up spouts of black slimy mud. The dootor and I sourried back to the shelter of the cottage wall. Another shell and another. A lieutenant-colonel of infantry, on horseback, swung violently round the corner and joined us. Three more shells fell. Then silence. "These sudden bursts of fire are very disconcerting, aren't they?" remarked the colonel as he mounted and rode away. "Say, now!" said the doctor "I think we'll call back and have that whiskyand-soda Major Bullivant offered us before we resume our journey."

to me.

"We'll take a trip up to the 'O.P. ' this morning," said the colonel to me at breakfast on October 28th. The wind was sufficiently drying to make walking pleasant, and to tingle the cheeks. The sun was a tonic; the turned-up earth smelt good. Our Headquarter horses had been put out to graze in the orchard-a Boohe 4.2 had landed in it the night before-and they were frolicking mightily, Wilde's charger "Blackie" being especially industrious shooing off one of the mules from the colonel's mare. There was a swirling and a skelter of brown and yellow leaves at the gap in the lane where we struck across a vege. table garden. A square patch torn from a bed-sheet flew taut from the top of a clump of long hop-poles-the sign, before the village was freed, to warn our artillery observers that civilians lived in the cottage olose by. Similar, now out-of-date, white flage swung to the breeze from

many roof-tops in the village. "The extraordinary feature,' the colonel mentioned, "was the number of Tricolours that the French had been able to hide from the Germans; they put them out when we came through." He nodded a pleasant good-day to a good-looking young staff officer who stood on the steps of the house in the pavé-laid street where one of our infantry brigades had made their headquarters. The staff officer wore a pair of those fullbelow-the-knee "plus 4 at golf" breeches that the Gardee affoots. "For myself, I wouldn't wear that kind of breeches unless I were actually on duty with the Guards," said the colonel rather sardonically"they are so intensely ugly." A tinny piano tinkled at a corner house near the roofless churoh and the Grande Place. In two-foot letters on the walls in the square were painted, "Hommes" on some houses, "Femmes " on others: reminders of the Boohe method of segregating the sexes before he evacuated the inhabitants he wanted to evacuate. Only five civilians remained in the village now, three old men and two feeble deorepit women, numbed and heart-sick with the war, but obstinate in olinging to their homesteads. Already some of our men were patching leaky, shrapnelflicked roofs with biscuit-tins and strong strips of waterproof sheeting.

We passed through A Battery's garden at nine o'clock, "We won't disturb them," said the colonel. "Bullivant is a

morning sleeper, and is certain not to be up after the nightfiring.' Round the corner, however, stood a new officer who looked smart and fresh, with brightly polished buttons and Sam Browne belt. He saluted in the nervously preoise fashion of the newlyjoined officer. The colonel answered the salute, but did not speak; and he and I worked our way-following the track of a Tank-through and between hedges and among fruit-trees that had not yet finished their season's output. We passed the huddled-up body of a shot British soldier lying behind a fallen treetrunk. We were making for the quarry in which C and D Batteries were neighbours. On a ditch-bordered road we met ten refugees, sent back that morning from a hamlet a mile and a half away, not yet considered safe from the Boohe. The men, seeing us, removed their hats and lowered them as far as the knee-the way in which the Boche had commanded them to proffer respect. One aged woman in a short blue skirt wore sabots, and British puttees in place of stockings.

There had been a mishap at D Battery in the early hours of the morning. Their five useable 4.5 howitzers had been placed in a perfect how. position against the bank of the quarry. In the excitement of night-firing a reinforcement gunner had failed to "engage the plungers," the muzzle had not been elevated, and the shell, instead of descending five

thousand yards away, had hit the bank twelve yards in front. The explosion killed two of the four men working that particular how. and wounded a third, and knocked out the N.C.O. in charge of another how. forty yards distant. The colonel examined the howitzer, looked gravely severe, and said that an officers' inquiry would be held next day. He asked Major Bartlett of C Battery, who was housed in a toy-sized cottage in the centre of the quarry, how his 18-pdrs. were shooting; and mentioned that the infantry were apprehensive of short-shooting along a road close to our present front line, since it lay at an awkward angle for our guns. Major Bartlett, self-possessed, competent, answered in the way the colonel liked officers to answer-no "I thinks": his replies either plain "Yes" or "No." Major Bartlett gave chapter and verse of his batteryshooting during the two previous days, and said that every round had been observed fire.

we

Walking briskly-the colonel was the fittest man of fortyfive I have known mounted a slope of turnipfields and fresh-ploughed land. There was a plantation five hundred yards to right of us, and another one five hundred yards to left of us; into the bigger one on the left two 5'9's dropped as we came level with it. Splashes of newly thrownup earth behind tree-clumps, against banks and alongside hedges, showed the short breasthigh trenches, some six yards long, in which the infantry

had fought a few days before. Fifteen hundred yards away the clustering trees of the great forest where the enemy lay broke darkly against the horizon. "You see that row of tall straight trees in front of the forest, to the right of the gabled house where the white flag is flying," said the colonel, pulling out his glasses -"that's the present front line." Three ponderous booms from that direction denoted trench mortars at work.

We descended the other side of the slope, keeping alongside a hedge that ran towards a red roofed farm. In two separate places about three yards of the hedge had been out away. "Boche soldiering!" remarked the colonel informatively. "Enabled him to look along both sides of the hedge and guard against surprise when our infantry were coming up.

