The modern battery is so concealed that the view from it is often restricted to a few hundred yards in any direction. It therefore follows that the officer who wishes to direct its fire must discover some place from where he can see the target he proposes to engage, and from whence he can establish communication, in practice almost invariably by telephone, with his battery. He may be lucky enough to find some point near at hand, such as a church tower, from which he can obtain the necessary range of vision, and such points certainly have the advantage that they usually afford an extended view. But far more frequently, especially if his target is a hostile trench only a few yards from our own lines, some point right up forward must be selected, for preference just behind our own front line. This usually involves the selection of alternative positions, both because the view from each is usually restricted to a very small section of the hostile line, and also in the not-uncommon event of the observation officer being shelled out of his post, the battery is out of action until he has established himself somewhere else. The forward observation officer (F.O.O.) is the eye of the artillery, it is his business to observe not only the shooting of his own battery, but also to keep a watch over the whole of the enemy's territory visible from his post; to learn by constant inspection every detail, to perceive the smallest alteration or movement that may give a hint from which enemy plans or dispositions may be deduced. Hence it is clear that the selection of a good observation post is one that demands no small skill and experience. Nor is this selection altogether devoid of humour. A battery arrives, apparently from nowhere, its officers have a bundle of unfamiliar maps thrust into their hands, and are told to go and find as many O.P.s as they require to see a certain prescribed area. "So-and-so will go with you, if you like, he knows all about this part of the world." So-and-so is eventually, after a prolonged search, unearthed from the one comfortable chair in his mess, it being, as he bitterly explains, the only afternoon he has had off for a month. We start, preferably along a road pitted with shell-holes that look disconcertingly recent. Our guide informs us with melancholy pride that two telephonists of the 652nd Battery were killed there yesterday. "But it's usually pretty healthy----" A small and particularly vicious shell whizzes apparently just over our heads and bursts a hundred yards or so away. We change the conversation. We come to a place where the road ends, and where it seems as though some lover of beauty had cut a narrow winding course for a merry little streamlet that murmurs contentedly between its banks. Some yards away stands what was once a house, but the doors have been wrenched off their hinges, the windows are blocked up--no loss to internal illumination, for a dozen huge gaps in the wall amply