The fall of trees

When I was a boy, I would spend all my summer holidays at my grandparents' in Bourton-on-the-water, in Gloucestershire. Down Cemetery Lane there was a place of dens and hideaways we kids called 'the jungle' that wove amongst a row of mighty Elms. Alas, Dutch Elm took them all. I recall the sense of tragic, irrevocable loss when first I beheld the gap, all bereft, where only the summer before, grand, sheltering trees had stood.