ivity
all along the vast battle line, enabling them to shape their plans
accordingly. "D Battery are a bit low in smoke shells," remarked the
colonel. "You'd better warn Major Veasey that he'll want some for
to-morrow morning."

"B Battery ... two casualties ... how was that?" he continued, before
signing another paper.

"About an hour ago, sir. Their mess cart was coming up, and got shelled
half a mile from the battery position. Two of the servants were
wounded."

"I've never seen an order worded quite like that," he smiled, when I
showed him a typed communication just arrived from the Divisional
Artillery, under whose orders we were now acting. It gave the map
co-ordinates of the stretch of front our guns were to fire upon in
response to S.O.S. calls. The passage the colonel referred to began--

"By kind consent of the colonel of the --th French Artillery,
the S.O.S. barrage on our front will be strengthened as
follows:..."

"Sounds as if the French colonel were lending his batteries like a
regimental band at a Bank Holiday sports meeting, sir," I ventured.

"Yes, we are learning to conduct war in the grand manner," smiled the
colonel, opening his copy of 'The Times.'

Our mess, under a couple of curved iron "elephants" stuck against the
bank, had looked a miserable affair when we came to it; but judicious
planting of sandbags and bits of "scrounged" boarding and a vigorous
clean-up had made it more habitable. Manning, the mess servant, had
unearthed from a disused dug-out a heavy handsome table with a
lacquered top, and a truly regal chair for the colonel--green plush
seating and a back of plush and scrolled oak--the kind of chair that
provincial photographers bring out for their most dignified sitters. By
the light of our acetylene lamp we had dined, and there had been two
rubbers of bridge, the colonel and the little American doctor bringing
about the downfall of Wilde, the signalling officer, and myself, in
spite of the doctor's tendency to finesse against his own partner. The
doctor had never played bridge before joining us, and his mind still
ran to poker. The Reconnaissance Officer of the --th Divisional
Artillery had rung up at 10 o'clock to tell us that an officer was on
his way with a watch synchronised to Corps time, and that we should
receive orders for the next morning's operation _via_ a certain Field
Artillery Brigade who were somewhere in our vicinity. I had told the
brigade clerk