ring blow of
the first day. Beyond Fricourt the British artillery was making a
crushing concentration on a clump of woods. This seemed to be the
hottest place of all. I would watch it. Nothing except the blanket of
shell-smoke hanging over the trees was visible for a time, unless you
counted figures some distance away moving about in a sort of detached
pantomime.

Then a line of British infantry seemed to rise out of the pile of the
carpet and I could see them moving with a drill-ground steadiness toward
the edge of the woods, only to be lost to the eye in a fold of the
carpet or in a changed background. There had been something workmanlike
and bold about their rigid, matter-of-fact progress, reflective of
man-power in battle as seen very distinctly for a space in that field of
baffling and shimmering haze. I thought that I had glimpses of some of
them just before they entered the woods and that they were mixing with
figures coming out of the woods. At any rate, what was undoubtedly a
half company of German prisoners were soon coming down the slope in a
body, only to disappear as if they, too, were playing their part in the
hide and seek of that irregular landscape with its variation from white
chalk to dark green foliage.

Khaki figures stood out against the chalk and melted into the fields or
the undergrowth, or came up to the skyline only to be swallowed into the
earth probably by the German trench which they were entering. I wondered
if one group had been killed, or knocked over, or had merely taken cover
in a shell-crater when a German "krump" seemed to burst right among
them, though at a distance of even a few hundred yards nothing is so
deceiving as the location of a shell-burst in relation to objects in
line with it. The black cloud drew a curtain over them. When it lifted
they were not on the stage. This was all that one could tell.

What seemed only a platoon became a company for an instant under
favorable light refraction. The object of British khaki, French blue and
German green is invisibility, but nothing can be designed that will not
be visible under certain conditions. A motley such as the "tanks" were
painted would be best, but the most utilitarian of generals has not yet
dared to suggest motley as a uniform for an army. It occurred to me how
distinct the action would have been if the participants had worn the
blue coats and red trousers in which the French fought their early
battles of the war.

A