WE are still in the neighbourhood of Death Corner. It looks as though the attack has been pressed as far as it can go at this point. The whole of Fouquescourt is now in our hands, but beyond that lies Fransart and the railroad, which the enemy is holding heavily. To the south of us the French are trying to turn the enemy’s flank of Noyon, but apparently with little success, for the resistance in front of us grows stiffer rather than less. The Hun is a long way from being beaten yet. Whatever may be the morale of his rank and file, his storm-troops never fought better. For two days after we had surrounded Fouquescourt there were machine-gunners who still refused to surrender and kept up a running scrap from house to house, causing us many casualties and much annoyance.

Every twenty-four hours we had to shift our guns owing to the Hun aerial activity. By day the enemy airmen spot us; under cover of night they return to bomb us. They have not scored any direct hits on our guns yet, thanks to our precautions in changing our positions every nightfall, but they have made us pay heavily in the loss of men. With so much shifting and changing it is not possible to build any overhead protection; the most we can do is to scoop holes in the ground of sufficient depth to hide us from the splinters. Next night we have to scoop fresh holes and spread our blankets somewhere else.

Owing to the precariousness of the way in which our front is held we have to be on duty all the time. At night we never dare to undress, nor even to remove our boots. This is not like the old days, when we had an elaborate system of trenches and a wide No Man’s Land between ourselves and the enemy; to-day we have outposts dotted here and there, and a thin line of riflemen strung out through ditches and woods. In a moving battle one is never quite certain where our country ends and the Hun’s commences. If we were for a minute to relax our vigilance, we might be overwhelmed. But the vigilance when combined with the bombing and the shelling is very wearing.

The weather has become unusually hot. The men go about stripped to the waist and dripping with sweat. We left all our surplus baggage behind before the offensive started, so there are few of us who have more than one change of underwear. The result is that all the time we feel prickly and dirty. We would give a month’s pay for a plunge in a river and a chance to clean ourselves. Try as we may to prevent it, already a number of the men are developing skin-diseases and nearly all of them are verminous. With the constant wearing of our boots, the feet of most of us are getting blistered and sore. One of our gun-detachments made a lucky find, which has caused them to be the envy of the battery. In what had been a Hun officers’ mess they found a quantity of woman s lingerie, all of the very daintiest—pink silk finery, with baby ribbons and much lace. They at once discarded their army shirts and now lend a touch of humor to our landscape as they fire their gun in their filmy attire.

The heat has caused the carcases of the dead horses to decompose more quickly than usual; they lie indecently throughout the wheat-fields and roads like huge inflated bag-pipes with their legs sticking woodenly in the air. For miles the atmosphere is tainted with the nauseating stench of decaying flesh. No one has the time or the energy for burying them; even our human dead have in very many cases not yet been accorded the common kindness of a grave. We are all too tired to form funeral parties and the risk of exposing one’s self is too great. All our movements have to take place under the cover of darkness; it is then that our ammunition is sent up. The Hun is perfectly aware of this; he keeps every road and suspected battery-position, with all its approaches, under constant bombardment from sundown to well after midnight.

Our rations, as may be imagined, are of the very plainest, consisting for the most part of bully beef, tea, and hard tack. To light fires to cook anything is dangerous; the smoke would give us away in a second. We have outrun our lines of communication. Our railhead is many miles behind. Everything has to be brought up to the battle area by motor-transport, across roads which the enemy did his best to destroy in his flight. We are entirely out of tobacco and cigarettes. Our only remaining smokes are Hun cigars, which we have found in abandoned billets or in the pockets of the dead.

It would have been normal to have supposed that in an advance of these dimensions we should have captured enough booty to have kept ourselves supplied. Where we are now was the Hun’s back-country a few days ago, to which his troops marched out to rest. His canteens were here, his workshops and hospitals. There were plenty of French civilians still in possession of these houses; the gardens and fields were under cultivation. Our advance was so unexpected and rapid that it gave him hardly any warning of our advent; and yet he contrived to strip everything and to carry it off in his wagons. Even the gardens are bare; nothing but the crops in the fields are left. The only fresh meat which any of us have had has been supplied us by our veterinary sergeant, who holds that horse-flesh is a perfectly healthy diet if you take only the best cuts. There are plenty of wounded horses wandering about, of no further service to the army.

War has certainly taught us one thing: that we all have a far greater power of endurance than we guessed. Here we are, having put up with every kind of hardship, having experienced every kind of shock, having lived with horror as a daily companion, having gone without sleep, without proper food or anything approaching cleanliness, and yet we are happy and cheerfully prepared for as much more punishment as may be allotted.

The extraordinary cheerfulness of our men, the kind of school-boy attitude they take up towards war, as though it were no more than a tremendous lark, is illustrated by the glee they displayed in firing the two whizz-bangs which Heming brought up to us when we were attacking Fouquescourt. I suppose they derived a grim satisfaction from pelting the enemy with his own shells. To have two more guns to serve meant that everybody had to do considerably more work. Besides the actual work of serving them, there was the added labour of hunting up and collecting the Hun ammunition which was scattered throughout the country-side. They did it all without a grumble, preferring to regard the undertaking as a joke at the enemy’s expense.

Yesterday we received an order that all captured ordnance had to be drawn back to a special park, some ten miles to the rear. When our men heard that, they went out and gathered together six hundred rounds per gun and spent the night in pooping them off into the enemy back-country just as fast as they could load and fire. Funny chaps! They won’t be so keen on working overtime when once they get back to their labour unions.

By the way, Suzette has just communicated to us an interesting fact about herself. She asked to be paraded before the Major, as though she were actually a Tommy instead of a civilian girl. In the queer broken English which she has picked up from our men, she told us that this was her country before the war came and she had to flee from it. Her home was in Fransart, which is the next town which we shall have to attack. She wanted to let us know this because she thought her knowledge of the district might be of value. And then came what was probably her real motive for asking to be paraded; a request that she might be allowed to accompany the next officer and party of signallers going up front.

“But why? What for?” the Major questioned.

“Eet was my ‘ome,” she said. “I wish zo much to zee eet before zee guns—-.” She puffed out her cheeks and then emptied them with an explosive sound. “Before zay make eet all flat.”

At first the Major refused her emphatically. But the Major has a soft place for Suzette; I’m not at all sure that he is not just as much in love with her as Heming. For some time I’ve had the feeling of a growing hidden rivalry between the two men—hidden because, being friends, they are ashamed to acknowledge rivalry. And then again, neither of them is willing to own her attraction. She has no right to be here. Were it discovered that the reason for her presence in a fighting unit was the Major’s or the Captain’s affection, the affair would wear a very different aspect in the eyes of not only the higher authorities, but also of the men in the battery itself. Compelled by her pleading, the Major has promised her that on the first quiet day he will allow her-to accompany one of us up front. In granting her request I think he is ill-advised. But it is clear to me now that, were she to make any request of him, however mad, he would not be able to withstand her.

As I look back, I am amazed that I have been so blind; I can remember incidents and chance phrases, insignificant in themselves, which pieced together prove beyond a doubt that the Major has been in love with her from the very first. A topsy-turvy world! Nothing really matters when you may be blown into eternity any second. All I hope is that no one else has noticed.

Charlie Wraith on that day at Death Corner, laughing like a boy playing pirates! It’s now plain what he was doing: he was winning the admiration of Suzette.