Another sport indulged in by the higher command was to change the main line of defense and re-allot the defense system of the sector. To be really qualified to do this, you should on no account have any knowledge of the actual terrain. Indeed, I think in all my experience I never received a defense map from the higher command where the individual making the map had been over the ground. All that you do, if you are the higher command, is to get a beautiful large scale map, draw broad lines across it and then dotted lines to indicate boundaries. For nearly a month I defended a sector where the map was entirely wrong. Two patches of woods were represented as in a valley, whereas they were on a hill. This worried neither the higher command nor me. The higher command did not know that the map was wrong; they had sent me their beautiful little plans. I sent them equally beautiful ones without debating the matter, and all were satisfied. I remember one general who commanded the brigade of which I was a member. His hobby was switch lines. A switch line is simply a trench running approximately perpendicular to the front, where a defensive position can be taken up in case the enemy breaks through on the right or left and whereby you form a defensive flank. The old boy would come up, solemn as a judge, and ask me where my switch lines were to be put. With equal solemnity I would explain to him. After talking for a half an hour he would ask confidentially, "Major, what is a switch line?" With equal solemnity I would explain to him and conversation would cease. Three days thereafter we would go through the same thing again. The old fellow had heard someone talking about a switch line once and somehow felt that it counted a hundred in game to have one. Another indoor sport of the high command was a report for plans of defense. A plan of defense consisted of maps and long screeds indicating just where counter-attacks were to be launched when parts of the front line were taken by the enemy. They were beautiful things, pages and pages long. They were as gay in color as Joseph's proverbial coat, and when things broke, circumstances were always such that you did something entirely different from any of the plans.