shrapnel-flicked roofs with biscuit-tins and
strong strips of waterproof sheeting.

We passed through A Battery's garden at nine o'clock. "We won't disturb
them," said the colonel. "Bullivant is a morning sleeper, and is
certain not to be up after the night-firing." Round the corner,
however, stood a new officer who looked smart and fresh, with brightly
polished buttons and Sam Browne belt. He saluted in the nervously
precise fashion of the newly-joined officer. The colonel answered the
salute, but did not speak; and he and I worked our way--following the
track of a Tank--through and between hedges and among fruit-trees that
had not yet finished their season's output. We passed the huddled-up
body of a shot British soldier lying behind a fallen tree-trunk. We
were making for the quarry in which C and D Batteries were neighbours.
On a ditch-bordered road we met ten refugees, sent back that morning
from a hamlet a mile and a half away, not yet considered safe from the
Boche. The men, seeing us, removed their hats and lowered them as far
as the knee--the way in which the Boche had commanded them to proffer
respect. One aged woman in a short blue skirt wore sabots, and British
puttees in place of stockings.

There had been a mishap at D Battery in the early hours of the morning.
Their five useable 4.5 howitzers had been placed in a perfect how.
position against the bank of the quarry. In the excitement of
night-firing a reinforcement gunner had failed to "engage the
plungers," the muzzle had not been elevated, and the shell, instead of
descending five thousand yards away, had hit the bank twelve yards in
front. The explosion killed two of the four men working that particular
how. and wounded a third, and knocked out the N.C.O. in charge of
another how. forty yards distant. The colonel examined the howitzer,
looked gravely severe, and said that an officers' inquiry would be held
next day. He asked Major Bartlett of C Battery, who was housed in a
toy-sized cottage in the centre of the quarry, how his 18-pdrs. were
shooting; and mentioned that the infantry were apprehensive of
short-shooting along a road close to our present front line, since it
lay at an awkward angle for our guns. Major Bartlett, self-possessed,
competent, answered in the way the colonel liked officers to answer--no
"I thinks": his replies either plain "Yes" or "No." Major Bartlett gave
chapter and verse of his battery-shooting during the two previous days