We were soon so near the enemy lines it would be dangerous to keep my men with me any longer. I was reluctant enough to leave them, but finally ordered them into a big shell-hole shelter where they would be well hidden from the flaring sky lights. I continued along toward the German barbed wire which the intermittent flashes plainly revealed. I made this advance wriggling on my stomach. The men accompanying me had evidently no expectation of seeing me come back. I wasn’t carrying a canteen full of confidence in that respect myself. You can’t help feeling grateful in just such a moment to have had your lance corporal and two men whisper most earnestly and sincerely, “Good luck to you, sir, good luck.” I fervently wished for that. Mystery, weirdness and soul-sickening loneliness for me was in the picture ahead, a picture you must keep in recollection that I could only see when it was under the uncanny illumination of the star-shells. Nature was on my side. The sky was a vast lowering, starless mist. The meshes of barbed wire wickedly expressed their purpose as man-traps, and beyond I could see the wavering man-deep furrows in the tumbled earth. And I give you my word, not a sound. That is, not a sound to indicate the presence of hundreds of human creatures just beyond me. No sound of their moving or their breathing. There was, however, one sound and a dreadful thing it is to hear. It was the soft scuffle of the rats among the dead. But a few minutes later I had reason to be thankful to those rats. At the cost of a seared face and torn hands, I was slowly, cautiously snapping with my wire-cutter a quiet entrance to the Boche trenches. I had gone far when I put my clippers on a certain string of wire, and my hand stiffened, my arm trembled, tickled and went numb. Simultaneously, came the sharp, high ringing of a gong. They have “burglar alarms” attached to the barbed wire construction in front of German trenches. My salvation was in the fact that they suspected an attack, not merely the presence of a scout. For the front line trenches began spilling everything in the way of deadliness that they had--rifle volleys, machine-gun patter, exploding bombs, and even shells. Also the Boches filled the sky with star-shells. But when these showed no attacking force ahead, the fire ceased. Still they kept up with the star-shells. I did not attempt to move. I believe that my flesh was as cold as that of any dead man as I lay there in a heavy mesh of barbed wire. I cannot imagine but that I must have been plainly in sight to some of the peering eyes from the German trench. Yet they did not see me. I did not dare look up myself to see what activity of observation took place among them.