On the same afternoon we marched to Marchelepot. German sign-posts, old gun positions and burnt dug-outs were objects of interest on the way. Though cold, the weather was fine. Freedom from shelling was a treat. We moved again on March 25, when the Bucks arrived to take over our quarters at Marchelepot. Passing St. Christ, where the R.E. had bridged the Somme, we saw the first samples of German back-area demolition. At Ennemain the first big road-crater held up the Transport. Our destination, Athies, formerly a flourishing little town but since utterly wrecked and still smouldering, it was quite difficult to reach. Sent on ahead as member of a billeting party, I had to cross the Omignon river by a single plank thrown across a weir. Until they are blown up one rather forgets the blessing of bridges. In Athies good enough quarters in cellars and half-basements were found for all. Headquarters went into the only roofed house in the town--and afterwards questioned their own wisdom. The house had been foreman's shed to a large factory, had been a Boche canteen, and, finally, the billet of the wrecking party. Though our advanced troops were in touch with the enemy some seven miles away in front, we were made to hold an outpost line each night east of the town. To bring up rations the Transport had all the distance from Framerville to cover--about eighteen miles. Never had Abraham so long a journey for this purpose. The wanton mischief, now manifest everywhere that the advance carried us, became a favourite topic for correspondents from the front, but cannot be passed over without some record here. To us Infantry this advance was a sort of holiday from the real war. It was like going behind the scenes at a pantomime and discovering the secrets of the giant's make-up. No list of things destroyed could lend any conception of the wholesale massacre by the Germans of all objects both natural and artificial. Chateau and cottage, tree and sapling, factory and summer-house, mill race and goldfish pond were victims equally of their madness. Hardly the most trivial article had been spared. The completeness of the work astonished. Yet withal our discomfort was slight. It was the French civilians, whose lives and homes had been thus ruined, that such Prussian methods touched. Amid this wreckage signs were perceptible of the enemy's weakening morale. Villages in no wise organised for defence and so remote from the German front as to have been outside the range of our furthest gun-fire, inevitably contained deep dug-outs. Such precautions surpassed all prudence and were sufficient almost to argue lack of mental balance. Germans seemed crazy on dug-outs.