ed over
with the diligence and professional earnestness of an architect over his
blue prints. He had been over the ground and studied it with the care of
a landscape gardener who is going to make improvements.

"A smoke barrage screen along there," he explained, indicating the line
of a German trench, "but a real attack along here"--which sounded
familiar from staff officers in chateaux.

Every detail of the German positions was accurately outlined, yard by
yard, their machine guns definitely located.

"We're uncertain about that one," he remarked, laying his pencil on the
map symbol for an M.G.

Trench mortars had another symbol, deep dugouts another. It was the
business of somebody to get all this information without being
communicative about his methods. Referring to a section of a hundred
yards or more he remarked that an eager company commander had thought
that he could take a bit of German trench there and had taken it, which
meant that the gunners had to be informed so as to rearrange the barrage
or curtain of fire with the resulting necessity of fresh observations
and fresh registry of practice shots. I judged that Howell did not want
the men to be too eager; he wanted them just eager enough.

This game being played along the whole front has, of course, been
likened to chess, with guns and men as pieces. I had in mind the dummy
actors and dummy scenery with which stage managers try out their acts,
only in this instance there was never any rehearsal on the actual stage
with the actual scenery unless a first attack had failed, as the Germans
will not permit such liberties except under machine gun fire. A call or
two came over the telephone about some minor details, the principal ones
being already settled.

"It's time to go," he said finally.

The corps commander was downstairs in the dining-room comfortably
smoking his pipe after tea. There would be nothing for him to do until
news of the attack had been received. "I hope you will see a good show,"
he remarked, by way of _au revoir_.

How earnestly he hoped it there is no use of mentioning here. It is
taken for granted. Carefully thought out plans backed by hundreds of
guns and the lives of men at stake--and against the Thiepval
fortifications!

"Yes, we'll make it nicely," concluded Howell, as we went down the
steps. A man used to motoring ten miles to catch the nine-thirty to town
could not have been more certain of the disposal of his time than this