nt afield
to trench or headquarters, to hospital or gun position, without finding
something new and wonderful to us if not to the public in that vast hive
of military industry.

"But if we ever start the push they'll read every detail," said our
wisest man. "It's the push that is in everybody's mind. The man in the
street is tired of hearing about rehearsals. He wants the curtain to go
up."

Each of us knew that the offensive was coming and where, without ever
speaking of it in our mess or being supposed to know. Nobody was
supposed to know, except a few "brass hats" in headquarters town. One of
the prime requisites of the gold braid which denotes a general or of the
red band around the cap and the red tab on the coat lapel which denote
staff is ability to keep a secret; but long association with an army
makes it a sort of second nature, even with a group of civilians. When
you met a Brass Hat you pretended to believe that the monotony of those
official army reports about shelling a new German redoubt or a violent
artillery duel, or four enemy planes brought down, which read the same
on Friday as on Thursday, was to continue forever. The Brass Hats
pretended to believe the same among themselves. For all time the
British and the French Armies were to keep on hurling explosives at the
German Army from the same positions.

Occasionally a Brass Hat did intimate that the offensive would probably
come in the spring of 1917, if not later, and you accepted the
information as strictly confidential and indefinite, as you should
accept any received from a Brass Hat. It never occurred to anybody to
inquire if "1917" meant June or July of 1916. This would be as bad form
as to ask a man whose head was gray last year and is black this year if
he dyed his hair.

Those heavy howitzers, fresh from the foundry, drawn by big caterpillar
tractors, were all proceeding in one direction--toward the Somme.
Villages along their route were filling with troops. The nearer the
front you went, the greater the concentration of men and material.
Shells, the size of the milk cans at suburban stations, stood in close
order on the platforms beside the sidings of new light railways; shells
of all calibers were piled at new ammunition dumps; fields were cut by
the tracks of guns moving into position; steam rollers were road-making
in the midst of the long processions of motor trucks, heavy laden when
bound toward the trenches and empty when returning;