shell-fire. To the right there is another village equally desolate. Still further in front there are two more villages which have been trampled into dust by attacks and counter-attacks. Every tree is dead. Every wood has been uprooted. Every Calvary, with its suffering Christ, has been knocked down. When the morning clears I shall be able to see for miles across all the intricate trench system of the Huns, defence line behind defence line, to the barricade of cities on the eastward edge of the plain. In those cities life seems to follow its normal round. The clock in the town-hall of Douai is so accurate that we can set our watches by it. Plumes of smoke puff lazily from chimneys and drift across the red roofs of houses. Through a telescope one can pick up lorries speeding along roads and trains steaming in and out of cuttings. Throughout the day we search hollows and woods for the flash of guns, taking bearings to them when they have been found. Early morning is the time to spot infantry movement. The men approach out of the distance in twos and threes. They may be carrying-parties or they may be runners. By careful watching you get to know their routes and even the places to which they are going. You telephone back the target to the guns and keep them “standing to” until your victims have reached a favorable point, then you send back the order for one gun to fire. You observe where the shell lands, send back a rapid correction and, when you’ve got the correct line and range, bring all your guns to bear upon the target, adjusting the range and line of your shots as they run. In the dull round of an observing officer’s life these little spells of man hunting are the chief excitement. There is another, however—when the enemy has spotted you and sets to work to knock you out. Neither of these diversions is likely to happen for some time yet; it’s too early. Long scarves of mist are swaying low along the ground. The more distant landscape is a sea of vaporous billows, above which only the blackened fangs of trees show up.     

       One day the greatest excitement of all may happen: camouflaged in a pit to my right we have an anti-tank gun; in the dug-out below me I have a specially selected detachment of gunners. Should the Hun make up his mind to break through, he would certainly employ tanks—perhaps some of our own, which he captured further south. Any one of these fine mornings when night is melting into dawn, our great chance may come. Then our gallant little thirteen-pounder, which has held 

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