e officer's whistle, would drop back
again and pick up the cigarettes they had placed in the grass and begin
leisurely to swab out their rifles with a piece of dirty rag on a
cleaning rod. Down in the plain below there was apparently nothing at
which they could shoot except the great shadows of the clouds drifting
across the vast checker-board of green and yellow fields, and
disappearing finally between the mountain passes beyond. In some places
there were square dark patches that might have been bushes, and nearer to
us than these were long lines of fresh earth, from which steam seemed to
be escaping in little wisps. What impressed us most of what we could see
of the battle then was the remarkable number of cartridges the Greek
soldiers wasted in firing into space, and the fact that they had begun to
fire at such long range that, in order to get the elevation, they had
placed the rifle butt under the armpit instead of against the shoulder.
Their sights were at the top notch. The cartridges reminded one of
corn-cobs jumping out of a corn-sheller, and it was interesting when the
bolts were shot back to see a hundred of them pop up into the air at the
same time, flashing in the sun as though they were glad to have done
their work and to get out again. They rolled by the dozens underfoot,
and twinkled in the grass, and when one shifted his position in the
narrow trench, or stretched his cramped legs, they tinkled musically. It
was like wading in a gutter filled with thimbles.

Then there began a concert which came from just overhead--a concert of
jarring sounds and little whispers. The "shrieking shrapnel," of which
one reads in the description of every battle, did not seem so much like a
shriek as it did like the jarring sound of telegraph wires when some one
strikes the pole from which they hang, and when they came very close the
noise was like the rushing sound that rises between two railroad trains
when they pass each other in opposite directions and at great speed.
After a few hours we learned by observation that when a shell sang
overhead it had already struck somewhere else, which was comforting, and
which was explained, of course, by the fact that the speed of the shell
is so much greater than the rate at which sound travels. The bullets
were much more disturbing; they seemed to be less open in their warfare,
and to steal up and sneak by, leaving no sign, and only to whisper as
they passed. They moved under