You see, things are expected to happen soon, and so I’m anxious to know all about it.  This part of the line is terrific.

Where we are, and for miles and miles around, myriads of troops, cavalry, artillery, everything, all camped in the open—­no concealment.  Mud?  Why, everyone is mud, up to the eyes, and so are the horses.  This big movement has quite dislocated the ordinary trench warfare, and now all over the dreary uplands are trenches hurriedly dug by the Hun and then abandoned.  Trenches that often barely shelter you above the knees.  Chaos, chaos.  Rifles lying to rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next.  Others in mere scratched-out shelters or in actual shell holes.  Sometimes they sing.  Often they are asleep.  Wreckage indescribable.  Shrapnel cracking into black clouds close by.  Enormous and magnificent H.E.’s hurling up black earth and red earth, and smoke that drifts slowly and solidly away to limbo.  Poor dead men lying about, and dead horses, too.  And in the trenches this limitless porridge of mud.  Cr-r-r-ump! go the crumps searching out a battery.  But oh the woods—­the poor scarecrow woods.  I was in a famous wood that looked positively devilish in its sinister nakedness.  And it’s September, too, when woods are so often at their loveliest.  Not a leaf—­not one single leaf; and, instead of undergrowth, just tossed earth, fuses, a boot, a coat, some wire, and above-ground dead men.  Below-ground (or as far below as they can get in the time) live men.

The Boche dug-outs are marvellous.  They are really works of art.  So solidly, even beautifully built.  I went into one that had wooden pillars supporting the roof like some baronial hall, with neat little cupboards, tables, beds, and everything complete.  There were two of our M.M.G. officers sleeping there, and we left them sleeping.  But emerge out into daylight, and ye gods! the confusion makes you feel awed.  A village is usually a heap of rubble, with here and there a bit of a gaudy enamelled coffee-pot or something; a geranium from a window, still growing; a china egg, a bit of a chair, a bit of an iron gateway.  And as far as the eye can see in this particular region, just undulating stretches of tormented earth.  All the old game of never showing above the parapet is quite disregarded, for often there is no parapet.  Time after time the Huns could have seen us, and I saw lots of them running across gaps.  You see, no sniping or anything like that can be organized yet.  Huns often come into our lines by mistake, and we do likewise.  And when you are not actually in close view of them, you go across the open.  If you get cut off by a barrage you just wait till it’s over.

I have been round all our M.G. positions and other Detachments.

September 10.

[Sidenote:  TOWARDS FLERS]