Now, here is what it means. There is no good done by describing the particular horrors of war--God knows those who see them want to forget them as soon as they can. But it is just as well to know what the work in the munition factories means to _your_ friends--_your_ sons and fathers and brothers at the front. The normal shelling of the afternoon--a scattered bombardment all over the landscape, which only brings perhaps half a dozen shells to your immediate neighbourhood once in every ten minutes--has noticeably quickened. The German is obviously turning on more batteries. The light field-gun shrapnel is fairly scattered as before. But 5.9-inch howitzers are being added to it. Except for his small field guns, the German makes little use of guns. His work is almost entirely done with howitzers. He possesses big howitzers--8-inch and larger--as we do. But the backbone of his artillery is the 5.9 howitzer; and after that probably the 4.2. The shells from both these guns are beginning to fall more thickly. Huge black clouds shoot into the air from various parts of the foreground, and slowly drift away across the hill-top. Suddenly there is a descending shriek, drawn out for a second or more, coming terrifyingly near; a crash far louder than the nearest thunder; a colossal thump to the earth which seems to move the whole world about an inch from its base; a scatter of flying bits and all sorts of under-noises, rustle of a flying wood splinter, whir of fragments, scatter of falling earth. Before it is half finished another shriek exactly similar is coming through it. Another crash--apparently right on the crown of your head, as if the roof beams of the sky had been burst in. You can just hear, through the crash, the shriek of a third and fourth shell as they come tearing down the vault of heaven--_crash--crash_. Clouds of dust are floating over you. A swifter shriek and something breaks like a glass bottle in front of the parapet, sending its fragments slithering low overhead. It bursts like a rainstorm, sheet upon sheet, _smash, smash, smash_, with one or two more of the heavier shells punctuating the shower of the lighter ones. The lighter shell is shrapnel from field guns, sent, I dare say, to keep you in the trench while the heavier shell pounds you there. A couple of salvos from each, perhaps twenty or thirty shells in the minute, and the shrieks cease. The dust drifts down the hill. The sky clears. The sun looks in. Five minutes later down comes exactly such another shower.