Thiepval again--Director of tactics of an army corps--Graduates of Staff Colleges--Army jargon--An army director's office--"Hope you will see a good show"--"This road is shelled; closed to vehicles"--A perfect summer afternoon--The view across No Man's Land--Nests of burrowers more cunning than any rodents--men--Tranquil preliminaries to an attack--The patent curtain of fire--Registering by practice shots--Running as men will run only from death--The tall officer who collapsed--"The shower of death." "We had a good show day before yesterday," said Brigadier-General Philip Howell, when I went to call on him one day. "Sorry you were not here. You could have seen it excellently." The corps of which he was general staff officer had taken a section of first-line trench at Thiepval with more prisoners than casualties, which is the kind of news they like to hear at General Headquarters. Thiepval was always in the background of the army's mind, the symbol of rankling memory which irritated British stubbornness and consoled the enemy for his defeat of July 15th and his gradual loss of the Ridge. The Germans, on the defensive, considered that the failure to take Thiepval at the beginning of the Somme battle proved its impregnability; the British, on the offensive, considered no place impregnable. Faintly visible from the hills around Albert, distinctly from the observation post in a high tree, the remains of the village looked like a patch of coal dust smeared in a fold of the high ground. When British fifteen-inch shells made it their target some of the dust rose in a great geyser and fell back into place; but there were cellars in Thiepval which even fifteen-inch shells could not penetrate. "However, we'll make the Germans there form the habit of staying indoors," said a gunner. Howell who had the Thiepval task in hand I had first known at Uskub in Macedonia in the days of the Macedonian revolution, when Hilmi Pasha was juggling with the Powers of Europe and autonomy--days which seem far away. A lieutenant then, Howell had an assignment from _The Times_, while home on leave from India, in order to make a study of the Balkan situation. In our walks around Uskub as we discussed the politics and the armies of the world I found that all was grist that came to his keen mind. His ideas about soldiering were explicit and practical. It was such hard-working, observant officers as he, most of them students at one time or another at the Staff College, who, when the crisis came, as the result of their application in peace time, became the organizers and commanders of the New Army. The lieutenant I had met at Uskub was now, at thirty-eight, the director of the tactics of an army corps which was solving the problem of reducing the most redoubtable of field works.