"Well. Suppose we come and look at things a little," said the
commanding officer.
AN OBSERVATION POST
There was a specimen tree--a tree worthy of such a park--the
sort of tree visitors are always taken to admire. A ladder
ran up it to a platform. What little wind there was swayed
the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway. A
telephone bell tinkled 50 foot overhead. Two invisible guns
spoke fervently for half a minute, and broke off like terriers
choked on a leash. We climbed till the topmost platform
swayed sicklily beneath us. Here one found a rustic shelter,
always of the tea-garden pattern, a table, a map, and a little
window wreathed with living branches that gave one the first
view of the Devil and all his works. It was a stretch of open
country, with a few sticks like old tooth-brushes which had
once been trees round a farm. The rest was yellow grass,
barren to all appearance as the veldt.
"The grass is yellow because they have used gas here," said an
officer. "Their trenches are------. You can see for
yourself."
The guns in the woods began again. They seemed to have no
relation to the regularly spaced bursts of smoke along a
little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away--no
connection at all with the strong voices overhead coming and
going.
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