g hard on a huge front, for here was
clearly a great effort on his extreme left wing. Unless it was our
counter-attack. But somehow I didn't think so.

I let down the window and stuck my head into the night. The fog had
crept to the edge of the track, a gossamer mist through which houses
and trees and cattle could be seen dim in the moonlight. The noise
continued--not a mutter, but a steady rumbling flow as solid as the
blare of a trumpet. Presently, as we drew nearer Amiens, we left it
behind us, for in all the Somme valley there is some curious
configuration which blankets sound. The countryfolk call it the 'Silent
Land', and during the first phase of the Somme battle a man in Amiens
could not hear the guns twenty miles off at Albert.

As I sat down again I found that the company had fallen silent, even
the garrulous Archie. Mary's eyes met mine, and in the indifferent
light of the French railway-carriage I could see excitement in them--I
knew it was excitement, not fear. She had never heard the noise of a
great barrage before. Blenkiron was restless, and Peter was sunk in his
own thoughts. I was growing very depressed, for in a little I would
have to part from my best friends and the girl I loved. But with the
depression was mixed an odd expectation, which was almost pleasant. The
guns had brought back my profession to me, I was moving towards their
thunder, and God only knew the end of it. The happy dream I had dreamed
of the Cotswolds and a home with Mary beside me seemed suddenly to have
fallen away to an infinite distance. I felt once again that I was on
the razor-edge of life.

The last part of the journey I was casting back to rake up my knowledge
of the countryside. I saw again the stricken belt from Serre to Combles
where we had fought in the summer of '17. I had not been present in the
advance of the following spring, but I had been at Cambrai and I knew
all the down country from Lagnicourt to St Quentin. I shut my eyes and
tried to picture it, and to see the roads running up to the line, and
wondered just at what points the big pressure had come. They had told
me in Paris that the British were as far south as the Oise, so the
bombardment we had heard must be directed to our address. With
Passchendaele and Cambrai in my mind, and some notion of the
difficulties we had always had in getting drafts, I was puzzled to
think where we could have found the troops to man the new front. We
must be unholily thin on