the trees or tree stumps by the sides of the roads one may still see
the "camouflage" by which these exposed places were screened from the
enemy observers. The four roads were not greatly used in the months of
war which preceded the battle. In those months, the front was too near
to them, and other lines of supply and approach were more direct and
safer. But there was always some traffic upon them of men going into
the line or coming out, of ration parties, munition and water
carriers, and ambulances. On all four roads many men of our race were
killed. All, at some time, or many times, rang and flashed with
explosions. Danger, death, shocking escape and firm resolve, went up
and down those roads daily and nightly. Our men slept and ate and
sweated and dug and died along them after all hardships and in all
weathers. On parts of them, no traffic moved, even at night, so that
the grass grew high upon them. Presently, they will be quiet country
roads again, and tourists will walk at ease, where brave men once ran
and dodged and cursed their luck, when the Battle of the Somme was
raging.

Then, indeed, those roads were used. Then the grass that had grown on
some of them was trodden and crushed under. The trees and banks by the
waysides were used to hide batteries, which roared all day and all
night. At all hours and in all weathers the convoys of horses slipped
and stamped along those roads with more shells for the ever-greedy
cannon. At night, from every part of those roads, one saw a twilight
of summer lightning winking over the high ground from the
never-ceasing flashes of guns and shells. Then there was no quiet, but
a roaring, a crashing, and a screaming from guns, from shells bursting
and from shells passing in the air. Then, too, on the two roads to the
east of the Ancre River, the troops for the battle moved up to the
line. The battalions were played by their bands through Albert, and up
the slope of Usna Hill to Pozieres and beyond, or past Fricourt and
the wreck of Mametz to Montauban and the bloody woodland near it.
Those roads then were indeed paths of glory leading to the grave.

During the months which preceded the Battle of the Somme, other roads
behind our front lines were more used than these. Little villages, out
of shell fire, some miles from the lines, were then of more use to us
than Albert. Long after we are gone, perhaps, stray English tourists,
wandering in Picardy, will see names scratched in a bar