hat I will never growl
at again as long as I live:

"It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud;
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns--
It's the MUD,
MUD,
MUD." [1]

Official reports of the later battles in 1918 tell us that the
shell-fire on the Somme was a mere popgun show to these battles, but it
is difficult for the imagination to grasp this fact, as it did not seem
then that the air had any room for more shells. In fact, I have seen
shells meet in the air, both exploding together. It seemed to us at
times as if there was not a foot of air that did not have a shell in
it. In one battle there were four thousand guns firing over a five
hundred yards front, the heavies being seventeen and a half miles
behind the lines, and the field-guns massed wheel to wheel a hundred
and fifty to the five hundred yards, and row after row like infantry
drawn up for review. Shells not merely whistled and screamed overhead,
they leaped from the ground beneath one's feet with a flame that
burned, a roar that deafened, and a displacement of air that swept one
away. At artillery practice in peace times there is great excitement
if one lone man happens to be in front of the gun, but on the Somme we
walked about among them, over them, and round them, and we were never
warned even when they fired but a couple of yards away. One day a
red-hot shell from a gun about fifty yards away landed at my feet, but,
fortunately, did not explode. For four months our artillery expended
an average of half a million shells a day. The increase in artillery
last year may be judged from the fact that in the last six months of
1917 one million tons of shells were used by the British on the western
front. By day the drum-fire of the guns beat on one's ears like a
devil's tattoo until one felt that in another week reason would be
unseated. But at night was added the horror of flame that drove away
the darkness with a ruddy glare. It seemed as if thousands of Bessemer
furnaces were refining metal for the paving of hell. Into this caldron
of man's making that outdid the fury of the elements young lads from
farms and shops walked uprightly. Like ants impotent in their strife
they swarmed, and to a watcher from another world they must h