tainly was a warm corner. If I had filmed
this scene, all that would have been shown was a dreary waste of
mud-heaps, caused by the explosion of the shells, and the graves of
fallen soldiers dotted all over the place. As far as the eye could see
the country was absolutely devoid of any living thing.

Thousands of people in England, comfortably seated in the picture
theatre, would have passed this scene by as quite uninteresting except
for its memories. But if the sounds I heard, and the flying bullets that
whizzed by me, could have been photographed, they might take a different
view of it.

Death was everywhere. The air was thick with it. To have lifted my head
would have meant the billet for a bullet. So there I had to lie soaked
through to the skin, and before I had been there twenty minutes I was
literally lying in water. The German fusillade seemed interminable.
Suddenly with a roar the Belgian guns spoke. About fifty shells were
fired, and gradually the rifle-fire ceased. With a sigh of relief I drew
myself out of the hole which my body had made, and on my elbows and
knees, like a baby crawling, I covered the intervening ground to the
battery. Getting up, and bending nearly double, I ran under cover of the
barricades.

The men were astounded to see me run in. I went in the direction of a
group of officers, who looked at me in amazement. Saluting me, one of
them came forward and asked who I wanted. Explaining my business, I told
him I had permission from headquarters to film any scenes of interest.
The officer then introduced me to his friends, who asked me how in the
world I had crossed the district without getting hit. I described my
movements, and they all agreed that I was exceedingly lucky.

Once more the guns started, so getting my camera ready I commenced
filming them in action, one scene after another. I changed from the
firing of one gun to the full battery in action. The men were working
like mad. All the time they were baling water out of the gun trenches
with buckets. In some cases after the gun had fired it sank back about
eighteen inches in the mud, and had to be dug out and set again. These
poor devils had been doing this for nearly four months, every man of
them was a hero.

While taking these scenes, my compressed air cylinders ran out. Looking
round for somewhere solid on which to put my machine and foot-pump, I
found some bricks, and made a little foundation. Then I started to pump
up. At ev