"Message for you, sir--from headquarters," says the telephonist, bearing a piece of pink paper in his hand. I take it, and read, "Fire twenty rounds at intersection of communication trenches at----" Here follow a combination of figures and letters that denote the position on the map. "Very well, call up the battery and give 'action.' Tell them to report when ready." Out comes the map, and the point mentioned in the message found. A road runs east and west close by it, yes, I know that road, have often noticed it. A communication trench runs along it for some way, then turns off at right angles by a hedge, which it follows for a couple of hundred yards till it meets its fellow, which place of meeting I am ordered, in the parlance of the front, to "strafe." Can I see that hedge, I wonder? Prolonged inspection through the glasses assures me that I cannot. There is nothing for it but to take a bearing. One hundred and seventeen degrees from my position, five degrees left of the church tower. Compass and sextant agree, giving me the line to the corner of a wood on the horizon, on which line my target must somewhere be situated. Out come the glasses again. There certainly is a mound right in line with my mark in the centre of that meadow, but it might be anything. Yes, the telescope shows it to be earth thrown up from some excavation or other, it must be the trench junction. It looks hopelessly foreshortened, nothing like the map, but then the map seems to look down on things with a calm judicial air, whilst I can only peer at them from their own level. A very little practice in observation soon shows one that the human eye is utterly unreliable as a gauge of the length of anything that stretches away from it. "Battery reports ready for action, sir," says the telephonist. "Thank you. No. 1 gun ranging, elevation nineteen degrees, etc., etc." Back comes the warning, "No. 1 reports ready to fire, sir." "Fire No. 1!" "No. 1 fired, sir!" and then an eternity of breathless anxiety, during which all the fabled deadly sins of gunners long since condemned to everlasting execration rush upon my memory. Suppose I have read the map wrong, and that is not the place at all? An instant's piercing scrutiny, which fails to reassure me in the least. Even if that is the place, it is not very far from our own trenches. Did I give the right elevation? Did I allow enough for wind? Were my orders perfectly clear to the section commander? Did the layer lay correctly? Shall I be "broke" if I slaughter a whole platoon in our own trenches, or only shot?... Eternity comes to an end at last after a life of some ten seconds, and I hear the whistle of the shell coming ever nearer--safely over my head, anyhow, thank heaven! Yes, she must have passed the trenches by now; where's she going to fall? The whistle ends abruptly, but nowhere is there any sign of smoke, nor does the sound of the burst reach me. A blind, I suppose, the shell must have fallen into something