. .. God alone knew what
was happening. Regiments had lost their way. Wounded were pouring
back. Officers had gone mad. Into the midst of all this turmoil shells
fell--shells from long-range guns. Transport wagons were blown to bits.
The bodies and fragments of artillery horses lay all over the roads. Men
lay dead or bleeding under the debris of gun-wheels and broken bricks.
Above all the noise of this confusion and death in the night the
hard, stern voices of German officers rang out, and German discipline
prevailed, and men marched on to greater perils.

They were in the shell-zone now, and sometimes a regiment on the
march was tracked all along the way by British gun-fire directed from
airplanes and captive balloons. It was the fate of a captured officer I
met who had detrained at Bapaume for the trenches at Contalmaison.

At Bapaume his battalion was hit by fragments of twelve-inch shells.
Nearer to the line they came under the fire of eight-inch and six-inch
shells. Four-point-sevens (4.7's) found them somewhere by Bazentin. At
Contalmaison they marched into a barrage, and here the officer was taken
prisoner. Of his battalion there were few men left.

It was so with the 3d Jager Battalion, ordered up hurriedly to make a
counter-attack near Flers. They suffered so heavily on the way to the
trenches that no attack could be made. The stretcher-bearers had all the
work to do.

The way up to the trenches became more tragic as every kilometer was
passed, until the stench of corruption was wafted on the wind, so that
men were sickened, and tried not to breathe, and marched hurriedly to
get on the lee side of its foulness. They walked now through places
which had once been villages, but were sinister ruins where death lay in
wait for German soldiers.

"It seems queer to me," wrote one of them, "that whole villages close to
the front look as flattened as a child's toy run over by a steam-roller.
Not one stone remains on another. The streets are one line of
shell--holes. Add to that the thunder of the guns, and you will see
with what feelings we come into the line--into trenches where for months
shells of all caliber have rained... Flers is a scrap heap."

Again and again men lost their way up to the lines. The reliefs could
only be made at night lest they should be discovered by British airmen
and British gunners, and even if these German soldiers had trench maps
the guidance was but little good when many trenches had