f Orientals or with Germans in the
trenches. I made myself at home in the parlour of the private house
occupied by himself and staff, while he went on with his work. No flag
outside the house; no sign that it was headquarters. Motor-cars
stopped only long enough for an officer to enter or alight. Brigade
headquarters is precisely the target that German aeroplanes or spies
like to locate for their guns.

"Are you ready? Have you your rubber boots?" the brigadier asked a
few minutes later, as he put his head in at the parlour door. It would
not do to approach the trenches until after dark. Of course, I had
rubber boots. One might as well try to go to sea without a boat as to
trenches without rubber boots in winter. "I'll take my constitutional," he
added; "the trouble with this kind of war is that you get no exercise."

He was a small man, but how he could walk! I began to understand
why the Boxers could not catch him. He turned back after we had
gone a mile or more and one of his staff went on with me to a point
where, just at dusk, I was turned over to another pilot, an aide from
battalion headquarters, and we set out across sodden fields that had
yielded beetroot in the last harvest, taking care not to step in shell-
holes. Dusk settled into darkness. No human being was in sight
except ourselves.

"There's the first line of German trenches before the attack," said my
companion. "Our guns got fairly on them." Dimly I saw what seemed
like a huge, long, irregular furrow of earth which had been torn almost
out of the shape of a trench by British shells. "There was no living in it
when the guns began all together. The only thing to do was to get
out."

Around us was utter silence, where the hell of thunders and
destruction by the artillery had raged during the battle. Then a spent
or ricochet bullet swept overhead, with the whistle of complaint of
spent bullets at having travelled far without hitting any object. It had
gone high over the British trenches; it had carried the full range, and
the chance of its hitting anyone was ridiculously small. But the nearer
you get to the trenches, the more likely these strays are to find a
victim. "Hit by a stray bullet!" is a very common saying at the front.

At last we felt the solidity of a paved road under our feet, and
following this we came to a peasant's cottage. Inside, two soldiers
were sitting beside telephone and telegraph instruments, behind a
window stuffed with sandb