ey notify the trenches of any unusual movement or sounds made by the
enemy.

In the evening we left the trenches and went into divisional reserve
at Rue Du Quesne. Let me give you some idea of the lay of the country.
There is a road about every kilometer and they run roughly northwest
and northeast.

Running southwest and almost parallel with the trenches was Rue
Pettion, a short road that terminated at the Fromelles road near our
headquarters. The next street, a little over a mile back, is Rue Du
Bois, north of the Fromelles Road, south of the Fromelles Road it is
called the Rue De Tilleloy. At the corner there was a shrine which had
suffered from shell fire and which Canon Scott had immortalized in a
poem, the best he has written and the best I have read since the war
began. The next street back is the Rue Du Quesne. Right through the
centre of our position ran the Fromelles Road. A kilometer southwest,
the trench line is crossed by the road to Aubers called the Rue
D'Enfer, or in our language, the Road to Hell. If this road is paved
with good intentions I have never seen any of them. It is strongly
held by the Germans. The "intentions" take the form of "crump" holes
excavated by German shells in the pavement.

The country on our side is perfectly flat and full of hedges and
ditches. Every hedge concealed a battery of guns of all kinds and
sizes. On the German side, half a mile back from their trenches, the
ground slopes up. The villages of Aubers and Fromelle are on the
western slope and the ridge behind is our true objective. On the ridge
we could see the church steeples of Herlies to the right and Fournes
to the left, while here and there peep the derricks, or as we in
America call them the "breakers" of coal pits. Beyond the ridge the
land slopes to the Scheldt. It was on the eastern slope of this ridge
that Caesar fought his greatest battles. There the Nervli charged
across the stream in thousands and fought until hardly a man of them
was left, fought until their dead were piled up breast high, fought
till Caesar had to take a buckler and spear from a fallen soldier to
defend himself. On all sides, from the horizon downward, rows of tall
elm trees cast their gaunt leafless branches in the air. Between them
were a sea of hedges and green brown boles of pollard willows. Elms
generally grew along the roadways and the limbs for fifty feet up are
trimmed off annually and tied up into faggots. The willows grew along