The fog did eventually lift, revealing the least hopeful of any gun positions it has ever been my lot to occupy. The whole country was green, a sort of turf. In this were three great white gashes of upturned chalk visible to the meanest intelligence as being the three battery positions. True, they were under the crest from any Hun O.P., but that didn’t minimize the absurdity. There were such things as balloons and aeroplanes. Further inspection revealed shell holes neatly bracketing the guns, not many, but quite sufficient to prove that Fritz had done his job well. Beside each gun pit was a good deep dugout for the detachment and we had sleeping quarters that would stop at least a four-two. The mess was a quaint little hut of hooped iron above ground, camouflaged with chalky earth, big enough to hold a table and four officers, if arranged carefully. We rigged up shelves and hung new fighting maps and Kirchners and got the stove to burn and declared ourselves ready for the war again. We spent long mornings exploring the trenches, calling on a rather peevish infantry whose manners left much to be desired, and found that as usual the enemy had all the observation on the opposite ridge. Behind the trench system we came upon old gun positions shelled out of all recognition, and looked back over an empty countryside with rather a gloomy eye. It was distinctly unprepossessing. If there were ever a show---- So we played the gramophone by night and invented a knife-throwing game in the door of the hut and waited for whatever Fate might have in store for us. The Captain had gone on leave from Chuignolles. The night after his return he came up to the guns as my own leave was due again. So having initiated him into the defence scheme and the S.O.S. rules I packed up my traps and departed,--as it turned out for good. Fate decreed that my fighting was to be done with the battery which I had helped to make and whose dead I had buried.