Background
The French name for the wood was Bois des Foureaux (now called Bois des Fourcaux) but to the British infantry who fought there, it was known as High Wood and, like neighbouring Delville Wood, it earned an evil reputation. The stench of rotting corpses in the wood was overwhelming in summer and it inspired E.A. MacKintosh to pen a parody of Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green:
" High Wood to Waterlot Farm,
All on a summer's day,
Up you get to the top of the trench
Though you're sniped at all the way.
If you've got a smoke helmet there
You'd best put it on if you could,
For the wood down by Waterlot Farm
Is a bloody high wood. "
Read more about this topic: High Wood
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)