y to dive. At
that moment I undressed and went in.

My swim was a very short one; shorter than usual, and I am not much of
a swimmer. A searching shell sped over from the German lines hit the
ground a few hundred yards to rear of the Canal and whirled a shower
of dust into the water, which speedily delivered several hundred nude
fighters to the clothes-littered bank. A second and third shell
dropping nearer drove all modest thoughts from our minds for the
moment (unclothed, a man feels helplessly defenceless), and we hurried
into our warrens through throngs of women rushing out to take in their
washing.

One of the shells hit the artillery horse lines on the left of the
village and seven horses were killed.

CHAPTER XVII (p. 228)

EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT

There's the butter, gad, and horse-fly,
The blow-fly and the blue,
The fine fly and the coarse fly,
But never flew a worse fly
Of all the flies that flew

Than the little sneaky black fly
That gobbles up our ham,
The beggar's not a slack fly,
He really is a crack fly,
And wolfs the soldiers jam.

So strafe that fly! Our motto
Is "strafe him when you can."
He'll die because he ought to,
He'll go because he's got to,
So at him every man!

What time we have not been in the trenches we have spent marching out
or marching back to them, or sleeping in billets at the rear and going
out as working parties, always ready to move at two hours' notice by
day and one hour's notice by night.

I got two days C.B. at La Beuvriere; because I did not come out on
parade one morning. I really got out of bed very early, and went for a
walk. Coming to a pond where a number of frogs were hopping from (p. 229)
the bank into the water, I sat down and amused myself by watching them
staring at me out of the pond; their big, intelligent eyes full of
some wonderful secret. They interested and amused me, probably I
interested and amused them, one never knows. Then I read a little and
time flew by. On coming back I was told to report at the Company
orderly room. Two days C.B.

I got into trouble at another time. I was on sentry go at a dingy
place, a village where the people make their living by selling bad
beer and weak wine to one another. Nearly every house in the place is
an _estaminet_. I slept in the guard-room and as my cartridge pouches
had an unholy knack of prodding a stomac