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We were in a lonely stretch of moorland; the nearest habitation was the shell-mauled cottage at the railway crossing, two miles away. Every ten minutes or so enemy shells screamed and flopped into the valley between us and the road alongside which D Battery lay. "We'll try and hurry these people up," said the colonel, picking up the telephone.

The shell-mauled German borne pickaback by a comrade found himself in an ambulance across from a Briton and his bearer was to know sleep after a square meal in the prisoners' inclosure.

Seen through the glasses, disregarding ordinary roads and traveled routes, the tanks' slatey backs seemed like prehistoric turtles whose natural habitat is shell-mauled earth. They were the last word in the business of modern war, symbolic of its satire and the old strife between projectile and armor, offensive and defensive.

Our march had brought us through Lieramont and beyond the shell-mauled cemetery where the Boche in his quest of safety had transformed the very vaults into dug-outs.

"A 4·2 gun turned on them from close range, and did frightful execution." We were near to a cross-road, marked balefully by a two-storied house, cut in half so that the interior was opened to view like a doll's house, and by other shell-mauled buildings. "The batteries came into action under that bank," he continued, pointing his cane towards a valley riddled with shell-holes.