“Well, go down there, and see if you can see the flashes from there; and if you can, mark it down. See?” “Yes, sir!” and he had his equipment on in no time, and was starting off when I called him back. “Be very careful to mark your own position,” I warned him. “You know what I mean.” He knew, and I knew that he knew. Meanwhile, I stuck an empty cartridge case in the parados behind my head and waited. Five flashes spat out again, and “pop--pop--pop--pop--pop” came up out of the valley: and between me and them in the parapet I stuck a second cartridge case---- I looked at my watch. It was half-past twelve. The post was finished, and the trench deep enough to get along, crawling anyway. “Cease work.” * * * * * The next day was so misty that you could see practically nothing over five hundred yards, and the new post was useless. The following day it had frozen again, and an inch of snow lay on the ground. It was a sunny morning, and from the new post all Fricourt lay in full view before me. How well I remember every detail of that city of the dead! In the centre stood the white ruin of the church, still higher than the houses around it, though a stubby stump compared to what it must have been before thousands of shells reduced it to its present state. All around were houses; roofless, wall-less skeletons all of them, save in a few cases, where a red roof still remained, or a house seemed by some magic to be still untouched. On the extreme right was Rose Cottage, a well-known artillery mark; just to its left were some large park-gates, with stone pillars, leading into Fricourt Wood; and just inside the wood was a small cottage--a lodge, I suppose. The extreme northern part of the village was invisible, as the ground fell away north of the church. I could see where the road disappeared from view; then beyond, clear of the houses, the road reappeared and ran straight up to the skyline, a mile further on. A communication trench crossed this road: (I remember we saw some men digging there one morning). With my glasses I could see every detail; beyond the communication trench were various small copses, and tracks running over the field; and on the skyline, about three thousand yards away, was a long row of bushes. And just to the left of it all ran the two white lace-borders of chalk trenches, winding and wobbling along, up, up, up until they disappeared over the hill to La Boiselle. Sometimes they diverged as much as three hundred yards, but only to come in together again, so close that it was hard to see which was ours and which the German. Due west of Fricourt church they touched in a small crater chain.