o and from the trenches, come in for hot tea or
coffee and refreshments night and day. A significant sign forbids more
than thirty men to congregate at once in this exposed spot, as
sometimes these Y M C A dugouts are blown to atoms by a shell. The one
down below in "Plug Street" has been blown to bits, and the man in the
one just up the line has been under such fire for several days that he
will have to abandon his dugout.

Just in front of us over the ridge is the first line of the present
British front. There is no time to build trenches now or to dig
themselves in. They just hold the broken line of unconnected shell
holes, or swarm in the great craters which are held by rapid fire
machine guns. The men go out by night to relieve those who have been
holding the ground during the previous day. It is harder for the
enemy's artillery to locate and destroy men scattered in these
irregular holes and craters than if they were in a clear line of
trenches. The British front faces down the slope toward the bristling
German lines, dotted with hidden snipers and studded with sputtering
machine guns. As the evening falls the batteries behind and all about
us open fire. Flash after flash of spurting flame leaps out from the
great guns. Boom upon boom, deep voiced and varied, follows from the
many calibred guns in the darkness, till the night is lurid and the
ground beneath us quivers with the earthquake of bombardment.

High above we hear the piercing shriek of the shells speeding to their
fatal mark, and below the crash of the exploding shells of the enemy,
which toss the earth in dark waves into the air in the black surf of
war. Gun after gun now joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in
a hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The whole horizon is lit up
and aflame. The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns,
as with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey
lights of greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day,
and like the lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while
the rifles crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great
star hangs suspended almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole
battlefield, and now a burning farmhouse or exploding ammunition dump
illuminates the sky as from some vast subterranean furnace flung open
upon the heavens. All the long sullen night the earth is rocked by
slow intermittent rumbling, till with