The next day we did an advance guard scheme, down in the plain. It was a crisp winter day, and I remember the great view from the top of the hill, on the edge of the plateau as you leave Montagne. It was all mapped out, with its hedgeless fields, its curling white roads, and its few dark triangles and polygons of fir woods. But we had not long to see it, for we came into observation then (so this dream game pretended!) and were soon in extended order working our way along over the plain. It all came back to one, this “open warfare” business, the advancing in short rushes, the flurried messages from excited officers to stolid platoon-sergeants, the taking cover, the fire-orders, the rattling of the bolts, the lying on the belly in a ploughed field; and yes! the spectator, old man or woman, gazing in stupid amazement at the khaki figures rushing over his fields. Then came the assault, bayonets fixed, and the C.O.’s whistle, ending the game for that day. “Game,” that was it: it is all a game, and when you get tired you go home to a good meal, and discuss the humour of it, and probably have a pow-wow in the evening in which the O.C. “A” is asked why he went off to the left, the real answer being that he lost direction badly, but the actual answer given explaining the subtlety of a detour round a piece of dead ground! Which is the dream? this, or the mud-slogging in the trenches and the interminable nights? For, every night we went to bed! Think of it! Every night! Always that bed, that silence, that priceless privacy of sleep! I had a rather cold ground-floor billet with a door that would not shut; yet it was worth any of your beds at home! And I should be here for a month, perhaps six weeks! I wrote for my basin and stand, for books, for all sorts of things. I felt I could accumulate, and spread myself. It was like home after hotels! For always we had been moving, moving; even our six days out were often in two or even three different billets.