regular schedule, which was maintained, with few breaks, throughout
the winter. When the time came to go into the reserve, the rest of the
battalion would go back to LaClytte but the Emma Gees went only to the
Vierstraat-Brasserie line before described. From there detachments
would alternate in going back to the battalion billets for a bath and
clean clothing. Some of us rigged up our own bath house in Captain's
Post, so found it unnecessary to go any farther. Personally, there was
only one day in three months when I was out of sight of the German
lines. We had comfortable quarters where we were and the towns of
Dickebusch and LaClytte had no attractions for me; and as to the
battalion billets, they were abominable. They consisted of so-called
huts which were simply floors with roofs over them: no walls at all;
just a sloping, tent-like roof on top of a rough board floor. Outside,
they were partly banked up and plentifully smeared with mud,
camouflaged, as it were. The British made it a practise at that time
to keep their troops out of the inhabited towns that were within range
of the enemy's guns, so as not to give any excuse for shelling them.
LaClytte was a very small town of but a few hundred native
inhabitants, but Dickebusch, situated about midway between the lines
and LaClytte, was a city of several thousands. In both places were
hundreds of refugees from the ruined towns to the eastward.

However, it seemed to make little difference to the boche; he shelled
both towns, intermittently, killing a number of civilians but very
rarely hitting a soldier. Later, in the spring of 1916, they started
in to wipe out Dickebusch, and, for all practical purposes, they
succeeded. I will speak of this in a later chapter.

Where opposing lines are so close together, say less than one hundred
yards apart, and the ground is level and star shells are going up
almost continuously, it would seem to be nearly an impossibility for
any man or number of men to venture out into No Man's Land without
being seen and fired upon by the enemy. But with certain members of
each organization it is merely a part of the daily routine. Every
night they slip over the parapet and, in small groups, patrol up and
down the line, constantly on the alert to prevent any surprise attack
by the enemy. But this is not all. There are times, at all points,
when it is necessary to put out new barbed wire or repair the old;
when large parties of men must go out