trenches in the dead of a winter night is an
experience which borders upon nightmare--the
hot-lobster-and-toasted-cheese variety.

The opening stages of this enterprise are almost ritualistic in their
formality. First of all, the Brigade Staff which is coming in visits
the Headquarters of the Brigade which is going out--usually a chateau
or farm somewhere in rear of the trenches--and makes the preliminary
arrangements. After that the Commanding Officers and Company
Commanders of the incoming battalions visit their own particular
section of the line. They are shown over the premises by the outgoing
tenants, who make little or no attempt to conceal their satisfaction
at the expiration of their lease. The Colonels and the Captains then
return to camp, with depressing tales of crumbling parapets, noisome
dug-outs, and positions open to enfilade.

On the day of the relief various advance parties go up, keeping under
the lee of hedges and embankments, and marching in single file.
(At least, that is what they are supposed to do. If not ruthlessly
shepherded, they will advance in fours along the skyline.) Having
arrived, they take over such positions as can be relieved by daylight
in comparative safety. They also take over trench-stores, and exchange
trench-gossip. The latter is a fearsome and uncanny thing. It usually
begins life at the "refilling point," where the A.S.C. motor-lorries
dump down next day's rations, and the regimental transport picks them
up.

An A.S.C. Sergeant mentions casually to a regimental Quartermaster
that he has heard it said at the Supply Depot that heavy firing has
been going on in the Channel. The Quartermaster, on returning to the
Transport Lines, observes to his Quartermaster-Sergeant that the
German Fleet has come out at last. The Quartermaster-Sergeant, when he
meets the ration parties behind the lines that night, announces to a
platoon Sergeant that we have won a great naval victory. The platoon
Sergeant, who is suffering from trench feet and is a constant reader
of a certain pessimistic halfpenny journal, replies gloomily: "We'll
have had heavy losses oorselves, too, I doot!" This observation is
overheard by various members of the ration party. By midnight several
hundred yards of the firing-line know for a fact that there has been a
naval disaster of the first magnitude off the coast of a place which
every one calls Gally Polly, and that the whole of our Division are
to be transferred for