Ten miles to the east of Amiens a steep-sided ridge divides the converging rivers of Ancre and Somme. They meet where it sinks, at its western end, into the plain. From the ridge there was, in pre-war days, a beautiful view. On the south the ground fell from your feet abruptly, a kind of earth cliff, to the north bank of the Somme, about a hundred feet below. Southwards, beyond the river, stretched, as far as eye could see, the expanse of the level Santerre, one of France's best cornlands. South-eastward you looked up the Somme valley, mile after mile, towards Bray and Péronne--a shining valley of poplars and stream and linked ponds and red-roofed villages among the poplars. But now the Santerre lay untilled, gone back to heath of a faded fawn-grey. The red roofs had been shelled; the Germans possessed them; the Germans held the blasted heath, across the river; other Germans held most of the ridge on this side to a mile or so east of the point to which I was posted that morning. English troops were to carry the eastern end of the ridge and the tricky low ground between it and the Somme. Australian and Canadian troops were to attack on a broad front, out on the level Santerre, across the river and under our eyes. But there was no seeing. The mist, in billowy, bolster-like masses, wallowed and rolled about at the touch of light airs; at one moment a figure some thirty yards off could be seen and then a thickened whiteness would rub it out; down the earth cliff we looked into a cauldron of that seething milky opaqueness. Of what might go on in that pit of enigma the eye could tell nothing; the mind hung on what news might come through the ear. We knew that there was to be no prior bombardment; the men would start with the barrage and go for five miles across the Santerre if they could, pushing the enemy off it. The stage was set, the play of plays was about to begin on the broad stage below; only, between our eyes and the boards there was hung a white curtain. Up the cliff, fumbling and muted, came the first burst of the barrage, suggesting, as barrages usually do, a race between sounds, a piece bangingly played against time on a keyboard. Now the men would be rising full length above earth and walking out with smoking breath and bejewelled eyebrows into the infested mist. Then our guns, for an interval, fell almost silent--first lift of the barrage--a chance for hungry ears to assess the weight of the enemy's answering gunfire. Surely, surely it had not all the volume it had had at Arras and Ypres last year. And then down came our barrage again, like one rifle-bolt banging home, and all thought was again with the friends before whose faces the wall of splashing metal, earth, and flame had just risen and moved on ahead like the pillars of fire and cloud.