f
transport on the move. One village I found populated half by
civilians and half by troops. Thereafter the country becomes
barer and grimmer, and the fields for the most part are
uncultivated--in itself a remarkable thing in France. The next
village I came to bore signs of having been shelled, but was
still habitable. Originally it must have been quite a pleasant
little place. Not many of the native inhabitants remained, and
the houses for the most part were filled with Scotsmen and
sappers.

Passing on, with the roar of the guns getting more and more
distinct, we come to a place that leaves no manner of doubt that
there is a war on. There are graves by the roadside, and
shell-holes. Lines of trenches and coils of barbed wire arrest
your attention. Now there comes into view the battered remnant of
what was once a busy mining village. The great slag-heap towers
up on our right hand, its sides scarred and smashed by
shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only
shattered walls and heaps of bricks. Over all hangs that curious
odour one gets at the Front--a sort of combined smell of burning
and decay. A grotesque effect is produced by a signboard hanging
outside a ruined tenement and bearing the words: "Delattre,
Debitant," or, in other words, "Delattre's Inn." On the right a
gunner is standing on what was once a house roof, hacking away at
the beams with a pickaxe; he is getting firewood, no doubt.
Solemnly a general service wagon rolls by, carrying a load of
fuel, and a limber crashes past at a trot. A little single-line
railway from the colliery crosses the road, and even now there
are standing on it two or three trucks, strange to say quite
intact. The machinery at the pit-head is all smashed, bent and
broken. You are impressed with the strange, eerie silence, when
suddenly there is an earth-shaking crash. One of our heavies has
been fired. You hear the shell whirring away on its journey of
destruction, and finally a faint, far-distant crash, perhaps
marking the end of a dozen men, five or ten miles off.

Resuming my journey I reached another village, where the
destruction had been simply terrible, surpassing even that of
Ypres. This village bears a name famous in the annals of British
arms, for it was from here that t