On account of this danger no man or officer is allowed to go unaccompanied within two miles of the Front—a rule which is invariably broken. We had walked so far that we had begun to think that we had passed our orchard, when quite suddenly we stumbled across it. It consisted of about a hundred trees. The first position lay behind the orchard in a wheat-field; the second in front, strung out along a dyke, with the whole of the Hun country staring at it. From every theoretical point of view the first position was the better, as the trees afforded it a certain amount of cover; on the other hand it had the disadvantage of being too obviously a good gun-position. If the Hun were to study his map for a likely place to shell a battery, he would be sure to pick on the rear of the orchard. The position was too ideal to be safe. Experience has proved that a bad position is often more healthy in the long run. It can be so damned bad that it’s almost good. The enemy would scarcely believe that any battery-commander would be fool enough to select it. Another disadvantage of the first position was that the wheat, while it would hide the guns, might easily be set on fire and be converted from a protection into a trap. Strong and I tossed for the choice; when I won, rather to his amazement I chose the bad position in front of the orchard. How bad it was I had not realized till the dawn began to rise. Then I discovered that the muzzles of our guns would poke out straight across the valley. The road, from the Gentelles Woods to Domart, skirted the left of the position, dipped down into the valley across No Man’s Land and climbed the further slope by a mass of trees, marked on the map as Dodo Wood. From Dodo Wood the enemy could have watched a cat washing itself on the ground where our guns were to come into action. One false step and the entire position could be wiped out. On the other hand, if we could contrive to lie doggo until the show commenced, the smoke of battle would confuse an enemy observer, so that he would be likely to mistake our flash for the flash of the battery in the wheatfield behind the orchard—in which case it would be they and not we who would be knocked out. That was the gamble one had to take. If one guessed wrong, he brought down death on most of his chaps. As day commenced to whiten, it became unwise to hang about in so exposed a place. All the transport that had creaked and thundered through the night, had vanished from sight and sound for over an hour. Under the sickly pallor which was spreading through the sky, the landscape looked afraid and haggard. One saw now for the first time how horribly it had been battered. Not a tree on the road along the ridge had escaped; they tottered like old prizefighters too proud to run away, with their arms drooping by their sides, waiting for the knock-out blow to fell them.