At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain ---- regretfully, "but we brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village--a splendid fight." Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed that no aeroplane overhead could guess it. There it was--how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and northern workshops!--its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock--not so violent as I had expected--and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has sped on its way to the German trenches--with what result to human flesh and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that--till afterwards. At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group of men in the darkness held all one's nerves gripped. In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the officers, in their billet, when our walk was done.