Unfortunately I happened to arrive on one of these occasions, and I knew it. Shells dropped all round us. Hardly a square yard of ground seemed untouched. Under such conditions it was no good standing. I looked round for cover, but there was none. The best thing to do under the circumstances was to go straight on, trust to Providence, and make for the communication trenches with all speed. I doubled like a hare over the intervening ground, and I was glad when I reached the trenches, for once there, unless a shell bursts directly overhead, or falls on top of you, the chances of getting hit are very small. I was now in the sniping zone, and could continually hear the crack of a Hun rifle, and the resulting thud of a bullet striking the mud or the sandbags, first one side then the other. The communication trenches seemed interminable, and, as we neared the front line, the mud got deeper and parts of the trench were quite water-logged. Plod, plod, plod; section after section, traverse after traverse. Suddenly I came upon a party of sappers mending the parapet top with newly filled sandbags. At that particular section a shell had dropped fairly near and destroyed it, and anyone walking past that gap stood a very good chance of having the top of his head taken off. These men were filling up the breach. "Keep your head well down, sir," shouted one, as I came along. "They" (meaning the Germans) "have got this place marked." Down went my head, and I passed the gap safely. We were now well up in the firing trench. Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches--that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. In front the German rifles, above the bursting shrapnel, each shell scattering its four hundred odd leaden bullets far and wide, killing or wounding any unfortunate man who happened to be in the way. The trenches looked as if a giant cataclysm of Nature had taken place. The whole earth had been upheaved, and in each of the mud-hills men had burrowed innumerable paths, seven feet deep. It was hard to distinguish men from mud. The former were literally caked from head to foot with the latter. I filmed the men at work. There were several snipers calmly smoking their cigarettes and taking careful aim at the enemy. Crack--crack--crack--simultaneously. "Sure, sir," remarked one burly Irish Guardsman, "and he'll never bob his ---- head up any more. It's him I've been afther this several hours!" And as coolly as if he had been at a rifle range at home, the man discharged the empty cartridge-case and stood with his rifle, motionless as a rock, his eyes like those of an eagle.