e my
leave and thank him for his courtesies the army that he had drilled had
received the schooling of battle and tasted victory. How great his task
had been only a soldier could appreciate, and only history can do
justice to the courage that took the Ridge or the part that it had
played in the war.

Upstairs in a small room of another chateau the Commander-in-Chief and
the Commander of the Fourth of the group of armies under Sir
Douglas--who had played polo together in India as subalterns, Sir Henry
Rawlinson being still as much of a Guardsman as Sir Douglas was a
Scot--had held many conferences. Sir Henry could talk sound soldierly
sense about the results gained and look forward, as did the whole army,
to next summer when the maximum of skill and power should be attained.
In common with Nivelle, both were leaders who had earned their way in
battle, which was promoting the efficient and shelving or "degumming,"
in the army phrase, the inefficient. Every week, every day, I might say,
the new army organization had tightened.

With steel helmet on and gas mask over the shoulder for the last time, I
had a final promenade up to the Ridge, past the guns and Mouquet Farm,
picking my way among the shell-craters and other grisly reminders of the
torment that the fighters had endured to a point where I could look out
over the fields toward Bapaume. For eight and ten miles the way had been
blazed free of the enemy by successive attacks. Five hundred yards ahead
"krumps" splashing the soft earth told where the front line was and
around me was the desert which such pounding had created, with no one in
the immediate neighborhood except some artillery officers hugging a
depression and spotting the fall of shells from their guns just short of
Bapaume and calling out the results by telephone, over one of the
strands of the spider's web of intelligence which they had unrolled from
a reel when they came. I joined them for a few minutes in their retreat
below the skyline and listened to their remarks about Brother Low
Visibility, who soon was to have the world for his own in winter mists,
rain and snow, limiting the army's operations by his perversity until
spring came.

And so back, as the diarists say, by the grassless and blasted route
over which I had come. After I was in the car I heard one of the wicked
screams with its unpleasant premonition, which came to an end by
whipping out a ball of angry black smoke short of a near-by how