You recognize _Puppchen_. Leisurely beating time, sipping a glass of coffee that our orderly with the Iron Cross has filled for him from a pot that simmers on the squat coal stove, the leader is having the time of his life. They play some old German Folk songs, and once the harmonica man is late in starting and receives a boisterous reprimand from the leader. They are singing now, "_Röslein auf der Heide ... Morgen Rot_," and you think how sinister the words are, "leads me to an early death." Red morning! Will it ever be for them? Even here under the earth I can hear the hungry growling of the shells. Modestly the leader is telling us that the Bavarian musicians are the best in Germany, "therefore our band is the best in the trenches," and the Colonel is beaming on them all. The orderly with the Iron Cross, who, unable to speak a word of English, has been smiling at me all night, urges us to take some more coffee; and it's "Good-by, boys! Good Luck," and we're out into the battle-shaken night. "Want to have a look at it?" Hauptmann Koller asks me. I nod, yes. Hugging the wall, Koller and I turn the corner of the barn and slowly go down the open space between the buildings, that we had rushed past earlier in the evening, plastering ourselves against the walls. As if that would do us any good! We can hear the French bullets whistling by, and the air is shaking with heavy guns. "After eleven," remarks Koller, "I fancy the French are at it with big _grenaten_," and as he speaks I see a flash in the trees not two hundred meters away and a field piece discharges with a crash. "Our seven answering them," Koller is pointing towards where a greenish light seems to flash in the sky. "Over there about a mile," he says, "is the Ypres Canal. The Thirty-sixth Division is on the other bank, and as soon as they push back the French, we'll go ahead again," he speaks with a quiet confidence that makes you feel that the advance of his regiment is a matter of course. "Come down here," he suggests, "and you can see the battle. Don't scorn the shelter of those trees. Keep them between you and the trenches. Go from one tree to the other." I hear him splash through the mud; he is waving from behind a tree. I plow after him, going so fast that I almost slip and fall. The whistle of a bullet will make you move faster than you ever thought possible. Out of breath we come to the edge of the little grove and look out on the battlefield. It is all color and noise--unearthly colors, unearthly noises. I stand at the edge of an Inferno. The heavens streak with a sulphurous green, and the earth is scarred with flame. I see the rockets swishing up from the trenches, breaking with the weird light that would reveal any enemy creeping up, and falling in a shower of sparks, like shooting stars. It gives a strange confirmation of an old saying that when a star falls some one dies.