It was grey noon and we found ourselves on a flat-backed bluff that rose from the marshes of the Somme. At the base of this bluff could be seen many openings, telling of the Germans who had once dug into the place, fashioning little homes in the wet clay. The German is a burrowing animal and it is safe to say that for every shell left by him in his flight across the Somme (and they are many) he has left a corresponding dug-out. These carefully constructed shelters are to be seen in all localities, in trench, gully, bank, by roadway, churchyard and farm. His dug-outs are everywhere, heavily timbered, strongly propped, snugly roofed. In the building of these habitations of fear the German soldier has no equal. The Australian soldier may have more dash and energy in fighting than the Boche, the English soldier more pluck and resource, the Scot more stubbornness, but none of them can fashion better dug-outs than the German. Whether the building is to him an art, profession, or instinct, the fact remains that his manifest ability in building is a thing of wonder.

Most of his dug-outs are furnished with due elegance, from the carpeted and curtained abodes of officers, to the snug hutments of the simple soldiers. The officers' chairs are covered with elegant brocade, the officers' tables are of carved oak, and here and there the officers' rooms are lined with rich tapestry. And all has been taken from the homes of France, from the chÂteau, church and cottage.

Round the bluff on which I stood and as far away as the eye reached could be seen innumerable brick red huddles, all that was left of the villages which once stood on the Somme field, all that now remains are stumps of walls, broken-down churches, smashed doors, paneless windows, desolation and ruin. At points on the immense landscape can be seen black blocks of enemy hutments which have in a measure escaped the ravages of war. Gun positions can even be located, the guns idle in their emplacements, howitzers knocked off their mountings, gun carriages stuck in the mud, lines of the everlasting wire entanglements stretching over miles and miles of fields. Here and there is a signpost with German directions telling where such and such a place can be found and where such and such a road is leading to. The village of A—— lies some distance in front, the village of B—— some distance to rear, and both heaps of ruins.

Each ruined village has an aspect peculiarly its own. Each seems to view its evil hap in its own way and the traveller becomes conscious of a distinct soul in each huddle of ruins.

Villers-Bretonneux with many walls standing and projecting beams and girders rising over the rubbish seems to groan out: "Though I am smashed and broken I am not yet beaten. They've tried to work their will on me, but for all that here I stand battle-scarred but indomitable. I have a soul that still remains my own."

Bray-sur-Somme, resting in a hollow, solitary and secluded, with its church spire down, the Christ above the church door lacerated with shrapnel splinters, and the green grass peeping covertly up from the cracks in the pavement, wears the air of a hermit who has cast himself off from the sin and temptation of the world. In it and around it all is quiet. Not a sound, not a whisper. It seemed to me as our party motored through there one day on our way to Chingnes, that something personal stood above it, the Spirit of the village, holding up its hand saying in a whisper: "Hush! Begone!" The village detached and alone reminded me of a jungle animal in pain that creeps into a dark corner to lick its sores. The life which disturbed the repose of Bray-sur-Somme, if only for a moment, was to it a sinful reproach; every movement, every voice and footfall seemed to throw it back to brood on its own misery.

Again there is the village that has left nothing but a memory, a village like Villars-Carbonnel, utterly dead, defaced off the world as writing is wiped off a slate, as the snow is thawed from a garden seat. Nothing remains of it, not a cafÉ sign, not a cobble or a butt of wall. A sign that I have already spoken of stands there telling that it marked the place where once stood Villars-Carbonnel, which is now as dead as the people of yesteryear. Poor little village! there are tears in its story, tears for the idle onlooker as well as for the refugees who will some day return to know the fate of their native place.

In a steep gully in Arey Wood, south of the village of Chingnes, we were shown a monster gun, with a bore of fifteen inches and a barrel fifty feet in length. The huge machinery of the mounting, its steel platform embedded in concrete was sunk into a deep pit surrounded by blackened and shivered trees. Three light railway lines ran up to the emplacement, and dug-outs for the gun crew, partially completed, were ranged round the base of the pit.

But the gun was smashed, broken at the breech, with the helpless barrel lying in the mud and the gun carriage standing helpless on its steel platform. Thus it was found by the men of the 1st Australian Division when they came forward on the heels of the retreating Germans in the early days of last August.

The shaping of this gun was certainly one of the most magnificent struggles of man against the forces of Nature, the moulding of the earth to his needs and the fashioning of it towards a desired end. As you look at it, you can picture the men who went down into the bowels of the earth, dug and scraped the iron ore which they sent up from the blackness of eternal night to the light of day. Then followed the moment when overburdened vehicles swept towards some busy centre of labour, where the ore was shovelled into the smelting pots. Men sweated and strained there, worked hard in overheated chambers, hurrying on the job which they had set out to do.

And others, wise in their lore, pondered over plans relating to this and that, elevation of the monster when in use, the trajectory of the missiles which it was to vomit forth, the absorption of recoil and the carriage of the weapon to its desired emplacement. And these things were studied and made plain while the munition worker in the hot suffocating atmosphere of the casting room laboured to make shells worthy of the gun.

And one day when the labour was accomplished, the weapon was sent forth in secrecy and placed in a tree-lined pocket of ground behind the German trenches. Here was an emplacement prepared fit for its installation, and on a movable carriage, a steel ribbed structure of gigantic proportions, the gun was placed, its fifty foot barrel rising to the sky.

Dynamos built in deep dug-outs waited, ready when the hour came to touch the spark that would send out the missile of death to some far off French town, Amiens perhaps, and wreak vengeance on the simple people who dwelt there.

Whether or not the shell was fired is a matter of doubt, but rumour has it that a shell never passed through the barrel of the gun. But still it had its toll of victims, for by the emplacement can now be seen fourteen graves and the crosses on these graves tell that the men buried there are German gunners. The shell bursting in the barrel of the gun served a purpose, and this was beneficial to the Allies.

Some day when the war comes to an end, report has it that the gun will be sent to Australia, where sightseers in Sydney or Melbourne will look with awe on the mighty weapon captured by the Diggers in the great struggle.

Of this matter I spoke to an Australian soldier in London the other day, but he shook his head.

"You don't think they'll be able to remove it?" I queried.

"It's not that," he said. "It may be taken to Australia, but to what city? One place is jealous of another, and if Sydney gets the gun, what is Melbourne going to say? For my own part, I think it would be wise to leave the gun where it is."

The Grave