As we plowed through a heavy cross road to Mouchy le Preux and came out on the highway to Arras, we saw a German battery. The last stars had withdrawn, and in the grayish morning light the clanking field pieces lumbered by, a ghostly company with vague gray ghostly men on ghostly horses. I imagined they were moving parallel to the firing line, changing position. How close were we now? Probably six kilometers. Two miles riding up the road to Arras with the battlefield of October 1st, the muddy, desolated fields on either side. It was up this road that the French artillery made its retreat, across those fields that their infantry poured with the Duke of Altenburg's Saxonians in hot pursuit. Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann had told me that the French had given way all along the line here before the German second drive, retreating to Arras, which they now held. I remember that he had spoken of Arras as an objective and that the Germans were constantly drawing nearer. How close were they now? How far from the French would we be in the trench? One began to feel a tremulous excitement. Hauptmann Kliewer and Ober-Lieutenant Herrmann told us that this was as far as they dared go with the motors. To approach closer than two kilometers to Arras with automobiles, and we easily would be discerned by the French artillery observers. Evidently having been telephoned that we were coming, two gray cloaked officers were waiting for us outside a little brown shack that I guessed was regimental headquarters. The Captain, an intelligent looking Prussian--and, by the way, I've yet to see one of the upturned mustached bullies of whom our cartoonists are so fond--spoke perfect English.