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"Very boring," said an officer by my side. "Not a damn thing to be
seen."
"Our men ought to have a walk-over," said an optimist. "Any living
German must be a gibbering idiot with shell-shock."
"I expect they're playing cards in their dugouts," said the officer
who was bored. "Even high explosives don't go down very deep."
"It's stupendous, all the same. By God! hark at that! It seems more
than human. It's like some convulsion of nature."
"There's no adventure in modern war," said the bored man. "It's a
dirty scientific business. I'd kill all chemists and explosive
experts."
"Our men will have adventure enough when they go over the top at dawn.
Hell must be a game compared with that."
The guns went on pounding away, day after day, laboring, pummeling,
hammering, like Thor with his thunderbolts. It was the preparation for
battle. No men were out of the trenches yet, though some were being
killed there and elsewhere, at the crossroads by Philosophe, and
outside the village of Masingarbe, and in the ruins of Vermelles, and
away up at Cambrin and Givenchy.


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