smooth cold breech-block, which shines like silver.     

       “We never got our chance to fire you, old girl,” is my thought: “but we’d have done our bit, if the Hun tanks had come, you and I. If the chance does come, you’ll have to play the game with some other chap now.”     

       We’re in the sunken road, climbing the ridge where the chalk gleams white as snow in the darkness. Some runners go past us, smoking cigarettes. They belong to the relieving troops; none of our men would do that. A cigarette shows up like a lamp from this point of vantage. I halt the men and order them to put out their cigarettes.     

       We’re on the crest now, where a sentry challenges. To the right and left shells are falling with a sullen crash. Our faces are turned towards the west, where the horizon is still faintly flame-coloured and evening has not yet sunk into night. To our right the splinted tower of Mount St. Eloi points a martyred finger at the clouds. Beneath our feet runs the Concrete Road, built at such sacrifice across the torn battlefield. All our transport comes up along this route, as the Hun knows well; he makes it the special target of his harassing fire. We note the new hits which the enemy has scored on it since last we made the journey. The ground is ploughed with shells on either side; here and there one finds black pools of blood, dead horses and broken limbers. From craters and places of concealment our forward guns belch fire. Their flash is hidden from the enemy by the ridge; but he has guessed their approximate locations, and searches and sweeps day and night in an effort to find and destroy them. Now and then, like the blast of a furnace, a torrent of flame shoots up where he has exploded an ammunition dump. Against the swift and momentary illumination one sees the shadowy figures of men running and dropping into shell-holes. The spectacle of death fails to move us. We have become too used to dying.     

       As we plod along under our heavy loads of instruments, kit, revolvers and reels of wire, we spread out so that one shell may not get the lot of us. My men are singing; from the words I gather an idea of what is happening in their minds:     

       I said “Good-bye” to the flowers     

       And “Good-bye” to the trees,     

  

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