neral has ordered a field gun to take up a position on
this bank. He refers to it as his "Sniping eighteen-pounder." It is firing
at seven hundred yards right at the German line and smashes up their
parapet in a style that is pretty to watch. The machine gunners are in a
great state, because the enemy will soon be "searching" with his artillery
for the eighteen-pounder and the lairs of the smaller hidden guns will
suffer.

The men are hunting for lice in their underwear. This is the kind of
conversation that is coming through from the next cellars: "I've got you
beat--that's forty-seven." "Wait a minute"--a sound of tearing cloth--"but
look at this lot, mother and young." "With my forty and these you'll have
to find some more." They were betting on the number they could find. I
peel off my shirt myself and burn them off with a candle. I glory in the
little pop they make when the heat gets to them. All the insect powder in
the world has been tried out on them and they've won.

All sentries here are doubled; one thing it's safer, and another it's
company; even when things are quiet, rats and mice scamper about and it
sets your nerves on end. Things which are inanimate during the day become
alive at night. Trees seem to walk about. I wonder what it tastes like to
have a real meal in which tinned food does not figure; fancy a tablecloth;
my tablecloth is a double sheet of newspaper, and even then I can't have a
new one every day.

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

Had a good night's rest; came in about twelve o'clock and slept until
eight-thirty this morning. One eye is completely closed up by a sting.

A German aeroplane has been hovering over our positions looking for my
gun, so we have stopped firing and all movement. I know just how the
chicken feels when the hawk hovers over it. Few people realize how much
aeroplanes figure in this war, for war would be much different without
them. They do the work of Cavalry only in the sky. Whenever they come
over, the sentries blow three blasts on their whistles and everybody runs
for cover or freezes; guns stop firing and are covered up with branches
made on frames. If men are caught in the open they stand perfectly still
and do not look up, for on the aeroplane photographs faces at certain
heights show light; dugouts are covered over with trees, straw or grass.
We use aeroplane photographs a great deal; they show trenches distinctly
and look very like th