The most careful maneuvering on fields at home was poor preparation for No Man's Land, which is like nothing else in the world except No Man's Land. Millions of soldiers know it through long watches over its dreary lifeless space, and more vividly through crossing it in a charge. For four years it had been the zone of death where no soldier from either side ventured except at night on patrol or in a raid or general attack. All this time shells had been pummeling it. The rims of craters, of sizes varying with the calibers of the shells, joined each other; old craters had been partly filled by later bursts. This continued pestling of the soil with nothing to press it down but the rain made it the more spongy in wet weather and the looser in dry weather. The heads of the men bobbed as they advanced, stepping in and out of craters, and wove in and out as they passed around craters. The rims often gave way with their weight, or they slipped on the dew-moist weeds that fringed them or upon some "dud" shell hidden in the weeds, as their attention was diverted from the ground under foot by the burst of an enemy shell or of one from their own guns which fell dangerously short. As our artillery, in order to preserve the element of surprise, had not "registered" with practice shots, it was firing strictly by the map; and, though its accuracy was wonderful, inexperienced gunners manning guns which had not had the allowances for error recently tabulated, were bound, in some cases, to send their shells wide of the mark. The big calibers might fail to destroy "strong points" that held machine-gun nests, or a battery of seventy-fives fail to cut the section of wire which was its assignment. For these mistakes the infantry must suffer. It is the infantry which always pays the price in blood for all mistakes; and the transfer of an officer to Blois or the demotion of a general officer would not bring back their dead. Their immediate concern, as that of every infantryman had been in every charge throughout the war, as they crossed No Man's Land, was the wire entanglements. All the original wire, four years' exposure to the weather making its rusty barbs the more threatening, was still there in some form or other, though it had been ruptured or further twisted by previous bombardments whose craters only added to the difficulties of passage. Breaks had been filled by new wire, which rather supplemented the old than took its place. Additional stretches had been put out at intervals to reinforce the defense of vital points. A half-dozen strands will halt a charge in its tracks; here was a close-woven skein, from three and four to twenty yards in depth. Where the depth was greatest, it was most likely to have a continuous uncut stretch which the enemy had marked as a target for fire upon the arrested attackers.