Germans had taken out of
the villages on their retirement, and had used to make their line more
comfortable.

We found, too, an extraordinary piece of engineering. A tunnel about
ten miles long ran underneath the whole of the Hindenburg Line. It was
about thirty or forty feet down, and had been dug, we heard, by
Russian prisoners. The tunnel was about six feet wide and about five
feet high. It had been roughly balked in with timber, and at every
twenty yards, a shaft led out of the tunnel up into the trench.
Borwick found a large mirror which he felt could not be wasted under
the circumstances. He could not resist its charm, so he started
lugging it back the six miles to camp. It was very heavy and its charm
had decreased greatly by the time he reached camp and found that no
one could make any use of it.

The day of the attack was still undecided, and in order to be quite
ready when it should come off, we left B---- with the tanks one
evening and took them up to Saint-L----, a little place about three
thousand yards away from the Hindenburg Line. Here we staged them
behind a railway embankment, underneath a bridge that had been
partially blown up. This was the same embankment, as a matter of fact,
behind which, four or five miles away, the Australian dressing-station
had been established in the last battle.

Here we spent two or three days tuning up the machines, and many of
our leisure moments in watching a howitzer battery which was just
beside us. This was fascinating. If you stand by the gun when it is
fired, you can see the shell leave the muzzle, and watch the black
mass shoot its seven or eight thousand yards until it becomes a small
speck and finally vanishes just before it hits the ground.

We also made an interesting collection of German and English
shell-cases. These cases are made of brass, and the four-fives,
especially, in the opinion of some people, make very nice rose-bowls
when they are polished, with wire arranged inside to hold the
blossoms. Weird music could be heard issuing from our dugout at times,
when we gave an impromptu concert, by putting several of these
shell-cases on a log of wood and playing elaborate tunes on them with
a bit of stone.

All this merry-making came to an end, though. One day we received word
that the attack was to come off the next morning. Then began the
preparations in earnest and the day went with a rush. At this part of
the Hindenburg Line, it was very easy to los