A string of covered waggons passes by.  I turn and see a number of men sitting inside and looking almost as cheerful as a beanfeast in Epping Forest.  They make facetious gestures.  They have a subdued sing-song going on.  But one of them looks a little sick, and then I notice not very obtrusive bandages.  “Sitting-up cases,” my guide explains.

These are part of the casualties of last night’s fight.

The fields on either side are now more evidently in the war zone.  The array of carts, the patches of tents, the coming and going of men increases.  But here are three women harvesting, and presently in a cornfield are German prisoners working under one old Frenchman.  Then the fields become trampled again.  Here is a village, not so very much knocked about, and passing through it we go slowly beside a long column of men going up to the front.  We scan their collars for signs of some familiar regiment.  These are new men going up for the first time; there is a sort of solemn elation in many of their faces.

The men coming down are usually smothered in mud or dust, and unless there has been a fight they look pretty well done up.  They stoop under their equipment, and some of the youngsters drag.  One pleasant thing about this coming down is the welcome of the regimental band, which is usually at work as soon as the men turn off from the high road.  I hear several bands on the British front; they do much to enhance the general cheerfulness.  On one of these days of my tour I had the pleasure of seeing the —–­th Blankshires coming down after a fight.  As we drew near I saw that they combined an extreme muddiness with an unusual elasticity.  They all seemed to be looking us in the face instead of being too fagged to bother.  Then I noticed a nice grey helmet dangling from one youngster’s bayonet, in fact his eye directed me to it.  A man behind him had a black German helmet of the type best known in English illustrations; then two more grey appeared.  The catch of helmets was indeed quite considerable.  Then I perceived on the road bank above and marching parallel with this column, a double file of still muddier Germans.  Either they wore caps or went bare-headed.  There were no helmets among them.  We do not rob our prisoners but—­a helmet is a weapon.  Anyhow, it is an irresistible souvenir.

Now and then one sees afar off an ammunition dump, many hundreds of stacks of shells—­without their detonators as yet—­being unloaded from railway trucks, transferred from the broad gauge to the narrow gauge line, or loaded onto motor trolleys.  Now and then one crosses a railway line.  The railway lines run everywhere behind the British front, the construction follows the advance day by day.  They go up as fast as the guns.  One’s guide remarks as the car bumps over the level crossing, “That is one of Haig’s railways.”  It is an aspect of the Commander-in-Chief that has much impressed and pleased the men.  And at last