Perhaps the most reliable is by runner, or courier, on foot. The runner has an arduous, dangerous, and often thankless, task, which he performs as a rule patiently, bravely and tirelessly. The telephone, telegraph, and power buzzer--the latter being sometimes used without wires, at a distance as great as 4000 yards--are commonly employed, though they have many disadvantages. The first of these is the difficulty in installing them in the face of heavy shelling and counter attacks by the enemy. Secondly, they are likely to be put out of commission, their wires being destroyed by shells. Finally, their messages are often picked up through the earth by your opponents with some apparatus invented for the purpose. There are the semaphore and flashlight methods of signaling, and signaling by flares, all naturally very limited in variety of use, the latter particularly so. But flares are of great service when a hurried artillery retaliation is desired, S.O.S. flares then being sent up. The wireless apparatus on aeroplanes and the throwing of flares by aviators are also used to good account. But there are times when all these different methods are found wanting. Through force of circumstance a battalion or company may be completely isolated, and then it is that the last and least employed method, that of carrier pigeons, is resorted to. In each battalion are a couple or more specially trained carrier pigeons, and to speak of the "O.C. Pigeons" is a standing joke. The pigeons are rarely employed. It may be almost forgotten that they are with a unit, as was practically the case of one battalion at the Somme of which the following story is told: The commanding officer had waited in vain for hours for some message as to the success or failure of a show one company was putting on. He was impatiently striding up and down when a poor little carrier pigeon fluttered into his presence. He hurriedly caught it, and untied from its leg the following message: "I am bally well fed up carrying this damned bird about. You take it for a while." After all this preparatory stage is completed, when transport, artillery preparation, communication, maps, training, dummy advances, extra rations, water, medical supplies and equipment, are in order, the next move is to get all troops taking part in the advance into the most advantageous positions, unknown to the Germans. The men are well fed, given extra water bottles, "iron rations" are in their kits--that is, bully beef and biscuit--they are equipped only in fighting dress. By night they are marched into the trenches from which they are to go over the top, and after a few hours of rest, broken by shell fire, the zero hour, or hour of attack, arrives.