And I stepped down to face the breech of a gun whose muzzle
pointed out of another hole in the timbered roof covered with earth.

"It's very cosy!" I remarked.

"Oh, this is the shop! The living room is below--here!"

I descended a ladder into a cellar ten feet below the gun level, where
some of the gunners were lying on a thick carpet of perfectly dry
straw.

"You are not doing much firing these days?" I suggested.

"Oh, we gave the Boches a couple this morning so they shouldn't get
cocky thinking they were safe It's necessary to keep your hand in
even in the winter."

"Don't you get lonesome?"

"No, we shift on and off. We're not here all the while. It is quite warm
in our salon, monsieur, and we have good comrades. It is war. It is for
France. What would you?"

Four other gun-positions and four other cellars like this! Thousands of
gun-positions and thousands of cellars! Man invents new powers of
destruction and man finds a way of escaping them.

As we left the battery we started forward, and suddenly out of the
dusk came a sharp call. A young corporal confronted us. Who were