The enemy’s country is more heavily wooded and more broken than our own. Dotted here and there are small straggling villages. To the north, on either side of the road, are two small villages, now a mass of ruins. Between them is the tall chimney of a sugar factory, from which the black smoke no longer rises; and behind it, nearer the firing line, the long, ragged arms of a windmill move furtively in the slight breeze. To the south, and immediately in the rear of another small village, there is a large and straggling cemetery. Woods, farms, a broken and distorted railway line, another factory, and a narrow winding stream, and the picture is complete. No! Not quite complete. Standing far removed from the main road is a large and densely wooded forest. The observer watches anxiously the stretch of British trenches immediately facing the wood. Then the barren, shell-swept land between the opposing trenches springs into life. Men and more men come swarming across the trenches and make for the German lines. The observer watches anxiously the stretch of British trenches immediately facing the wood. There is a strange, unaccountable feeling in the air that, were it not for the never-ceasing roar of the aeroplane engine, would be hushed and silent as the moment prior to the start of a horse-race, when an element of overstrung expectancy pervades the human brain. Down below there, the lilliputian figures crouch like ants behind the mudbank, waiting for the dread signal when the race shall commence, the race of human life and death. The booming of the great guns in the rear has long since ceased, and the nebulous region of No-man’s-land, were it not for the battle-scarred earth, would resemble an ordinary peaceful countryside, so quiet and deserted has it become. The minutes tick slowly on and on. Now it must be getting very near the appointed hour. Will it never come? Restless movements are evidenced in the opposing trenches, where an occasional bayonet glitters in the sun, or strange figures wander to and fro. At last! With a shout and roar, they are over the top. The earth trembles. Then the barren shell-swept land between the opposing trenches springs into life. Men and more men come swarming across and make for the German lines. The scene now baffles all description, it is like a fleeting glimpse of Dante’s Inferno, as if all the hate and murder and courage and strength of human existence had met in one protracted struggle of life and death between savagery and civilization. The two opposing masses intermingle, so that now it is no longer possible to distinguish each from each. At last there comes a lull in the battle, and the aeroplane pilot, his hazardous expedition concluded and at a sign from the observer, thankfully turns for home, leaving behind him a scorched and scarred earth from which the smoke rises continuously in curling white-gray clouds. CHAPTER XXI A TRUE STORY OF THE WAR (BEING PART OF THE DIARY OF AN INHABITANT)