soldier on the way to an attack. His car which was waiting had a right
of way up to front such as is enjoyed only by the manager of the works
on his own premises. Of course he paid no attention to the sign, "This
road is shelled; closed to vehicles," at the beginning of a stretch of
road which looked unused and desolate.

"A car in front of me here the other day received a direct hit from a
'krump,' and car and passengers practically disappeared before my eyes,"
he remarked, without further dwelling on the incident; for the Germans
were, in turn, irritated with the insistence of these stubborn British
that they could take Thiepval.

Three prisoners in the barbed-wire inclosure that we passed looked
lonely. They must have been picked up in a little bombing affair in a
sap.

"I think that they will have plenty of companions this evening," said
Howell. "How they will enjoy their dinner!" He smiled in recollection
as did I of that familiar sight of prisoners eating. Nothing excites
hunger like a battle or gives such zest to appetite as knowledge that
you are out of danger. I know that it is true and so does everybody at
the front.

As his car knew no regulations except his wishes he might take it as far
as it could go without trying to cross trenches. I wonder how long it
would have taken me if I had had a map and asked no questions to find my
way to the gallery seat which Howell had chosen for watching the show.
After we had passed guns with only one out of ten firing leisurely but
all with their covers off, the gunners near their pieces and ample
ammunition at hand, we cut straight up the slope, Howell glancing at his
wrist watch and asking if he were walking too fast for me. We dropped
into a communication trench at a point which experience had proven was
the right place to begin to take cover.

"This is a good place," he said at length, and we rubbed our helmets
with some of the chalk lumps of the parapet, which left the black spot
of our field glasses the only bit of us not in harmony with our
background.

It was a perfect afternoon in late summer, without wind or excessive
heat, the blue sky unflecked; such an afternoon as you would choose for
lolling in a hammock and reading a book. The foreground was a slope
downward to a little valley where the usual limbless tree-trunks were
standing in a grove that had been thoroughly shelled. No one was in
sight there, and an occasional German five-point-nine shell burs