It is almost funny in a village that is being shelled.  Things simply disappear.  You are standing in an archway a little back from the road—­a shriek of shrapnel.  The windows are broken and the tiles rush clattering into the street, while little bullets and bits of shell jump like red-hot devils from side to side of the street, ricochetting until their force is spent.  Or a deeper bang, a crash, and a whole house tumbles down.

3/4-hour later.—­Curious life this.  Just after I had finished the last sentence, I was called out to take a message to a battery telling them to shell a certain village.  Here am I wandering out, taking orders for the complete destruction of a village and probably for the death of a couple of hundred men[20] without a thought, except that the roads are very greasy and that lunch time is near.

Again, yesterday, I put our Heavies in action, and in a quarter of an hour a fine old church, with what appeared from the distance a magnificent tower, was nothing but a grotesque heap of ruins.  The Germans were loopholing it for defence.

Oh the waste, the utter damnable waste of everything out here—­men, horses, buildings, cars, everything.  Those who talk about war being a salutary discipline are those who remain at home.  In a modern war there is little room for picturesque gallantry or picture-book heroism.  We are all either animals or machines, with little gained except our emotions dulled and brutalised and nightmare flashes of scenes that cannot be written about because they are unbelievable.  I wonder what difference you will find in us when we come home——­

Do you know what a night scare is?  In our last H.Q. we were all dining when suddenly there was a terrific outburst of rifle-fire from our lines.  We went out into the road that passes the farm and stood there in the pitch darkness, wondering.  The fire increased in intensity until every soldier within five miles seemed to be revelling in a lunatic succession of “mad minutes.”  Was it a heavy attack on our lines?  Soon pom-poms joined in sharp, heavy taps—­and machine guns.  The lines to the battalions were at the moment working feebly, and what the operators could get through was scarcely intelligible.  Ammunition limbers were hurried up, and I stood ready to dart anywhere.  For twenty minutes the rifle-fire seemed to grow wilder and wilder.  At last stretcher-bearers came in with a few wounded and reported that we seemed to be holding our own.  Satisfactory so far.  Then there were great flashes of shrapnel over our lines; that comforted us, for if your troops are advancing you don’t fire shrapnel over the enemy’s lines.  You never know how soon they may be yours.  The firing soon died down until we heard nothing but little desultory bursts.  Finally an orderly came—­the Germans had half-heartedly charged our trenches but had been driven off with loss.  We returned to the farm and found that in the few minutes we had been outside everything had been packed and half-frightened men were standing about for orders.