t, because
otherwise it would prevent good observation. In some places grass doesn't
have a chance to even take root, let alone grow. The shells take care of
that.

I managed to get a translation of a diary kept by a German soldier who
fell on the field. Below is an exact translation and gives the point of
view of a man in the trenches on the other side of the line. He was
writing his diary at the same time I was writing mine, and we were both
fighting around the salient at Ypres, Hooge being on the point of the
salient farthest east. This part, which was once a place of beauty which
people came long distances to see, is now like a great muddy Saragossa Sea
which at the height of its fury has suddenly become frozen with the
tortured limbs of trees and men, and wreckage and reeking smells, until it
can again lash itself in wild fury into whirlpools. It is in all respects
Purgatory, but of greater horror than Dante ever dreamt of.

-------------------------------------

_Diary of F---- P---- of the 6th Company, 3d Battalion, 132d Regiment.
Killed at Hooge on August 9th, 1915._

On May 10, we were told to prepare for the journey to the front. Each man
received his service ammunition and two days' rations, and we then started
with heavy packs on our backs and our water-bottles full of coffee. After
a long march we reached our reserve position, where we were put into rest
billets for two days in wooden huts hidden in a wood. We could hear from
here the noise of the shells coming through the air.

On May 13, we moved into the trenches, in the night. We were a whole hour
moving along a communication trench one and one-half metres deep, right up
to the front line some fifty metres from the enemy. This was to be our
post. We had hardly got in before the bullets came flying over our heads.
Look out for the English! They know how to shoot! I need hardly say we did
not wait to return the compliment. We answered each one of their greetings
and always with success, inasmuch as we stood to our loopholes for
twenty-four hours with two-hour reliefs.

At length early on the 15th, at four o'clock, came our first attack. After
a preliminary smoking-out with gas, our artillery got to work, and about
ten o'clock we climbed out of the trenches and advanced fifty metres in
the hail of bullets. Here I got my first shot through the coat. Three
comrades were killed at the outset of the assault, and some twenty
slightly or