clock striking, and continue the greater part of the day, rocking the
deserted town with its clamor. Hearing it, the soldiers en repos would
say, talking of The Wood, "It sings (ça chante)," or, "It knocks (ça
tape) up there to-day." The smoke of the bursting shells hung over The
Wood in a darkish, gray-blue fog. But since The Wood had a personality
for us, many would say simply, "Listen to The Wood."

The shell expresses one idea--energy. The cylinder of iron, piercing the
air at a terrific speed, sings a song of swift, appalling energy, of
which the final explosion is the only fitting culmination. One gets,
too, an idea of an unbending volition in the thing. After a certain time
at the front the ear learns to distinguish the sound of a big shell from
a small shell, and to know roughly whether or not one is in the danger
zone. It was a grim jest with us that it took ten days to qualify as a
shell expert, and at the end of two weeks all those who qualified
attended the funeral of those who had failed. Life at The Wood had an
interesting uncertainty.

A quarter of a mile beyond the corner, on the slope of Puvenelle
opposite The Wood, stood Montauville, the last habitable village of the
region. To the south of it rose the wooded slopes of Puvenelle; to the
north, seen across a marshy meadow, were the slope and the ridge of the
Bois-le-Prêtre. The dirty, mud-spattered village was caught between the
leathery sweeps of two wooded ridges. Three winding roads, tramped into
a pie of mire, crossed the grassy slope of The Wood, and disappeared
into the trees at the top. Though less than a mile from the first German
line, the village, because of its protection from shells by a spur of
the Bois-le-Prêtre, was in remarkably good condition; the only building
to show conspicuous damage being the church, whose steeple had been
twice struck. It was curious to see pigeons flying in and out of the