, better the
devil you know than the devil you don't know!

We managed to have a good deal of comfort in these trenches, all things
considered. We even rigged up hot baths in our second line. The men
were able every second day to have a hot bath, get clean underclothing,
and have a red-hot iron passed over their uniforms, which was the only
effective method I have known of keeping us reasonably free from
body-vermin. These baths turned us out like new men, as the Australian
craves his daily shower. I doubt if there are any troops in the world
who take such pains for cleanliness. Wherever we camp we rig up our
shower-baths as a first essential, and in some of the French villages
the natives would gather round these Hessian enclosed booths staring at
the bare legs showing beneath and jabbering excitedly about the madness
of these people who were so dirty that they needed a bath every day.

Although this sector of trench was during eight months known as "a
quiet front," as no actual offensive took place, yet there was never a
day or night free from peril, and all the time our strength in numbers
was being sapped--men left us "going west" or said good-bye as they
went to hospital, and sometimes would disappear in No Man's Land--gone,
none knew where. We received reinforcements that did not keep pace
with our losses and during all the time were never once up to half
strength. Always we were on the watch to worst our enemy, and he was
by no means napping. Gas was often used and sentries were posted with
gas alarm-signals not only in the trenches but in the streets of the
villages behind the lines. If by night or day the whitish vapor was
seen ascending from the trenches opposite, then such a hullabaloo of
noises would pass along the trenches and through the streets of the
towns as to make the spirits of the bravest quail, and woe betide even
the little child who at that signal did not instantly cover his face
with the hideous gas-mask. These noises were made chiefly with klaxon
horns, though an empty shell-case struck by iron was found to give out
a ringing sound that could plainly be heard above even the screech and
crump of the shells.

Our gas-masks are quite efficient protection, and I have been a whole
day under gas without injury, by keeping the cloth in my mask damp all
the time. Men sometimes lose their lives through lack of confidence in
their masks. The chemical causes an irritation of the mucous membr