t was the
remains of a church steeple. It was the dominating ruin in the town of
Beaumont.

"Turn here to the left," the officer conducting our party whispered into
the ear of the driver.

The sudden execution of the command caused the officer's helmet to rasp
against that of the driver with a sound that set the cautious whispering
to naught.

"Park here in the shadow," he continued. "Make no noise; show no light.
They dropped shells here ten minutes ago. Gentlemen, this is regimental
headquarters. Follow me."

In a well buttressed cellar, surmounted by a pile of ruins, we found the
colonel sitting at a wooden table in front of a grandfather's clock of
scratched mahogany. He called the roll--five special correspondents,
Captain Chandler, American press officer, with a goatee and fur coat to
match; Captain Vielcastel, a French press officer, who is a marquis and
speaks English, and a lieutenant from brigade headquarters, who already
had been named "Whispering Willie."

The colonel offered sticks to those with the cane habit. With two
runners in the lead, we started down what had been the main street of
the ruined village.

"I can't understand the dropping of that shell over here to-night," the
colonel said. "When we relieved the French, there had been a
long-standing agreement against such discourtesy. It's hard to believe
the Boche would make a scrap of paper out of that agreement. They must
have had a new gunner on the piece. We sent back two shells into their
regimental headquarters. They have been quiet since."

Ten minutes' walk through the mud, and the colonel stopped to announce:
"Within a hundred yards of you, a number of men are working. Can you
hear 'em?"

No one could, so he showed us a long line of sweating Americans
stretching off somewhere into the fog. Their job was more of the endless
trench digging and improving behind the lines. While one party swung
pick and spade in the trenches, relief parties slept on the ground
nearby. The colonel explained that these parties arrived after dark,
worked all night, and then carefully camouflaged all evidences of new
earth and departed before daylight, leaving no trace of their night's
work to be discovered by prying airman. Often the work was carried on
under an intermittent shelling, but that night only two shells had
landed near them.

An American-manned field gun shattered the silence, so close to us that
we could feel its breath and had a greater res