It was just such a glorious day as this one has been, a year ago, when this corps of untried soldiers suddenly rushed into the nightmare of a desperate fight.  At this moment of the night the rattle of rifle fire was incessant all round the hills.  Men were digging and firing and digging in a dream which had continued since early dawn and had to continue for two more days and nights before there was the first chance of rest.  They were old soldiers within twenty-four hours, as their leader told them in an order which was circulated at the time.  Only a sprinkling of the men who were there are in the Anzac units to-day.  But they are the officers and the N.C.O.’s, and that means a great deal.

We have been here long enough now to discover the differences between this front and the old fighting-line in Gallipoli.  The rain has been heavier in March than for thirty-five years, and April until yesterday seemed almost as bad.  The trenches are made passable by being floored with a wooden pathway which runs on piles—­underneath which is the gutter of water and mud which is the real floor of the trench.  Sometimes the water rises in the communication trenches so that the boards float or disappear, and if you happen to step into an interval between them you may quite well sink to your waist in thin clay mud.  The actual firing trenches and the dug-outs there are mostly dry by comparison, except where the accumulated task of draining them has been gaining on some regiment which garrisons them, and the rear of the line is a morass of foul-smelling clay.

This difficulty never really reached us in Gallipoli, though we might possibly have found the trenches falling in upon us in the rains of winter if we had stayed.  The trenches in France are full of traces of old dug-outs and mouldering sandbags, collapsed through rain in the dim past before the timbering of all works was looked on as a necessity.  In Anzac we never had the timber for this, and one doubts if we ever could have had it had we stayed.  The soil there was dry and held well, and the trenches were deep and very elaborate to a degree which one has not seen approached in France.  There may be some parts here where such trenches are possible, and where they exist; but I have not seen them.  It must be remembered that in many places in France there are stretches of line where it is impossible to dig a trench at all in winter, because you meet water as soon as you scratch the surface; and therefore both our line and the German are a breastwork built up instead of a trench dug down.  The curious thing is that in the trenches themselves you scarcely realise the difference.  Your outlook there is bounded in either case by two muddy walls over which you cannot wisely put your head in the daylight.  The place may be a glorious green field, with flowers and birds and little reedy pools, if you are two feet over the parapet.  But you see nothing from week-end to week-end except two muddy walls and the damp, dark interior of a small dug-out.  You see no more of the country than you would in a city street.  Trench life is always a city life.