dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells,
very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man's Land. The enemy has a
very good kind which remains alight for several minutes.

Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are
working hard, it is miserable here,--wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes,
smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a poor,
wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium,
where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient.

Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by
sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened
shell-riddled town and knocked up an _estaminet_; we got a much finer meal
than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who
kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. "Oh, no! I sleep
upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at
night. Then I go into the cellar." This woman was a very pleasant,
intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally
leave the danger zone.

Marching through the sloughed-up mud, through shell holes filled with
putrid water, amongst most depressing conditions, I saw a working party
returning to their billets. They were wet through and wrapped up with
scarves, wool helmets, and gloves. Over their clothes was a veneer of
plastered mud. They marched along at a slow swing and in a mournful way
sang--

"Left--Left--Left
We--are--the tough Guys!"

Apparently there are no more words to this song because after a pause of a
few beats they commenced again--

"Left--Left--Left--"

They looked exactly what they said they were.

Windmills, of which there are a good many, are only allowed to work under
observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy
information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the
same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also used in
the same way.

I saw a pathetic sight to-day. A stretcher came by with a man painfully
wounded; he was inclined to whimper; one of the stretcher-bearers said
quietly to him, "Be British." He immediately straightened himself out and
asked for a "fag." He died that night.

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

We had a terrific bombardment last night; the ground shook all night and
the sky was lit up for miles