g parapet on
the back to prevent pieces of "back-kick shells" from coming in, or
prematures from our own or the French guns for that matter. Some straw
on the floor completed it. The ground was treacherous and a slip the
first night nearly buried----. So we had to be content with walls
straight up and down, and trust to the height of the bank for safety.
All places along the bank were more or less alike, all squirrel holes.

This morning we supported a heavy French attack at 4.30; there had
been three German attacks in the night, and everyone was tired. We
got heavily shelled. In all eight or ten of our trees were cut by
shells--cut right off, the upper part of the tree subsiding heavily and
straight down, as a usual thing. One would think a piece a foot long
was just instantly cut out; and these trees were about 18 inches in
diameter. The gas fumes came very heavily: some blew down from the
infantry trenches, some came from the shells: one's eyes smarted, and
breathing was very laboured. Up to noon to-day we fired 2500 rounds.
Last night Col. Morrison and I slept at a French Colonel's headquarters
near by, and in the night our room was filled up with wounded. I woke up
and shared my bed with a chap with "a wounded leg and a chill". Probably
thirty wounded were brought into the one little room.

Col.----, R.A., kept us in communication with the French General in
whose command we were. I bunked down in the trench on the top of the
ridge: the sky was red with the glare of the city still burning, and we
could hear the almost constant procession of large shells sailing over
from our left front into the city: the crashes of their explosion shook
the ground where we were. After a terribly hard day, professionally and
otherwise, I slept well, but it rained and the trench was awfully muddy
and wet.

Sunday, April 25th, 1915.

The weather brightened up, and we got at it again. This day we had
several heavy attacks, prefaced by heavy artillery fire; these bursts
of fire would result in our getting 100 to 150 rounds right on us or
nearby: the heavier our fire (which was on the trenches entirely) the
heavier theirs.

Our food supply came up at dusk in wagons, and the water was any we
could get, but of course treated with chloride of lime. The ammunition
had to be brought down the roads at the gallop, and the more firing the
more wagons. The men would quickly carry the rounds to the guns, as
the wagons had to halt behind o