These picturesque spots have often charming names: _Bois de la Viergette_, _Ruisseau des Emerlots_, _Fontaine la Houyette_, _Fontaine-aux-Charmes_, _Fontaine-Madame_ and _Bagatelle_. Sometimes the names are quaint: _Fille-Morte_, _Moulin del’Homme Mort_, _Ferme-la-Mitte_, _Chêne Tondu_ and _Courte-Chausse_. Below the long ridge, which forms, as it were, the backbone of the forest, the _Chemin de la Haute-Chevauchée_, and, a little further west, the _Pavillon St. Hubert_ evoke memories of bygone hunting-parties. All these names, yesterday but little known, are to-day famous, as for months they recurred almost daily in the Communiqués of the Great War, and each of them brings to mind, not one battle only, but a series of battles, fierce struggles, and hand-to-hand encounters in the dense undergrowth. The stationary warfare assumed a special character in the Argonne. Lanes and footpaths formed the only breaks in the impenetrable thickets. There were no gentle slopes, no convenient firing positions for the infantry, no observation-posts for the artillery--everything being concealed by the thick foliage; no easy roads, for though several wide valleys enter the forest, they invariably end in narrow ravines which, except where there are paths, present almost insuperable obstacles. The innumerable springs give rise to excessive moisture. Tiny rivulets intersect the clay soil, and mud collects easily, making the paths impassable. Log roads had to be made in order to facilitate the bringing up of reliefs and supplies. Trenches were no sooner dug than they filled with water and mud, necessitating continuous baling, often with makeshifts such as pails, shovels, dishes, mess-tins, etc. These trenches, dug haphazard under enemy fire, were very irregular in line, and French and German trenches sometimes overlapped. The fusillade was uninterrupted, but erratic, except for a few snipers perched here and there in the trees. At night, the forest was swept at random by rifle and machine-gun fire, to make movement dangerous and to prevent surprise. Rockets continually lit up the night. Here the rifle was merely an auxiliary weapon, but grenade and bomb fighting went on all day without respite. Under this continuous rain of hand projectiles, and the hurricane of shells which destroyed the trenches, the casualties were heavy. Apart from the losses in actual battle, there were often hundreds of killed and wounded in a single day. In the attack or defence of a trench the fighting immediately became a hand-to-hand struggle, in which the long, cumbersome rifle generally gave place to the knife and revolver.