The sheer audacity of the offensive, as planned, took away our breath when we saw the nature of the landscape. It was a great plateau, lacking in any cover and scored by deep rapines to right and left; every inch of it was commanded by the enemy’s higher ground. The road along the ridge was a direct enfilade for the enemy; the air was heavy with decaying flesh and the sickening smell of explosives. It ran level for fifteen hundred yards, then it began to dip down to Demart, which lay in a valley which crossed the road at right angles. The near side of the valley was in our hands; the far side, which rose to a much greater height, was in the enemy’s. To attempt to bring artillery into that area, especially when all the work had to be carried on by night, and to expect to be able to do it unobserved, seemed madness. Shells were coming over far too frequently for comfort; the enemy was searching and sweeping the Gentelles Woods, so we set out at a smart walk along the ridge in a south-easterly direction. X ONE by one our party left us, turning off along side-roads to search for the particular map-locations which had been suggested as positions for their batteries. At last only I and one other officer, named Strong, remained together. The spot for which we were looking was an orchard to the right of the road along the ridge which we were travelling. We walked on and on. It seemed an interminable distance. A fine rain began to descend, which had the effect of mist, blurring the few landmarks which one could still identify as though a muslin curtain had been drawn across them. Every now and then the humpy figure of a man with a ground-sheet flung over his rifle and shoulders, would loom up out of the dark and pass us. It seemed as though he was always the same man, working like a beast of prey round and round us in circles, waiting for us to drop. We spoke to him several times, but he never deigned to answer. Men rarely answer when they are spoken to on the road up front at night. Whether it is that they enjoy the luxury which darkness affords them of not recognising authority, or that the sullenness of night has entered into their souls, or that they are afraid of being delayed one extra minute from the much needed sleep which awaits them in some wretched kennel, I do not know. But the effect of this silence on anyone who is travelling a country with which he is unfamiliar, is to arouse the suspicion that he may, unwittingly, have gone too far and have wandered behind the enemy’s line. This has happened quite often. Many an officer has started out on a night reconnaissance and disappeared as completely as if the ground had swallowed him up. In some cases the next news has been from a prisoners’ camp in Germany. In others a spy has been captured wearing his uniform; the presumption has been that he was murdered by a Hun agent on our side of the line and that his body has been tossed into some lonely shell-hole.