Presently the fire became less scattered, and as the appointed hour approached our batteries aimed only in one direction.  It was the ridge to the left of the hill where lines of German trenches had been dug below the fringe of wood.  That place must have been a hell for half an hour or more.  Through the mist and the drowsy smoke I could see the flashes of the bursting shells like twinkling stars.  Those glittering jewels sparkled in constellations, six or more at a time, and there was never a minute without the glint of them.  It was not hard to imagine the terror of men crouching in pits below that storm of fire, smashing down upon their trenches, cutting up their barbed wire entanglements, killing any human life that could not hide below the ground.  The din of guns was unceasing, and made a great symphony of staccato notes on a thunderous instrument.  I could distinguish the sharp crack of the field batteries and the deeper boom of the heavier guns.  When one of these spoke there was a trembling of earth, and through the sky a great shell hurtled, with such a rush of air that it seemed like an express train dashing through an endless tunnel.  The bursts were, like volcanoes above the German lines, vomiting upwards a vast column of black smoke which stood solid on the sky-line for a minute or more before being torn down by the wind.  Something within me seemed to quake at these engines of destruction, these masses of explosive power sent for the killing of men, invisible there on the ridge, but cowering in fear or lying in their blood.

How queer are the battlefields of life and the minds of men!  Down below me, in a field, men were playing a game of football while all this business of death was going on.  Above and between the guns I heard their shouts and cheers, and the shrill whistle for “half-time,” though there was no half-time in the other game so close to them.  Nature, too, was playing, indifferent to this bloody business.  All the time, while the batteries were at work, birds were singing the spring song in ecstatic lyrics of joyfulness, and they went on far flights across a pale blue lake which was surrounded by black mountains of cloud.

Another bird came out, but with a man above its wings.  It was an English aeroplane on a journey of reconnaissance above the enemy’s lines.  I heard the loud hum of its engine, and watched how its white wings were made diaphanous by the glint of sun until it passed away into the cloud wrack.

It was invisible to us now, but not to the enemy.  They had sighted it, and we saw their shrapnel searching the sky for it.  The airman continued his journey on a wide circling flight, and we saw him coming back unscathed.