For the second permissible--periscopes are tempting targets--I looked through one over the top of the parapet. Another film! A big British lyddite shell went crashing into the German parapet. The dust from sandbags and dugouts merged into an immense cloud of ugly, black smoke. As the cloud rose, one saw the figure of a German dart out of sight; then nothing was visible but the gap which the explosion has made. No wise German would show himself there. British snipers were watching for him. At least half a dozen, perhaps a score, of men had been put out by this single “direct hit” of an h. e. (high explosive). Yes, the British gunners were shooting well, too. Other periscopic glimpses proved it. Through the periscope we learned also that the two lines of sandbags of German and British trenches were drawing nearer together. Another wounded man was brought by. “They’re bombing up ahead. He has just been hit by a bomb.” As we drew aside to make room for him to pass, once more the civilian realised his helplessness and unimportance. One soldier was worth ten Prime Ministers in that place. We were as conspicuously _mal à propos_ as an outsider at a bank directors’ meeting or in a football scrimmage. The officer politely reminded us of the necessity of elbow room in the narrow quarters for the bombers, who were hidden from view by the zigzag traverses, and I was not sorry, though perhaps my companions were. If so, they did not say so, not being talkative men. We were not going to see that two hundred yards of captured trench that was beyond the bombing action, after all. Oh, the twinkle in that staff officer’s eye! “A _Boche_ gas shell!” we were told, as we passed an informal excavation in the communication trench on our way back. “Asphyxiating effect. No time to put on respirators when one explodes. Laid out half a dozen men like fish, gasping for air, but they will recover.” “The _Boches_ want us to hurry!” exclaimed L----. They were giving the communication trench a turn at “strafing,” now, and shells were urgently dropping behind us. There was no use of trying to respond to one’s natural inclination to run away from the pursuing shower when you had to squeeze past soldiers as you went. “But look at what we are going into! This is like beating up grouse to the guns, and we are the birds! I am wondering if I like it.” We could tell what had happened in our absence in the support trench by the litter of branches and leaves and by the excavations made by shells. It was still happening, too. Another nine-inch, with your only view of your surroundings the wall of earth which you hugged. Crash-- and safe again! “Pretty!” L---- said, smiling. He was referring to the cloud of black smoke from the burst. Pretty is a favourite word of his. I find that men use habitual exclamations on such occasions. R----, also smiling, had said, “A black business, this!” a favourite expression with him. “Yet--pretty!” R---- and I exclaimed together.