parapet, which had to be done gingerly because of snipers, bringing our food in from the rear in big carriers, getting water, pushing our trench out from an angle slantingways forward.  Getting meals, clearing up and so on takes a lot of time.  We make tea in big kettles in the big dug-out, which two whole companies use for their cooking, and carry them with a pole through the handles to our platoons.  We wash up and wash and shave.  Dinner preparation (and consumption) takes two or three hours.  Tea too uses up time.  It’s like camping out and picnicking in the park.  This first time (and next too) we have been mixed with some Sussex men who have been here longer and know the business....  It works out that we do most of the fatigue.  Afterwards we shall go up alone to a pitch of our own....

“But all the time you want to know about the Germans.  They are a quarter of a mile away at this part, or nearly a quarter of a mile.  When you snatch a peep at them it is like a low parti-coloured stone wall—­only the stones are sandbags.  The Germans have them black and white, so that you cannot tell which are loopholes and which are black bags.  Our people haven’t been so clever—­and the War Office love of uniformity has given us only white bags.  No doubt it looks neater.  But it makes our loopholes plain.  For a time black sandbags were refused.  The Germans sniped at us, but not very much.  Only one of our lot was hit, by a chance shot that came through the sandbag at the top of the parapet.  He just had a cut in the neck which didn’t prevent his walking back.  They shelled the trenches half a mile to the left of us though, and it looked pretty hot.  The sandbags flew about.  But the men lie low, and it looks worse than it is.  The weather was fine and pleasant, as General French always says.  And after three days and nights of cramped existence and petty chores, one in the foremost trench and two a little way back, and then two days in support, we came back—­and here we are again waiting for our second Go.

“The night time is perhaps a little more nervy than the day.  You get your head up and look about, and see the flat dim country with its ruined houses and its lumps of stuff that are dead bodies and its long vague lines of sandbags, and the searchlights going like white windmill arms and an occasional flare or star shell.  And you have a nasty feeling of people creeping and creeping all night between the trenches....

“Some of us went out to strengthen a place in the parapet that was only one sandbag thick, where a man had been hit during the day.  We made it four bags thick right up to the top.  All the while you were doing it, you dreaded to find yourself in the white glare of a searchlight, and you had a feeling that something would hit you suddenly from behind.  I had to make up my mind not to look round, or I should have kept on looking round....  Also our chaps kept shooting over us, within a foot of one’s head.  Just to persuade the Germans that we were not out of the trench....