, I could see, was the only way up to the farm, so I made the best
of it. I resigned myself to getting thoroughly wet through. Quite
unavoidable. I plunged into this unwholesome clay ditch and went along,
each step taking me up to my thighs in soft dark ooze, whilst here and
there the water was so deep as to force me to scoop out holes in the
clay at the side when, by leaning against the opposite side, with my
feet in the holes, I could slowly push my way along. In time I got to
the other end, and sat down to think a bit. As I sat, a bullet suddenly
whacked into the clay parapet alongside of me, which stimulated my
thinking a bit. "Had I been seen?" I tried to find out, and reassure
myself before going on. I put my hat on top of a stick and brought it up
above the parapet at two or three points to try and attract another
shot; but no, there wasn't another, so I concluded the first one had
been accidental, and went on my way again. By wriggling along behind an
undulation in the field, and then creeping from one tree to another, I
at last managed to get up into our reserve trenches, where I obtained my
first daylight, close-up view of our trenches, German trenches, and
general landscape; all laid out in panorama style.

In front of me were our front-line trenches, following the line of the
little stream which ran into the Douve on the right. On the far side of
the stream the ground gently rose in a long slope up to Messines, where
you could see a shattered mass of red brick buildings with the old grey
tower in the middle. At a distance of from about two to four hundred
yards away lay the German trenches, parallel to ours, their barbed wire
glistening in the morning sunlight.

"This place I'm in is a pretty good place for a sniper to hitch up," I
thought to myself. "Can see everything there is to be seen from here."

After a short stocktaking of the whole scene, I turned and wallowed my
way back to the farm. Some few days later they did make a sniper's post
of that spot, and a captain friend of mine, with whom I spent many
quaint and dismal nights in St. Yvon, occupied it. He was the "star"
shot of the battalion, an expert sniper, and, I believe, made quite a
good bag.

CHAPTER XXIII

OUR MOATED FARM--WULVERGHEM--THE
CURE'S HOUSE--A SHATTERED CHURCH
--MORE "HEAVIES"--A FARM ON FIRE

Our farm was one of a cluster of three or four, each approximately a
couple of hundred yards apart. It was perhaps the largest