We marched towards the flashes and could soon see the flare-lights curving over the trenches in the distance. The noise of the guns grew louder and louder. Then we were among the batteries. From behind us on the left of the road a salvo of four shells came suddenly over our heads. The battery was only about two hundred yards away. This broke up _Aberystwyth_ in the middle of a verse and set us off our balance for a few seconds; the column of fours tangled up. The shells went hissing away eastward; we could see the red flash and hear the hollow bang where they landed in German territory. The men picked up their step again and began chaffing. A lance-corporal dictated a letter home: ‘Dear auntie, this leaves me in the pink. We are at present wading in blood up to our necks. Send me fags and a lifebelt. This war is a booger. Love and kisses.’ The roadside cottages were now showing more and more signs of dilapidation. A German shell came over and then whoo—oo—ooooooOOO—bump—CRASH! twenty yards away from the party. We threw ourselves flat on our faces. Presently we heard a curious singing noise in the air, and then flop! flop! little pieces of shell-casing came buzzing down all around. ‘They calls them the musical instruments,’ said the sergeant. ‘Damn them,’ said Frank Jones-Bateman, who had a cut in his hand from a jagged little piece, ‘the devils have started on me early.’ ‘Aye, they’ll have a lot of fun with you before they’re done, sir,’ grinned the sergeant. Another shell came over. Every one threw himself down again, but it burst two hundred yards behind us. Only Sergeant Jones had remained on his feet and laughed at us. ‘You’re wasting yourselves, lads,’ he said to the draft. ‘Listen by the noise they make coming where they’re going to burst.’ At Cambrin village, which was about a mile from the front trenches, we were taken into a ruined house. It had been a chemist’s shop and the coloured glass lights were still in the window. It was the billet of the Welsh company quartermaster-sergeants. Here we were issued with gas-respirators and field dressings. This was the first respirator issued in France. It was a gauze-pad filled with chemically-treated cotton waste, to be tied across the mouth and nose. It seems it was useless against German gas. I never put it to the test. A week or two later came the ‘smoke-helmet,’ a greasy grey-felt bag with a talc window to look through, but no mouthpiece. This also was probably ineffective against gas. The talc was always cracking and there were leaks where it was stitched into the helmet. These were early days of trench-warfare, the days of the jam-tin bomb and the gas-pipe trench-mortar. It was before Lewis or Stokes guns, steel helmets, telescopic rifle-sights, gas-shells, pill-boxes, tanks, trench-raids, or any of the later improvements of trench-warfare.