At Albert we found them, specimens of them, wedged in the line with our infantry, learning the game. Their one desire was to go out into No Man’s Land and get to close quarters. They brought Brother Boche or bits of him every time. One overheard talk on one’s way along the trenches to the O.P. “Danger?” queried one sarcastically, “Say, I ain’t bin shot at yet.” And another time when two officers and I had been shelled out of the O.P. by a pip-squeak battery to our extreme discomfort and danger, we came upon a great beefy American standing on the fire step watching the shells burst on the place we had just succeeded in leaving. “If that guy don’t quit foolin’ around with that gun,” he said thoughtfully, “some one’ll likely get hurt in a minute.” Which was all to the good. They shaped well. The trouble apparently was that they had no guns and no rifles. Our own positions were another instance of the criminal folly of ignorance,--great obvious white gashes in a green field, badly camouflaged, photographed and registered by the Hun, so placed that the lowest range to clear the crest was 3,500 and the S.O.S. was 3,550. It meant that if the Germans advanced only fifty yards we could not bring fire to bear on them. The dawn of our getting in was enlivened by an hour’s bombardment with gas and four-twos. Every succeeding dawn was the same. Fortunately it proved to be a peace sector, comparatively speaking, and I moved out of that unsavoury spot with no more delay than was required in getting the Colonel’s consent. It only took the death of one man to prove my point. He was a mere gunner, not even on proficiency pay, so presumably it was cheap knowledge. We buried him at midnight in pouring rain, the padre reading the service by the light of my electric torch. But the Colonel wasn’t there. From the new position so reluctantly agreed to, we fired many hundreds of rounds, as did our successors, and not a single man became a casualty. What is the psychology of this system of insisting on going into childishly unsuitable positions? Do they think the Battery Commander a coward who balks at a strafed emplacement? Isn’t the idea of field gunners to put their guns in such a place as will permit them to remain in action effectively for the longest possible time in a show? Why, therefore, occupy a position already accurately registered by the enemy, which he can silence at any given moment? Do they think that a Major of two years’ experience in command of a battery in the line has not learned at least the rudiments of choosing positions for his guns? Do they think it is an attempt to resent authority, or to assert their own importance? Do they think that the difference of one pip and a foot of braid is the boundary between omniscience and crass stupidity? In civil life if the senior partner insists on doing the junior’s job and bungles it, the junior can resign,--and say things.