places where two or three steps were missing altogether. It was bad
enough going up where we could take hold and pull ourselves up, but it
was far worse going down, because we were ordered down in a hurry and
all came piling down in a steady stream. There were squeaks and screams
at the bad moments, but we did manage to get down without mishap and
take stock of ourselves.

We found some German prisoners lying on the straw in the entrance hall,
and stopped to speak to them. They said that their troops were very
tired from long, hard fighting, but that they had plenty of men. They
seemed rather depressed themselves.

By the time we got down, our information had come and we set off through
a welter of transport trains, artillery, ambulances, marching troops,
and goodness knows what else, in the direction of X----. When we got
within a couple of kilometers of the place, an officer stopped us and
asked if we knew where we were going. He shrugged his shoulders when we
said we did, and let us go straight into it. When we were bowling along
about one kilometer from the town, three shells burst at once, about two
hundred yards to our left, and we stopped to see what was toward. A
hundred yards ahead to the right of the road was a battery of five big
guns, and the Germans were evidently trying to get their range. The
shells kept falling to the left, near a group of farm-houses, and as
some of the spent balls of shrapnel kept rolling around near us, we
decided we might as well go and see the big guns from nearer to.

In the shelter of the farm-houses were fifty or sixty men, some of them
cooking their lunch, others sleeping, all quite oblivious of the roar of
bursting shrapnel and the spattering of the bullets near by. And a few
months ago probably any of these men would have been frightened into a
fit by a shell bursting in his neighbourhood. It is wonderful how soon
people become contemptuous of danger. The horses that were tethered by
the roadside seemed to take it all as a matter of course, and munched
away at their hay, as though all the world were at peace. A wobbly cart
came creaking by with an infantryman, who had had a good part of his
face shot away. He had been bandaged after a fashion and sat up blinking
at us stupidly as the cart lumbered by, bumping into holes and sliding
into ruts.

I was not keen on staying longer than was necessary to see what was
there, but W.---- was very deliberate and not to be budged for m