s devastated. In this present area there is green
grass between the rims of the craters. But not enough green grass to
matter. The general colour of the country on the British side is
brown--all gradations of it--from thin, sloppy, grey-brown mud, trampled
liquid with the feet of men and horses, to dull, putty-like brown mud so
thick that, when you get your foot into it, you have a constant problem
of getting it out again.

For it is the country over which the fight has passed. As we advance, we
advance always on to the area which has been torn with shells--where the
villages and the trenches and the surface of the green country have been
battered and shattered, first by our guns and then by the German guns,
until they have made a hell out of heaven.

And always just ahead of us, a mile or so behind the German lines, there
is heaven smiling--you can see it clearly; in this part, up the
opposite slope of the wide, open valley. There is the green country on
which the Germans are always being driven back, and up which this
monstrous engine of war has not yet begun its slow, gruesome climb.
There are the beautiful green woods fading to soft autumn brown and
yellow--the little red roofs in the trees, an empty village in the
foreground--you can see the wet mud shining in its street and the white
trickle of water down the centre of the road.

Down our long muddy hill-slope, near where the knuckles of it dip out of
sight into the bottom of the valley, one notices a line of heads. In
some places they are clear and in others they cannot be seen. But we
guess that it is the line ready to go out.

At the top of the opposite up-slope the tower of Bapaume town hall
showed up behind the trees. We made out that the hands of the clock were
at the hour--but I have heard others say that they were permanently at
half-past five, and others a quarter past four--it is one of those
matters which become very important on these long dark evenings, and
friendships are apt to be broken over it. The clock tower,
unfortunately, disappeared finally at eighteen minutes past eleven
yesterday morning, so the controversy is never likely to be settled.

The bombardment broke out suddenly from behind us. We saw the long line
of men below clamber on to the surface, a bayonet gleaming here and
there, and begin to walk steadily between the shell-holes towards the
edge of the hill. From where we were you could not see the enemy's
trench in the valley--onl