You will understand that it did not mean that I must cover the entire territory and lest I might bore my reader with the military technicalities of performing such a task, I will simply add that to the old soldier certain aspects are capable of equally certain deductions as to gun positions and the rest of it. It was decided that I would start out at nine o’clock that night, and though the Germans were mercilessly strafing us, as though they were in contemplation of an onslaught of their battalions upon us, only our long-distance guns were taking up the challenge. That was a little courtesy to me. It was enough that I would have to cross No Man’s Land under enemy fire without placing on me the risk of losing my life by the fire of our own guns. Small arms would have no difficulty in carrying over the strip. No Man’s Land here was no more than five hundred yards across. So shells, machine-gun drums and snipers’ bullets from the Germans were ignored, our trenches making no answer. There had been many rains and hardly had I gone over the top when I realized what lush traveling was ahead. I soon found myself in mud up to my knees. A tiny company of three men, a lance corporal and two privates, followed out into the corpse-strewn territory. It looked from the very beginning as if the Germans had suspected what was afoot. They began making an especial display with their star-shells the very moment after we had started. When these flares went up, we stood stock still and held the position steadily. It is when you move that the light of the star-shells limns your figure and make you your enemy’s mark. After the first outburst of star-shells, I ordered my men to go to their knees and advance on all fours, thus lowering our visibility. As I sank to my knees and put out my hands, one of them touched a man’s face. I drew the hand back with that instinctive recoil that is uncontrollable at the touch of cold, dead flesh. I groped for the poor fellow’s identification disk and papers, handed them over to the lance corporal, and then crawled onward. But soon the sensation of pawing over the cold faces of the dead became common to all of us. There was no shock in it any more. But we were careful to gather up their disks and papers before moving along. The new shock came when I rested my hand on the back of a man lying with his face toward the German trenches. He moved and I grasped him by the neck and was ready to use my trench knife when he grunted: “Who the hell’s that?” “Who the hell are you?” I demanded. “Warwickshire--out on reconnaissance. Lost my way. Nearly walked into the Germans. Been wandering out two hours. Where am I, sir?” I whispered directions as to his way back. It took us all of four hours, owing to the caution we had every instant to use, to cross that swamp of heavy mud mingled with the bodies of the fallen.