“Where do they go at such times?” I asked.

“I never thought about it.  I suppose they get into the cellar.  But if they do it is not at all because they are afraid.”

We went on, until some five of the nine miles had been traversed.

I have said before that the activity at the front commences only with the falling of night.  During the day the zone immediately back of the trenches is a dead country.  But at night it wakens into activity.  Soldiers leave the trenches and fresh soldiers take their places, ammunition and food are brought up, wires broken during the day by shells are replaced, ambulances come up and receive their frightful burdens.

Now we reached the zone of night activity.  A travelling battery passed us, moving from one part of the line to another; the drivers, three to each gun, sat stolidly on their horses, their heads dropped against the rain.  They appeared out of the mist beside us, stood in full relief for a moment in the glow of the lamps, and were swallowed up again.

At three miles from our destination, but only one mile from the German lines, it was necessary to put out the lamps.  Our progress, which had been dangerous enough before, became extremely precarious.  It was necessary to turn out for teams and lorries, for guns and endless lines of soldiers, and to turn out a foot too far meant slipping into the mud.  Two miles and a half from the village we turned out too far.

There was a sickening side slip.  The car turned over to the right at an acute angle and there remained.  We were mired!

We got out.  It was perfectly dark.  Guns were still passing us, so that it was necessary to warn the drivers of our wrecked car.  The road was full of shell holes, so that to step was to stumble.  The German lines, although a mile away, seemed very near.  Between the road and the enemy was not a tree or a shrub or a fence—­only the line of the railway embankment which marked the Allies’ trenches.  To add to the dismalness of the situation the Germans began throwing the familiar magnesium lights overhead.  The flares made the night alike beautiful and fearful.  It was possible when one burst near to see the entire landscape spread out like a map—­ditches full of water, sodden fields, shell holes in the roads which had become lakes, the long lines of poplars outlining the road ahead.  At one time no less than twenty starlights hung in the air at one time.  When they went out the inky night seemed blacker than ever.  I stepped off the road and was almost knee-deep in mud at once.

The battery passed, urging its tired horses to such speed as was possible.  After it came thousands of men, Belgian and French mostly, on their way out of the trenches.

We called for volunteers from the line to try to lift the car onto the road.  But even with twenty men at the towing rope it refused to move.  The men were obliged to give it up and run on to catch their companies.