pect for its bite. The
proximity of the gun had not even been guessed by any of our party. A
yellow stab of flame seemed to burn the mist through which the shell
screeched on its way toward Germany.

Correspondent Junius Woods, who was wearing an oversized pair of hip
rubber boots, immediately strapped the tops to his belt.

"I am taking no chance," he said; "I almost jumped out of them that
time. They ought to send men out with a red flag before they pull off a
blast like that."

The colonel then left us and with the whispering lieutenant and runners
in advance, we continued toward the front.

"Walk in parties of two," was the order of the soft-toned subaltern.
"Each party keep ten yards apart. Don't smoke. Don't talk. This road is
reached by their field pieces. They also cover it with indirect machine
gun fire. They sniped the brigade commander right along here this
morning. He had to get down into the mud. I can afford to lose some of
you, but not the entire party. If anything comes over, you are to jump
into the communicating trenches on the right side of the road."

His instructions were obeyed and it was almost with relief that, ten
minutes later, we followed him down the slippery side of the muddy bank
and landed in front of a dugout.

In the long, narrow, low-ceilinged shelter which completely tunnelled
the road at a depth of twenty feet, two twenty-year-old Americans were
hugging a brazier filled with charcoal. In this dugout was housed a
group from a machine gun battalion, some of whose members were snoring
in a double tier of bunks on the side.

Deep trenches at the other end of the dugout led to the gun pits, where
this new arm of the service operated at ranges of two miles. These
special squads fired over the heads of those in front of them or over
the contours of the ground and put down a leaden barrage on the front
line of the Germans. The firing not only was indirect but was without
correction from the rectifying observation, of which the artillery had
the benefit by watching the burst of their missiles.

Regaining the road, we walked on through the ruins on the edge of the
village of Seicheprey, where our way led through a drunken colony of
leaning walls and brick piles.

Here was the battalion headquarters, located underneath the old stones
of a barn which was topped by the barest skeleton of a roof. What had
been the first floor of the structure had been weighted down heavily
with railroad