me thing. So it goes."

From the variety of screams of big shells and little shells and screams
harrowingly close and reassuringly high, which were indicated as
ours, one was warranted in suggesting that the British were doing
considerable artillery preparation themselves.

"We must give them as good as they send--and better."

Better seemed correct.

"Those close ones you hear are doubtless meant for the front
German trench, which accounts for their low trajectory; the others for
their support trenches or any battery-positions that our planes have
located." We could not see where the British shells were striking. We
could judge only of the accuracy of some of the German fire.
Considering the storm being visited on the support trench which we
had just left, we were more than ever glad to be out of it. Artillery is
the war burglar's jemmy; but it has to batter the house into ruins and
blow up the safe and kill most of the family before the burglar can
enter. Clouds of dust rose from the explosions; limbs of trees were
lopped off by tornadoes of steel hail.

"There! Look at that tree!"

In front of a portion of the British support trench a few of a line of
stately shade trees were still standing. A German shell, about an
eight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about the
same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the
bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion.
Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green
wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a
sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried
across the splintered stump with crushing impact from the power of
its flight, plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge which
broke the shell-jacket into slashing fragments; and the towering
column of limbs, branches, and foliage laid its length on the ground
with a majestic dignity. Which shows what one shell can do, one of
three which burst not far away at the same time. In time, the shells
would get all the trees; make them into chips and splinters and
toothpicks.

"I'd rather that it would hit a tree-trunk than my trunk," said L------.

"But you would not have got it as badly as the tree," said the officer
reassuringly. "The substance would have been too soft for sufficient
impact for a burst. It would have gone right through!"

XXII
More Best Day

At battalion