ved hand waving. "Plenty of 'em
round here; see, there's another in that cloud, and beyond it
another."

So for a while I rode with my eyes turned upwards, and thus I
presently saw far ahead many aeroplanes that flew in strange, zigzag
fashion, now swooping low, now climbing high, now twisting and
turning giddily.

"Some of our 'planes under fire!" said F., "you can see the shrapnel
bursting all around 'em--there's the smoke--we call 'em woolly bears.
Won't see any Boche 'planes, though--rather not!"

Amidst all these wonders and marvels our fleet car sped on, jolting
and lurching violently over ruts, pot-holes and the like until we
came to a part of the road where many men were engaged with pick and
shovel; and here, on either side of the highway, I noticed many
grim-looking heaps and mounds--ugly, shapeless dumps, depressing in
their very hideousness. Beside one such unlovely dump our car pulled
up, and F., gloved finger pointing, announced:

"The Church of La Boiselle. That heap you see yonder was once the
Mairie, and beyond, the schoolhouse. The others were houses and
cottages. Oh, La Boiselle was quite a pretty place once. We get out
here to visit the guns--this way."

Obediently I followed whither he led, nothing speaking, for surely
here was matter beyond words. Leaving the road, we floundered over
what seemed like ash heaps, but which had once been German trenches
faced and reinforced by concrete and steel plates. Many of these last
lay here and there, awfully bent and twisted, but of trenches I saw
none save a few yards here and there half filled with indescribable
debris. It was, indeed, a place of horror--a frightful desolation
beyond all words. Everywhere about us were signs of dreadful
death--they came to one in the very air, in lowering heaven and
tortured earth. Far as the eye could reach the ground was pitted with
great shell holes, so close that they broke into one another and
formed horrid pools full of shapeless things within the slime.

Across this hellish waste I went cautiously by reason of torn and
twisted tangles of German barbed wire, of hand grenades and huge
shells, of broken and rusty iron and steel that once were deadly
machine guns. As I picked my way among all this flotsam, I turned to
take up a bayonet, slipped in the slime and sank to my waist in a
shell hole--even then I didn't touch bottom, but scrambled out, all
grey mud from waist down--but I had the bayonet.

It was in thi