The hour is Retreat and a Sergeant-Major is inspecting the three men for duty at a one-man post during the coming night. Each man in turn will do two hours’ duty, followed by four hours’ rest. The fine austere drawing of the sunset, the wide waste spaces, the intent men mounting picket and the men off duty strolling at ease, is imbued with the spirit of the region just behind our front. [Illustration] X DUG-OUTS A small hamlet of sand-bagged dug-outs a little behind the front line, seen during a passing lift of the clouds at the end of a wet day. Many dug-outs, like the one on the left, bear such names as “The Rat Hole,” “It,” “Some Dug-out, believe ma,” “The Old Curiosity Shop” and “The Ritz.” On the right, a shelf in the outer wall of sand-bags is decorated with flowers in pots. [Illustration] XI GORDON HIGHLANDERS: OFFICERS’ MESS In the bare dancing hall of a village inn behind the Somme Front. The artist has found means to interpret with the utmost sympathy and power the extraordinary romantic quality that there often is about a Highland mess in France, created by the rude setting, the primitive half light amidst cavernous gloom, and the spectator’s sense of an enveloping world of strange dangers and adventures. [Illustration] XII WAITING FOR THE WOUNDED A British advance has just begun, and the surgeons of a Divisional Collecting Station near the Somme are awaiting the arrival of the first laden stretcher-bearers. In a few minutes the three officers will be at work, perhaps for twenty-four hours on end. At one Casualty Clearing Station a distinguished surgeon performed, without resting, nineteen difficult operations, each lasting more than an hour, in cases of severe abdominal wounds, where delay would have meant the loss of life. In almost every case the man was saved. Another surgeon operated for thirty-six hours without relief. Such devotion is not exceptional in the R.A.M.C. [Illustration] XIII THE HAPPY WARRIOR The place is a field dressing station. The wounded Grenadier Guardsman in the foreground on the left, wearing a German helmet and eating bread and jam, had brought in as prisoner the German who is sitting on the right with his hand to his face. The Guardsman indicated the German to the artist, and said, “Won’t you draw my pal here, too, Sir? He and me had a turn-up this morning when we took their trench, and he jabbed me in the arm and I jabbed him in the eye, and we’re the best of friends.” Other Germans are sitting in attitudes characteristic of newly-made prisoners. [Illustration] XIV (a and b) RED CROSS BARGES ON THE SOMME