"We may as well call at Battalion Headquarters," he added when we reached the farm. In a wide cellar, where breakfast had not yet been oleared away, we came upon a lieutenant-colonel, twentyfour years of age, receiving reports from his company commanders. Suave in manner, olear-eyed, not hasty in making judgments, he had learnt most things to be known about real war at Thiepval, Sehwaben Redoubt, and other bloody places where the Division had made history; wounded again in the August advance, he had refused to be kept from these final phases. The colonel and

he understood each other.

There was the point whether liaison duties between infantry and artillery could be more usefully conducted in the swiftchanging individual fighting of recent recent days from infantry brigade or from infantry battalion; there were conflicting statements by junior officers upon short-shooting, and they required sifting; a few words had to be said about the battalion's own stretch of front and its own methods of harassing the enemy. A few crisp questions and replies, all bearing upon realities, a smile or two, a consultation of maps, and another portion of the colonel's task for that day was completed.

We walked across more ploughed land towards & sunken road, where infantry could be seen congregated in that sort of dolce far niente which, on the part of infantry in support, is really rather deceptive.

A "ping-ping!" whisked past, and stung us to alertness. "Hullo machine-guns!" ejaculated the colonel, and we quickened our steps toward the sunken road.

A major and a subaltern of the machine-gunners olambered down the opposite bank.

"I believe I've spotted that fellow, sir," burst forth the major with some excitement. "I think he's in a house over there might be a target for you... bullets have been coming from that way every now and again for two days. . . I'll show you, if you like, sir."

The major and the colonel

orept out on top of the bank, and made for a shell-hole forty yards in front. I followed I followed

We

The colonel looked through his glasses.

The major spoke again. “Do you see the square piece removed from the church spire, sir? . . . That looks like an 'O.P.,' doesn't it?"

The colonel opened his map and pointed to a tiny square patch. "I make that to be the house," he said. "Do you agree?"

"Yes, sir,” replied the major. "We thought at first it was the house you see marked four hundred yards more southeast; but I believe that is really the one."

"I've got an 'O.P.' farther forward. I'm going up there now. We'll have a shot at the house," responded the colonel simply.

The major went back to the sunken road. The colonel and I walked straight ahead, each of us in all probability wondering whether the Boche machine-gunner was still on duty, and whether he would regard us as worthy targets. That, at any rate, was my own thought. We strode out over the heavygoing across a strip of ploughed land, and heard the whizz of machine-gun bullets once more -not far from the spot we had just left. We did not speak until we descended to a dip in

...

Before we came to the crest of the slope the colonel stopped. "We're in view from the Boche front line from the top," he said sharply. "The 'O.P.' is a hole in the ground. . . . You had better follow me about twenty yards behind. . . . And keep low. . . . Make for the fifth telegraph - pole from the left that you will see from the top."

He moved off. I waited and then followed, my mind concentrated at first on the fifth telegraph-pole the colonel had spoken about. There was no shelling at this moment. A bird twittered in a hedge close by; the smell of grass and of clean earth rose strong and sweet. No signs or sound of war; only sunshine and trees and

The colonel's voice came sharp as whipcord. as whipoord. "Keep down keep down!" I bent almost double and walked fast at the same time. My mind turned to September 1916, when I walked along Pozières Ridge, just before the Couroellette fight, and was shouted at for not crouching down by my battery commander. But there were shells abroad that day.

. I almost laughed to

down my face as I removed my tin hat; my hair was wet and tangled.

Johns, a subaltern of D Battery, was in the pit with a couple of telephonists. He was giving firing instructions to the battery.

"What are you firing at, Johns?" inquired the colonel, standing on a step out in the side of the pit, and leaning his elbows on the parapet. "Two hundred yards behind that road, sir-trench mortars suspected there, sir." He called, "All guns parallel!" down the telephone.

"Don't you keep your guns parallel when you aren't firing?" asked the colonel quickly. "Isn't that a battery order?"

Johns flushed and replied, "No, sir. . . . We left them as they were after night-firing."

"But don't you know that it is an Army order-that guns should be left parallel?" "Y-e-es, sir."

"Why don't you obey it, then?"

"I thought battery commanders were allowed their choice. I-___"

The colonel out poor Johns short. "It's an Army order, and has to be obeyed. Army orders are not made for nothing. The reason that order was made was because so many battery commanders were making their own choice in the matter. Consequently there was trouble and delay in 'handing-over.' So the Army made a standard ruling."

Then, as was always the case, the colonel softened in

manner, and told Johns to do his shooting just as if he were not looking on.

The new subaltern of A Battery suddenly lowered himself into the pit. The colonel brightened. "You see the grey house over there!. Can you see it? ... Good! An enemy machine-gun is believed to be there. ... I want you to fire on that house. There's the point on the map."

"Sorry, sir, my wire to the battery is not through yetI've just been out on it."

The colonel looked at his watch. "It's half-past eleven now. Your line ought to be through by this time."

"Yes, sir; it's been through once, but it went half an hour ago. I expect my signallers back any minute."

"Very well! you can be working out your switch angle and your angle of sight while you wait."

Johns had now got his battery to work, and the sight of his shells bursting among the hedges and shrubs fired his fired his Celtic enthusiasm and dissipated the nervousness he had felt in the colonel's presence. "Look at that! isn't that that a fine burst?" he called, olutohing my arm,-" and see that one. Isn't it a topper?"

An exclamation from the colonel, who had stood sphinxlike, his glasses directed upen the grey house, made every one turn, "I've spotted him," he called, his voice vibrating. "He's at the topfloor window nearest to us. ... There he goes again.