springing verdure and
bloom and blossom. Even the trapping of war, the fighting machine
itself, wears a holiday or--at most--an Easter-peace-manoeuvre
appearance. A heavy battery has its guns so carefully concealed, so
bowered in green, that it is only the presence of the lounging gunners
and close, searching looks that reveal a few inches of muzzle peering
out towards the hill crest in front. Scattered about behind the guns,
covered with beautiful green turf, shadowed by growing trees, are the
dwelling-places of the gunners, deep 'dug-outs,' with no visible sign
of their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. Out
in the open a man sits with a pair of field-glasses, sweeping the sky.
He is the aeroplane look-out, and at the first sign of a distant speck
in the sky or the drone of an engine he blows shrilly on his whistle;
every man dives to earth or under cover, and remains motionless until
the whistle signals all clear again. An enemy aeroplane might drop to
within pistol shot and search for an hour without finding a sign of the
battery.

When the regiment swerves off the main road and moves down a winding
side-track over open fields, past tree-encircled farms, and along by
thick-leaved hedges, it passes more of these Jack-in-the-Green
concealed batteries. All wear the same look of happy and indolent
ease. Near one is a stream, and the gunners are bathing in an
artificially made pool, plunging and splashing in showers of glistening
drops. They are like school boys at a picnic. It seems utterly
ridiculous to think that they are grim fighting men whose business in
life for months past and for months to come is to kill and kill, and to
be killed themselves if such is the fortune of war. Another battery of
field artillery passes on the road. But even here, shorn of their
concealing greenery, in all the bare working-and-ready-for-business
apparel of 'marching order,' there is little to suggest real war.
Drivers and gunners are spruce and neat and clean, the horses are sleek
and well fed and groomed till their skins shine like satin in the sun,
the harness is polished and speckless, bits and stirrup-irons and
chains and all the scraps of steel and brass twinkle and wink in bright
and shining splendour. The ropes of the traces--the last touch of
pride in perfection this, surely--are scrubbed and whitened. The whole
battery is as spick and span, as complete and immaculate, as if it were
waiting t