ing party consisted of Major Mallaby-Kelby, Major Veasey,
Major Bullivant, young Beale of A Battery, and Kelly and Wood of D
Battery, who loaded themselves with a No. 4 Director, the tripod
instrument with which lines of fire are laid out.

When we approached the highest point along the main road leading east,
Major Mallaby-Kelby sent back word that the road was under observation;
we must come along in couples, two hundred yards between each couple.
The Boche was sending over some of the high-bursting shells which he
uses so much for ranging purposes, but we were not greatly troubled. We
dipped into a slippery shell-scarred track that wound through a
hummocky copse, swung southwards along a sunken road, and then made due
east again, drawing nearer a dense forest of stubby firs that stretched
far as eye could see. This was the wood into which our infantry had
pushed fighting patrols on Sept. 1. Every few yards we met grim
reminders of the bloody fighting that had made the spot a memorable
battle-ground. My horse shied at two huddled grey forms lying by the
roadside--bayoneted Huns. I caught a glimpse of one dead German, half
covered by bushes; his face had been blown away. Abandoned heaps of
Boche ammunition; fresh gaping shell-holes; one ghastly litter of
mutilated horses and men, and a waggon rolled into the ditch, revealed
the hellish execution of our artillery. The major called a halt and
said we would leave our horses there.

We struck north-east, away from the forest, and, reaching the
cross-roads on top of the crest, gazed across the great wide valley
that from the canal sloped up to the blue haze of heights still held by
the enemy. Through the glasses one saw the yellows and greens of
bracken and moss and grass in the middle distances. "We're getting into
country now that hasn't seen much shelling," remarked the major with
satisfaction. But the glasses also showed slopes seared and seamed with
twisting trenches and tawny waggon tracks.

Our path lay along a road bordered by evenly-planted, broken and
lifeless poplars. The major called out for us to advance in single
file, at intervals of twenty-five yards. When high-velocity shells
struck the ground a hundred yards short of the road and a hundred yards
beyond it, we all of us dropped unquestioningly into the narrow
freshly-dug trench that ran at the foot of the poplars. About five
hundred yards on, to the left of the road, we passed a shell-blasted
grove that