think they have got divisional headquarters there," someone
remarks.... "They haven't. But they keep on."

In this zone where shells burst the wise automobile stops and tucks
itself away as inconspicuously as possible close up to a heap of ruins.
There is very little traffic on the road now except for a van or so that
hurries up, unloads, and gets back as soon as possible. Mules and men
are taking the stuff the rest of the journey. We are in a flattened
village, all undermined by dug-outs that were in the original German
second line. We report ourselves to a young troglodyte in one of these,
and are given a guide, and so set out on the last part of the journey
to the ultimate point, across the land of shell craters and barbed
wire litter and old and new trenches. We have all put on British steel
helmets, hard but heavy and inelegant head coverings. I can write little
that is printable about these aesthetic crimes. The French and German
helmets are noble and beautiful things. These lumpish _pans._..

They ought to be called by the name of the man who designed them.

Presently we are advised to get into a communication trench. It is not
a very attractive communication trench, and we stick to our track across
the open. Three or four shells shiver overhead, but we decide they are
British shells, going out. We reach a supporting trench in which men are
waiting in a state of nearly insupportable boredom for the midday
stew, the one event of interest in a day-long vigil. Here we are told
imperatively to come right in at once, and we do.

All communication trenches are tortuous and practically endless. On
an offensive front they have vertical sides of unsupported earth and
occasional soakaways for rain, covered by wooden gratings, and they go
on and on and on. At rare intervals they branch, and a notice board says
"To Regent Street," or "To Oxford Street," or some such lie. It is all
just trench. For a time you talk, but talking in single file soon palls.
You cease to talk, and trudge. A great number of telephone wires come
into the trench and cross and recross it. You cannot keep clear of them.
Your helmet pings against them and they try to remove it. Sometimes you
have to stop and crawl under wires. Then you wonder what the trench is
like in really wet weather. You hear a shell burst at no great distance.
You pass two pages of _The Strand Magazine._ Perhaps thirty yards on
you pass a cigarette end. After these sensational i