In the early days of the war these regiments had suffered heavy losses, so that there were new drafts in them now, but there were lads here who had fought at Mons and Charleroi and had seen their comrades fall in heaps round about Le Cateau.  They told their tales, with old memories of terror, which had not made cowards of them.  Their chief interest to-day was centred in a football match which was to take place about the same time as the “other business.”  It was not their day out in the firing line.  We left them putting on their football boots and hurling chaff at each other in the dim light.  Out of the way of the flying shells they forgot all about the horror of war for a little while.

Forcing our way through the brushwood on the slopes, we reached the crest of the hillock.  Near by stood two generals and several staff officers—­men whose names have been written many times in the Chief’s dispatches and will be written for all time in the history of this war.  They were at their post of observation, to watch the progress of an attack which was timed to begin shortly.

Presently two other figures came up the hillside.  One of them arrested my attention.  Who was that young officer, a mere boy, who came toiling up through the slime and mud, and who at the crest halted and gave a quick salute to the two generals?  He turned, and I saw that it was Edward, Prince of Wales, and through the afternoon, when I glanced at him now and again as he studied his map and gazed across the fields, I thought of another Edward, Prince of Wales, who six centuries ago stood in another field of France.  Out of the past came old ghosts of history, who once as English princes and knights and men-at-arms fought at St. Omer, and Ypres, Bailleul, and Bethune, and all that very ground which lay before me now...

More than an hour before the time at which the attack was to be concentrated upon the enemy’s position—­a line of trenches on a ridge crowned by a thin wood immediately opposite my observation point—­ our guns began to speak from many different places.  It was a demonstration to puzzle the enemy as to the objective of our attack.

The flashes came like the flicking of heliographs signalling messages by a Morse code of death.  After each flash came the thunderous report and a rushing noise as though great birds were in flight behind the veil of mist which lay on the hillsides.  Puffs of woolly-white smoke showed where the shrapnel was bursting, and these were wisped away into the heavy clouds.  Now and again one heard the high singing note of shells travelling towards us—­the German answer to this demonstration—­and one saw the puff balls resting on the hill-spur opposite our observation post.