At this point Group Commanders, Battalion Commanders, and Battery Commanders join in the game, taking sides. Battery Commanders walk miles and miles daily along duck boards, and shoot wire in all sorts of odd places on the enemy front trench, and work out an exhaustive barrage. Then comes a booklet, which is a sort of revision of all that has gone before, and alters the task of every battery. A new barrage table is worked out. Follows a single sheet giving zero day. The raiders begin cutting off their buttons and blacking their faces and putting oil drums in position. Battery wagon lines toil all night, bringing up countless extra rounds. The trench mortar people then try and cut the real bit of wire, at which the raiders will enter the enemy front line. As a rule they are unsuccessful, and only provoke a furious retaliatory bombardment along the whole sector. Then Division begins to get excited and talks rudely to Group. Group passes it on. Next a field battery is ordered to cut that adjective wire and does. A Gunner officer is detailed to go over the top with the raid commander. He writes last letters to his family, drinks a last whisky, puts on all his Christmas-tree, and says, “Cheero” as though going to his own funeral. It may be. Then telephones buzz furiously in every brigade, and everybody says “Carrots” in a whisper. You look up “Carrots” in the code book, and find it means “raid postponed 24 hours.” Everybody sits down and curses. Another paper comes round saying that the infantry have changed the colours of all the signal rockets to be used. All gunners go on cursing. Then comes the night! Come up to the O.P. and have a dekko with me, but don’t forget to bring your gas mask. Single file we zigzag down the communication trenches. The O.P. is a farmhouse, or was, in which the sappers have built a brick chamber just under the roof. You climb up a ladder to get to it, and find room for just the signaller and ourselves, with a long slit through which you can watch Germany. The Hun knows it’s an O.P. He’s got a similar one facing you, only built of concrete, and if you don’t shell him he won’t shell you. But if you do shell him with a futile 18-pounder H.E. or so, he turns on a section of five-nines, and the best thing you can do is to report that it’s “snowing,” clear out quick and look for a new O.P. The chances are you won’t find one that’s any good. It’s frightfully dark; can’t see a yard. If you want to smoke, for any sake don’t strike matches. Use a tinder. See that sort of extra dark lump, just behind those two trees--all right, poles if you like. They _were_ trees!--Well, that’s where they’re going over. Not a sound anywhere except the rumble of a battle away up north. Hell of a strafe apparently.