The day was very quiet and hazy and it was impossible to see very far. We suddenly came upon the remains of a little village which had been literally levelled to the ground; not two feet of brick wall could be seen anywhere. At the cross roads in the centre of the village two military policemen seemed to be surprised at our appearance with a large motor car but said nothing, evidently thinking that we knew our own business best, and we made the correct turn according to the sign board and kept on. About two hundred yards farther on we ran into a veritable maze of trenches, barbed wire entanglements and dug-outs, without doubt part of the front line trench system. Needless to say we made a rapid right-about face and speedily retraced our steps by the road we had come. We found later on that the road we had taken did go to the village that we wanted to visit but that it went through the German trenches en route. At the point where we had turned, which was only four hundred yards from the German trenches, thirty men had been killed by snipers during that month while getting water at one of the wells in the neighborhood. The haze in the atmosphere saved us from observation for we would have been a fine target for rifles, machine guns and even whiz bangs. We met officers in every branch of the service,--infantry, cavalry, artillery, flying corps, ordnance, army service, medical, engineers, construction, water transport, etc., and thereby obtained a splendid idea of what was going on, and how the various branches of the service worked together and viewed any given problem. Some of these views were quite at variance with one another. For instance the artillery man looked upon the infantryman as the man who protected his guns and kept off the enemy while he killed them. The infantryman naturally looked upon the artillery as the arm to support him in time of trouble and prepare the ground while he did the dirty work. The aviator called them all "ground soldiers" in a more or less lofty manner. The medical and other services looked upon the fighting man as the one who gave them a great deal of work, and they all usually forgot that they existed for the express purpose of keeping Tommy in the trenches clothed, fed, healthy and protected from the assaults of the enemy; for Tommy is the man, say what you will, without him everything else goes smash; it is the human being who still counts in war; it is the man power which will win. CHAPTER XII. SKETCHES FROM A LABORATORY WINDOW. _The Bandstand in the Square._