"We were the advance division. We got there at nightfall, a desperate long march. The Germans had dynamited seven out of the eight bridges, but one just stood. We were ordered to shuffle across it singly, at ten yards intervals. It began at midnight, in the dark, a queer, nervous job; and we weren't all over, quite, by five in the morning. Two of the chaps slipped in, astray in the dark, one just ahead of me. I thought it was the bridge going up--the sort of 'plump' he went!" I have had that feeling several times these last weeks, the stealthy crawl across the bridge with dynamite already laid below it. North of the forest of Villers, the region which is a grim cemetery of men and of the homes of men, full of the smoke and dust of ruined houses and of the smoke and dust of burning piles of what were men, many soldiers were still lying on straw under shelter from the rain, waiting their turn to be fetched down by the ambulances. There are scores still waiting. For one I took down a letter. This is its substance: "Jack and me were in that show at Shivers (Chivres-sur-Aisne?) It was not man-fighting that week; just banging with engines over our heads, and getting them too, often enough. When it got dark, 'they' always rang off. And we went out, not under orders, just for our turn; about six of us. Jack got a sentry--here--and we got to the pit; but they were on us before we could mess the gun; and it was pretty fair hell in the dark; just jabbing at anything you heard or touched. Three of us got back; and we left 'them' some burying to do on their own, too." The valley of the Aisne has a deadly sameness. At Retheuil and Chelles, the silent apathetic peasants--all too few--were heaping remains of men and horses for burning, or dragging them into the long raw trenches that scar the fields with white issues of lime. Anything of value or metal is dragged off, the bodies thrust in, and, for all the pestilent air, the peasant stolidly munches at his bread between whiles. It is astonishing how little it affects one after a day or two. I don't believe the sight or sound of always present death, or even, for that matter, the more intolerable affliction of sleepless nights, wet trenches, cold winds, and continuous strain, has taken five minutes of his quaint optimism from the British soldier. And yet this war is being fought without the exciting accompaniment of bands or drums. There are no parade sights; no colour.