has come within range of the enemy's anti-aircraft guns and the clouds
of shrapnel are bursting about it. Most of them break wide of the mark
and it sails on unscathed over the enemy's lines. Just above us is
hanging a German _taube_, obviously watching us and the automobile
which we had left below in the road, while the British huge
anti-aircraft guns near by are feeling for it, shot after shot.

We duck into our little Y M C A dugout, just under the crest of the
ridge. It is an old, deserted German pit for deadly gas shells, which
even now are lying about uncomfortably near, in heaps still unexploded.
Here the men going to and from the trenches, come in for hot tea or
coffee and refreshments night and day. A significant sign forbids more
than thirty men to congregate at once in this exposed spot, as
sometimes these Y M C A dugouts are blown to atoms by a shell. The one
down below in "Plug Street" has been blown to bits, and the man in the
one just up the line has been under such fire for several days that he
will have to abandon his dugout.

Just in front of us over the ridge is the first line of the present
British front. There is no time to build trenches now or to dig
themselves in. They just hold the broken line of unconnected shell
holes, or swarm in the great craters which are held by rapid fire
machine guns. The men go out by night to relieve those who have been
holding the ground during the previous day. It is harder for the
enemy's artillery to locate and destroy men scattered in these
irregular holes and craters than if they were in a clear line of
trenches. The British front faces down the slope toward the bristling
German lines, dotted with hidden snipers and studded with sputtering
machine guns. As the evening falls the batteries behind and all about
us open fire. Flash after flash of spurting flame leaps out from the