he fellows training their pieces in
keeping with his instructions might be in for a sudden concentration of
blasts from the enemy, of course. Wasn't that part of the experience?
Wasn't it their place to take their share of the pounding, and didn't
they belong to the guns?

These were examples close at hand, but sprinkled about the well-won area
I saw the puffs from other British batteries which, after a nocturnal
journey, morning found close to the firing-line. While I was moving
about in the neighborhood I cast glances in the direction of that
particular battery of eighteen pounders which was still serenely firing
without being disturbed by the German guns. There was something unreal
about it after nearly two years of the Ypres salient.

But the worst shock to a trench-tied habit of mind was when I stood upon
the parapet of a German trench and saw ahead the British firing-line and
the German, too. I ducked as instinctively, according to past training,
as if I had seen a large, black, murderous thing coming straight for my
head. In the stalemate days a dozen sharpshooters waiting for such
opportunities would have had a try at you; a machine gun might have
loosened up, and even batteries of artillery in their search for game to
show itself from cover did not hesitate to snipe with shells at an
individual.

I must be dead; at least, I ought to be according to previous formulae;
but realizing that I was still alive and that nothing had cracked or
whistled overhead, I took another look and then remained standing. I had
been considering myself altogether too important a mortal. German guns
and snipers were not going to waste ammunition on a non-combatant on the
skyline when they had an overwhelming number of belligerent targets. A
few shrapnel breaking remotely were all that we had to bother us, and
these were sparingly sent with the palpable message, "We'll let you
fellows in the rear know what we would do to you if we were not so
preoccupied with other business."

I was near enough to see the operations; to have gone nearer would have
been to face in the open the sweep of bullets over the heads of the
British front line hugging the earth, which is not wise in these days of
the machine gun. A correspondent likes to see without being shot at and
his lot is sometimes to be shot at without being able to see anything
except the entrance of a dugout, which on some occasions is more
inviting than the portals of a palace.

I