e from the front-line trenches. We had not quite reached
our destination when the darkness began to lift in the east, and with
feverish energy we pushed ahead, through the driving snow.

Late that afternoon, Talbot was again sent ahead with five or six
troopers and orderlies to a village in the front line. It was
necessary for us to spend three or four days there before the attack
commenced, in order to study out the vulnerable points in the German
line. We were to decide also the best routes for the tanks to take in
coming up to the line, and those to be taken later in crossing No
Man's Land when the "show" was on. We rode along across fields denuded
of all their trees. The country here was utterly unlike that to which
we had been accustomed in "peace-time trench warfare." This last
expression sounds like an anomaly, but actually it means the life
which is led in trenches where one may go along for two or three
months without attacking. In comparison with our existence when we are
making an offensive, the former seems like life in peace times. Hence,
the expression. But from this it must not be supposed that "peace-time
trench warfare" is all beer and skittles. Quite the contrary. As a
matter of fact, during four or five days in the trenches there may be
as many casualties as during an attack, but taking it on an average,
naturally the losses and dangers are greater when troops go over the
top. Curiously enough, too, after one has been in an attack the
front-line trench seems a haven of refuge. Gould, who was wounded in
the leg during a battle on the Somme, crawled into a shell-hole. It
was a blessed relief to be lying there, even though the bullets were
whistling overhead. At first he felt no pain, and he wished, vaguely,
that he had brought a magazine along to read! All through the burning
summer day he stayed there, waiting for the night. As soon as it was
dark he wriggled back to our trenches, tumbled over the parapet of the
front-line trench, and narrowly escaped falling on the point of a
bayonet. But he never forgets the feeling of perfect safety and peace
at being back, even in an exposed trench, with friends.

The fields across which we rode had been ploughed the preceding autumn
by the French civilians. Later, when the snow had disappeared, we
could see where the ground had been torn up by the horses of a German
riding-school of ten days before. On some of the roads the ruts and
heavy marks of the retreating