inal charge. In addition to the advancing
curtain-fire immediately preceding the troops, a second screen of fire
is dropped between the enemy's first and second lines, thus preventing
the men in the first line from retreating and making it equally
impossible for the men in the second line to get reinforcements or
supplies to their comrades in the first. Still other batteries are
engaged in keeping down the fire of the hostile artillery while the
big guns, mounted on railway-trucks, shell the enemy's headquarters,
his supports, and his lines of communication.

The attack is accompanied by and largely directed by airplanes,
certain of which are assigned to regulating the artillery fire, while
others devote themselves exclusively to giving information to the
infantry, with whom they communicate by means of dropping from one to
six fire-balls. As the aircraft used for infantry and artillery
regulation are comparatively slow machines, they are protected from
the attacks of enemy aviators by a screen of small, fast
battle-planes--the destroyers of the air--which, in several cases,
have swooped low enough to use their machine-guns on the German
trenches. If it becomes necessary to give to the infantry some special
information not provided for by the prearranged signals, the aviator
will volplane down to within a hundred feet above the infantry and
drop a written message. I was told that in one of the successful
French attacks before Verdun such a message proved extremely useful as
by means of it the troops advancing toward Douaumont, which was then
held by the Germans, were informed that the enemy was in force on
their right, but that there was practically no resistance on their
left. Acting in response to this information from the skies, they
swung forward on this flank, and took the Germans on their right in
the rear. Just as a football team is coached from the side-lines, so a
charge is nowadays directed from the clouds.

[Illustration: Australians on the Way to the Trenches.
Despite gas, bullets, shells, rain, mud, and cold the British
soldier remains incorrigibly cheerful. He is a born optimist.]

[Illustration: The Fire Trench.
"Figures, looking strangely mediaeval in their steel helmets,
crouched motionless, peering out into No Man's Land."]

One of the picturesque developments of the war is _camouflage_, as
the French call their system of disguising or concealing batteries,
airplane-sheds, ammu