"I realized what it meant that I had promised to do. It meant that I was to climb up a scaling ladder over our parapet, go out into the full exposure of the enemy, crawl on my stomach slowly--slowly again--an inch at a time--so slowly that if a German saw me, he would not know I was moving at all, and would suppose me dead. I must cover the distance between our parapet and our entanglement, which was perhaps a dozen yards, with a tripping wire in between, then noiselessly cut a lane through twenty feet of knotted and gnarled barbed wire, fastening it back so that it could not curl up and entangle our men as they rushed through. Then I must creep and crawl on my stomach, hugging the ground until I got back and slid into our trench. If I were seen, it was all day with me. I'd go to Blighty--for good. "Well, twelve o'clock came around--all too soon. I went. When I had cut my first wire, a German star shell fell, lighting up the barbed-wire entanglement for rods around. Luckily for me it fell short of the parallel in which I was, to the trenches. If it had fallen back of me, it would have thrown my body into bold relief." For the readers' benefit be it said that a star shell is something like a sky rocket or a roman candle. It is sent up into the air and falls to the ground, lighting up everything around it. The purpose of it is to betray any action of the enemy in No Man's Land. Obviously, if it falls short, it blinds the sender to what is going on beyond it, just as a light in the window of a house will not throw the objects in the room into view from the outside, especially if the spectator is some distance away. But objects can be plainly seen in the room by a person across the street, if the light is on the far side of the room. This is particularly true if the object should move. So with the star shell. But it must frighten one at best to be lying on his stomach and have the whole world illuminated about him even if he is behind the light. In slower and lower tones the poilu continued: "I had just cut my last wire and folded it back on the post--I don't think thirty seconds had passed--when a star shell came down between me and my own trench and glimmered away as if it never would go out. It may have burned for thirty seconds, but that thirty seconds seemed like thirty years to me.