the communication trench you are fairly safe from snipers, but not, of
course, from shrapnel or high-angle fire. A communication trench which I
visited, when paying an afternoon call at a dug-out, was wide enough to
admit a pony and cart, and, as it has to serve to bring up
ration-parties and stretcher-bearers as well as reliefs, it is made as
wide as is consistent with its main purpose, which is to protect the
approach and to localise the effect of shell-fire as much as possible,
the latter object being effected by frequent "traversing." To reach the
fire-trenches is easy enough; the difficulty is to find your way out of
them. The main line of fire-trenches has a kind of loop-line behind it
with innumerable junctions and small depots in the shape of dug-outs,
and at first sight the subaltern's plan of the estate was as bewildering
as a signalman's map of Clapham Junction. And the main line is
complicated by frequent traverses--something after the pattern of a
Greek fret, whereas such French trenches as I have seen appeared to
prefer the Norman dog-tooth style of architecture. A survey of these
things makes it easy to understand the important part played by the bomb
and the hand-grenade in trench warfare, for when you have "taken" part
of a trench you never know whether you are an occupier or merely a
lodger until you have fully explored what is behind the traverses to the
right and left of you. The delivery of a bomb serves as a very effective
notice of ejectment. The back of the trench is protected by a ridge of
earth commonly known as a parados. My servant, whose vocabulary was
limited, called it a paradox, and was not very wide of the mark.

Somewhere behind the trenches at varying distances are the batteries.
The gunners affect orchards and copses as affording good cover for their
guns, and if none are to be found they improvise them. Hop-poles
trailed with hops or cut saplings will do very well. Usually there is a
delectable garden, which is the peculiar pride of the men. Turf
emplacements are constructed for the six guns, and turfed dug-outs house
the telephone-operator and the gunners. The battery officers are
billeted some way back, usually in a kind of farmhouse, whose chief
decorative feature is a midden-heap; in England it would promptly be the
subject of a closing order by any Public Health authority.

There is nothing more admirable than a field-gun. As a ship answers her
helm or an aeroplane its controls