The evacuation of wounded may also be briefly described. On a casualty occurring the wounded man was brought by the regimental stretcher-bearers to the Regimental Aid Post, a dug-out or shelter near a communication trench, generally in the neighbourhood of battalion headquarters. A mile or two further back was the Advanced Dressing Station, to which the Field Ambulance stretcher-bearers carried "lying-down" cases and conducted "walking" cases. If possible, wheeled stretchers or a trench tramway were here employed. At the A.D.S. food in some form was always ready; wounds were re-dressed if necessary, morphia given if required, and the soothing cigarette added. Then the cars of the Field Ambulance conveyed the casualty to the Main Dressing Station; _i.e._, the headquarters of the Field Ambulance. This was to all intents and purposes a temporary hospital, where the wounded man might obtain rest, and further surgical aid if required. It was the last stage in the divisional chain. From it the cars of the Motor Ambulance convoy took him to the Casualty Clearing Station, whence a hospital train bore him to the base hospital or, during an offensive, direct to the hospital ship. The above is an attempt to sketch, without entering into its ten thousand complications, some of the main features of the life of a man in the trenches. War, at that time and in such a sector as this, had not acquired many of the horrors that were to come. Bombing by aeroplanes was in its infancy; so was the use of gas shell. Long-range shelling of villages with high-velocity guns was almost unheard of hereabouts. With regard to all shelling there would appear to have been conventions. Those who have seen German shells at Mailly-Maillet dropping at dusk, the hour when the transport started for the line, on to the Serre and Auchonvillers Roads, but never closer than one hundred yards to the first houses of the village, will agree with this opinion. The surroundings were far less grisly and depressing than they afterwards became. There was, it must be remembered, save that at Ypres and that which at the moment was being fashioned at Verdun, no devastated area wider than a narrow ribbon from the coast to Switzerland. From the Mesnil Ridge, where the observation posts of the Division were manned by the Cyclist Company, the country behind the enemy's lines showed green and smiling. Villages which the troops were not to see at close hand save as ruins, Irles, Pys, Grévillers, Bihucourt, were intact. The time could be read with the aid of a telescope by the church clock of Bapaume. On the British side, villages a couple of miles back were little disturbed. Martinsart was no farther from the enemy, and here it was possible to call on Brigade headquarters at their château as one returned from the trenches, and drink a cup of tea poured out by the daughter of the house, who rang for a British orderly to bring hot water. Mediæval idyll! With spring appearing, the trenches drying,