red-gold stooks in patches over tlie Somme, full in the ear, plentiful and beauteous to look upon. One comes upon a patch of it amid a heave of chalk and weeds and the last traces of hell. The shells and brokenness of war lie piled beside this patch of stubble; heaped-up wire marks the boundaries of the field. * Not ' far from Wprlencourt two patches pf corp—fiy.e acres .each, per-, baps—qnd a first-,class pate!) .of mangold made me think of England.

An ancient personage was surveying )jjs “farm” carefully, It was all ho had, 50 hp told me. When the war-tide came it just washed out his home and everything that was his. He does not know now .even where his house was. Trenches massed with wire and wild convolvulus and poppies and red-eyed wild mignonette have changed the geography of his lands. Rut h.c was proud of his ten acres of eprn and his five acres of roots; never had lie. been so proud of a crop. His wife was dead, bis sons killed, but nature had given bun back this little bit of s.o].n,ce.

“It’s fine corn” he tpld me. “This lam? never knew better, and 1 grew cprn here for forty years.” “Rut the poison— He shrugged his' sjhojilders. “The Roche couid not kill Fran.ee,” was nil lie said. Jt is tji|e. Ten thousand guns concentrated on j) patch could not hinder the nijracle of seed-time. The soil of Pozieres, every inch ol it raked yards deep by Australian and German guns, was giving back' better corn than it had yielded for years. The Somme is the earth as it was wjien the first tares were put into it. Ijts weed-wastes show spots of gold where little harvests are gathering. Up at Le Sars n motor-plough was at work to-day, bumping and rocking like a lahpurjng boat—Rlijdgj’ t heavy work. But there will he grain at Le Sars next year. Down by Delville Wood, in which tjiey ar.e still searching for dead, and have 3,000 yet to find, they are stocking 'tlie now corn. ft js lik,e that. Death and Life as neighbours—as they always were.