Letters to Helen | Page 5

people.
The dug-outs are deep in the side of the hill. It's what is called an advanced H.Q.--_i.e._, when the Push begins, the gilded ones will crawl in and rap out messages to the various commanders, and watch the battle.
The R.E. officers showed us what was wanted, and each man put in his pick or shovel to mark the line. This is the procedure: each pick or shovel about 2 yards apart, and each man delves on that spot till he is 6 feet down. If it were not done like this, then (when it became too dark to see) the line would be lost. This only applies fully, of course, when you are in woods or other cover. Digging isn't really a cavalry job. But what of that?
[Sidenote: TRENCH DIGGING]
Well, now we've started. It's about ten o'clock, and getting very dim. Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle. Humphry and I creep up (neglectful of duty) to the top of the hill. A tiny tower there, smashed to pieces, but beautiful in the twilight. We creep about amongst shell craters. Presently a strange sweet odour. Flowers? Impossible. We stare into the dusk. An exquisite faint scent all around us. Surely, surely, thyme? Yes, sweet-williams, thyme. Evidently there has been a cottage here, but now only a mass of rubble and beams and glass to show where once it was. Sweet-williams, thyme, and later some Canterbury bells. Another dream-place, like that old chateau-farm.
What a view from here of the German lines and ours! As it gets darker, the flashes of the guns and the Very lights' solemn brilliance illuminate the whole show like a map. That tragic ruin of a town on our left is being shelled as usual. Jim is there. In front of us the German salient. All comparatively quiet. How lovely it is! The sounds of our men digging in the wet soil mingle now with other small noises. Voices underground. Listen. And a mouth-organ's cheery bray coming from the bowels of the earth. It is pitch-dark. We stand up like Generals surveying the battle-field. No danger. The Boche does not waste ammunition.
The rain is very heavy. I have got a tuft of sweet-william to smell.
We return to the men. They are wet through, but quite happy and content. Not a bullet, not a scrap of anything that goes pop. They work in a warm, wet peace. That is one of the odd things you learn--that only certain places are dangerous, and usually only at certain times.
The rain is coming down with tropical intensity. I am in a misty dream. It's all so mysterious. Suddenly I fall over something--plonk into the middle of some excavated earth, which the rain has made into semolina pudding. Tiresome to be absent-minded. How it pours! Midnight.
The roots of the trees make it very difficult to dig tidily, but the men use their "billucks" with the unerring skill of farmers, and their spades and picks as you or I would use a pencil. Time goes on. The trench must be done before 2.30 a.m. We have to be gone before dawn. It is nearly done now. Half-past twelve. The rain is stopping. One o'clock. No, it isn't. It's coming down again. Half-past one. The trench is finished. We must cover up all signs of it with branches, lest the wily Taube should see, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.
A quarter to two.
[Sidenote: A STRAFE]
Suddenly crash! bang! clash! boom! bang! We almost jump out of our skins. Where the deuce were all those guns hidden? From all about us, and far away behind and on either flank, our guns have begun strafing. The most hideous and deafening din.
The ground seems to shake. Then an order comes that we are to clear out at once. We do so. The Boches haven't answered yet, but they will. The whole thing seems quite unreal. The men vastly entertained. I honestly felt as if I were at some exciting melodrama. The least cessation of the guns, and I found myself saying: "Don't stop! don't stop!" I shouted into Corporal Nutley's car: "Can you hear what I'm saying?" and he answered: "No, sir."
At last we got out into the little path, and had to double along through the mud. Humphry was last man out, and he saw the one and only shell the Boches sent over, exploding quite close to the aforementioned dug-out.
Isn't it funny. The Boches don't apparently know of this dug-out, or of the cable trenches, or they would, of course, smash it to pieces. And, for some reason that I haven't yet grasped, they never reply to our guns immediately. They wait for perhaps ten minutes, and then they don't always reply to the same spot we spoke from. As, for example, this wood. Our guns were all in and round