The heavy guns are generally to be found in splendid isolation; one
such I visited and I marvelled at its appearance; it resembled nothing
so much as the mottled trunk of a decayed plane-tree except for its
girth. "Futurist art," explained the major deprecatingly as I stared at
its daubed surface; "it makes it unrecognisable." It certainly did.
Close by were what looked at a distance like a bed of copper cucumbers.
"More gardening?" I asked. "Yes, market gardening," replied the major;
"if we lay the shells like that with sand-bags between them we prevent
their igniting one another in case of accidents. It helps us to deliver
the goods."

A mile or two from the battery headquarters at X---- Y---- was the
observing station. The battery-major and myself were accompanied thither
by a huge mastiff who in civil life was a dairyman by profession and
turned a churn, but had long since attached himself to the major as
orderly. We duly arrived at a deserted farm, but at this point the
mastiff stopped dead and declined to come any further. I thought this
churlish, and told him so, but he merely wagged his tail. When we
entered the farmyard I understood. It was pitted with shell-holes, and
they were obviously of very recent excavation. As a matter of fact the
Huns suspected that farm, and with good reason, and treated it to
intermittent "Hate." The mastiff therefore always waited for the
battery-major at what it judged, quite erroneously, to be a safe
distance. We clambered up into a loft by means of unreliable ladders. In
the roof of the loft some tiles had been removed, and leaning our arms
on the rafters we looked out. "You see that row of six poplars over
there?" said the Major, pointing to a place behind the German trenches.
I recognised them, for the same six poplars I had seen through a
periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a
house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned