he would have been in the Ypres salient.

When the British took over this section of line, so short were they of
guns that they had to depend partly on French artillery; and their
troops were raw New Army battalions or regulars stiffened by a small
percentage of veterans of Mons and Ypres. The want of guns and shells
required correspondingly more troops to the mile, which left them still
relying on flesh and blood rather than on machinery for defense. The
British Army was in that middle stage of a few highly trained troops and
the first arrival of the immense forces to come; while the Germans
occupied on the Eastern front were not of a mind to force the issue.
There is a story of how one day a German battery, to vary the monotony,
began shelling a British trench somewhat heavily. The British, in reply,
put up a sign, "If you don't stop we will fire our only rifle grenade at
you!" to which the Germans replied in the same vein, "Sorry! We will
stop"--as they did.

The subsoil of the hills is chalk, which yields to the pick rather
easily and makes firm walls for trenches. Having chosen their position,
which they were able to do in the operations after the Marne as the two
armies, swaying back and forth in the battle for positions northward,
came to rest, the Germans had set out, as the result of experience, to
build impregnable works in the days when forts had become less important
and the trench had become supreme. As holding the line required little
fighting, the industrious Germans under the stiff bonds of discipline
had plenty of time for sinking deep dugouts and connecting galleries
under their first line and for elaborating their communication trenches
and second line, until what had once been peaceful farming land now
consisted of irregular welts of white chalk crossing fields without
hedges or fences, whose sweep had been broken only by an occasional