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[Page 14]
lying scarcely covered in the bottom of the trench or here and there to observe a limb, boot or hand or a piece of khaki sticking out from the side of the trench with no other legend than "An unknown British solider". Field gray cloth was unmarked. It so frequently happens on a new trench being dug it is put down through the forgotten and unmarked resting place of a soldier. Sitting down for a rest before entering the trench, listening to the screaming of our shells towards the German lines, I became aware that the explosion was at the wrong end of some of the screams, and looking to the right noticed some enemy shells bursting with a loud "crr-ump" near some batteries about a hundred yards or two away. I heard later that they had blown up one battery, but I could not get away from the feeling, after the first apprehensive flutter of my heart, that I was sitting watching a picture, and those great columns of debris and smoke were part of it.
A heavy mist had now fallen obscuring from view objects 50 yards away and causing approaching figures to loom large and forbidding, on approach. The order is understood that nobody should expose himself to view, thus giving away the position to the enemy, and needlessly exposing himself to danger. However, here we were some distance from the enemy's lines, the mist had obscured everything and there being little hostile fire, I felt constrained under the pretence of "retiring to the rear" to climb over the parapet and do some exploring. Rambling about the shell holes, those funicular holes varying from 3 to 20 feet deep, though fewer of the latter here. I found ample evidence of the bitter fighting that had occurred here. Damaged British & German rifles, bayonets, equipment, thousands of rounds of ammunition and hundreds of yards of German machine-gun belts lying about in great confusion. The waste of a battlefield is incalculable but it is searched in time by the Salvage Corps and much material recovered. The tragic side of my investigations was revealed in the pitiful mounds usually in convenient shell holes, showing their exposure in patches of khaki and field gray, the hurried nature of
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