started on the road. The ground for these emplacements
was the orchard of a chateau. While we were there a whistle blew three
times, an order shouted; immediately the guns were covered up and the men
took cover. The enemy had sent an aeroplane to locate them. If they could
once find them, hundreds of shells would rain on this spot in a few
minutes. At a few yards' distance I couldn't see the guns myself. The
"Hows" were firing at a house in the German lines which had been giving
trouble. In three rounds they got it and then started in to "dust" the
neighborhood. Of course, the firing is indirect. The officers and men who
are with the guns don't see the effects. Apparently they fire straight
away in the air. The observation is done by the forward observing officer
in the fire trenches who corrects them by 'phone.

After the appointed number of rounds had been fired, we adjourned to the
chateau, a fine house, marble mantelpiece, plaster ceilings, gilt mirror
panels, etc. It has still a few pieces of furniture left, no carpets, most
of the windows are smashed; shells have visited it, but chiefly in
splinters. I saw one picture on the wall with a hole drilled in by a
shrapnel bullet which had gone clean through as though it had been
drilled. It hadn't smashed the glass otherwise. From a window of the room,
which the officers use as a mess, a neat row of graves is to be seen.
Outside there are great shell holes, most of them big enough to bury a
horse. Suddenly a shriek and a deafening explosion occurred in the garden.
"Sixty-pound shrapnel! Evening hate," said an artillery sub. We left! We
had been sent up to see the guns fire and not to be fired at.

To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that
was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be
left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their
merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a
wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman's undergarments. A
grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down
through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has
been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be
continued any time, is thrilling. Churches are always hateful to the
Germans. They shell them all; bits of the organs are wrapped around the
tombstones, and coffins, bones and skulls are churned up into a great
stew. In