ores of ammunition, troops in support
marching to repel a counter-attack or follow through the new objectives,
ambulances threading their way back through the traffic, with loads
of prostrate men, mules, gunhorses, lorries churning up the mud in
Flanders.

So we gained a personal view of all this activity of strife, and from
many men in its whirlpool details of their own adventure and of
general progress or disaster on one sector of the battle-front. Then in
divisional headquarters we saw the reports of the battle as they came in
by telephone, or aircraft, or pigeon-post, from half-hour to half-hour,
or ten minutes by ten minutes. Three divisions widely separated provided
all the work one war correspondent could do on one day of action, and
later news on a broader scale, could be obtained from corps headquarters
farther back. Tired, hungry, nerve-racked, splashed to the eyes in mud,
or covered in a mask of dust, we started for the journey back to our own
quarters, which we shifted from time to time in order to get as near as
we could to the latest battle-front without getting beyond reach of the
telegraph instruments--by relays of despatch-riders--at "Signals," G. H.
Q., which remained immovably fixed in the rear.

There was a rendezvous in one of our rooms, and each man outlined the
historical narrative of the day upon the front he had covered, reserving
for himself his own adventures, impressions, and emotions.

Time slipped away, and time was short, while the despatch-riders
waited for our unwritten despatches, and censors who had been our
fellow-travelers washed themselves cleaner and kept an eye on the clock.

Time was short while the world waited for our tales of tragedy or
victory... and tempers were frayed, and nerves on edge, among five
men who hated one another, sometimes, with a murderous hatred (though,
otherwise, good comrades) and desired one another's death by slow
torture or poison-gas when they fumbled over notes, written in a jolting
car, or on a battlefield walk, and went into past history in order
to explain present happenings, or became tangled in the numbers of
battalions and divisions.

Percival Phillips turned pink-and-white under the hideous strain of
nervous control, with an hour and a half for two columns in The Morning
Post. A little pulse throbbed in his forehead. His lips were tightly
pressed. His oaths and his anguish were in his soul, but unuttered.
Beach Thomas, the most amiable of