those distant ridges. But I cannot swear
that I see a single one. The sound of the bombarding is like the sound
of some titanic iron tank which a giant has set rolling rapidly down an
endless hill. We can hear the soft whine of scores of shells hurrying
all together through the air. Every five minutes or so a certain
howitzer, tucked into some hiding-place, vents its periodical growl, and
we can hear the huge projectile climbing slowly, up his steep gradient
with a hiss like that of water from a fire-hose. There is some other
heavy shell which passes us also, somewhere in the middle of his flight.
We cannot distinguish the report of the gun, and we do not hear the
shell burst; but at regular intervals we can quite distinctly hear the
monster making his way leisurely across our front.

We can distinguish in the uproar the occasional distant crash of a heavy
shell-burst. But not one burst can I see. The sun upon the mist makes
the distant hill crests just a vague blue screen against the sky.

There is one point on those hills where the two lines of trenches ought
to be clearly visible to us. With a good glass on a clear day you should
be able to distinguish anything as big as a man at that distance--much
more a line of men. Within less than an hour, at half-past seven, the
infantry will leave our trenches over twenty miles of front and launch a
great attack. The country town below us is Albert--behind the centre of
the British attack. One can see the tall, battered church tower rising
against the mist, with the gilt figure of the Virgin hanging at right
angles from the top like the arm of a bracket. On the hills beyond can
just be made out the woods of Fricourt behind the German line. They are
in the background behind Albert church tower. The white ruins of
Fricourt may be the blur in the background south of them. We shall be
attacking Fricourt to-day.

The Germans have not a single "sausage" in the air that I can see. The
sausage is the very descriptive name for the observation balloon. We
have twenty-one of them up, specking the sky as clearly as a
bacteriologist's slide is specked with microbes.

The Germans used to have a whole fleet of them looking down over us. But
a week ago our aeroplanes bombed all along the line, and eight of them,
more or less, went down in flames within a single afternoon.

7.10 a.m.--Six of our aeroplanes are flying over, very high, in a
wedge-shaped flight like that of birds. Single Bri