Several men wounded, or resting from the front, in these villages, told me the same story: "It began about six--heavy, accurate shell fire; there was a lunch interval; it stopped about dusk every day. Then in the night, often came the charges. One night I couldn't count them! It was awful. Kill, kill, kill, and still they came on, shoving each other over on to us!" No man but had his story of comrades on either side shot or smashed day after day, of the shriek of shells, of the perpetual groaning of the wounded as they lay in the wet trenches. "Seven days and nights of it! and some nights only an hour's sleep." And all the same description--"It was just absolute hell." No one found another word to describe it. And the sight of the men bore it out. Muddied to the eyes, soaked, often blood-caked. Many were suffering from the curious aphasia produced by the continuous concussion of shells bursting. Some were dazed and speechless, some deafened. And yet, splendid to relate, I saw on no Briton's face, wounded or resting, the fixed, inhuman stare of war. Even the wounded were in good spirits, unconquerable,--the sporting "looker-on" attitude of the British soldier. I scrawled a line of letter for some of them; they all wanted it said that it had been "hell"; that they were glad to be out; but not sorry to have been in. Many wanted advice added to "brother Tom" or "cousin Dick" not to rush into it; but they knew themselves, as anyone who knows the breed would know, that it was just that scrap that would make Tom or Harry mad that he had not been in it too! The French were more absorbed and aloof, less of "professional" fighters. They could not do without the personal touch. A little group of the Line sat before a burnt cottage sharpening and caressing their bayonets--"Rosalie" they call them, for love of their bloodstained edges. Soissons has suffered little less than Rheims. Not from fire as yet, but six or more dark, jagged holes showed where the cathedral has been shelled. The town looks more than half in desolate ruins. The fighting here has been indescribably fierce. At Bucy-le-Long, just to the north-east, the Germans dropped shells into a school converted into a Red Cross ambulance, killing many wounded. One of the wounded assistants described the scene. "They didn't intend it, probably; we had troops coming up just behind, and they're poor shots!" Description of the sights and sounds of past battlefields are monotonously grim, and useless to repeat. But the villages and country in the track of this long battle, along the south of the Aisne, cannot be left unmentioned, if war is to be recognised as reality.