rs. The two were alike in a
standardized system, only one dealt with corps and the other with
battalions. A trip to Auchonvillers at any time during the previous year
or up to the end of June, 1916, had not been fraught with any particular
risk. It was on the "joy-riders'" route, as they say.

When I said that the German batteries were making relatively little
reply to the preliminary British bombardment I did not mean to imply
that they were missing any opportunities. At the dead line for
automobiles on the road the burst of a shrapnel overhead had a
suggestiveness that it would not have had at other times. Perhaps the
Germans were about to put a barrage on the road. Perhaps they were
going to start their guns in earnest. Happily, they have always been
most considerate where I was concerned and they were only throwing in a
few shells in the course of artillery routine, which happened also on
our return from the Observation Post. But they were steadily attentive
with "krumps" to a grove where some British howitzers sought the screen
of summer foliage. If they could put any batteries out of action while
they waited for the attack this was good business, as it meant fewer
guns at work in support of the British charge.

An artilleryman, perspiring and mud-spattered from shell-bursts, who
came across the fields, said: "They knocked off the corner of our
gun-pit and got two men. That's all." His eyes were shining; he was in
the elation of battle. Casualties were an incident in the preoccupation
of his work and of the thought: "At last we have the shells! At last it
is our turn!"

On our way forward we passed more batteries and wisely kept to the open
away from them, as they are dangerous companions in an artillery duel.
Then we stepped into the winding communication trench with its system of
wires fast to the walls, and kept on till we passed under a lifted
curtain into a familiar chamber roofed with heavy cement blocks and
earth.

"Safe from a direct hit by five-point-nines," said the observation
officer, a regular promoted from the ranks who had been "spotting"
shells since the war began. "A nine-inch would break the blocks, but I
don't think that it would do us in."

Even if it did "do us in," why, we were only two or three men. All this
protection was less perhaps to insure safety than to insure security of
observation for these eyes of the guns. The officer was as proud of his
O.P. as any battalion commander of hi