We wanted to go to a place the other side of the wood.  When we reached the middle of the wood, where a new O.P. of ours has been established, Fritz put up a barrage on the edge of the wood.  Very well, then.  We just waited at the O.P. till the barrage was over, and then calmly walked out.  The wood is only a few shattered stumps of trees, and the place where undergrowth once was is one continuous sea of earth thrown about in every conceivable shape, with dead Tommies and dead Fritzes lying side by side.  So the wood isn’t much cover, you can imagine.

On the far side of the wood is beautiful rolling country, but not green.  It’s all brown, just a mess of earth.  It’s pitted with holes just like sand after a hailstorm.  In the distance you can see real lovely trees, but nothing grows where the strafing is.  Overhead the martins flicker and swoop, and starlings sail by in circling clouds, while the colossal noises crash and boom away merrily.

Ought I, perhaps, not to talk of these things?  Does it worry you to think of crumps bursting and so on?  But, really, it seems quite ordinary and in the day’s work here.  Men talk of crumps as you would talk of bread and butter.  That is, perhaps, why letters from home that talk about homely things—­cows and lavender and the new chintz—­are so welcome.

Besides, good heavens! don’t you know that there’s not a man in France but knows that the best-beloved ones at home are having a far worse time than we are having here?  Wet clothes?  Mud?  Shells a-bursting, guns a-popping?  Even a wound, perhaps?  Pish!  No one thinks at all out here.  There isn’t time.  Most of the people out here are perfectly happy and merry, really.  The sort of “long-drawn-out-agony” touch is, I think, rare.

I’m writing this in a jolly Boche dug-out, all panelled and cosy.  Jezebel and Swallow and a new pack mare I’ve got are in a valley that’s hardly ever touched, and in fine, all’s well.

September 24.

[Sidenote:  TEAR SHELLS]

Tear shells or “lachrymatory shells.”  They haven’t been putting many over lately, apparently.  But they put some over the other day, and they are so amusing that I must describe them to you.

The Colonel and I were up trying to find a “working-party” from the regiment.  The regiment is sadly split up at present into various parties doing various jobs in various places, all unpleasant.  Better than infantry work, but still unpleasant.

We rode up much closer than we have ridden before, and left the Colonel’s orderly and Hale in a bit of a valley with Minotaur, Jezebel, Hob, and Tank.  Tank is a new mare I’ve got.  Hale was riding her, as I never take Swallow closer than I can help.

We dismounted in this small valley, and the Colonel’s orderly and Hale were given orders to move if any shells were put over too near them.

Then the Colonel and I went up through a wood that is just a few splintered stumps now.