m writing
my letter on the banks of the river in the shade of green trees and
shrubs, with birds singing and twittering, and building their nests
round me; it is spring-time here, you know, or early summer. Here and
there, sauntering or sitting, are groups of our khaki soldiers enjoying
mightily a good rest after the hard work, marching and fighting, of the
last ten days. From the river-bed come voices calling and talking,
sounds of laughing, and now and then a plunge. Heads bob about and
splash in the mud-coloured water, and white figures run down the bank
and stand a moment, poised for a plunge. Three stiff fights in seven
days doesn't seem to have taken much of the spring out of them.

You would scarcely think it was the scene of a battle, and yet there are
a few signs. If you look along the trees and bushes, you see here and
there a bough splintered or a whole trunk shattered, as though it had
been struck by lightning. A little lower down the river there is a shed
of corrugated iron, which looks as if some one had been trying to turn
it into a pepper-pot by punching it all over with small holes. They run
a score to the square foot, and are a mark of attention on the part of
our guards, who, lying down over yonder in the plain, could plainly
distinguish the light-coloured building and made a target of it. In many
places the ground is ploughed up in a curious way, and all about in the
dust lie oblong cylinders of metal, steel tubes with a brass band round
one end. These would puzzle you. They are empty shell cases. The tops,
as you see, have been blown off, which is done by the bursting charge
timed by a fuse to ignite at a certain range, _i.e._, above and a little
short of the object aimed at. The explosion of the bursting charge by
the recoil, checks for an instant the flight of the shell, and this
instant's check has the effect of releasing the bullets with which the
case is filled. These fly forward with the original motion and impetus
of the shell itself, spreading as they go. Horizontal fire is easy to
find cover against, but these discharges from on high are much more
difficult to evade. For instance, ant-hills are excellent cover against
rifles, but none at all against these shells. It is shrapnel, as this
kind of shell is called, that does the most mischief. The round bullets
(200 to a caseful) lie scattered about in the dust, and mixed with them
are very different little slender silvery missiles, quite pretty