stinct. We were among the men who were in the actual
fighting lines and who went into the trenches turn and turn about, so
that it became the normal routine of their lives.

In the early days of the war these regiments had suffered heavy
losses, so that there were new drafts in them now, but there were
lads here who had fought at Mons and Charleroi and had seen their
comrades fall in heaps round about Le Cateau. They told their tales,
with old memories of terror, which had not made cowards of them.
Their chief interest to-day was centred in a football match which was
to take place about the same time as the "other business." It was not
their day out in the firing line. We left them putting on their football
boots and hurling chaff at each other in the dim light. Out of the way
of the flying shells they forgot all about the horror of war for a little
while.

Forcing our way through the brushwood on the slopes, we reached
the crest of the hillock. Near by stood two generals and several staff
officers--men whose names have been written many times in the
Chief's dispatches and will be written for all time in the history of this
war. They were at their post of observation, to watch the progress of
an attack which was timed to begin shortly.

Presently two other figures came up the hillside. One of them
arrested my attention. Who was that young officer, a mere boy, who
came toiling up through the slime and mud, and who at the crest
halted and gave a quick salute to the two generals? He turned, and I
saw that it was Edward, Prince of Wales, and through the afternoon,
when I glanced at him now and again as he studied his map and
gazed across the fields, I thought of another Edward, Prince of
Wales, who six centuries ago stood in another field of France. Out of
the past came old ghosts of history, who once as English princes and
knights and men-at-arms fought at St. Omer, and Ypres, Bailleul, and
Bethune, and all that very ground which lay before me now...

More than an hour before the time at which the attack was to be
concentrated upon the enemy's position--a line of trenches on a ridge
crowned by a thin wood immediately opposite my observation point--
our guns began to speak from many different places. It was a
demonstration to puzzle the enemy as to the objective of our attack.

The flashes came like the flicking of heliographs signalling messages
by a Morse code of death. After each flash came the thunderous
report an