Far back the infantry brigade commander is lying upon his stomach upon the height to the left of the wrecked shelter-trench. The fog-belt has moved off. He has a clear view from ridge to ridge. Suddenly he takes his field-glasses from his eyes and picks up a telephone receiver at the end of a long line trailing over the ground. He speaks a few words into it, replies shortly to mysterious enquiries that emanate from the far distance, suggests a number of metres in thousands. Almost immediately the shriek of a shell passes overhead and the report of a cannon-shot comes echoing along the valley, arrives in a succession of distinct shocks to the ear. Ere the echoes have died away another shell screams past, followed by its series of reverberations. The infantry brigadier is watching the distant ridge through his binoculars. The line of boulders is faintly visible. The first shell bursts above it and beyond; the second bursts short. The bracket is too wide. The brigadier speaks again through the telephone. Another shell wakes weird noises from the mountains as an accompaniment to its own shriek. It bursts just in front of the line of boulders above it. Through his glasses the brigadier sees the splash of shrapnel bullets upon the rocks like twinkles in quick whiffs of dust. He speaks two brief words into the telephone. A flight of shells rushes overhead like a covey of screaming spirits and with an enormous roll of thunder arrives the roar of a battery in rapid action. Its reverberations roll and clash endlessly, surging from side to side of the valley in confused waves of violent sound. The long line of boulders is suddenly whelmed in a cloud of dust that renews itself as fast as it drifts into the air. From one end of that cloud spurt tiny points of flame, and shriek crosses shriek in the air above, whilst a series of sharp crashes mingles with the continuous roar. Quick puffs of white smoke appear in groups against the blue sky. In the unfinished shelter-trench spurts of dust leap up around the bodies of the dead men who lie behind the boulders. A battery of guns has been pushed up into the infantry line over there on the hostile ridge and, unobservant of the menace close at hand, is spending its fury upon the trench that it wrecked overnight.