First they throw a few incendiary bombs at the prey which they have singled out. When the fire has been started and the firemen have come running to fight it, the Boches enliven the situation with shells, in the hope, I suppose, of feeding the flames with some human victims. It is vastly entertaining! As we came back we made the acquaintance of some very noteworthy British soldiers. They call them Bantams. The distinguishing feature of these men is their height, which is below the average. There was a certain number of men in England who had been rejected for service in the ranks because of their shortness. As they were very keen to fight, somebody thought of forming them into a special division. And so the Bantam Division came into being. And these little cocks can fight to the death, like those in whose battles the villages of Northern England used to delight; and, little though they are, they grow, if one may say so, at once to the size of Titans. CHAPTER III. THE GROUND OF HEROIC DEEDS. Last year the ground that we are treading, this cold and rainy December day, saw played out one of the most terrible acts of this terrible war. It shook for weeks together during May and June, 1915, to the thunder of vast opposing artilleries. Thousands of men moved over it and drenched it with their blood. This ground has seen the French Army, in a transport of courage, bind for an instant the wings of victory; it has seen our battalions burst at racing speed over trenches that were deemed impregnable; it has seen Petain's men storm the Vimy Ridge and win a sight of the plain, the goal of their desires, their promised land.... It has seen that! I own frankly that, as I write these impressions, I am in the grip of an emotion which I do not even try to conquer. Perhaps it is because these events of May and June, 1915, are already so distant that time has magnified their tragic splendour till they have acquired a sort of legendary quality. We reached this battlefield through the wood of Bouvigny, which lies to the North-westwards of the crest of Notre Dame de Lorette. In this wood, which is all close thickets and has few large trees, just before the attack of May, an entire French division succeeded in gathering without being discovered by the enemy. You can still see clearly, at the Southern edge of the wood, the first French trenches, in front of which, in October, 1914, after the evacuation of Lille, the German hosts were stopped in their march to the West. The breaking flood has eaten deeply into the slopes, as the sea has done along the Breton Coast.