nfilade our lines of attack. The natural strength of his position
along the ridges, which were like a great bony hand outstretched through
Flanders, with streams or "beeks," as they are called, flowing in the
valleys which ran between the fingers of that clawlike range, were
strengthened by chains of little concrete forts or "pill-boxes," as our
soldiers called them, so arranged that they could defend one another
by enfilade machine-gun fire. These were held by garrisons of
machine--gunners of proved resolution, whose duty was to break up our
waves of attack until, even if successful in gaining ground, only small
bodies of survivors would be in a position to resist the counter-attacks
launched by German divisions farther back. The strength of the
pill--boxes made of concrete two inches thick resisted everything but
the direct hit of heavy shells, and they were not easy targets at long
range. The garrisons within them fought often with the utmost courage,
even when surrounded, and again and again this method of defense proved
terribly effective against the desperate heroic assaults of British
infantry.

What our men had suffered in earlier battles was surpassed by what they
were now called upon to endure. All the agonies of war which I have
attempted to describe were piled up in those fields of Flanders. There
was nothing missing in the list of war's abominations. A few days after
the battle began the rains began, and hardly ceased for four months.
Night after night the skies opened and let down steady torrents, which
turned all that country into one great bog of slime. Those little rivers
or "beeks," which ran between the knobby fingers of the clawlike range
of ridges, were blown out of their channels and slopped over into broad
swamps. The hurricanes of artillery fire which our gunners poured
upon the enemy positions for twenty miles in depth churned up deep
shell-craters which intermingled and made pits which the rains and
floods filled to the brim. The only way of walking was by "duck-boards,"
tracks laid down across the bogs under enemy fire, smashed up day by
day, laid down again under cover of darkness. Along a duckboard walk men
must march in single file, and if one of our men, heavily laden in his
fighting-kit, stumbled on those greasy boards (as all of them stumbled
at every few yards) and fell off, he sank up to his knees, often up
to his waist, sometimes up to his neck, in mud and water. If he were
wounded wh