Funnily enough, I was ceasing to think it a place of evil omen, for one soon forgets the atmosphere of nightmare.

But I was convinced that it was a thing I was destined to see, and to see pretty soon.
Darkness fell when we were some miles short of the city, and the last part was difficult driving.

On both sides of the road transport and engineers' stores were parked, and some of it strayed into the highway.
I noticed lots of small details--machine-gun detachments, signalling parties, squads of stretcher-bearers--which mean the fringe of an army, and as soon as the night began the white fingers of searchlights began to grope in the skies.
And then, above the hum of the roadside, rose the voice of the great guns.

The shells were bursting four or five miles away, and the guns must have been as many more distant.

But in that upland pocket of plain in the frosty night they sounded most intimately near.