were active that day. Yet we could see none, so completely were they
hidden by camouflage. The woods were barren of leaves or branches
though they should have been in foliage. We gazed through the windows
of the ambulance into the stark forest with its top off, and then
rather gradually it occurred to me that the white objects carefully
corded against the tree trunks were not sticks of cord wood at all,
as they seemed, and as they should have been if the wood had been
under the ax instead of under fire. They were French seventy-five
shells--deadly brass cartridges two feet long, all nicely and
peacefully corded against the trunks of the big trees! We rode
through them for several miles. Beside the road always were the
little heaps of road metal, little heaps of stone, and always the
engineers stood ready to refill the holes that might be made by
the incoming shells. And occasionally they were coming in; though
they seemed to be landing in a distant part of the forest. The
ear becomes curiously quick at telling the difference between what
are known as arrives and departs. The departs were going out that
day at the ratio of 32 to one arrive. For the Germans had wasted
enough ammunition on the Verdun sector and were trying to economize!
Still the arrives were landing in the Avecourt wood every minute
or so, and they were disquieting. Only the chirping of our own
broad-mouthed Canaries there in the roofless forest gave us cheer.
For some way the sound of the shells of our own guns shrieking
over us is a deep comfort; it is something like the consolation of
a great faith.

At last, seven or eight miles in the forest, we came upon the first
aid post, a quarter of a mile from the opposite edge of the wood
and but half a mile from the front line trenches of Verdun The first
aid post there was a cellar, half excavated, and half covered with