''E's a bloomin' little butcher, is that Lefftenant of ours,' the Corporal said that night. ''Course it was a good bit o' work, an' he'd reason to be proud of it; but--well I thought I'd a strongish stomach, an' I've seen some dirty blood-an'-bones messes in my time but that scorchin' shambles near turned me over. An' he comes back, after lookin' at it, as cheerful as the cornerman o' a Christie Minstrel troupe, an' as pleased as a dog wi' two tails. Fair pleased, 'e was.' But he was a little wrong. What had brought the Subaltern back with such a cheerful air was not the sight of his work, not the grim picture of the smashed trenches. It was an encounter he had had with a little group of German prisoners, the recognising amongst them of a dirty, mud-stained blue shirt with sleeves cut off above the elbows, a close-cropped bare head, a boy's face with smooth oval chin and girlish eyes. The mine work he had directed, but others had shared it. It was the day's work--it was an incident of war--it was, after all, merely 'a mine successfully exploded . . .' But that one life saved was also his work, and, moreover, his own, his individual personal work. It was of that he thought most as he came back smiling to his Corporal. ARTILLERY SUPPORT '_. . . supported by a close and accurate artillery fire . . ._'--EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH. From his position in the 'Observation Post' the Artillery Forward Officer watched the fight raging along his front much as a spectator in the grand-stand watches a football match. Through his glasses he could see every detail and movement of the fighters, see even their facial expressions, the grip of hands about their weapons. Queerly enough, it was something like looking at the dumb show of a cinema film. He could see a rifle pointed and the spit of flame from the muzzle without hearing any report, could see an officer gesticulating and his mouth opening and closing in obvious stentorian shoutings without hearing the faintest sound of his voice, could even see the quick flash and puffing smoke of a grenade without catching the crash of its explosion. It was not that he was too far off to hear all these sounds, but simply because individually they were drowned in the continuous ear-filling roar of the battle.