At the rear the stretcher-bearers marched, the rolled-up stretchers upon their shoulders; but even so, by various dark stains and marks upon that dingy canvas, I knew that here was a company that had done and endured much. Close by me was a man whose hairy knee was black with dried blood--to him I tentatively proffered my cigarette case. "Wull ye hae one the noo?" I questioned. For a moment he eyed me a trifle dour and askance, then he smiled (a grave Scots smile). "Thank ye, I wull that!" said he, and extracted the cigarette with muddy fingers. "Ye'll hae a sore leg, I'm thinking!" said I. "Ou aye," he admitted with the same grave smile, "but it's no sae muckle as a' that--juist a wee bit skelpit I--" Our car moved forward, gathered speed, and we bumped and swayed on our way; the bagpipes shrieked and wailed, grew plaintively soft, and were drowned and lost in that other sound which was a murmur no longer, but a rolling, distant thunder, with occasional moments of silence. "Ah, the guns at last!" said I. "Yes," nodded K., lighting another cigarette, "I've been listening to them for the last hour." Here my friend F., who happened to be the Intelligence Officer in charge, leaned forward to say: "I'm afraid we can't get into Beaumont Hamel, the Boches are strafing it rather, this morning, but we'll go as near as we can get, and then on to what was La Boiselle. We shall leave the car soon, so better get into your tin hats." Forthwith I buckled on one of the morions we had brought for the purpose and very uncomfortable I found it. Having made it fairly secure, I turned, grinning furtively, to behold K.'s classic features crowned with his outlandish-seeming headgear, and presently caught him grinning furtively at mine. "They're not so heavy as I expected," said I. "About half a pound," he suggested. Pulling up at a shell shattered village we left the car and trudged along a shell-torn road, along a battered and rusty railway line, and presently struck into a desolate waste intersected by sparse hedgerows, and with here and there desolate, leafless trees, many of which, in shattered trunk and broken bough, showed grim traces of what had been; and ever as we advanced these ugly scars grew more frequent, and we were continually dodging sullen pools that were the work of bursting shells. And then it began to rain again. On we went, splashing through puddles, slipping in mud, and ever as we went my boots and my uncomfortable helmet grew heavier and heavier, while in the heaven above, in the earth below and in the air about us was the quiver and thunder of unseen guns. As we stumbled through the muddy desolation I beheld wretched hovels wherein khaki-clad forms moved, and from one of these damp and dismal structures a merry whistling issued, with hoarse laughter. On we tramped, through rain and mud, which, like my helmet, seemed to grow momentarily heavier.