The day’s work in trenches begins about nine o’clock the night before.  Darkness having fallen, various parties steal out into the no-man’s-land beyond the parapet.  There are numerous things to be done.  The barbed wire has been broken up by shrapnel, and must be repaired.  The whole position in front of the wire must be patrolled, to prevent the enemy from creeping forward in the dark.  The corn has grown to an uncomfortable height in places, so a fatigue party is told off to cut it—­surely the strangest species of harvesting that the annals of agriculture can record.  On the left front the muffled clinking of picks and shovels announces that a “sap” is in course of construction:  those incorrigible night-birds, the Royal Engineers, are making it for the machine-gunners, who in the fulness of time will convey their voluble weapon to its forward extremity, and “loose off a belt or two” in the direction of a rather dangerous hollow midway between the trenches, from which of late mysterious sounds of digging and guttural talking have been detected by the officer who lies in the listening-post, in front of our barbed-wire entanglement, drawing secrets from the bowels of the earth by means of a microphone.

Behind the firing trench even greater activity prevails.  Damage done to the parapet by shell fire is being repaired.  Positions and emplacements are being constantly improved, communication trenches widened or made more secure.  Down these trenches fatigue parties are filing, to draw rations and water and ammunition from the limbered waggons which are waiting in the shadow of a wood, perhaps a mile back.  It is at this hour, too, that the wounded, who have been lying pathetically cheerful and patient in the dressing-station in the reserve trench, are smuggled to the Field Ambulance—­probably to find themselves safe in a London hospital within twenty-four hours.  Lastly, under the kindly cloak of night, we bury our dead.

Meanwhile, within various stifling dug-outs, in the firing trench or support-trench, overheated company commanders are dictating reports or filling in returns. (Even now the Round Game Department is not entirely shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on the doings of the enemy, and another report of one’s own doings, and a report on the direction of the wind, and so on.  Then there are various indents to fill up—­scrawled on a wobbly writing-block with a blunt indelible pencil by the light of a guttering candle—­for ammunition, and sandbags, and revetting material.

All this literature has to be sent to Battalion Headquarters by one A.M., either by orderly or telephone.  There it is collated and condensed, and forwarded to the Brigade, which submits it to the same process and sends it on, to be served up piping hot and easily digestible at the breakfast-table of the Division, five miles away, at eight o’clock.