After a few pleasantries he asked what it was that we would most like, and I replied in my stock phrases, “Observation points and trenches, if you please.” He stood for a moment studying the tip of his dusty boot; evidently he was not very eager about the job. However, he shrugged his shoulders and went back to the telephone, and after a few minutes conversation came back and said to us: “It is a very bad time to go into our trenches, as we have no covered ways, and in the daytime one is seen, and the enemy always begin firing. It is very unsafe, but if you are very anxious I shall permit one of you to go forward, though it is not convenient. When the enemy begin to fire, our batteries reply, and firing starts in all the trenches. The soldiers like to fight, and it doesn’t take much to start them.” Put in this way none of us felt very keen about insisting. So we all compromised by a visit to a secondary position, which we were told was not very dangerous, as the enemy could only reach it with their shell fire and “of course no one minds that,” as the officer casually put it. We all agreed that, of course, we did not mind that, and so trooped off with the Colonel to the trenches and dug-outs where the troops who were not in the firing line were in immediate reserve. The group of dug-outs was flanked with trenches, for, as the Colonel informed us, “Who knows when this position may be attacked?” And then he added, “You see, though we are not in the direct view of the enemy here, they know our whereabouts and usually about this time of day they shell the place. They can reach it very nicely and from two different directions. Yesterday it became so hot in our house that we all spent a quiet afternoon in the dug-outs.” He paused and offered us a cigarette, and as he did so there came a deep boom from our rear and a howitzer shell wailed over our heads on its mission of protest to the Austrians about firing on Red Cross wagons. A few seconds later the muffled report of its explosion came back across the valley. A second later another and another shell went over our heads. The Colonel smiled, “You see,” he said, “my orders are being carried out. No doubt the enemy will reply soon.” His belief was justified. A moment later that extremely distressing sound made by an approaching shell came to our ears, followed immediately by its sharp report as it burst in a field a few hundred yards away. I looked about at the soldiers and officers around me, but not one even cast a glance in the direction of the smoke drifting away over the field near by. After wandering about his position for half or three-quarters of an hour, we returned to the cottage. It consisted of but three rooms. The telephone room, a little den where the officers ate, and a large room filled with straw on which they slept at night, when sleeping was possible.