Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/118

92 example. There was a railroad embankment ahead, some queer whitish furrows in the distance. One heard curious little gusts of wind. When will we be under fire?" I asked.

The officer grinned.

"Don't get up too high. We have been under fire ever since we left the automobiles. Listen!"

One of the gusts of wind had a sharper sound. "Shells," he said.

I experienced a sensation of nakedness. I was glad when he said:

"We'd better get down."

We walked on through apparently endless lines of trenches with a glimpse at a turning, perhaps, of a bit of brick wall in the shelter of which poilus improvised a meal. In all directions lines branched from the communication we followed. Each was labelled. It was like a hidden city whose inhabitants carried an air of constant expectancy. Covered with mud these creatures slipped by us from time to time.

“How are things in the front line?" our officer would ask.

Fairly quiet," was the almost invariable reply.

"It is the rain," the officer explained to us. Yet it wasn't quiet in the language of any other war. The roar of the guns seemed continuously closer. No minute passed without a number of