lls descend among the
empty Nissen huts in Guillemont. Two drivers of A Battery were being
carried away on stretchers and the waggons were coming towards me at a
trot. They halted four hundred yards from the spot where they had been
shelled, and young Beale said they counted themselves lucky not to have
had more casualties.

The Boche by now had got his guns in position and began a two hours'
bombardment of Guillemont and its cross-roads. It was not until 7 P.M.
that Major Mallaby-Kelby returned. He was tired, but anxious to go
forward. "We are the advanced Brigade for to-morrow's show," he said.
"The battery positions are only 1600 yards from the Boche, but I think
they will be comparatively safe.... I want you all to come along and
we'll arrange a headquarters. I've got my eye on a sunken Nissen hut.
There's a section commander of another brigade in it, but it ought to
be big enough to hold us as well."

So the major, the adjutant, Wilde, and myself walked at a smart pace
along the road to Combles. The Boche shells were mostly going over our
heads, but whizz-bangs now and again hit the ground to left and right
of us; a smashed limber had not been cleared from the road, and fifty
yards short of the railway crossing four decomposing horses emitted a
sickening stench. "We'll have our headquarters waggon line along there
first thing to-morrow," announced the major, stretching a long arm
towards a side-road with a four-foot bank.

At the forsaken railway halt we turned off the roadway and followed the
line, obeying to the letter the major's warning to bend low and creep
along under cover of the low embankment, "Now we'll slip through here,"
said the major, after a six-hundred-yards' crawl. We hurried through
what had been an important German depot. There was one tremendous dump
of eight-gallon, basket-covered wine bottles--empty naturally; a street
of stables and dwelling-huts; a small mountain of mouldy hay; and
several vast barns that had been used for storing clothing and
material. Each building was protected from our bombers by rubble
revetments, fashioned with the usual German carefulness. "They shell
here pretty consistently," added the major encouragingly, and we made
for more open land that sloped up towards a well-timbered wood on the
wide-stretched ridge, a thousand yards away. The sparse-covered slopes
were dotted with living huts, all built since the Boche recovered the
ground in his March push. "A Battery h