s. But for a mercy, he had pulled down his
panel--didn't know he had!--and the next thing he knew was a
bullet spattering on it--just where his eye should have been.
He was jolly quick in backing out and into a dug-out, and an
hour later he got the man.

'But there was an awful thing here last night. An officer was
directing one of our snipers--stooping down just behind him,
when a Hun got him--right in the eyes. I was down at the
dressing-station visiting one of our men who had been knocked
over--and I saw him led in. He was quite blind,--and as calm as
anything--telling people what to do, and dictating a post card
to the padre, who was much more cut up than he was. I can tell
you, Pamela, our Army is _fine_! Well, thank God, I'm in
it--and not a year too late. That's what I keep saying to
myself. And the great show can't be far off now. I wouldn't
miss it for anything, so I don't give the Hun any more chances
of knocking me over than I can help.

'You always want to know what things look like, old Pam, so
I'll try and tell you. In the first place, it's just a glorious
spring day. At the back of the cranky bit of a ruined farm
where we have our diggings (by the way, you may always go back
at night and find half your bedroom shot away--that happened to
me the other night--there was a tunic of mine still hanging on
the door, and when you opened the door, nothing but a hole ten
feet deep full of rubble--jolly luck, it didn't happen at
night-time!) there are actually some lilac trees, and the buds
on them are quite big. And somehow or other the birds manage to
sing in spite of the hell the Huns have made of things.

'I'm looking out now due east. There's a tangled mass of
trenches not far off, where there's been some hot raiding
lately. I see an engineer officer with a fatigue party working
away at them--he's showing the men how to lay down a new
trench with tapes and pegs. Just to my left some men are
filling up a crater. Then there's a lorry full of bits of an
old corduroy road they're going to lay down somewhere over a
marshy place. There are two sausage balloons sitting up aloft,
and some aeroplanes coming and going. Our front line is not
more than a mile away, and the German line is about a mile and
a quarter. Far off to my rig