lies 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. Ha